Tenlethar

Alright, i have now uploaded a full resolution video to show you how this problem looks like. Click here to download Just use free download mode - its only 60 MB. In this video i set iBlurDeferredShadowMask to 0 to fully sharpen out the shadows which intensifies the effect and thus makes it more visible in the video. Concentrate on the shadows not in front of the character but further away (the second tree shadow group). While i move the character slightly forward and backward you should see the flicker/glimmer. Does that help?

I have now tried the 304.48 BETA driver, but to no avail. The issue just remains the same. I now also tried more things, such as lowering my refresh rate in windows to 60 Hz (i usually run at 120 Hz) but it did not help. I also reset my CPU clocking, so that its no longer overclocked, but the issue is still there, so it probably has nothing to do with the overclocking. I have now recorded a few short videos that display the issue i experience. Perhaps you guys could take a look at them - maybe you recognize something. Edit: This is a shame! I just realized the effect is NOT VISIBLE on the YouTube videos - somehow YouTube when converting to whatever they use, must have used some filtering or - i don't know what - which fixed the shimmering/flickering.

Thank You for your input! I am currently running 301.42 but there seems to be a BETA out 304.48 - i might try that, the question is why no other 680 users complain about such shadow issues. As you already said - reverting back to an older driver is difficult with newer cards, i thus hope that perhaps testing on the BETA will do me good. I'll do that within the next hours but i remain open for other suggestions as well.

Hello Community, Yesterday afternoon i got myself a GTX 680. It was a hard decision as i consider this beast to be beyond affordable. Why did i buy it, then? You bet! Skyrim, of course. You know the drill! I'll cut through the long story and share my problem: After having Skyrim generate fresh INIs i launched up and noticed the shimmering of shadows cast by trees and plants moving in the wind. The shimmering occurs only when i move around, no matter at what distance from the shadows. When i stand still, the shimmering/flickering stops. After comparing the view to how shadows of more static objects look, i realized that this problem seems to occur only with shadows of plants and i assume that it does because they are moving in the wind. This is the one part where i was unable to find any proper research material about. Everybody was posting about the blocky shadows and the flickering caused by the sun update time, but nobody seemed to have complained about how they look when they move around with the wind. This whole thing set me on on a journey that i can only describe as a pain in the cojones. I was up until 7 AM trying every fix i found, researching, reading all the articles and slowly, slowly realizing that my issue is not shadow quality. It is not the resolution. It must be something else! And my GTX 480 AMP! did NOT have this issue. As mentioned, i tried it all. All types of shadow resolutions, activating Shadow Z Prepass, shadow distances, LOD fade settings, blurring the shadows using the mask setting, bDrawLandShadows to 0. I of course tweaked the INI according to S.T.E.P. thus having sun update times altered. I also spent many hours of tweaking my NVidia configuration through the NVidia Inspector. In the Elder Scrolls:Skyrim profile, i tried all kinds of settings, clamping the LOD Bias, setting a negative value, setting a positive one. But the issue would just not go away :unsure: Until now i have been playing with a GTX 480 AMP!. Yes, it was not perfect - i had to play with VSync forced off and the FPS capped to 60. I had a LOT of texture shimmering. But it was playable, after quite some testing and tweaking. Shadows looked okay as i chose a good mix of distance and quality. The key point: They did not shimmer. Bottom Line: The frustration of having wasted my entire night with this issue is killing me. When i think back to when i started with Skyrim, i I thought i'd get a good graphics card and do myself a favour. Well, very much not so. But before i return it to where i bought it from, i would like to give it another chance because aside from the shadow glitch it works just insanely well - i mean the whole performance is mind-boggling. The card delivers a constant framerate that seems to suffer only from having to render lots of fog or smoke. And all of that with VSync enabled as the game defaults to. No noticeable input lag. Please note that i already went through game cache verification and all of that. I would be very glad if you could share your thoughts on this and perhaps new approaches and fixes! Thank You for your efforts! Mainboard: Gigabyte X58A-UD3R rev. 2.0 CPU: Intel Quad Core i7-920 4x2,67 Ghz (overclocked to 4.0 Ghz stable) RAM: 6 GB DDR3 Kit PC3-1600 Mhz, CL8 Graphics: NVIDIA / EVGA GTX 680 OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64Bit DVD Screen: SAMSUNG 2233 RZ TFT @ 120 Hz

