Flickering/Flashing Objects

[Salty Simon 0]

Hi i have a problem

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfFkDenVOG8

 

If i get flickering objects i will have only 10fps, i have a brand new computer with high components. But i dont know why all objects flashing?

need help

[stanhope 411]

Hi and welcome too this forum.

Have you verified your game files?

Are you running any mods?

What are your graphics settings?

[Salty Simon 0]

i just running all DLC's nothing more

 

i play all on ultra but i was trying all settings, if i play on Server where they have their own Launcher then i dont have these problems

 

but if i start over steam i have somethimes

[Dedmen 2693]

What are your computers specs? Seems like Arma is struggling to get the resources that it needs. Maybe out of memory.

[Gunter Severloh 4051]

On 5/28/2019 at 5:18 AM, Dedmen said:

Maybe out of memory.

Yes i think this is probably the issue, i've seen this in the past on my own rented server before after playing a mission for several hours, the trees, and buildings were flickering,

i think the issue was the memory has been used up. A restart of the game fixed it even tho the mission was on the server, i had no more issues after restart.

On 5/25/2019 at 7:59 AM, Salty Simon said:

i play all on ultra but i was trying all settings

If and when he comes on again, hopefully he sees our messages but as asked by Dedmen what are your computer specs, also for your settings,

set the visibility to 2000m as it directly runs off the cpu.

[Salty Simon 0]

http://prntscr.com/o4br0g

[Salty Simon 0]

need help 😕

[Ulfgaar 30]

Was there any solution to this problem?

We're experiencing the same currently - which really wrecks the fun we're having.
We're using mods and DLC (WS) - but its the very same issue as the OP who's just using DLCs.

Here are my recordings on the issue (recorded yesterday, 11.03.23)
1: https://youtu.be/R0ORFO_bY6c
2: https://youtu.be/9cdF2GSqTek

To deal with it we have to leave the game and reboot Arma completely for it to be gone - but it is seemingly returning after a while for some. Its visually very annoying, and over time makes FPS take a proper dump to the unplayable the longer it continues.

We've struggled with this issue in a 5 mission long campaign set on ALTIS hosted on a dedicated server. It affects everyone over time, and playing a mission where one have to reboot the game 3-4 times over a 3+ hour missions is just unbearable.

My rig where i recorded this is the following:
i9 12900K
RTX 3080 (12GB)
32 GB DDR4 RAM

I should have plenty of power for the game, but as said - its not only affecting myself, but everyone.

First I thought it was due to some triggers I used to make certain hidden assets appear and become simulated in the mission, but its clearly not that. We then suspect it might be something with the mod "CH View Distance" which enables you to change view/render distance on the fly - but not really proven this to be the issue yet either.

Any information on how to solve this issue will be very much welcome.

[Jackal326 1181]

23 hours ago, Ulfgaar said:

[...]

We then suspect it might be something with the mod "CH View Distance" which enables you to change view/render distance on the fly - but not really proven this to be the issue yet either.[...]

Stop using the mod. If the issue goes away, its the mod to blame. If it doesn't, its not.

Arma is  a very finnicky game, sometimes one person using so called "optional" mods that others are not using can cause issues for everyone on the server. Sound mods are a prime example of this - often when one user is using a sound replacement mod (JSRS as an example), other players on the server sometimes can't hear weapons firing or explosions etc. Perhaps it is a similar case for view-distance mods? Though this wouldn't explain the OP's issues when not running any mods...

[Gunter Severloh 4051]

I blame mods because i had the same exact issue on the terrain Zagorsk Big Lakes, like 2 months ago

when my coop group were doing missions on it, but for me the flickering wouldn't start til we were

like 3hrs into the mission, basically towards the end.

 

When that terrain was updated as the author is actually still updating it, he fixed something on it and now it dont flicker anymore.

I also blame having tons of ai and destroyed things on the map, and the mission was also updated which helped, but we

dont experience it anymore.

 

My suggestion is test without mods and if same issues occurs, then use a test mission, if issue still occurs then

you may need more ram, it depends, if everyone is having the issue then its mod and or the mission.

Try another map with the same setup with mods and mission if it repeats, then follow the process, lose the mods,

change the mission, put your test mission on (no dlc's, just couple vanilla assets).

 

Rpt

Lastly post an RPT when this happens again, rpt can reveal alot more

then what you guys are telling us.

so do this:

1. In the Arma 3 launcher go to parameters tab and then locate this ---->  [ ] No logs and make sure that box is NOT checked.

