sombrereptile Posted November 11, 2012 Share Posted November 11, 2012 Hello lovely people of the vast nexus, I have recently built my first gaming PC, and was very excited to join the 'master race', especially when it came to Skyrim. I had been playing on the 360 since release, but seeing all the screenshots and awesome mods out there made me feel like I was missing something. So after building my new rig, I was thrilled to boot up Skyrim and see that settings had been set to their highest. However, I immediately noticed issues. At first, I encountered something that perhaps is rather common: distant mountains would flicker as I moved around, and this immediately turned me off to the game. I was hoping for crystal clear graphics and all that goodness, but already had an issue. After posting around, I found one of Gopher's videos (which are just excellent for their level of depth and clarity), which outlined how to address the issue of 'Z-fighting'. After tweaking the .ini files, I found that the flickering mountains were no longer visible! Joy! Hoooowever, there was another problem now... Come to think of it, I noticed this issue beforehand as well, but it seems to have gotten worse after applying the tweaks to address the Z-fighting issues. Generally, the issue I am having is with trees that are somewhat far away. They appear to flicker rapidly, disappearing and reappearing. This tends to stop when I am stationary, but not always. In addition, I am encountering some very noticeable artifacting/tearing when looking around, moreso in the sky than anywhere else. I realize this is somewhat of a loose description, but it's the best I can do. I'd really love to get back into Skyrim, and I've even sunk a few hours in already even with the trees flickering just because I'm THAT desperate. If anyone has any suggestions for a fix, I'd love to hear them. For reference, I am running Skyrim on a i5-3470 3.2GHz processor, with a XFX R7870 2GB GPU. I have tried googling my issue, but only found people with different issues than the one I am encountering. Also, I have been having a peculiar issue where after exiting Skyrim, my computer will frequently freeze up. This seems to happen when I start/close Steam sometimes too, and is equally irritating. If anyone has any ideas regarding that, I'd be very appreciative. Hope this wasn't too much of a wall of text... just really unsure of what to do, especially coming into the Skyrim PC scene this late. THANKS IN ADVANCE! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shadowdef Posted November 11, 2012 Share Posted November 11, 2012 Aw my friend i understand your pain greatly. First just let me say that graphics to me are very important so much so i bought a SSD and 1TB Seta drive as well as a Radeon HD 7950 Just to experince great graphics and game play. I will try my best to assist you here. First off let me say that this is more or less a problem with draw distence. draw distence can be imrpoved though the Advance options or you could just hit ultra graphic settings. If you belieave that yout issue is not draw distence related please provide me with some screen shots and i will try to help. Let me also suggest that you down load mods that further improve upon the games visuals. All mods below are compatiable tested by me. Top to bottom in order of importence to your problem. Enhanced Distant Terrain - Enahnced Distant Terrain 1-4 http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/1598 Skyrim Realistic Overhaul http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/5400 TreesHD_Skyrim_Variation - TreesHD_Skyrim_variation_ULTRA_NEW http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/3812 Lush Trees. Make sure you get the Optional file as well. http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/3385 Skyrim Bigger Trees http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/17168 Lush Grass - Lush Grass 1-4-1 http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/3288 Flora Overhaul Patch Flora Overhaul http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/141 Disclaimer Please note that i do NOT take credit for any of the above mods. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sombrereptile Posted November 11, 2012 Author Share Posted November 11, 2012 Hey, thanks for your reply. I was doing a little googling/investigation, and it seems that I (may) have fixed the issue with the disappearing trees. All I changed was the load order of some mods into a more logical one. HOWEVER, I am still getting some very irritating artifacts/tearing when looking up at the sky. It's basically random shapes of white, pink, and black that flicker and morph randomly. I'm wondering if that could be caused by a mod I have... so I might just try disabling some and testing it again. Hoooowever, an even more irritating issue right now is that every time I exit Skyrim, within a few seconds my computer will completely freeze up. This has happened every time for the past few weeks, and I am completely perplexed by this issue. Occasionally, my computer will also freeze when starting/closing Steam, so there might be a connection there. I'm going to make a thread on the steam forums hoping that there might be some more specific help I could find there, but if you (or anyone else) happen to know anything about such issues, I'd love to hear any suggestions. Oh, and as a note I do have a few of those mods you mentioned already. I saw a mod spotlight that featured a few mods to enhance the quality of distant terrain, and downloaded them all. Haven't really been able to enjoy them too much, and they have not changed the issues with graphical artifacting and the very odd freezing that happens upon exiting the game. Thanks again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RozenDoll Posted November 12, 2012 Share Posted November 12, 2012 As for the artifacting/flickering, many have reported such issue with AMD/ATI cards recently, since the latest update of Skyrim. Don't quote me on that though.As for the freezing, i suggest you keep Performance Monitor open and keep an eye on the Disk Queue. If it periodically rises above 1 you could have an issue. if it periodically rises above 4 you do have an issue with the harddrive activity. sometimes my machine suffers from this, as my harddrive isn't in the most healthy state it seems, but system freezing was caused majorly by Avast! Antivirus, because it always checks every single file access, effectively doubling or trippling the load on the harddrive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sa547 Posted November 12, 2012 Share Posted November 12, 2012 I wonder if it's the only game being affected by those glitches; I mean, Somber, have you checked if other games are affected by the problem? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts