Very specific issue, please help.

Vasoka · December 2016

Hey forum.

Since one year, perhaps more, after changing from a laptop to a desktop (or an ESO patch, the cause really remains unclear), i've had a very specific issue only with this game, which has continuously put me off from playing it.

I use vertical sync to play and cap my FPS at 60, (60hz monitor), due to the annoying choppyness if you let it go all over to 100 (very sensitive to such things).

However, here is the deal - when I turn on vsync and cap my fps to 60, i get some VERY strange flickering on the surfaces of textures when I am walking around, sprinting or riding my horse. It's like the thing renders and it creates a white flash during the rendering (this is NOT present with vsync off).

To make it more interesting, it doesnt seem hardware OR windows related. I had it over several configurations and monitors. I've changed monitor, I've changed -3- video cards, I've changed SSD. The issue simply persists, each time I enable vsync. While my girlfriend who is playing on another PC next to me (using my old GPU and monitor which had the SAME ISSUE on my configuration when they were in my box), doesn't have this issue.

The specific issue makes me think it's somewhat refresh rate related or something like that, due to the fact that if I OC my monitor (say, cap it on 61) and THEN enable vsync, the issue disappears.

Specs are as follows: i7-4790k, SSD evo 850, 16GB ram kingston 1866, gtx 1070 (CPU and GPU are OC-ed, and no, that's not causing the problem - I've checked between OCs and different parts several times.

If anyone can give me any idea on what the **** that could be, i'd be very grateful. It's driving me insane.

Nestor · December 2016

Vasoka wrote: »

The specific issue makes me think it's somewhat refresh rate related or something like that, due to the fact that if I OC my monitor (say, cap it on 61) and THEN enable vsync, the issue disappears.

It is, and there can be other things too, like with the Physics of a game (exploding piles of junk in Skyrim anyone?). On the other side of the spectrum, things like Microstutter can be eliminated by capping below the refresh rate like at 54 or so FPS.

There are many reasons why you have graphical glitches and why they bother you and maybe not someone else. The reasons are many, and I could fill pages on the boards here discussing all the reasons. For the record, I see these things too, but I am not bothered by them for the most part.

But, instead, I think you can just make the game behave and not worry about it. First, if OCing your monitor to 61 eliminates the issues in this game and cause no other issues in other games, then run things that way. I know it's bit of an Ostrich in a Sandbox thing, but simple solutions are still solutions.

If the OCing the monitor causes issues in other games and you want to leave Vsync on for other games, then try clamping the Frame Rates in this game to some other value than the Monitor Refresh Rate. See this for how to do it and the math needed. You may want to go a little lower or a little higher, experimentation is the trick.

For anyone who needs to limit the Elder Scrolls Online's framerate any reason including tearing above your monitor's refresh rate, to make sure G-Sync stays enabled full-time, or raise the default limit of 100fps if you're using, for example, a 120hz or 144hz display, you can edit the usersettings.ini file in your "Documents" folder under Elder Scrolls Online\live. You can see how to find/edit it below, and I'll list the line you'll want to change after the picture. I'll add in some tech stuff but also I'll plain-English it if you just want to know what to change , too!

(You can see this post with a little bit better formatting in its home thread on the official ESO forums here: http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/173780/ but I have copied the info to Reddit for people at work or who can't go to them for whatever other reason.)

Image link: http://i.imgur.com/9VQE9bh.jpg

The line you'll want, by default (unless you have changed it previously) will be this:

SET MinFrameTime.2 "0.01000000"

This is the value in seconds, or in other words, a second divided by this number, that the game is allowed to render frames for display output (layman's terminology: the FPS limit ). You can change this to any number you would like by altering the number in quotation marks in that line. For example, 60 frames per second is 16.66e milliseconds mathematically, or essentially every 16.6 milliseconds with the 6 after the decimal repeating infinitely. If you wanted to limit your framerate to 60 fps to keep heat/power use down, you could change the line to look like this, instead:

SET MinFrameTime.2 "0.01680000"

Why didn't I say to just do sixes in there? Because the number is what the game engine is told to aim for, and the actual framerate will vary a little depending on what's happening in-game just by the nature of how it all works internally. By adding in a little bit of a lower limit, this will generally keep it from exceeding 60 fps, but not limit it to much less either. If you need to stay below a specific frame rate, make sure you add this kind of extra time buffer in the number you enter.

