Shimmer Flickering On Mountain

[mooit]

Hello,

I'm using Majestic Mountains, and something I've been trying to fix, which I thought might be related to Z Fighting, but I'm not sure, I see flickering/shimmering sometimes when looking at the mountain covered in snow in the distance, when I move the camera around.

I took some screen shots to explain, but when I see this in the game, it looks more like a light reflecting, it can be quite distracting.

This screen shot in the middle of the red box, there's a black area which appears and disappears, but it's not always the same color/hue, or shape, when I move the camera around.

Now when I move the camera around, in this screen shot the black area is gone, and it's all white.

What causes these flickers/shimmers on the mountain, and how can I correct this?

Has the size to attach images/files been lowered from 3mb to now 0.23? I had to make the images really small to attach them.

THANKS

Edited September 6, 2022 by mooit

[DoubleYou]

This is z-fighting and there is not really much that can be done to fix it. It is caused by terrain LOD occupying the same space as the mountain object lod. 

[z929669]

Specifically, when LOD is transitioning to full, there is often some z-fighting. It's more apparent for mountains, since they can be seen from afar. To mitigate, you can set your LOD4 to be farther out in [TerrainManager] (or DynDOLOD MCM), but that may be performance taxing.

You can also use Level0 for LOD4 and LOD8, and Level1 for LOD16 (our recommended mesh rule for mountains)

---

EDIT: also, you should be using mods like Flickering Mesh Fixes, Fixed Mesh Lighting, etc., which update meshes to fix z-fighting, collision, lighting, etc.

This is what the Step guide is doing and why we recommend following that as general guidance for things like asset overrides ... to fix some of these issues. If you use our guide as a base, you can then choose your own mods and resolve just those conflicts (trusting that the Step-guide asset priorities are 'good' advice ... many others are using our guide and reporting issues all the time that we fix if valid)

When you find these z-fighting meshes, it's best to use More Informative Console and other methods that give the mesh name and mod source for further investigation.

[mooit]

What about this Z-Fighting guide, good to use?

https://stepmodifications.org/wiki/Guide:Z-Fighting

I am using  Flickering Mesh Fixes, and Fixed Mesh Lighting

Thanks everyone!

Edited September 8, 2022 by mooit

[DoubleYou]

Honestly, that guide is rather old, and we know a lot more now. I wouldn't recommend it. Probably the thing that helps the most is generating terrain LOD at higher quality. Consider setting the quality to 0 for all levels. Probably cost some performance, but will likely lessen the issue. 

[mooit]

50 minutes ago, DoubleYou said:

Honestly, that guide is rather old, and we know a lot more now. I wouldn't recommend it. Probably the thing that helps the most is generating terrain LOD at higher quality. Consider setting the quality to 0 for all levels. Probably cost some performance, but will likely lessen the issue. 

I'm running a Ryzen 5 5600X with an EVGA 3080 FTW Ultra, hopefully these specs on all 0 is ok.

THANKS

Edited September 9, 2022 by mooit

[mooit]

I am also now seeing different areas shimmer/flicker with Majestic Mountains 4.0, so I don't know if this version has introduced more, but I didn't see this Z-Fighting before in these areas I am seeing at now.

Here's a screen shot where I placed two red boxes around the areas the mountain is shimmering/flickering. Also the area I drew a red circle around, this entire area also shimmers flickers now.

Flicker ZFight — Freeimage.host

When I was using Alpha95 I also wasn't seeing this area of the landscape shimmer that I placed the red circle around, I don't know if Majestic also covers this area too.

Here's a video I uploaded, if you look closely, you'll see all these areas shimmer/flicker.

Flicker Z-Fighting (vimeo.com)

DynDOLOD Alpha 100 just came out, I'll try this and put LOD 4/8/16 on Level 0 and see if it helps.

THANKS

Edited October 1, 2022 by mooit

[DoubleYou]

It is normal to see z-fighting on mountains. This has been the case since 2011.

[mooit]

The thing is, I'm seeing it change with updates either on DynDOLOD or the latest MM 4.0.

So I wasn't sure, that even though it's been around, if I might see it change from time to time, to different locations with newer updates. hmm 

THANKS

[DoubleYou]

You recently increased fBlockLevel0Distance. This is likely the reason why it is shimmering at a different place. It is typically unwise to set this that high.

[mooit]

36 minutes ago, DoubleYou said:

You recently increased fBlockLevel0Distance. This is likely the reason why it is shimmering at a different place. It is typically unwise to set this that high.

I only increased it, to see if it helped with grass rendering in the distance.

Before I increased it, I still saw this same issue, it had no effect at a lower setting of; fBlockLevel0Distance=57344.0000

P.S. I'm going to try DynDOLOD 100 now, and play around, maybe I'll have some better luck with this version. All I know is that with Alpha95 and the previous version of MM, I wasn't seeing all this, in fact using Level 0 on all the LODs, I wasn't seeing any Z-fighting anywhere.

Edited October 2, 2022 by mooit

[z929669]

39 minutes ago, mooit said:

I only increased it, to see if it helped with grass rendering in the distance.

Before I increased it, I still saw this same issue, it had no effect at a lower setting of; fBlockLevel0Distance=57344.0000

P.S. I'm going to try DynDOLOD 100 now, and play around, maybe I'll have some better luck with this version. All I know is that with Alpha95 and the previous version of MM, I wasn't seeing all this, in fact using Level 0 on all the LODs, I wasn't seeing any Z-fighting anywhere.

DynDOLOD versions don't suddenly change the way LOD looks. Your own config settings and mods to that. updates to DynDOLOD only add functionality. LOD still works the same.

To minimize z-fighting in mountains, try setting a mountain mesh rule and use Level0/Level0/Level1. This is why you didn't have this issue before ... because you were using the Step guide as a basis (we set all DynDOLOD mesh rules via config files). You keep changing your entire LO though, so you will obviously need to reconfigure many things when you do that (INI settings, grass/landscape, weather, ENB settings, etc.).

[mooit]

I used Level0/Level0/Level1 and Level0/Level0/Level0 before with MM 3.2 and the shimmer/flickering went away.

Now it's back with MM 4.0, so I can only assume MM 4.0 has introduced other bits I didn't see before.

I'm assuming LO = Load Order? Because I'm not changing my entire load order, I've only updated some mods is all, to newer versions.

THANKS

P.S. I'll keep playing around...

Edited October 2, 2022 by mooit

[mooit]

By the way, on the topic of shimmer/flicker, I noticed at Whiterun a couple of houses with shimmer/flicker, and wanted to know if this was also Z-Fighting?

The two buildings straight ahead in the distance.

Building Flicker.mp4 on Vimeo

THANKS

Edited October 2, 2022 by mooit

[DoubleYou]

That is z-fighting. It looks like a possible large reference bug to me.