Alright! Thank You again for your great input. It seems that the issue is resolved. The ironic part is that i was able to resolve it using onboard sound (RealTek). Upon further research i more and more dove into the impression that Creative is old and outdated. This starts with the super-oldschool installer they provide. When downloading the latest drivers i noticed that they were many years old. I personally believe Creative is just trying to stay in the low-end business even though there is nothing about their SE product line to justify that. Anyway. The issue of the popping noises DID occur with the RealTek as well, at first. I followed blitzen's advice and flashed my BIOS which was still at FA (by now Gigabyte had release FH, so that's quite some freshness, plus: Gigabyte seems to be fairly active in the field of keeping their BIOS up-to-date). After updating, i also downloaded the 64-Bit Edition of their drivers. At least that is how i understood it. This driver includes something called Dolby Surround Home Center (or a title to that effect). Ever since i did this, i have not experienced any sound issues in Skyrim (except for the fact that when i jump into the water, i don't get ANY kind of splash sound, which i found annoying but was unable to figure out <=> Input appreciated :thumbsup: ). The popping/crackling noise seems to be gone. It is important to mention that i also overclocked my system from 3.06 to 4.00 GHZ stable (after reporting the issue here, and after updating BIOS and RealTek). But i don't think that the CPU utilisation has much to do with all of that. Thank You!

Bumpman!

Hello, at night, the rocks of the mountains, in closeup, next to Riverwood look like this: http://i.imgur.com/OxavQ.jpg http://i.imgur.com/yrnqb.jpg Which i find a little strange. Now, as i have a lot of mods installed (almost all of them according to the STEP Guide) i tried to disable the Snow & Rocks HD mod, as well as playing around with the landscape/mountains textures. I even once renamed the whole Textures folder to _Textures so that it would not load at all. The funny thing is: the problem remains. I start wondering if this is even a problem - perhaps its meant to look like this? Also, i moved my INI files out of the folder and launched, so that i would see the whole thing with fresh INI files generated, but the rocks still looked that way. Finally i reset all the settings of my NVidia profile for Skyrim to the defaults, also later tried playing around with all those settings, but still - the rocks would have these strange, almost single-colored blotches. Can anybody give me some input on this? I run an NVidia GTX 480 AMP! Edition 1.5 GB RAM videocard on a GA-X58-UD3R mainboard, Windows 7 64-Bit, Skyrim patched to the latest version. Thank You, appreciated Community!

Hey Guys, i just re-setup my Skyrim fresh, with the latest patch and everything. I then went through the STEP Guide and installed almost all the mods in there. Now i have to say i am not very advanced when it comes to the mods in Skyrim, so i have no idea what happened or what could have caused it, but i am now getting quite surrealistic flare/glare effects around candles. I can't say i like them much. I tried turning off Warmer Magic Lights as well as Real Effect Candle but i am still getting the effect. Does anyone know straight-away what mod causes this effect or how i can get rid of it? Thank You! Edit: I'd still appreciate some input on the issue, however it seems to have been reduced with the deactivation of AA Supersampling (which i had on 2x). However, when deactivating the sampling, i get a strange glitter and flickering around corners and edges, but only when the object (or the viewport, i.e. player=me) is moving.

I have not tried that. I can though. It is -however, as you say, unlikely, as i am experiencing this issue with Skyrim exclusively. For instance, i ran The Witcher 2 all through the complete game, without a single issue. Sometimes i have a dream, and in that dream i see a Bethesda devteam with the skills of CDProject Red :sad:

Hello & Thank You for your response. You are correct in assuming that mine is occurring randomly. It will just start during normal gameplay, and it will fade away after a while just the same. Needless to say, its still pretty annoying. Yes, i have uninstalled / reinstalled the game completely. I use the vanilla version without mods. I was about to install some mods but i won't play the game with this sound popping issue, so i decided to wait with installing mods, just until i have this figured out. I use Bose Desktop speakers but i can safely say that the audio jack is fine, that this crackling stops immediately when i exit the game and that thus it comes from the game. I use this machine a lot and i never have or had any similar issues.

