Possible Bug - Phantom Blocks - I Believe It's a Long-Known Problem

[Morkilimus]

I've done a lot of googling, and I've found a few threads here and there that talk about this, but there's never an answer for it, and it doesn't seem that anyone ever confirms that YES, it's a bug, or NO, it's a client issue with GPU memory or if it's just settings that need to be adjusted.

I'm playing on A19, on a multiplayer server (I do not own the server). I run an i5 8600, 16 gb RAM, GeForce RTX 2060 Super. Settings have been optimized using GeForce Experience, but generally hover around ULTRA settings. LOD is set to 100.  All of my drivers are up to date.

Some POIs I have encountered have phantom blocks that you can walk right through. Wooden planks that don't disappear when broken, and lots of strange marble-like textures scattered around the building.  You (and zombies) can walk through them, but they obstruct vision. A lot of the textures in the POI also flicker, as if two textures are on top of one another.

Nobody else on the server has reported seeing this issue, but we may not be looking at the same POIs in the same area.   It seems to go away *sometimes* if you leave the game and reload some time later.  Leaving the game and coming right back in doesn't seem to make it disappear. In fact, I'm not sure there's any rhyme or reason as to when/why it goes away and comes back.

edit:  I've attached some photos of the glitch.   This is the gas station where I've set up a temporary sleeping spot.  The first picture shows a bunch of extra, phantom blocks in front of the door and windows.

The second picture shows the gas pumps that have turned into phantom blocks.

The third shows the gate to the backyard (looks like a giant block of gate textures), some of the phantom marble on the windows and side walls of the station, and a pile of trash

outside looks like a black and white checkered box.

Edited July 5, 2020 by Morkilimus (see edit history)

[Sinixter]

Im also noticing this issue after a full reinstall.  Most of the POIs glass blocks are showing the marble texture. 

[Rizzano]

I had this problem once so far on A19, and quite a few times on A18.

 

I wonder if it has something to do with GeForce. I too, have a 2600, and have used GeForce Experience to optimize.   

Edited July 6, 2020 by Rizzano (see edit history)

[Majesticwalker]

For those having it - is it a fully vanilla server? Is it happening in SP as well? I've had multiple people complain about it but the server it happens on has server-side mods/modlets.
From my understanding, it did not happen to at least one of them in SP, but they also did not play the game much in SP from what I gathered, at that point, so I'm curious.
Particularly curious about the trader being 24-7, instead of having their usual hours.

[Morkilimus]

 

7 hours ago, Majesticwalker said:

For those having it - is it a fully vanilla server? Is it happening in SP as well? I've had multiple people complain about it but the server it happens on has server-side mods/modlets.
From my understanding, it did not happen to at least one of them in SP, but they also did not play the game much in SP from what I gathered, at that point, so I'm curious.
Particularly curious about the trader being 24-7, instead of having their usual hours.

I'm not sure if it's happening in sp, as I don't play sp, but the server is entirely vanilla.  

However, I believe that I may have figured out that it's an issue with GPU memory.  Regardless of the fact that my GPU is more than equipped to handle the ULTRA settings of the game, and despite the fact that GeForce Experience is optimizing the game for me, I think the poor optimization of the game itself is causing the graphical memory to become overloaded, and the textures are being replaced with these phantom textures when it can't draw them properly.

I went into my settings and tweaked them some, lowering a few things (I'll edit to include screenshots of my settings for you) and I have not seen the problem since.

 

 

That's what I ended up lowering my settings to. Now, even on full Ultra, I was only using around 51% of my GPU's RAM, so I don't know why the game kept doing what it was doing. And I'm not entirely convinced the problem is resolved yet. I haven't played enough on these settings to be 100% certain.

Edited July 6, 2020 by Morkilimus (see edit history)

[Morkilimus]

Aaaaaannnd literally the moment I logged into the game just now, those blocks are back. So obvs not fixed.

[DarienDragon]

This is exactly the problem my wife is experiencing. Also on a Geforce. It never happened before A19 though. It doesn't seem to be happening to me. I think it cropped up once on my laptop then stopped. I have a mobile Quadro K5000 card so it could be something about Geforce, as mentioned above? I don't have a solution (yet) but I figure something out I'll share.

Edited July 8, 2020 by DarienDragon (see edit history)

[Sinixter]

On 7/6/2020 at 11:54 AM, Majesticwalker said:

For those having it - is it a fully vanilla server? Is it happening in SP as well? I've had multiple people complain about it but the server it happens on has server-side mods/modlets.
From my understanding, it did not happen to at least one of them in SP, but they also did not play the game much in SP from what I gathered, at that point, so I'm curious.
Particularly curious about the trader being 24-7, instead of having their usual hours.

