Z-Fighting problem: I just can't get rid of it/reduce it!?

[Exalerion]

Hi everyone,

 

 

I have the Z-Fighting or distant terrain/mountain flickering problem, and I just can't get rid of it or reduce it! It are not only the mountains and the snow on them that flicker, but all of the distant terrain flickers a bit too!

 

I've already tried the following Z-Fighting fix on the  S.T.E.P. Wiki/Forums, but it doesn't work:

 

Skyrim.ini

[Display]

fNearDistance=25.0000

 

SkyrimPrefs.ini

[Terrainmanager]
fBlockMaximumDistance=500000
fBlockLevel1Distance=140000
fBlockLevel0Distance=75000
fSplitDistanceMult=4.0
[MAIN]
fSkyCellRefFadeDistance=500000.0000

 

 

I even cranked those settings up to DOUBLE those values or higher in my ini files, but it doesn't make a difference at all...

I've also tried uGrids 7 instead of 5, but the only difference was a huge fps drop :P

And yes, I also already have an ENB with DoF and Vivid Clouds and Fogs, but the mountain flickering is just too heavy to cover it up.

 

I've been told that those Terrainmanager fixes on the internet will never completely "fix" the Z-Fighting issue, but for me the mountain flickering doesn't even get reduced!!!

 

 

I hope someone has a more effective solution for this problem, let it be mod- or ini related...!

 

Thanks in advance ;)

Edited October 12, 2015 by Exalerion

[TirigonX]

Are you using Skyrim Enhanced Camera? It comes with an ini file which overrides the fNearDistance setting. So changing it in Skyrim's ini file won't have any effect.

[Exalerion]

Are you using Skyrim Enhanced Camera? It comes with an ini file which overrides the fNearDistance setting. So changing it in Skyrim's ini file won't have any effect.

Yes I am. Damn, I've never noticed that! I'll look into the ini file right away and change/disable some values and see what is does. Lol, it seems to be changing the FOV too, so that might be the reason why my FOV constantly resets to 65 when starting a new game/clean save! Haha, thanks. I'll let you know :)

 

EDIT:

Thanks man, it worked!!! I'd probably never have come up with that lol... I just set it to not override my fNearDistance settings, and the mountain flickering is a LOT less now! It's still not 100% gone, but hey, I have around 400 mods installed and a lot of high textures, so I'm stressing the hell out of this old game engine.. xD But it does come at the cost of the mod itself though, because with fNearDistance set to 25, the 1st person view of my body is almost completely clipped out, transparant... But maybe I can lower it a little bit though.. The mod set it to 10 in 1st person, so 25 is a big bump up! :P Let's hope I can find a sweet spot here :)

 

EDIT2:

Well, I'd have to go to about 14 to not clip out my upper body in 1st person view, and that's still pretty low so the mountain flickering persists. I guess I'll leave it at 25 and have to live with a clipped out chest.. But hey, how often do you actually look down lol.. I think the mountains are more important as eye candy! :)

 

Thanks again TirigonX!

 

 

 

@ the forum:

Maybe someone has another tweak to completely remove the landscape flickering issue, so I'll mark this thread as not solved for now. ;)

Edited October 12, 2015 by Exalerion

[hishutup]

It can be further reduced by just covering it up with rocks, take a look at Enhanced Landscapes 

[DoubleYou]

Depth of Field helps as well.

[TechAngel85]

I prefer to use Vivid Clouds and Fog to cover most of it up.

[DoubleYou]

If every day was foggy and cloudy, that would work well.

[TechAngel85]

Well, it adds better mountain clouds around just the mountains to hide the z-fighting as one of its features.

[Exalerion]

It can be further reduced by just covering it up with rocks, take a look at Enhanced Landscapes 

Mmm, I've seen that mod before, but it looks a bit complex to me. It would also require DynDOLOD, which I don't have/need/understand.

 

Depth of Field helps as well.

I already have an ENB with DoF enabled, but thanks.

 

I prefer to use Vivid Clouds and Fog to cover most of it up.

I also already have Vivid Clouds and Fogs installed, but thanks.