Hello Guys, i have an issue with Skyrim that seems to be a bit out of line. I would like to mention that i have done lots of research on this issue and i have tried the common solutions that are suggested when encountering sound issues. When playing Skyrim, occasionally i will get a strange popping/ticking noise that will repeat every second or so, and it will stay like that for a while (say, sometimes 30 seconds, sometimes a few minutes) then go away again. This does not only occur ingame, it also occurs when i launch the game and the intro screen is shown. I have not recorded it but i found a that quite resembles the issue. I have also seen some texture flickering occuring once, like a short strobe effect (texture flickering like 10 times within a second or two) and that was accompanied with a strange crackling noise. Aside from these issues i have not encountered any problems with sound being too low or anything like that. Unfortunately the guy at YouTube has not posted any potential solutions. I messaged him, asking whether he was able to fix the issue, but received no response. Problem Solving Upon my research i stumbled upon a lot of people who had sound issues, even though none of them seemed to be similar to mine. However, it was suggested to change the audio output to 44khz @ 16-bit. I tried that, but the problem was persistent. I then read some post about onboard sound possibly causing issues. Well, until then i was using my normal RealTek onboard sound module. But as i am determined to solve the issue, i went and bought myself a Creative Sound Blaster Audigy SE PCI card. However, even with that card i was able to notice no difference whatsoever. Unfortunately, i don't know what else to try :unsure: Any constructive input is highly appreciated. Thank You! My Specifications I am using the latest NVidia drivers along with the latest drivers for the Audigy SE. I encountered the problems in Skyrim Vanilla, both, patched around 1.5 and then to the very latest version. PSU: ENERMAX MODU82+ with 625 Watts Tower: COOLER MASTER Xcalade 690, PURE Black Edition CPU: Intel Quad Core i7-920 4x2,67 Ghz Cooling: Thermalright AXP-140 + Enermax Twister Cluster 120x120x25 Mainboard: Gigabyte X58A-UD3R rev. 2.0 RAM: 6 GB DDR3 Kit PC3-1600 Mhz, CL8 Graphics: NVIDIA / ZOTAC GTX 480 AMP! Overclocked Edition Harddrive: 35,2035,201SATA II SAMSUNG SpinPoint F3, 500GB, 16MB Cache CD-Rom: DVD-+R/-+RW SATA LG GH-22NS40, Bulk, Black OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64Bit DVD Screen: SAMSUNG 2233 RZ TFT @ 120 Hz Note: My system is not overclocked (only the graphics card, but by factory default).

Hi there, i have been through more testing now - clamping the negative LOD Bias i did already before, but tried again now - but it didn't help. Uninstalling DirectX i have not tested yet. But there is some other news: Yesterday i decided to run some advanced Fallout 3 tests and guess what - while at first i thought the game runs fine, i found similar graphical glitches there!! I will record a video of that tomorrow.. but it apparently was the same thing happening! I got it on various spots in the game. I also tried installing Oblivion on my other, older PC in my audio studio now - just for testing. I used a savegame i made on the newer computer. The glitch (grass flickering) was NOT there on the older machine. It runs a 4870, but its the same 4870 i used to test with on the new computer a few days back - and on the new computer, when using that 4870 i did get the glitches, so its probably not the card. It could be the drivers though (!?). Now the weird part is that EVEN on the old machine i got the shadow-on-grass flickering. As mentioned above i didn't get the grass flickering there.

Hey ;) Come on man, there is no need to be rude. That, of course, was not my intention, but I think you know that. :whistling: <snip> I don't think anybody considers you a buckethead -- heck, you've shown that you are familiar inside your box, too. But you have to understand that attempting to (help) diagnose problems in print only (we don't have access to your setup) is a damned frustrating hobby. :wallbash::blink: Well, I'm out of ideas, so best of luck. :thumbsup: I do understand. And you have all the reasons to be out of ideas. Thank you for all the effort!!

