Weird graphics glitches on Intel HD graphics. Tried many things.

DaforLynx

I recently reinstalled ESO after clearing out some hard drive space. I was pretty excited to get back into the swing of things, progress other characters - I'd uninstalled it because my guild disbanded, but I kinda just want to play the game now. To my dismay, upon loading into Stonefalls, I noticed that the game was...well..


I tried changing a few graphics settings, including setting it to fullscreen, turning shadows on, and probably something else. That fixed the mist effect, but some glitches remained.


And here's a weird one I got when reading a letter.


But that's not the worst of it. All the artifacts seemed to be related to this...what is either a bug in the way textures are drawn, or the lighting, or geometry, I'm not sure. Here is a screenshot which pretty much captures what I'm talking about.


As you can see, weird triangles are being shown on the ground. Again, no combination of graphics settings fixed the issue.
The next day, I fully updated my graphics driver (it's on Intel HD graphics driver version 15.40 now). I then booted up the game again, trying a different character in a different area. (I also have MSI Afterburner on for the sake of it.) Yet the glitches still remain.



And here's the interesting part. All transparencies - effects, ghosts, even healthbars - are getting every other one of these weird triangles drawn over them.




It's truly bizarre, and happens in no other game I've played. I don't - can't - overclock my graphics, despite using MSI Afterburner. This graphics bug is pretty annoying, and I'm hoping either someone will suggest a fix or it will get fixed in a later patch. And another thing, I can't seem to find any other person with this same issue. So I might have to do more testing.
If you need it, my laptop's specs are:
Intel i5 4210U
8 GB RAM
Intel HD Graphics 4400

Let me know if I should post this elsewhere.

MilkJugg24

DaforLynx wrote: »

Let me know if I should post this elsewhere.

You have posted this in the right place. Do you know the maker and model number of your laptop? Using the drivers provided by your laptop's manufacturer is usually better than Intel's latest releases. This is because laptop logic boards are sometimes designed differently than others, allowing companies to provide certain features that Intel can't account for, so the Intel HD Graphics driver that you have installed may be incompatible with your specific laptop.

For example, I have a Sony Vaio VPCCA190X from 2011 that will operate with the latest drivers from AMD for my Radeon HD6630M, however, games will perform worse, and in many cases, my entire PC screen will shut off and force a hard reset. So, I have to use my old laptop drivers from 2013 from the manufacturer in order for my laptop to function properly, even though I can download the latest 2020 drivers from AMD directly.

There is no reason to use overclocking software such as MSI Afterburner, EVGA PrecisionX, etc.. This is for laptops and desktop PCs that have dedicated graphics cards from either Nvidia or AMD which have the capacity to be overclocked. Intel HD integrated graphics are built to display HD video content more than they are to play games, so the performance is very poor and the driver support depends on how much the laptop's manufacturer intends it on being a 'gaming' device.

DaforLynx

MilkJugg24 wrote: »

DaforLynx wrote: »

Let me know if I should post this elsewhere.

You have posted this in the right place. Do you know the maker and model number of your laptop? Using the drivers provided by your laptop's manufacturer is usually better than Intel's latest releases. This is because laptop logic boards are sometimes designed differently than others, allowing companies to provide certain features that Intel can't account for, so the Intel HD Graphics driver that you have installed may be incompatible with your specific laptop.

For example, I have a Sony Vaio VPCCA190X from 2011 that will operate with the latest drivers from AMD for my Radeon HD6630M, however, games will perform worse, and in many cases, my entire PC screen will shut off and force a hard reset. So, I have to use my old laptop drivers from 2013 from the manufacturer in order for my laptop to function properly, even though I can download the latest 2020 drivers from AMD directly.

There is no reason to use overclocking software such as MSI Afterburner, EVGA PrecisionX, etc.. This is for laptops and desktop PCs that have dedicated graphics cards from either Nvidia or AMD which have the capacity to be overclocked. Intel HD integrated graphics are built to display HD video content more than they are to play games, so the performance is very poor and the driver support depends on how much the laptop's manufacturer intends it on being a 'gaming' device.

Thanks for the reply. I have a Dell Inspiron 3542, according to the System Properties. I'll try downgrading the drivers, which might just work since that's how it was the last time I played. In between then and now, I'd updated the drivers twice, and the second time, I got some glitches involving V-sync. So yeah, Dell-approved drivers it'll be. I'll update when I get the chance to play again.

MilkJugg24

No problem. Just to keep things easy, I Google'd Dell Inspiron 3542 and found the list of drivers here: https://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/product-support/product/inspiron-15-3542-laptop/drivers


Double-check that the model number and operating system matches the one on your laptop before downloading and installing the Intel HD Graphics Driver from June of 2017. It appears there's also variants of that laptop that use Nvidia GPUs, just make sure you choose the correct one. You can verify that your laptop does not use Nvidia graphics by looking under the 'Display Adapters' in Windows 'Device Manager'.

My computer currently uses an AMD RX 5600 XT desktop graphics card, and that is what my Display Adapter menu shows.

In response to the glitches involving v-sync, did you perhaps see 'screen tearing'? Laptop displays are typically 60Hz refresh rate, which makes it pretty easy, especially with low framerates, a de-sync in the frames that are being displayed on the screen. In the first minute or two of this video, the concept of screen tearing is explained: https://youtu.be/5Ey-KObDABI

DaforLynx

Yep, June 2017, that's the one. Just gotta restart.
The v-sync glitch I'm talking about is not screen tearing, unless it's screen tearing on a massive scale. The screen was flickering like crazy while playing CS:GO unless I turned v-sync on. That didn't happen with the older driver. But then again, I wasn't using the Dell-approved drivers, so I suppose I was asking for it.

MilkJugg24

DaforLynx wrote: »

The screen was flickering like crazy while playing CS:GO unless I turned v-sync on.

Interesting. Definitely sounds like a driver issue. So, hopefully this driver re-installation resolves the issue. As someone who used to game on a laptop (the one I mentioned in my previous post), it is a pain in the butt, and I definitely do not miss having to deal with all of its problems.

DaforLynx

Whelp...it didn't work.



Back to square...triangle one.

MilkJugg24

DaforLynx wrote: »

Whelp...it didn't work. Back to square...triangle one.

Sorry to hear that. I think we did the best we could. After doing a search, I found a slightly older thread which had a lot of people having the same issue: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/514173/no-water-texture-and-triangles-on-ground/p2

That laptop is indeed able to run the game, but its capabilities, in terms of visual fidelity, are limited. Again, due to the lack of driver support coupled with the lack of recommended hardware.

If I had to make an educated guess, the issue is related to how the Intel HD Graphics processes shading on certain texture maps. You can see how the triangles coordinate with where shaded areas might appear.

There's one more thing I would check though... Close out of the game, and open your UserSettings.txt file (C:\User\Document\Elder Scrolls Online\UserSettings.txt). There is a line which looks like the following...

SET SIMPLE_SHADERS 0

If that number is a 0 (off), change it to a 1 (on). In addition, and if applicable, change the following line as well to 0 to disable any high quality shader maps from loading.

SET HIGH_RESOLUTION_SHADOWS 1

If done correctly, the settings you changed should look like this...

SET SIMPLE_SHADERS 1
SET HIGH_RESOLUTION_SHADOWS 0

Save the text file, and re-launch the game.

DaforLynx

Sadly, that didn't work either. How can I bring this to the attention of devs?


Edit: I used /bug to report a graphical bug, also linking to this post.

MilkJugg24

DaforLynx wrote: »

Sadly, that didn't work either. How can I bring this to the attention of devs?

If you type the /bug command using the in-game chat, you can send a bug report with a link to this thread. From there, maybe someone in the technical development team will see it. Judging from how slow ZeniMax has been to answer tickets, I wouldn't hold your breath on getting a fix anytime soon, or perhaps before Greymoor launches.

For the drop-downs, I would recommend the following...


I'm sorry I couldn't help with your issue.

DaforLynx

Update: fixed the issue using lines from a config file found down the page here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/6747361
Seems like turning off specular lighting did the trick.