This issue sprung up when moving from NVIDIA driver 470.74 to 470.82. I’m now on 495.44 and the issue persists. It is similar in appearance to a graphics issue I’ve encountered in Two Point Hospital, which had apparently resulted in an incompatibility between NVIDIA RTX cards and the Linux version of that game, but I don’t know that it’s similar in this case.
Basic system specifications:
Pop!_OS 21.04 (Ubuntu based) with XanMod 5.14.15 kernel
NVIDIA RTX 2060 with the 495.44 driver, X11 windowing, and Gnome 3.38.5.
Disabling Gnome extensions makes no difference.
AMD Ryzen 7 3700X
preface: this may be a highly technical issue that will likely require the devs involvement and is probably well beyond the realm of a normal game bug
Just to confirm - this only happens on Nvidia drivers newer than 470.82 (and including)? I.e. you were able to revert back to the older Nvidia 470.74 and the problem went away?
Two Point Hospital is also using the Unity Game Engine but based on the games release date I would expect that the version of Unity it uses is older than the 2019 LTS version Last Epoch uses. It could still obviously be that there is some configuration or setting that sparks this issue specifically with Unity but a lot more info would be needed to figure if this is a specific Unity / Nvidia issue…
@d3viant has had a lot of success getting Last Epoch working on Linux (actually Pop_OS!) and recently made some posts about improving things on Nvidia GPUs. Perhaps he is willing to chip in here and help with his experiences - and maybe even test the newer Nvidia Drivers to see if he gets similar results…
Some thoughts that may or may not spark something that could be related:
What in-game settings are you using? Does dropping this down to the Very Low quality settings make any difference? Does adjusting framerate limits (to lower GPU usage from the 165Hz your screen is using) have any impact on this?
I am not seeing any texture or graphical item loading issues in the log file you have attached…
Have you tested this only via the Steam version or via the Standalone Launcher version for Linux (available from your account page on EHG)?
Have you tried to verify the LE game files in the Steam version to make sure that the install is still ok?
Have you checked for various Mesa / OpenGL updates etc - perhaps there is a dependancy / library that is now out of sync with the updated GPU drivers?
HEYA, there are dozens of us Linux folks!
I’d try it on vanilla Pop and see if issue goes away, I do not have ANY of those issues and I’m getting >60fps on only 3600/1080 nVidia. I’m not running bleeding edge kernel, just stock, zero issues. I AM running standalone Linux app (not thru Steam, that MIGHT make a diff?) Keep us in the loop as I have vested interest in this game on Linux!!!
I’m probably going to try the standalone version of the game in a bit to see if that makes a difference. With Two Point Hospital, I found that running the game through Proton (forcing the use of the Windows client rather than Linux client) resolved the issues, so I’m attempting that here right now. I’ve set the game in Steam’s settings to run using Proton 6.20-GE-1 and I’ll see what it does.
I’ve tested it using the Windows client through Proton, and I get zero graphical issues whatsoever, now to try the standalone client. I’ll edit the comment later once it’s done.
Edit: The standalone client has the exact same graphical corruption.
Running the game on Ultra is not recommended even if your hardware should be able to do so… the game is in beta and has known performance & graphical issues if you push the settings/resolution/framerate… Imho, there is very little difference in the visual quality between Ultra and High and with the performance and stability tradeoff that Ultra tends to cause, its just not worth it… and your GPU will thank you for it. I liken it to gunning the car to the corner cafe to get bread and milk 30 seconds quicker than driving normally - what is the point. Oh.,… and never leave LE with unlimited framerates… always limit it…
On the same topic of settings… Does the screen mode have any affect? I.e. fullscreen windowed etc… This has been an issue on windows with odd graphical anomolies so I thought i would ask to check.
Really need to establish if your deduction about the exact GPU driver versions causing the problem is correct… based on previous issues with Linux, exact combinations of GPU driver and underlying dependencies like MESA etc has made a huge difference in getting LE to work properly. It really is important as this will likely provide the devs with a way to pinpoint the issue between driver versions. This becomes even more important when others are successfully able to use the latest drivers etc…
Not being able to downgrade drivers/kernel to test - I think that the main concern here is that you have a lot of different factors involved and it might very well be a very specific combination of these factors that is causing the issue (it might not just be the GPU driver version) and its very hard for anyone else to replicate your exact setup…
The Unity Game engine can be launched with varions command line arguments… Perhaps you want to see if any of these make a difference? You can change things like OpenGL versions etc… See Scroll down to Unity Standalone Player command line arguments. Its a long shot, and a shot in the dark, but its something to try… maybe you get lucky and it helps the devs figure out the issue.
I actually forgot to mention that It’s not totally ultra that I run it at, I do reduce foliage density to low, reduce screen space reflections as well as shadow quality a bit, but running the game at lowest settings didn’t make a difference (though now that I’m thinking of it, I would like to try restarting the game after reducing to minimum settings to see if that makes a difference - if it does, I’ll report back).
Screen mode was one of the first things I’ve tried and it made no difference. Again, I’m thinking I should try restarting the game after toggling through settings. I normally keep it on Borderless Window.
My problem with downgrading the graphics driver was that I couldn’t actually get the older version from NVIDIA’s repositories. The installation would always fail probably due to missing dependencies that were removed (not certain). Installing manually would also fail for reasons I don’t recall, but I could try it again. I actually tried with the Nouveau driver (knowing it likely wouldn’t work) and it unsurprisingly didn’t work, the game simply crashed with Nouveau.
I may actually have to try it with a clean install (no custom kernel) on the same hardware and see if that does anything. I’m usually a bit strapped for time and don’t really want to fool around with these things when I’d rather be relaxing so this may not happen soon.
I may go ahead and try launching the game through the terminal to see if it is helpful. I’m doubtful (I’m a bit pessimistic) that it will reveal anything.
I’m not going to go right back at this right now as I’m quite tired from the day, so next update will likely take some time.
I’ve determined the cause. In the NVIDIA X Server Settings application, I found that the driver was set to override application settings for anisotropic filtering. Unchecking the box and then restarting the game resolved the graphical issues.
I don’t recall if this option was even present in the older driver or if it was and I had already had it enabled prior and the new driver update broke things, but either way I’ve resolved the problem.
NVIDIA X Server Settings → Antialiasing Settings → Anisotropic Filtering section → Uncheck “Override Application Setting”
Wonderful news - glad it turned out to be a setting and not something more complicated. One of the issues with the older Nvidia drivers is that they didnt have all the features available to configure - perhaps the newer ones added this and/or defaults to the setting you found and LE just doesnt like it.
Thanks for posting the solution to help others in the future…
- and maybe even test the newer Nvidia Drivers to see if he gets similar results…