Hey Qwaxalot. Thanks for joining in. I have not done that, no. Should i give it a try? I mean, i was reinstalling Windows 7 64-Bit completely from the scratch yesterday and then i ran the fresh DX11 update. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I have recorded a new video demonstrating the disappearing / appearing / changing grass glitch: click here to see it

Hey ;) Come on man, there is no need to be rude. I am aware of how weird it may sound, but then again, i really am not crazy, i don't have an eye problem at all - and i certainly would prefer to play the game rather than troubleshoot it. My direction is towards a solution. Anyway, to straighten things out, i will explain what type of error i am getting: 1.) Flickering grass textures This one is always possible but difficult to reproduce, and it is hard to see any logical scheme as to when it starts to occur. Sometimes when i stand in the middle of a grassy field, i will get flickering grass textures, just as you can see them in the video i linked to in my first post. If you look at the upper part of the screen, you will see some grass flickering and that is exactly what happens. Sometimes i'd stand in the middle of a grass field and all around me there is this flickering. As this can only be seen from certain angles i have to move around a lot to reproduce it. 2.) Flickering shadows on grass I wouldnt mind that problem if i did not believe it was related to the other one. Basically what happens here is that any shadows that are cast on grass will flicker like crazy. This one is easy to reproduce since i just turn on shadows on grass and it will flicker like wild! As said before, i would just turn it off, but i think its related to the other problem. However, if the other one would be solved i WOULD just turn it off and not use it. 3.) Disappearing and appearing grass textures Grass would appear and disappear right in my fiel of view, best seen from 3rd perspective (i recorded a new video demonstrating this glitch - click here to see it - please note: i turned off shadows on grass while running this test and i was using a savegame, i have confirmed that the problem will occur with a new game as well.). When i move the camera angle, the grass will disappear or change, and then when i move it back it would change again. Its real weird. And yes, i promise, it happens with a complete clean install. Think about it - when i got my new motherboard yesterday i even HAD to reinstall Windows and so i did. After installing drivers & DirectX updates, the first thing i would install is Oblivion (yes, from the original DVD, i own this :) ). I would then run the launcher of the base version that is installed. Then i go to settings and set my resolution and i activate HDR (i did try using Bloom and None earlier, but it didnt help). According to the uninstall/reinstall guide on tesnexus, i then launch Oblivion, start a new game and see myself in the prison cell (how ironic!). Then i go into 3rd person and see a flickering shadow even on the prison floor. It will flicker constantly. I then save the game, exit, and run the Oblivion patch tool with the latest patch for my version (UK). After that, i re-run the launcher, go to settings and activate "VERY HIGH" quality settings. It will then reset my resolution so i set this again and i will also activate HDR again. Then i run the game and load the save from before. The shadow on the prison floor will now no longer be flickering. Hope comes up, and i go into the console and type "coc HeroHill" to teleport myself to my testing location, but without having to use any old savegames. At Hero Hill i will go into 3rd person again and go into video settings to activate shadows on grass. In the game i will then get flickering shadows on the grass all around me. After switching to 1st person and back out again, sometimes the shadow will be gone completely. After switching between the two views more often, the shadow will sometimes return, but on grass it will always be flickering. I turn off the shadows on grass and start moving around a bit. I then encounter a few grass textures around me that would flicker (like in the first video i posted). I turn around and see grass disappear from where it was placed, i turn around again and on the edge of the screen new grass will appear - and all around me it will flicker. It drives me nuts, obviously :) But guys, i am not a complete buckethead. I am working as a programmer since more than 10 years now. I have been doing computer stuff since more than 15 years. I only tell you that so you know that when i say i get this error, these glitches, i really mean i do get them. They are there and there need to be no mods or tweaks on my system whatsoever to make them appear. Neither will any mods or tweaks make them go away again.