Terrain Geometry Bug

[mccoyed]

I have a Ryzen 5 3600 and a brand new 6800xt and I am experiencing some kind of texture loading bug, I don't know.

I noticed it on the first planet but believed it was standard texture pop-in. On Kreet, the effect follows me as I move around. It's basically an issue of textures on the ground going transparent or "cracking" into visible seams. I've seen this kind of thing before but I don't know the technical term, if any, or how to fix it or what might be causing it in a game.

This is what I've tried:

- Multiple Restarts of game
- Full Steam reinstall
- Shader reset via AMD Adrenalin
- Various in-game display settings (we all know by now how sparse these are)

None of this has had any effect at all. The issue persists and it is the same. I did not have any issues like this during the intro excepting what I mentioned above when I first stepped out. The fact that the opening area is on a huge platform means I didn't see much terrain anyway and the caves, interiors, and buildings/construction elements were all fine.

On Kreet, the issue makes the game unplayable. It's like the old issue with the lighting system floating around your character, making shadows change as you move around. Except in this case, it's like the game can't decide how to render the geometry and textures.

In some cases, I can see right through the ground.

Normally, I'd be super patient because a) new release and b) BGS game but I've hunted around for a few hours now (waiting for reinstall) and NO ONE else seems to be reporting anything like this. Only FPS issues and HDR issues which are sadly standard gaming problems now. This feels deeply broken in a different way and I'm hoping someone can help me.

EDIT:

After an additional hour troubleshooting, I last resort rolled my display drivers back (I was using AMD's latest driver, the one released today) and it fixed this issue. This confirms it was a driver problem and may have been a borked installation on my end. I will still be waiting to update haha.

I hope this helps anyone else who might encounter this problem but it SHOULD be extremely rare. Cheers.

[|SoS|Rattler]

ty for taking the time to update, this helps.

[bspawn]

I'm having the same problem with a 6700xt; gaps in the terrain mesh/ misaligned polygons, changing as i walk around. Driver versions 23.7.1 and 23.8.2.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3030571484

Tried driver 23.8.1, same problem.

[Somb]

For anyone still struggling with this I found a fix that worked for me with the newest drivers. I disabled Radeon Image Sharpening in Adrenalin and the issue went away.

[mccoyed]

For what it's worth, I never used Image Sharpening in Adrenalin. I believe it's likely that it was a bad driver installation. I recently clean-installed the 23.8.2 drivers and have not again seen this issue.

I expect it'll be a while before there's a solid body of workable knowledge on these and other issues with this game.

[Bobby Jimmy]

Same problem here. Did all of the above. Did a clean driver install. Changed every possible setting both in the game and in the Adrenalin software. Running Windows 11. You'd think running an AMD partnered game with an AMD GPU and an AMD CPU wouild keep this stuff from happening. THIS is why nVidia kicks AMD's ass.

[J-Man84]

Same issue for me, 6700XT updated to 23.8.2 but still the issue persists.

[mccoyed]

I wish I could help. I had this the first night I played and spent 3hrs fixing it. I can't imagine having to deal with it for days on end. I really hope you guys get a fix ASAP and I'll leave any info I come across here in the meantime.

[Sythalin]

Same issue here:

https://i.imgur.com/fVBaGZG.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/NQ2x01e.jpg

Video: https://youtu.be/LUNhY1yyu1I

GPU: RX 7900XT (v23.9.1)
CPU: i7-13700K
RAM: 32G

[_oBSOLEte_]

Originally posted by bspawn:

I'm having the same problem with a 6700xt; gaps in the terrain mesh/ misaligned polygons, changing as i walk around. Driver versions 23.7.1 and 23.8.2.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3030571484

Tried driver 23.8.1, same problem.

Holy molly. I've seen tighter grounds on PSX.

[mccoyed]

One thing I'll recommend for those who've tried the driver rollback and wouldn't mind trying it again: Make sure you use DDU (google it) beforehand. It's a free tool that basically scours your PC for dummy files and junk leftover from GPU drivers and software like GeForce Experience or Adrenalin. They're not supposed to be able to corrupt their own installation but it happens all the time anyway.

DDU cleans out old driver stuff that can mess up new installs. Whenever drivers misbehave, cleaning and reinstalling from scratch is a common way to fix it. I didn't mention this step when I talked about rolling back my drivers. Please try it if nothing else is working. But make sure you READ CAREFULLY as no one but you is responsible for your PC.

