Massive Z-fighting

[SUPR3ME KILL3R 0]

Well, after I thought that new Nvidia drivers had caused this, I was wrong.

I tried changing every setting available in the game and in Nvidia control panel, no effect.

5 different drivers, no effect.

All resolutions, no effect.

Watch for yourself

Absolutely rediculous.

Quad Core 3 GHZ

Nforce 790i

One (no SLI) 8800 GTX 768 MB

4 GB DDR3 RAM

Fully updated drivers for everything.

Any ideas on what the #@(% is causing that?

[Yoma 0]

Did you update any other drivers? Mainboard for example.

Do you have an image of your system from before the problem exists? When did it first start to happen? (I bet just after some vga driver update).

(Maybe some leftover of some special driver or something is causing this)

Does it allso happen in other games? Is it allways like this?

What you could do to rule out any hardware problems is:

-make an image of your pc using a tool like Ghost on an external HD

-reinstall windows (if you're tired of fiddling with driver installers), install the drivers your vga came with.

-install arma and try, if this works then you somehow screwed up your windows along the lines.

-make an image of this working installation

-restore the image of the nonworking installation and try to get the correct drivers again.

[gL33k 0]

Did you update any other drivers? Mainboard for example.

Do you have an image of your system from before the problem exists? When did it first start to happen? (I bet just after some vga driver update).

(Maybe some leftover of some special driver or something is causing this)

Does it allso happen in other games? Is it allways like this?

What you could do to rule out any hardware problems is:

-make an image of your pc using a tool like Ghost on an external HD

-reinstall windows (if you're tired of fiddling with driver installers), install the drivers your vga came with.

-install arma and try, if this works then you somehow screwed up your windows along the lines.

-make an image of this working installation

-restore the image of the nonworking installation and try to get the correct drivers again.

i personnally never see arma running without z-fighting ...

[Yoma 0]

Well i have the same vga as he does and on my pc it sure doesn't look like on his (judging the movie he uploaded)

Where i have occasional blips and model changes he has it all over the place and without really changing distance to objects.

I used to have the same thing with one of the NVIDIA drivers, but can't remember which one.

If it would look like that on my pc i would consider it unplayable.

[SUPR3ME KILL3R 0]

Going to reformat and just use the drivers off the CD's and see what happens.

[SUPR3ME KILL3R 0]

I reformatted, installed ArmA Gold with patch 1.14 and I think the only other thing was winrar, and upon testing with and without any mods/addons...

Same result.

Nvidia 8800 GTX I bought has no drivers on the CD for windows XP, only vista. So I used the most recent ones available on their website. Think its version 180.48.

[Lepardi 0]

Well, after I thought that new Nvidia drivers had caused this, I was wrong.

I tried changing every setting available in the game and in Nvidia control panel, no effect.

5 different drivers, no effect.

All resolutions, no effect.

Watch for yourself

Absolutely rediculous.

Quad Core 3 GHZ

Nforce 790i

One (no SLI) 8800 GTX 768 MB

4 GB DDR3 RAM

Fully updated drivers for everything.

Any ideas on what the #@(% is causing that?

I had the same problem with an nvidia card. I had also ArmA crashing a lot with it.

But then I upgraded to an ati card and both problems were gone. It is a problem with nvidia drivers or hardware, i dont know. Get a HD 4870 since they're cheap now, 1gb model for ~200€. It'll fix the problem.

[mr.g-c 6]

Have the same Problems in Arma (and ONLY in Arma) with my Nvidia Card too.

If i remember correctly this "bug/behavior" has been Introduced with any of the "beta 1.09", "beta 1.11" or "final 1.14" patch.

Very similar bugs since those above mentioned patch, is that the sun is shining THROUGH mountains for instance and sometimes dead bodies disappear when you zoom at them while standing next to them and the rotating your view around.

All this was NOT in Arma 1.08 or before - 100% sure!

But yeahh, was also gone for me as i had the ATI HD3870 2,3 months ago in my System (If i remember correctly).

Really Poor. Hope we will not see something like this in Arma2.

[Yoma 0]

I reformatted, installed ArmA Gold with patch 1.14 and I think the only other thing was winrar, and upon testing with and without any mods/addons...

Same result.

Nvidia 8800 GTX I bought has no drivers on the CD for windows XP, only vista. So I used the most recent ones available on their website. Think its version 180.48.