Quickly and easily, here are some of the common framerates you might want to set as limits, and a line you can just copy in to do so, pasting it to replace the existing one. Remember, you can always paste the stock one back if you goof it! You won't cause anything to actually go wrong if you make a mistake. To calculate your own, simply use a calculator to divide 1 (one) by the number of frames per second you want. Then, add around 5% (1/20th) of the number you get onto itself and use it:

30 FPS SET MinFrameTime.2 "0.03450000"

60 FPS SET MinFrameTime.2 "0.01680000"

96 FPS SET MinFrameTime.2 "0.01042000"

120 FPS SET MinFrameTime.2 "0.00845000"

144 FPS SET MinFrameTime.2 "0.00705000"

For G-Sync users, add a little extra padding (~10% instead of 5% as described above) to make sure you don't have your framerate exceed your monitor's refresh rate, which causes G-Sync to disable itself temporarily until the framerate goes back down below that level. For 60hz on my 4K G-Sync monitor, I use...

SET MinFrameTime.2 "0.01700000"

...to ensure that it doesn't go above 60. Another easy alternative is to use a program like MSI Afterburner's "RTSS (RivaTuner Statistics Server)" to set a global framerate limit for any Direct3D/DirectX game, which usually is able to work within 0.1-0.2 FPS of the limit you set with the caveat that due to doing it at the OS level rather than the game itself, will add an extremely minor amount of input lag (generally, only tournament-level competitive gamers will even perceive this, but I did want to note it).

Source https://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/38v4ld/guide_how_to_limit_your_framerate_in_eso_for/

Vasoka · December 2016

I could OC the monitor, yes - but I play a lot of different games and it's not a deal for me.

Capping the fps to anything under 60 is no deal as well, as it causes ridiculous stuttering and choppyness. Capping it over 60 WITHOUT vsync on will be choppy as well, so my only choice is proper monitor OC in order to control those things.

The thing is, I am wondering why is this happening and why isn't it affected by anything else, and what might the reason in this particular game be for this. I've been wondering since a very long time and am still beating my head against the wall, as it's super annoying. I shouldn't have to alter my PC so much for a single game.

Has anyone else seen such things in ESO, do you use Vsync etc?

SirAndy · December 2016

Have you tried deleting your cooked shaders file?

It can get corrupted and the game will rebuild it on startup if you delete it manually.

Vasoka · December 2016

SirAndy wrote: »

Have you tried deleting your cooked shaders file?

It can get corrupted and the game will rebuild it on startup if you delete it manually.

Yeah, I've done that several times over the years. Including today. Doesn't seem to have an effect - only thing that fixes it is having a different fps cap than the "exact" 60, for some ungodly reason. Which, of course, makes my game choppy as hell.

Vasoka · December 2016

EDIT:

After an entire night of troubleshooting, I came to the conclusion that it was my DVI cable between the GPU and the monitor. I changed it to a good HDMI to HDMI and it resolved my issue after more than 2 years of stumbling.

For anyone having an issue with strange graphic glitches, the cable connection is worthy looking into.

You can close the thread.

Nestor · December 2016

Vasoka wrote: »

EDIT:

After an entire night of troubleshooting, I came to the conclusion that it was my DVI cable between the GPU and the monitor. I changed it to a good HDMI to HDMI and it resolved my issue after more than 2 years of stumbling.

For anyone having an issue with strange graphic glitches, the cable connection is worthy looking into.

You can close the thread.

Great find on this. Too often we over look the physical connections. While no one needs to buy those Monster Cable type cables, people should buy decent quality ones. Also, HDMI cables do "wear out". Well, its more the connector you plug the cable into that wears out unfortunately, not the cable itself. To prevent that, try to unplug and replug cables as little as possible, which for most of us it easy, as we only unplug to move.

The question I have now is, would a new decent DVI cable have solved the issue, as HDMI is a different video output format. Also, people have seen graphical issues on HDMI that they don't see on DVI. I am glad you got it sorted and did not have to resort to game or system tweaks to fix it, as you and I said, the tweaks are not always the best way to go about fixing this. But, it does raise some more questions.