2. Start your game with your mods, mission ect,. and when the flickering starts, give it a minute or so, then quit.

3. Grab the logs from your server, open it with notepad (it will say rpt at the end of it) select everything in it and copy it

then paste it here ---->  https://justpaste.it/

the reply with the link you got after you published it.

[Jackal326 1181]

1 hour ago, Gunter Severloh said:

[...]

When that terrain was updated as the author is actually still updating it, he fixed something on it and now it dont flicker anymore.

I also blame having tons of ai and destroyed things on the map, and the mission was also updated which helped, but we

dont experience it anymore.

[...]

Back when the porting of Arma2 terrains was still a "new thing" and All In Arma was still around (before CUP surpassed it) I remember there were numerous issues with terrain flickering and the ponds breaking stuff.

Like I said...Arma is a finnicky beast...

[Ulfgaar 30]

On 3/13/2023 at 2:06 PM, Jackal326 said:

Stop using the mod. If the issue goes away, its the mod to blame. If it doesn't, its not.

Arma is  a very finnicky game, sometimes one person using so called "optional" mods that others are not using can cause issues for everyone on the server. Sound mods are a prime example of this - often when one user is using a sound replacement mod (JSRS as an example), other players on the server sometimes can't hear weapons firing or explosions etc. Perhaps it is a similar case for view-distance mods? Though this wouldn't explain the OP's issues when not running any mods...

We're running with a fixed mod-list which is white-listed on our server. So, everyone is using the same mods - anyone attempting to use anything in addition, or with anything less - will be blocked by server. I dont really think its CH-view distance, as our in-house programmer said that this most likely was due to some sort of memory leak. What causes it could be anything from mod, to a script etc., so it might be problematic to "pin down" what. We've had no issues with this in the past - so if its a mod, the logical conclution would be a mod that recently has been updated, rather one that has been working and not touched in a while?

We've used this mod-set for a full year now almost, and not really had any issues with this outside once earlier on he Panthera map, and now on Altis (Altis being among the oldest BI maps for A3, so would think it was pretty "optimal" for A3 compared to modded maps). 

We're having a different OP this saturday using the same mod-set and compositions for our unit, so we'll see if it persists in a different scenario and map. 

I'll look into the .RPT logs - just not immediatly. On paternity leave, so time is...limited 😉.

Thank you for the responses so far! 

[Wolfowitzer 6]

I experienced the same issues, tried every possible parameter, finally in my case I fixed the issues by upping my launcher parameter "System Memory Limit" to 8192. 
It at least fixes the problem short term.
So, seems to be a memory related issue, like Gunter assumed.

[Ulfgaar 30]

I think I've come to a sensible suspicion. 

Through out this rather sizable campaign mission - i used a myriad of triggers to either "hide and turn off simulation" or "show and activate simulations" blocks of enemy units on the map depending on player distance to them. This was done in hopes of saving some performance. However, i did not use the global command, meaning that with a fair numbers of players going in and out of different zones - turning these units/assets on/off locally - while the assets still being "owned" by the server, would cause some serious shenanigans. 

I have since learned about the codes global variant - which i believe would have worked a lot better - and i've more or less stopped using them in this way outside minors assets i'd like to keep hidden from players till certain conditions are met.

Quite sure its a memory issue, but i believe these triggers were the cause of said memory issue in this case. 

I have however noticed similar effects, but not on this scale since - which might be other memory related issues, so i'll check up on the launchers "memory limit" settings for sure.

 

[Harzach 2517]

5 hours ago, Ulfgaar said:

- turning these units/assets on/off locally - while the assets still being "owned" by the server, would cause some serious shenanigans. 

 

The point of enableSimulation/hideObject being local effect (LE) is that the effect is local only. There is no network traffic involved.

[cooked auto 6]

I can add my group has had similar issues with flickering/flash objects for the past 2-3 months, from what I can remember never even seen the issue until after the 2.14 patch.

 

So far it's struck us during Liberation, but it also happened during a test run of a mission I made. I'm guessing it's something stemming from too many AI present in the mission. But it also seems to ignore Dynamic Simulation to some extent because I made sure that was running properly to deal with FPS issues. But I will have to look that over again.

Speaking of CHVD, we reached a conclusion that it might help dealing with the issue, but no conclusive results were reached on it yet.

 

Edit:
So from what I can tell, after going through some Discord chat logs, is that the flickering issue started happening at the end of September last year. I can remember instances where my game slowed down to an absolute crawl and models starting to T-pose and things began flickering in and out. Watching a tank get blown up one frame at a time is interesting I should add, but also incredibly frustrating.
If it happens again during a future session I'll have to remember to save the rpt logs.