Massive visual bug! unplayable

[dirksoccer]

I'm currently doing my second play through of fallout 3, fairly heavily nodded, and I'm encountering an absolutely unplayable visual bug. I'm doing the Reilly's Rangers quest at the statesman's hotel, and for some reason, completely out of nowhere, I'm experiencing massive full screen blurring only when I turn. The whole scene, including my gun (in fact, my gun is the worst aspect), becomes completely blurred. The closest thing I can compare it to is the classic old windows glitches where tiny ghosts of your file window would remain on screen as you dragged the window around, except full screen.

A few quick things:

-I know it isn't a mod/load order issue: it was working fine yesterday, and I haven't changed anything since then.

-When I load an earlier save, even the save I first loaded today, I get no issues, crystal clear 60fps. It isn't until about 5 "in game minutes" after my most recent save that the issue first appears, but once it does it will not go away!

-fast traveling to a new location does nothing to help.

-saving/loading does nothing

-purging the cell buffer does nothing

-resetting the .INI to defaults does nothing

-I have all in game sources of motion blur (project reality, dynavision), disabled

 

Please help! I really don't want to lose the last 5-6 hours in an attempted reload of the last playable save!

 

Thanks in advance for any advice

[pkleiss]

Does it occur if you don't go to the Statesman Hotel? I mean, does it occur no matter where you go after 5 mins?

 

For kicks and giggles, start a new game, completely mod free (only Fallout 3 & DLCs) and see if your games blurs 5 minutes in. If it does, then you know it's not a mod issue. Just because 'it was working fine yesterday' does not preclude it from being mod related.

 

Aside from that...

 

I had an issue once with cyclical lag that started to occur in my game after a period. The game ran fine, then one day I stated to get about 5 seconds of lag every 55 seconds or so. It was very predictable and cyclical. I spent an enormous amount of time trying to figure it out (weeks to months). In the end, it turned out to be that my CPU was dying. A quick fix I learned was to under clock my CPU. This resolved the issue for a few weeks, but the problem would eventually return and I had to lower my clock speed again. Eventually, I just bought a new CPU. If your issue is replicatable between graphic-intensive games, you might have a CPU or GPU issue. If it only happens with Fallout 3, this has probably been a waste of text.

[dirksoccer]

It continues no matter where I go (ie- if I fast travel with the character experiencing the bug, it doesn't fix the bug). However, if I load up an earlier save (say, from around GNR or megaton), I can play without any sort of errors. In fact, even an earlier save from within Statesman's Hotel works fine, up until a point...

One thing I haven't tried yet but will tonight is loading up an earlier Statesman's Hotel save, fast traveling out, and then playing for a while to see if it occurs after a set time or after this specific fight that I was entering when it started.

As far as failing components, its a good theory (I actually found out last year about a failing GPU because the witcher started having wierd artifacting). However, in this case I don't think that's it, since before booting up fallout (and for a little while afterward too) I was playing Battlefield 3 on full Ultra with no errors whatsoever.

Thanks for the ideas, keep 'em coming!

 

**side note: I guess your right that I can't know its not mods, but since uninstalling all of my mods, verifying game cache, starting a new character, then reinstalling all of my mods again sounds like a ton of work, I'd really like to save that for a next resort.

[pkleiss]

You don't have to do all that to test if it's a mod issue. You use FOMM or NMM, right? If so, just untick all your mods and start a fresh game. That shouldn't take but a couple of minutes on top of the 5...(well, now that I think about it, that won't remove any loose files like hi-res textures or meshes that may be at fault. So yeah, I guess leave that as a last resort...)

 

After reading your last comment, it now sounds to me like you may have a corrupted save. If you don't get the blur when playing older saves, that is a strong indication that the problem lies within the save data itself. It still could be a mod issue though. If you start with an older save where the blur does not occur within that 5 minute time frame, does it then appear when you reach a certain point within the Statesman?

 

If it were a mod issue, I would look at those mods which add hi-res textures first.

Edited September 25, 2013 by pkleiss

[dirksoccer]

Weirdest thing ever:

I powered through (mainly out of desperation) and played in spite of the blurry craziness for probably 20 minutes (died a TON since I couldn't see anything while strafing and with FWE that means death). Then, out of nowhere, in about a minute of time it went from unplayable and faded to perfectly clear. So I guess its fixed for now!! Thanks for the help though!

 

**side note: it faded after I managed to fight my way out of Statesman's hotel. It didn't clear up immediately after, so I'm not sure if there was a connection or if it was just some strange cached shader/worldspace glitch that finally worked itself out, but I thought I'd throw that out there in case anyone else having this issue sees this thread in the future

[pkleiss]

Could you have just been under the influence of drugs or alcohol addiction, or been concussed?

 

Now you have me thinking it was a mod that added some image space modifier, like you said... Either by design or fluke.

 

At least your back up! :thumbsup:

[camycamera]

i think you might have been under the influence of drugs, lol. you may have been injected by an enemy, or you might have done it accidently yourself. maybe you should go back a save when it was blurry, and look at current effects tab thing on the pip boy.

Edited September 28, 2013 by camycamera