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Shadows flashing in and out of existence (not the old flickery moving


CaptBlackbeard

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The title does a poor job of explaining what I mean, but this isn't the same problem I've seen people describe when the shadows simply flicker as they move. No, everything was fine in game for me until I performed a clean install of Windows for an unrelated issue, installed the latest drivers for my GPU etc., and reinstalled Skyrim. Now, whether I'm standing still or moving the shadows actually flash in and out of existence, as in they'll be there for one split second then disappear again. Originally things were a lot worse, with flashes of multicoloured artifacts appearing every few seconds and extreme lag, but playing around with the settings seems to have made these issues disappear somehow (I don't even know how though). I've searched online for a solution to the flashing shadows but keep finding the same old information about the other shadow problem, I even tried the steps here http://forums.nexusmods.com/index.php?/topic/538874-flickering-shadows-driving-me-crazy/ but to no avail. Oddly enough the problem disappears if I turn the settings down to high, but this is the only problem with ultra at the moment and previously it ran absolutely smoothly on that setting.

 

Can anyone point out what the hell went wrong?

 

Edit: Hmm, the title didn't cut out when I was editing it, apologies.

Edited by CaptBlackbeard
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Try an earlier version of the video drivers and see if the problem is still there. I don't know which card you have, but when I updated to the latest nvidia drivers, I had some visual issues which involved both shadows and random visual artifacts (usually yellow or red flashes on the screen). I run with a driver version that is 2 releases previous to the latest ones, since that seems to work best. There are also a number of .ini settings that affect shadows, and you may be able to fix the shadow problem with minor config changes.
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Try an earlier version of the video drivers and see if the problem is still there. I don't know which card you have, but when I updated to the latest nvidia drivers, I had some visual issues which involved both shadows and random visual artifacts (usually yellow or red flashes on the screen). I run with a driver version that is 2 releases previous to the latest ones, since that seems to work best. There are also a number of .ini settings that affect shadows, and you may be able to fix the shadow problem with minor config changes.

 

AMD, so I'm kind of s*** out of luck anyway when it comes to the reliability of drivers. I was using the latest beta before my clean install however, and it actually improved performance very well over the latest official release (as they focussed on Skyrim according to the release notes), and it definitely installed correctly this time after my clean install as I was very careful to remove all traces of the old driver before installing the new one, so I'm understandably reluctant to just say it's a driver problem. I should also mention that when I first discovered the issue, I did install the two older drivers consecutively to test if the driver was the problem, and alas, I received similar if not worse results.

 

I also now have an issue I just discovered with water, when looking directly down in or near water, the water flashes between its default colouring and what appears to be a darker block shade.

 

Edit: Also, when this happens with the water the sound effect of rushing water become choppy and cuts out.

Edited by CaptBlackbeard
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I have to agree that it sounds like a driver issue. Have you tried to uninstall the current drivers and then reinstall the ones you had previously, when your game was working? Also, when you do this, it may help to shut sown your computer completely before installing the new drivers. If your cache is not cleared then it is possible to have a corrupt installation.

 

Additionally, are you sure you now how the correct version of DirectX, Adobe Flash, etc, after your Windows reinstall?

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