 

~~~~~~~~~~

 

Thanks for the suggestions, but I don't want to partially hide the mountain flickering, I've already tried that, I just want to solve it. I already have DoF and VCaF (not specifically installed for covering up the flickering, covering it up is just a little additional advantage), but it only covers it up for a bit. Also, DoF only kicks in when you don't look at the mountains, so that's kinda useless for this matter anyway. And the flickering is still visible through the fog of VCaf. VCaF only retextures clouds and fogs and replaces the CoT Wheather Patch, and it adds some additional fog. It's not that the mountains are totally covered up with clouds when it's rainy or misty, and I wouldn't want that anway, because I still want to be able see the beautiful snowy mountains! :)

 

But the mountain flickering is tolerant right now. Not solved, but bearable.. It's the terrain landscape, the plains and buildings in front of the mountains in the distance that flicker even more than the mountains right now.

Edited October 12, 2015 by Exalerion

[Aiyen]

You can look around the forum for the most comprehensive pieces of info on the topic. There are a few other websites that offer a few nuggets as well, but at the end of the day it is due to how the game was made, and short of redoing those areas it would most likely not be possible to remove entirely. And even redoing it some have put doubt towards, since it would not fix the underlying issues. 

 

One thing you can try to minimize further is increase resolution via. downsampling. This will remove flickering due to aliasing... up to a certain point. Ofc. this also means that you wont be able to play at 60FPS... And that is before you take ENB into account. 

[TechAngel85]

Most just use a combination of techniques to hide it like Vivid, Enhanced Landscapes, and DoF. If you completely solve the issue you'll be on the level of Sheson and others, like the UP Team, with the UPs, memory patch, and DynDOLOD of fixing some of Skyrim's worse issues. Best of luck!

[Exalerion]

You can look around the forum for the most comprehensive pieces of info on the topic. There are a few other websites that offer a few nuggets as well, but at the end of the day it is due to how the game was made, and short of redoing those areas it would most likely not be possible to remove entirely. And even redoing it some have put doubt towards, since it would not fix the underlying issues. 

 

One thing you can try to minimize further is increase resolution via. downsampling. This will remove flickering due to aliasing... up to a certain point. Ofc. this also means that you wont be able to play at 60FPS... And that is before you take ENB into account. 

Are you talking about nVidia's DSR? Or/and disabling any kind of AA?

 

Most just use a combination of techniques to hide it like Vivid, Enhanced Landscapes, and DoF. If you completely solve the issue you'll be on the level of Sheson and others, like the UP Team, with the UPs, memory patch, and DynDOLOD of fixing some of Skyrim's worse issues. Best of luck!

Haha thanks! I'd love to delve deeper into the real technical aspects of Skyrim and modding, but I just don't have the time for it to begin with.. :P

Edited October 16, 2015 by Exalerion

[TechAngel85]

This is a pure guess, but from what I know about the game I assume z-fighting occurs due to LOD textures being in the same or close to the same Z (height) coordinates. Thus making them "switch" back and forth between the two textures which creates the "flicker".

 

I could be completely wrong though.

[hishutup]

 

Thanks for the suggestions, but I don't want to partially hide the mountain flickering, I've already tried that, I just want to solve it. I already have DoF and VCaF (not specifically installed for covering up the flickering, covering it up is just a little additional advantage), but it only covers it up for a bit. Also, DoF only kicks in when you don't look at the mountains, so that's kinda useless for this matter anyway. And the flickering is still visible through the fog of VCaf. VCaF only retextures clouds and fogs and replaces the CoT Wheather Patch, and it adds some additional fog. It's not that the mountains are totally covered up with clouds when it's rainy or misty, and I wouldn't want that anway, because I still want to be able see the beautiful snowy mountains! :)

 

But the mountain flickering is tolerant right now. Not solved, but bearable.. It's the terrain landscape, the plains and buildings in front of the mountains in the distance that flicker even more than the mountains right now.

You could use a static DoF, look at the vividian installer for some really good DoF pictograms

[Exalerion]

This is a pure guess, but from what I know about the game I assume z-fighting occurs due to LOD textures being in the same or close to the same Z (height) coordinates. Thus making them "switch" back and forth between the two textures which creates the "flicker".

 

I could be completely wrong though.

That's about right yeah, I've read about it and it has something to do with two or more textures or polygons occupying essentially the same space, with neither in front. So movement of the camera causes one polygon to "win" the z test (depth), then another, and so on. The overall effect is a flickering, noisy rasterization of two polygons which "fight" to color the screen pixels. This problem is usually caused by limited sub-pixel precision and floating point and fixed point round-off errors.

But knowing how it works doesn't help me much :P

 

You could use a static DoF, look at the vividian installer for some really good DoF pictograms

Thanks for the suggestion hishutup, but I just want to use the dynamic DoF, I want to see the distance, and since the flickering is already much less noticeable or distracting, I don't need to cover it up. I don't even have Vividian ENB btw, I have RealVision Full. But DoF wouldn't cover it very well anyway as I said before.

 

The only disadvantage of fNearDistance=25 is the clipping, but it's that, or heavy Z-Fighting..

Edited October 17, 2015 by Exalerion