Hey there,
I’ve some screen flashing issues for a long time now. Honestly I never posted a bug report as I thought I remember having seen a response to a similar issue being adressed.
Like the performance issues, these flashes become less and more with different patches. The current game version 0.8.1c is one of the worst in that regard.
This flashes also happen on the character selection menu. Ingame it seems only to happen while moving. It’s not always as annoying as in the video. But currently there’s not play session without it and it definitly is getting worse for me.
I had a similar thing with my 1060 but on the previous game version 0.8 and my flashing was a thinner band along the bottom of the screen not the top in blocks like yours… I did a graphics driver update (clean install) and have not experienced it at all since the latest game version dropped.
I see from your diags that you are aslo running an odd aspect ratio (3840 x 1080) - LE has had some issues with the non-standard screen ratios causing odd things - maybe just as a test after checking the drivers, see if manually setting it to a more standard res has the same flashing…
Another thing would be to consider changing individual graphics settings and see if any of them have an impact on the issue.
EDIT: looking more closely at your video… Is your graphics card ok… Do you have any way of running other diagnostics on it… Dont want to jinx anything but the block and strange colour banding worry me a little… Could just be the way your screen handles the extra wide aspect ratio…
The screen flashing issue I have ever since I play LE and exclusively in this game. The Ultrawide Screen I have just for a few weeks now. So I’m relatively sure, it’s not the aspect ratio.
I’ll try testing some graphic settings, like you suggested and do a clean driver install, too.
The thing is that I have the feeling, that this issue is related to some maps. I’ll start recording these details, too.
I hope it’s nothing with my graphics card. Are there any diagnostic tools, I could use to check?
I ran a 3D Mark recently. abeside the relatively bad performance of my potato pc, there were no graphical issues.
Have you tried vsync? I see that the screen is 120Hz… and our old 1060s would struggle to keep up with that refresh rate especially at the ultrawide resolution - mine can only manage 75hz @ 1080p before it starts to struggle in LE.
Maybe try the fps limiting instead of vsync… Perhaps this is some sort of screen tearing effect?
What I found odd is how it neatly split the screen into 4 quadrants and flashes each of those… Maybe there is a driver setting that is related specifically to this.
Or even a screen cable causing this? Maybe try HDMI or Displayport and see? I have had problems with old/cheap screen cables not being compatible with the later HDMI versions and similar… Maybe even a different port on the graphics card?
Diagnostic tools… Cannot really suggest anything - repeated runs of 3D mark should show if its overheating or having problems. HWmonitor or something else to see the stats.
I’ve seen this behavior in other games when they have too many lighting sources for the engine to handle properly in a small area. That’s not to say this is what’s causing it, but it might be worth keeping an eye out to see if you notice it more in areas with more activity/when there are more effects going on. Usually those effects are a bit more ‘controllable,’ though, because the camera position changes as you move, so you sometimes see predictable patterns if you run back and forth in a small area when the flickering is going.
Some of the flashes also remind me a bit of what I used to see when alt-tabbing into a windowed fullscreen game (usually Skyrim) that had other windows open behind it. Most of them don’t look like that at all, though, so also probably unrelated. But just in case it’s a Windows-LE interaction, I would experiment with closing all other programs/windows (or having them on one monitor, while switching your LE back to the other monitor) and see if it helps. It probably won’t, but might be worth a try.
If it were the cable or driver doing this, I would expect to also see this behavior (or at least other graphical problems) in other games.
Yeah. I’ve not made a statistic about it, but it seems to be related to the map I’m playing. When it occurs, it’s there for the entire map. And it does only flicker when moving.
Don’t know how it comes that I have this issue sometimes on the character selection screen.
In the past I played with 2 screens# one for the game one for other tasks. Even with nothing in the background its happening.
Now that I have switched to my UWS I have windows open in the background. But not in the pattern you can see flickering. The pattern also changes. It’s not like that 4 squares you see in the vid.
I switched between windowed and fullscreen and it does not have an impact.
I’m relatively sure this is a LE related problem, since it’s only happening there. I’ve played a lot of Valheim recently as well as Outriders. No issues. And there are many other games that I’ve played since I have this problem.
In my OP I said I have this issue “for a long time now”. By long time I mean since I started LE with the EA release in 2018.
It’s unlikely that my graphics card is broken since then, but the only issues occur in LE. But who knows.
I’m relatively sure that this issue has been mentioned by other players, too. It’s not happening that often so it’s not gamebreaking for me.
I have reported this multiple times before, been getting it for over a year and still getting it. People on the stream tonight were all commenting how horrible it was and felt like they subliminal messages lmao.
Edit: Also thread on reddit popped up with lots of people complaining about it. Hopefully seeing that many people experience this (and mine is like your video but on steroids with a flicker every second) it gets fixed or at least addressed
I encounter this as well frequently and it makes the game borderline unplayable for me. There are different things that happen:
A rectangle including the hotbar, vitals et cetera flashes in dark-orange-yellow
The whole screen flashes white
The whole screen flashes in distorted colors as seen in the video of OP. Sometimes, only in parts of the screen.
The issue seems to get worse if I cast any Mage spells (only played that class so far) or expand the map using [Tab]. I also noticed that it seems to happen more frequently when pushing further into an area, so maybe something with preloading/pre-rendering or something else catching up?
I am not an epileptic, but if the issue was just a tad more severe, as I said, I would be unable to play the game.
For me myself, it happens sporadically during a session, but definitely in every session. There is not a single area where it does not happen, although I think that it started somewhere around Chapter 2-4 and was especially bad in Chapter 7 (8?), the currently last released one in 0.8.1c.
That description is pretty much what I was getting before the latest patch & a driver update fixed it. It happened all the time/every time I played before then. Obviously I am just lucky that it seems to have resolved itself for me. Touch wood I havent gotten one of the big block ones everyone is describing.
The weird thing with this bug is that it is almost gone since I posted the report. Before I made the clip I had some serious issues because it happened frequently. Now I get a small flicker maybe 1-2 per half an hour. It is barely noticable.
The only thing I changed was to set 60Hz refresh rate from 120Hz in my windows settings. No issue since then. After playing a few days with that setting without any issues, I turned it to 120Hz again. Still no issues for days. For about a few days I get that very rare single time flickers.
So finally I think it’s not the refresh rate (what I thought may be the cause in the first place).
There was no driver update or whatsoever. Also the recent LE hotfixes had no influence.
I started a second character and the flashing definitely changed, as in, it appears in less areas. It is still present in some areas, but it is gone in most areas. The worst areas so far are Maj’elkan Catacombs, Nest of the Fallen and Citadel Sewers and I expect The Burning Pier to be one as well.
The first video shows the screen flashing, with the screen being divided into different parts, the second video shows the hotbar flashing in dark-yellow (blink and miss it) and the last video highlights a lot of weird flashes all over the screen that make the game almost unplayable.
So far I have found no way that changes the issue in any way. I tried changing my settings, quality, vsync, limiting frame rate, nothing seems to help.
The only thing that I noticed is that while leaving the game idle, the issue does not appear, but only if you make inputs, move the character, use skills and so on.
Although, now re-visiting the areas in a new session, I have zero flashing anymore, tested it in both Citadel Sewers and Maj’elka Catacombs. The only thing that I did notice was that screen tearing was a lot more severe than in other areas, vsync disabled. So the problem only appears in a long session, after the game has run for a longer time, with the player progressing a lot?