As you may know, if you reinstall drivers your game will build a shader cache on initial launch again. Just in case you don't expect to see that, it's normal. I think!

[bspawn]

I found a workaround that reduces the problem.

In the ini settings for render quality settings (low.ini, medium.ini etc in the starfield program folder) under [Terrain]there is the setting "fTerrainDisplacementErrorThreshold=1".
I changed 1 to 0.1 and now the gaps in the terrain mesh are rendered at a larger distance and are less noticeable.
For it to take effect you have to re-apply the quality setting in the display settings menu. Or you add it to StarfieldCustom.ini in documents\my games\starfield\

[Terrain]
bEnableStochasticTiling=1
bEnableStochasticTilingDominantPlane=0
bEnableTerrainPlanarMapping=1
fTerrainDisplacementErrorThreshold=0.1

There is another setting that also seems to affect the distance where the gaps show up: in Starfield.ini (in program folder) under [General] there is uExterior Cell Buffer=36. I think the number must be the square of a whole number (e.g. 7x7=49, 8x8=64) and increasing it increases the distance where the gaps show. Increasing it too much probably costs a lot of performance.

[Maximum Underdrive]

Welcome to an engine so old it can't generate caves in its terrain map being coated with 39 layers of automotive paint

[Empire]

Originally posted by bspawn:

I found a workaround that reduces the problem.

In the ini settings for render quality settings (low.ini, medium.ini etc in the starfield program folder) under [Terrain]there is the setting "fTerrainDisplacementErrorThreshold=1".
I changed 1 to 0.1 and now the gaps in the terrain mesh are rendered at a larger distance and are less noticeable.
For it to take effect you have to re-apply the quality setting in the display settings menu. Or you add it to StarfieldCustom.ini in documents\my games\starfield\

[Terrain]
bEnableStochasticTiling=1
bEnableStochasticTilingDominantPlane=0
bEnableTerrainPlanarMapping=1
fTerrainDisplacementErrorThreshold=0.1

There is another setting that also seems to affect the distance where the gaps show up: in Starfield.ini (in program folder) under [General] there is uExterior Cell Buffer=36. I think the number must be the square of a whole number (e.g. 7x7=49, 8x8=64) and increasing it increases the distance where the gaps show. Increasing it too much probably costs a lot of performance.

Thank you SO much. To anyone reading this, this works ^. Has saved my game until a proper patch (hopefully) comes out

[J-Man84]

Originally posted by bspawn:

I found a workaround that reduces the problem.

In the ini settings for render quality settings (low.ini, medium.ini etc in the starfield program folder) under [Terrain]there is the setting "fTerrainDisplacementErrorThreshold=1".
I changed 1 to 0.1 and now the gaps in the terrain mesh are rendered at a larger distance and are less noticeable.
For it to take effect you have to re-apply the quality setting in the display settings menu. Or you add it to StarfieldCustom.ini in documents\my games\starfield\

[Terrain]
bEnableStochasticTiling=1
bEnableStochasticTilingDominantPlane=0
bEnableTerrainPlanarMapping=1
fTerrainDisplacementErrorThreshold=0.1

There is another setting that also seems to affect the distance where the gaps show up: in Starfield.ini (in program folder) under [General] there is uExterior Cell Buffer=36. I think the number must be the square of a whole number (e.g. 7x7=49, 8x8=64) and increasing it increases the distance where the gaps show. Increasing it too much probably costs a lot of performance.

Thank you, i copied:

[Terrain]
bEnableStochasticTiling=1
bEnableStochasticTilingDominantPlane=0
bEnableTerrainPlanarMapping=1
fTerrainDisplacementErrorThreshold=0.1

into my StarfieldPrefs.ini found in Documents\my games\Starfield and it works as you say, gaps are now much less annoying as they are not as close, thanks again.

[InfraRed]

i am also having the same issue on a 6700 I've tried everything i got on my laptop that has a 3060ti and looked to see if the issue was happening and it wasnt.. Update: Fixed, but I’ll update here for anyone with the same issue. In AMD Adrenalin, ensure all gaming->graphics settings are set to “use application settings” and then reset the shader cache. I believe the issue was the AMD driver forcing its own tessellation method on the game, breaking some of the textures. i give credit to
ZincNut on reddit for this i was lucky enough to stumble upon his post and it fixed the issues at hand hope this helps all