Local Multi-Player. Yes my host PC has the issue. But the others connecting to it do not including 1 that matches the specs of my pc 100%.. Rebooting the game clears the issue. but it will come back at some point during the play through.  I am running a GEFORCE card also. but the pc with matching specs doesnt have the same issue so i think we can rule out the video card. Best guess is a memory leak. Doesnt matter the settings either. i can go low and grainy to ultra and grainy doesnt matter. 

[Morkilimus]

9 minutes ago, Sinixter said:

Local Multi-Player. Yes my host PC has the issue. But the others connecting to it do not including 1 that matches the specs of my pc 100%.. Rebooting the game clears the issue. but it will come back at some point during the play through.  I am running a GEFORCE card also. but the pc with matching specs doesnt have the same issue so i think we can rule out the video card. Best guess is a memory leak. Doesnt matter the settings either. i can go low and grainy to ultra and grainy doesnt matter. 

It also seems to be the same POI or POIs that get all glitchy for me. There's only been a few buildings, but every time it happens, it's those same buildings.

[sinda]

try lowering your ground terrain from ultra a notch or two. it's extremely intensive on a lot of systems, and has helped others with the distance mesh unloading properly without those resources being jammed up. *terrain quality.

Edited July 7, 2020 by sinda
monsters are such interesting people (see edit history)

[DarienDragon]

7 hours ago, Sinixter said:

Local Multi-Player. Yes my host PC has the issue. But the others connecting to it do not including 1 that matches the specs of my pc 100%.. Rebooting the game clears the issue. but it will come back at some point during the play through.  I am running a GEFORCE card also. but the pc with matching specs doesnt have the same issue so i think we can rule out the video card. Best guess is a memory leak. Doesnt matter the settings either. i can go low and grainy to ultra and grainy doesnt matter. 

After some testing I can confirm it's the same here. The problem seems to be the host, we transferred the saves to my system and suddenly I was the one with the graphical artifacts. Also worth noting; I have 4G of VRAM and 16 of system RAM, my VRAM shot up over 50% and my system RAM was at 90% load. I'm inclined to agree now that it's not GPU specific, and that a memory leak (somehow specific to the host) is the culprit.

6 hours ago, sinda said:

try lowering your ground terrain from ultra a notch or two. it's extremely intensive on a lot of systems, and has helped others with the distance mesh unloading properly without those resources being jammed up. *terrain quality.

I don't know about the OP, but we have the same problem with the terrain quality at medium. I'll try dropping it to low tomorrow and report any changes.

[Damocles]

You should try to set the occlusion to off, to see if that resolves the problem.

 

 

[Laz Man]

2 hours ago, DarienDragon said:

After some testing I can confirm it's the same here. The problem seems to be the host, we transferred the saves to my system and suddenly I was the one with the graphical artifacts. Also worth noting; I have 4G of VRAM and 16 of system RAM, my VRAM shot up over 50% and my system RAM was at 90% load. I'm inclined to agree now that it's not GPU specific, and that a memory leak (somehow specific to the host) is the culprit.

I don't know about the OP, but we have the same problem with the terrain quality at medium. I'll try dropping it to low tomorrow and report any changes.

I doubt its a host issue.  My brother experienced the same issue at a POI the other day and when I logged in and stood next to him, the POI looked fine to me.  We use a rented server from Bluefangs.

[Morkilimus]

11 hours ago, sinda said:

try lowering your ground terrain from ultra a notch or two. it's extremely intensive on a lot of systems, and has helped others with the distance mesh unloading properly without those resources being jammed up. *terrain quality.

I've adjusted the settings in all kinds of ways, and it still seems to happen.  I'm running with 16 GB of system memory and 8 gb of video memory, with a card powerful enough to run this on ultra. I highly doubt it's due to strain on my system. As others have stated, seems that the problem persists even when settings are low and in some cases off, such as with AO.

I have confirmed that I'm not the only person on the server experiencing the problem though.   The other person reporting the issue runs on a much less expensive PC and keeps her settings turned down low.
 

 

[DarienDragon]

9 hours ago, Laz Man said:

I doubt its a host issue.  My brother experienced the same issue at a POI the other day and when I logged in and stood next to him, the POI looked fine to me.  We use a rented server from Bluefangs.

