Distant buildings Flash colours?

[Kinetiq]

On occasion when playing in 3rd person, i have had distant buildings (usualy bruma castle when standing on the waterfront) flash completly white,blue,even green at a certain moment when walking. it happens only occasionly and usualy at night time or in a thunder storm, i will try and get a screenshot.

 

Its happend like 3 or 4 times in 12 hours+ of gameplay. not a huge deal but can be distracting.

if i load from a save piont a few minutes before and go to the excact same point it happend it doesnt do it??

 

maybe an anomaly or bug?, i have the recomended sytem requirements if not better, plus the latest patch.

Any one got any ideas what it could be? if there is way to stop it?

[Guest Tessera]

Well, a few questions first...

 

(1) Are you forcing Anisotropic Filtering in your video card's control panel..? Sometimes, doing so can cause a few anomalies in Oblivion, depending on how other settings are adjusted.

 

(2) Which specific video card are you using..? How old is it..?

 

(3) Have you installed any high-resolution LOD mods to the game..?

 

(4) If you have an nVidia video card, check to see whether or not "Negative LOD Bias" is set to "Clamp" or "Allow." It's better to set it to "Allow" for Oblivion.

 

(5) Do not use Trilinear Optimization, unless you really feel the need. It can cause texture anomalies sometimes. It only applies to situations where Vertical Sync is enabled and I don't suggest enabling that function for this game.

 

Now, just for informational purposes...

 

Here's my personal settings for my nVidia Forceware driver:

 

Antialiasing (all AA settings): "Application Controlled"

Anisotropic Filtering (all AF settings): "Application Controlled"

Vertical Sync: "Application Controlled"

Image Settings: "High Quality"]

Force Mipmaps: "Trilinear"

Conformant Texture Clamp: "On"

Extension Limit: "Off"

Trilinear Optimization: "Off"

Triple Buffering: "Off"

Negative LOD Bias: "Allow"

Threaded Optimization: "On" (only used for dual-core systems)

Frames To Render Ahead: "1" (setting to "0" as many suggest is not a good idea)

 

The above settings are used with an nVidia 8800-GTX video card, but they're also applicable to most other nVidia cards that were made in the past year or so. Those settings give me a very nice gameplay experience in Oblivion.

 

If you own an ATI video card, they have other issues when it comes to Oblivion. Check out TweakGuides.com for some tips on how to setup your Catalyst Control Panel for ATI drivers.

[Kinetiq]

first up thanks for the reply, second i will awnser best i can as when it comes to technical details no matter how basic im usless :S

 

I use a 256mb Ati Radeon x1300pro, it sets as defualt for high settings and thats what i leave it at, other than changing certain things like, turn hdr off and turn bloom on as i prefer the less intense lighting etc..

 

I have looked on the ati site for the latest drivers, but there isnt a x1300pro listed plus i tried installing the x1300 series latest driver and i had to restore my whole comp (long story)

 

As far as the control panel i checked and it was set mostly at what yours is listed as, let the application decide.

The only mod i am using is the quite feet one and no others.

i have viewd the tweaks guides and tweaked stuff as recomended in the ini files and it didnt make much difference so i deleted the modified one and it restored it to the defaults as instructed.

 

the only thing that i have enabled which you suggested not to have is the Vertical Sync or V.sync as it is shown on oblivion startup. what difference does that make wether its on or off?

 

So yeh, its not a huge problem, actualy its fairly minor as if i reload at a different point it doesnt happen, i can live with it, but would be nice to now it wont happen again :D

[Guest Tessera]

Unfortunately, Oblivion was optimized for GeForce cards and some RADEONs have issues when it comes to the game's textures. ATI keeps saying that they'll release a better beta driver that can handle Oblivion properly, but the ones that they've released thus far... well... they ain't what they should be. Not yet, anyway. They managed to get rid of a crash bug, but the game still seems to have sync problems and other minor glitches on many ATI cards.

 

You might end up just having to live with the flickering, until ATI gets their act together. I wish they would, because their hardware is phenomenal. It's their drivers that have issues, at least where this game is concerned.