Board index FlightGear Support Graphics

Visual Artifacts...  Topic is solved

Graphics issues like: bad framerates, weird colors, OpenGL errors etc. Bad graphics ar usually the result of bad graphics cards or drivers.
Forum rules
In order to help you, we need to know a lot of information. Make sure to include answers to at least the following questions in your initial post.

- what OS (Windows Xp/Vista, Mac etc.) are you running?
- what FlightGear version do you use?
- what graphics card do you have?
- does the problem occur with any aircraft, at any airport?
- is there any output printed to the console (black window)?
- copy&paste your commandline (tick the "Show commandline box on the last page of FGRun or the "Others" section on the Mac launcher).
- please upload a screenshot of the problem.

If you experience FlightGear crashes, please report a bug using the issue tracker (can be also used for feature requests).
To run FlightGear on old computers with bad OpenGL support, please take a look at this wiki article. If you are seeing corrupted/broken textures, please see this article.

Note: If you did not get a reponse, even after 7 days, you may want to check out the FlightGear mailing lists to ask your question there.

Visual Artifacts...

Postby Kugelfang » Sun Jun 10, 2018 9:17 pm

I'm experiencing visual artifacts (screenshots below; clicking on them will open a larger version but there may be adverts involved). In the first image note the vertical stripes in the brown ground cover. In the second note the large black/blue area indicating water. These artifacts and others randomly flash across the screen. Often vegetation will display red flashing squares. There are times when it's more frequent. Rendering options are set to minimal--Particle systems and 3d clouds are disabled. Shader effects can be set anywhere from 0 to 5. It doesn't seem to make any difference. The artifacts are more common when ALS or Rembrandt is enabled. (Actually, ALS and Rembrandt make FGFS almost unusable for me--they just eat fps--probably because I'm using a 32" monitor. Windowing FGFS to a smaller size helps but still not enough to use ALS.) Though, oddly, if I enable ALS and then disable it, it seems to temporarily diminish the occurrence of the artifacts. My gut feeling is that this has something to do with transparencies and/or blending of textures in the scene or perhaps LODs and is probably due to my graphics card. I'm hoping I'm wrong, though, because an upgraded GPU isn't in my near future. Any thoughts as to causes or work-arounds?

Image Image

____________________________________________________________________
Current FGFS: 2018.2.1
Linux Version: Mint 18 Cinnamon
Skylake Desktop Processor: i5-6600 3.3-3.9 GHz 4-core (Intel HD 530)
Video card w/ integrated: Nvidia GTX 1050 (using Nvidia 384.111 0ubuntu0.16.04.01 driver)
We were set in our ways. We believed in a good God, a bad Devil and a hot Hell, and more than anything else we believed that the same good God did not intend man should ever fly.
--Bill Tate (Crouch, The Bishop's Boys)
Kugelfang
 
Posts: 178
Joined: Sun Dec 24, 2006 1:40 pm
Location: Silver Spring, MD, USA
Version: 2020.4.0
OS: Linux Mint 20.3

Re: Visual Artifacts...

Postby legoboyvdlp » Sun Jun 10, 2018 11:18 pm

Hi,
A 1050 should be more than capable. I run with a 920M myself at about 35 frames per second. I presume you have selected the 1050 as default for fgfs.exe in the Nividia Control Panel instead of the HD530 and have updated your drivers? What you say sounds like FlightGear is using the Intel GPU, not the 1050.

Jonathan
User avatar
legoboyvdlp
 
Posts: 7981
Joined: Sat Jul 26, 2014 2:28 am
Location: Northern Ireland
Callsign: G-LEGO
Version: next
OS: Windows 10 HP

Re: Visual Artifacts...

Postby Thorsten » Mon Jun 11, 2018 9:29 am

I concur with the analysis. Though he's using Linux - if the computer has an Optimus setup, changing the GPU from the internal may not be exactly trivial (certainly not as easy as specifying it in the control panel...) - dependent on the distribution, this may require major fiddling.
Thorsten
 
Posts: 12490
Joined: Mon Nov 02, 2009 9:33 am

Re: Visual Artifacts...