I think that's exactly your problem:

those recent Nvidia drivers stink.

look for this one

163.75_forceware_winxp_32bit_international_whql

Just remove the current drivers, make sure to allso uninstall the physx crap if you installed that.

After that, reboot and install the above driver.

[Lepardi 0]

I reformatted, installed ArmA Gold with patch 1.14 and I think the only other thing was winrar, and upon testing with and without any mods/addons...

Same result.

Nvidia 8800 GTX I bought has no drivers on the CD for windows XP, only vista. So I used the most recent ones available on their website. Think its version 180.48.

I think that's exactly your problem:

those recent Nvidia drivers stink.

look for this one

163.75_forceware_winxp_32bit_international_whql

Just remove the current drivers, make sure to allso uninstall the physx crap if you installed that.

After that, reboot and install the above driver.

I'm sure that won't help. I had the same exact problem with those drivers when I had an 8800. Just get rid of the geforce and get an ati card which will work.

[SUPR3ME KILL3R 0]

I don't see replacing the 8800 GTX as a viable option...

I can still play ArmA just fine, its just that at certain points I run into that problem. I could live with it, but it would ruin any more videos that I do.

[andersson 285]

I have tried some newer drivers but always with the result you have. The driver I use with good result is a 17x.xx something (16x.xx?? not 100% sure....), I'm not in the same city as my game-rig so I cannot check exactly what driver. Sorry.. I use a 8800GTS.

I suggest you try older drivers. Works for me.

[SUPR3ME KILL3R 0]

Quote[/b] ]I have tried some newer drivers but always with the result you have. The driver I use with good result is a 17x.xx something (16x.xx?? not 100% sure....), I'm not in the same city as my game-rig so I cannot check exactly what driver. Sorry.. I use a 8800GTS.

I suggest you try older drivers. Works for me.

I tried to oldest drivers available but still no dice...

I wanted to try out the driverheaven Omega Drivers but windows XP 64 be damned I can't.

[kklownboy 43]

not sure, but the 1.15 seems to not have the slow loading/(zfight?) with my X2s...

[Yoma 0]

I have absolutely no idea what drivers may be any good for XP64.

The ones I talked about worked fine for me on xp32.

Nowadays i'm on Vista64

[[frl]myke 14]

This isn't a nVidia related Problem since i have the same effect on a HD4870 also:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gCl-KHMG4w

Note that this happens only on large viewdistances (also SUPR3ME KILL3R's vid seems to be viewed over large distance with high zoom factor) and completely disappears when closing up.

[max power 21]

That will happen because the z buffer loses precision over distance, so this kind of thing is more likely to happen over increasing distances. It's too bad that noone supports the w buffer anymore. That was a better solution for high distances.

[Lepardi 0]

This isn't a nVidia related Problem since i have the same effect on a HD4870 also:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gCl-KHMG4w

Note that this happens only on large viewdistances (also SUPR3ME KILL3R's vid seems to be viewed over large distance with high zoom factor) and completely disappears when closing up.

I have that problem only in BF2 since it's an engine bug. I had that bug before I changed my 8800GTS to HD 4870 though.

[SUPR3ME KILL3R 0]

Quote[/b] ]That will happen because the z buffer loses precision over distance, so this kind of thing is more likely to happen over increasing distances.  It's too bad that noone supports the w buffer anymore.  That was a better solution for high distances.

I noticed that too.

So the only fix I have for the moment is to not use long range weapons with optics or the UAV system shown in my video... great.

[max power 21]

Quote[/b] ]That will happen because the z buffer loses precision over distance, so this kind of thing is more likely to happen over increasing distances.  It's too bad that noone supports the w buffer anymore.  That was a better solution for high distances.

I noticed that too.

So the only fix I have for the moment is to not use long range weapons with optics or the UAV system shown in my video... great.

While I don't think there is anything you can do about that, I don't think you can infer that conclusion based on what I've said. I was just talking about the reason it happens and that it's a common problem. Who knows, maybe some driver configurator genius will pop up and lend a hand, or maybe BIS will patch the problem out some how.

[Pulverizer 1]

Try forcing z-buffer depth to 24- or 32-bit in your favourite gfx card configuration utility. Is not a bug, merely an artefact of low fidelity z-buffer. Turning down the view distance will also help of course, as you will get the same amount of z-bits for a smaller range of possible distance value.