In our case I'm certain it's a host issue. Or more specifically, being the host is exacerbating the issue. But we're not on a server, one of us is creating the game and the other joining it. We have to restart whenever the host starts to get too visually bugged. In your case, since nobody's machine is doing double duty as host... maybe it's just taking longer to happen? On our end the client may not be playing long enough to see the phantom blocks by the time the host is. In which case, if we go back to it being purely a memory leak... then hosting a server seems to exponentially increase said leak. Which would also mean that changing all the video options in the world won't help (and that seems to be the case).

 

Sadness. But it's the price of experimental I suppose.

[ggoblin]

Interesting. After at least a year of experiencing this problem (since a18 at the very least), I decided to write a forum post about it

 and I missed OP's by several hours 🙂 Anyway, linking it here so we can share knowledge. I, for one, do not believe it has anything to do with actual hardware but suspect far-distance models instead. It would be helpful if any developer could actually look into this since from a19 relogging into the game no longer 100% solves the issue (sometimes it solves, sometimes nothing happens).

[Wesinator42]

I have had this issue as well. Had it in A18 a few time, but seems worse in A19. I have a GeForce 950. a lot of times it happens with doors or windows. I am running a solo SPon my pc, but have had it on a friends server in MP with just 2 of us. Only one of us will see the objects. Yes he is running a GeForce as well. 

 

Edited July 18, 2020 by Wesinator42 (see edit history)

[Majesticwalker]

On 7/7/2020 at 7:34 PM, sinda said:

try lowering your ground terrain from ultra a notch or two. it's extremely intensive on a lot of systems, and has helped others with the distance mesh unloading properly without those resources being jammed up. *terrain quality.

This seems to be the case on our server as well. People complaining about it are complaining about the same places.

[wendi]

happens to me too running a private dedicated server and i use nvidia geforse experience aswell..... i see the ghostblocks on my client pc when i play on the server and so far im the only one that sees them... use gforce on client pc aswell

[Elroniel]

I'm getting the same sort of issues on nvidia but in singleplayer.  Some observations I've made in my own findings:

• Only happens to me in very POI dense areas, like city blocks that all have POI's (no blank/forested city blocks).
• Can easily be replicated on NitroGen maps (due to increased POI density, I wager)
• Seems to only be per POI - either it bugs and has the phantom blocks or it doesn't.  I often see a POI with Phantoms Blocks and then one right next to it that's just fine.
• No graphic settings seem to increase or decrease the rate at which they show up.
• As others have said, exiting the game and reloading in front of the affected POI works, though it's a bit time consuming, obviously.
• I only started having the issue this past Tuesday.  No system changes to my PC prior to it starting.
  • Now that it's happening, I updated a nvidia driver and my Windows, but neither had any impact (positive or negative)

Just figured I'd throw some more info out there and see if that helps anyone figure this out!

Edited July 10, 2020 by Elroniel (see edit history)

[Marcinkoman]

I have this bug too. I play singleplayer and use Nitrogen. I read in another thread to us the "pois" command to make it go away. It works!! I do not know what that command actually does, when i use it it says pois disabled. But,  I have not noticed anything unusual nor not working as it did before. The pois function exactly as they did before i used the command except no marble blocks everywhere. When you see the phantom blocks, open the console and type pois. Problem gone. I was ready to stop playing and wait for stable and now I can play again, try it.

[Laz Man]

It is worth pointing out the blocks that you guys are seeing are part of the distant POI mesh file that is loaded when you see a specific POI off in the distance.  The anomaly is why is it not unloading once you are close enough to the POI.  You can observe the popping out of the mesh when approaching any given POI at a certain distance.  The reason it is probably not fixed yet is because there are no errors and I have yet seen anyone to provide a consistent reproduction step that the programmers can work with.

 

If any of you have such steps, please submit it along with all of the required information asked.

 

As a side note, I have NEVER experienced the issue myself in either A18 or A19 but my brother has...So the million dollar question is why some people and not others?

 

Edit: As a side note, one theory is the more dense the POIs in one area, the more frequent the issue can happen...

Edited July 10, 2020 by Laz Man (see edit history)

[Elroniel]

Interesting note on the "pois" console command.  That certainly does work - typed it in and hit enter, boom, fixes the non-rendered blocks and snaps them into the right textures/meshes.  Sadly, it also makes it to where distant POI's don't render any longer.  I presume the actual function of the "pois" command is more related to that, but the fix for now is nice.

Is there another command like "pois" that can snap the meshes back into place -and- leave distant POI's still rendered as they are?  That would be perfect.

[Laz Man]

The "pois" command turns off the distant POI mesh for ALL pois.  That is why it fixes the issue as that is what players are seeing up close.

[Elroniel]

That makes sense.  Which Video setting controls the range at which the game switches from the distant mesh to the normal one?