Postby wkitty42 » Mon Jun 11, 2018 11:52 pm

on ubuntu, there was a bumblebee thing that kept being installed on my system... supposedly it was something to do with switching video cards... i had to fight it every time and remove it because i have only one NVIDIA video card and it was causing everything to reset to like 640x480 and no other resolutions were available... that's a huge change from my normal 1600x1200...

so, maybe the OP has bumblebee or similar to select his card with? there is, with the NVIDIA drivers, the "NVIDIA X Server Settings" app that has an "Application Profiles" section... i do not know how to write those rules or profiles but maybe that's where one can select that the NVIDIA card is to be used with certain applications??
"You get more air close to the ground," said Angalo. "I read that in a book. You get lots of air low down, and not much when you go up."
"Why not?" said Gurder.
"Dunno. It's frightened of heights, I guess."
User avatar
wkitty42
 
Posts: 9146
Joined: Fri Feb 20, 2015 4:46 pm
Location: central NC, USA
Callsign: wk42
Version: git next
OS: Kubuntu 20.04

Re: Visual Artifacts...

Postby Kugelfang » Tue Jun 12, 2018 1:21 am

Is there a way to determine which graphics card and driver is being used from within FGFS?

I've been suspicious of the graphics card since getting this new computer but basically because the performance is not what I expected. I don't have enough knowledge to confirm my suspicions, though.

The Nvidia proprietary driver is installed. But I can't seem to find anything that confirms that the Intel driver is NOT being used. The monitor is plugged into the Nvidia card, though, not the MB/integrated card. I've assumed that means the Nvidia card is being used--but that may not be an accurate assumption.

Bumblebee is not installed. Nvidia-prime is installed, but I do not see any options in the NVIDIA X Server Settings to actually select which card is being used--it's a very simple dialogue unlike most of the examples I see on-line. Like wkitty42 says, the only option I have there is to create application profiles but I've not uncovered any information on how to do that. On my old laptop running an earlier version of Mint (Mate) which this current desktop replaced, the NVIDIA Server Settings had considerably more options. I'm now running a more recent version of Linux Mint (Cinnimon) but those options simply don't appear. Hmmm....

I've looked at the BIOS (apparently in some systems you can disable the on-board graphics there) but I don't see anything that relates to graphics in this particular BIOS set up.
We were set in our ways. We believed in a good God, a bad Devil and a hot Hell, and more than anything else we believed that the same good God did not intend man should ever fly.
--Bill Tate (Crouch, The Bishop's Boys)
Kugelfang
 
Posts: 178
Joined: Sun Dec 24, 2006 1:40 pm
Location: Silver Spring, MD, USA
Version: 2020.4.0
OS: Linux Mint 20.3

Re: Visual Artifacts...

Postby wkitty42 » Tue Jun 12, 2018 5:51 am

F10->Help->About is the only thing close that i'm currently aware of... specifically the driver being used is generally a good sign...

[reading further] ahhh... so not a laptop, then...

i do have Prime stuff here... not sure when it showed up but i've also not had to fight bumblebee in quite a while...
"You get more air close to the ground," said Angalo. "I read that in a book. You get lots of air low down, and not much when you go up."
"Why not?" said Gurder.
"Dunno. It's frightened of heights, I guess."
User avatar
wkitty42
 
Posts: 9146
Joined: Fri Feb 20, 2015 4:46 pm
Location: central NC, USA
Callsign: wk42
Version: git next
OS: Kubuntu 20.04

Re: Visual Artifacts...

Postby bugman » Tue Jun 12, 2018 8:42 am

Are you able to switch quickly to the open source NVidia driver and see what happens? That should be using the proprietary driver, but the only thing that I can think of is a driver bug causing the problems. I've never seen such a problem reported before unfortunately.

Regards,
Edward
bugman
Moderator
 
Posts: 1808
Joined: Thu Mar 19, 2015 10:01 am
Version: next

Re: Visual Artifacts...

Postby Kugelfang » Wed Jun 13, 2018 1:00 am

Well, f10->help->about in FG indicates that I'm using the OS Nouveau driver event though the Mint Driver manager indicates I'm using the Nvidia-384 (recommended) driver. So, using the Driver Manager, I am able to select the Nouveau driver, restart the machine, launch FG and f10->help->about still says I'm using the Nouveau driver (as expected, actually). I don't see much difference in the rendered scene. Not as much striped artifacts, but certainly red flashes for the flora and urban shaders--gut feeling is it's something about texture transparencies. So I guess the next step would be to create some sort of application profile forcing FGFS to use the Nvidia driver and see if there's a difference there. I'm going to make the assumption that the computer is using the Nvidia card, but the OS Nouveau driver. Does that sound like a reasonable next step?
We were set in our ways. We believed in a good God, a bad Devil and a hot Hell, and more than anything else we believed that the same good God did not intend man should ever fly.
--Bill Tate (Crouch, The Bishop's Boys)
Kugelfang
 
Posts: 178
Joined: Sun Dec 24, 2006 1:40 pm
Location: Silver Spring, MD, USA
Version: 2020.4.0
OS: Linux Mint 20.3

Re: Visual Artifacts...

Postby Thorsten » Thu Jun 14, 2018 9:03 am

Last time I checked, there was a plan to make the Nouveau manage the whole Optimus setup - so running the driver may unfortunately still mean yoo run the integrated card (dependent on your Linux distro).

I think you may be better off in the support forum of your Linux distro, I don't think this is primarily an FG issue.
Thorsten
 
Posts: 12490
Joined: Mon Nov 02, 2009 9:33 am

Re: Visual Artifacts...

Postby bugman » Thu Jun 14, 2018 9:11 am

Can you boot Mint to runlevel 3, completely uninstall the Nouveau driver, and reinstall the Nvidia proprietary driver? There's definitely a video driver issue causing the problems.

Regards,
Edward
bugman
Moderator
 
Posts: 1808
Joined: Thu Mar 19, 2015 10:01 am
Version: next

Re: Visual Artifacts...

Postby WoodSTokk » Thu Jun 14, 2018 2:58 pm

bugman wrote in Thu Jun 14, 2018 9:11 am:Can you boot Mint to runlevel 3, completely uninstall the Nouveau driver, and reinstall the Nvidia proprietary driver? There's definitely a video driver issue causing the problems.


AFAIK the nouveau driver comes with the kernel and can not uninstalled as one part.
Normaly, if you install the nvidia driver, the nouveau module should be on the blacklist so that the kernel dont load this module.

You can reinstall the nvidia driver with:
Code: Select all
sudo aptitude reinstall nvidia-384 nvidia-settings
WoodSTokk
 
Posts: 1077
Joined: Tue Oct 17, 2017 3:30 pm
Location: Milky Way/Sol/Earth/Europe
Callsign: SX-W57
IRC name: WoodSTokk
Version: 2020.4.0
OS: Debian Bullseye

Re: Visual Artifacts...  

Postby Kugelfang » Fri Jun 15, 2018 9:49 am

Just to wrap this up and help other FGers if they come across this problem.

Yes, it was not a FGFS issue. It was a driver issue. The aptitude reinstall command did not work. So, what I ended up doing was:

Code: Select all
sudo apt-get purge nvidia*


To remove all the nvidia drivers. Then:

Reboot.

Then use the Mint driver manager to reload the nvidia driver.

Reboot again.

Then
Code: Select all
inxi -Fxz


To ensure changes took place.

I can now run FGFS at full screen, maxing out the graphics and I'm getting ~ 60 fps (haven't tried urban areas yet). A relatively easy solution, after all.

I am a happy puppy and can get back to early aircraft development.

Thanks for everyone's help!
We were set in our ways. We believed in a good God, a bad Devil and a hot Hell, and more than anything else we believed that the same good God did not intend man should ever fly.
--Bill Tate (Crouch, The Bishop's Boys)
Kugelfang
 
Posts: 178
Joined: Sun Dec 24, 2006 1:40 pm
Location: Silver Spring, MD, USA
Version: 2020.4.0
OS: Linux Mint 20.3

Re: Visual Artifacts...

Postby Dave B » Sun Jul 29, 2018 3:03 pm

Bit late to the party, but in case helpful for other GNU/Linux users in the future.

- Fix missing NVIDIA settings

Before removing the NVIDIA driver, try the following.
Code: Select all
sudo update-initramfs -u

Reboot, then check NVIDIA settings again.

If not fixed, and driver needs to be removed, on Linux Mint apt is self elevating under certain conditions, using the following you'll be prompted for your password.
Code: Select all
apt purge nvidia-*
Dave B
 
Posts: 13
Joined: Fri May 18, 2018 4:19 pm


Return to Graphics

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 7 guests