Shimmering/Flickering(getting tired of it)

[Nïċḵ]

Please, I really need some help here. I'm going crazy with this issue cause I don't know what else to do. I have been trying to fix this problem for months. The only thing that got me close was to use AMD's VSR(Virtual Super Resolution) so I can render games at higher resolution than the display's native resolution.





PC Specs:

MB - GA-AB350M-Gaming 3

CPU - Ryzen 5 1500X

GPU - Gigabyte RX 560 4GB OC

RAM - Crucial 8GB 2666Mhz

HDD - Blue Wd Western Digital 1TB

PSU - XFX XT 500W 80 PLUS BRONZE

Monitor - Generic Samsung 1366x768


I have been looking in a lot of forums(and I mean it, a damn lot, even 15 years old forums) and I honestly haven't found a single person who could actually asnwer this... nightmare of a riddle.

Some said it could be hardware related, but other people said they changed the entire rig(including monitor) only to find that they still had the same problem. Others recommended to do what I did(the super resolution thing) but it only reduced the issue, didn't really fix it. Some, like usual, talking about lack of antialiasing(even tho I have tried with everything at highest).

Some random guy in a Nvidia forum, even said that this was a brain trick. That games actually look that, and that the problem is not a "problem", it's just that our eyes noticed that texture shimmer/flicker in games, and once we see it, we can't unsee it anymore. Explaining why some(literally 90% of the gaming community, because I haven't seen few that actually talk about this issue) didn't get any troubles with their games, but it is still there, just that they didn't notice... That's some nazis were the good guys level of bullls**t theory.

[Electric Cupcake]

Funny how people mentioned House in another thread. Ya gotta be scientific and test and eliminate different hypotheses.

First thing would be to make sure drivers are all up to date as well as try in safe mode with generic drivers and settings. Second, would be to clean the cable, make sure the connections aren't loose and try a different cable. Third, try a different monitor to compare against. If you feel up to it, open the monitor and make sure the display panel ribbon cable is secure. Forth, try a different GPU (and maybe try baking the old one).

[Julien, cut it out.]

Can you please explain the issue.
You mention shimmering/flickering in the thread title, but you don't explain what your experiencing in your post.

I haven't seen 1366x768 for a while. That needs to be an old TFT monitor. Do you have any information about the monitor?

[_I_]

it may be as simple as a bad display

try another display
using a non native or dsr/vsr will make the image look blurry and the gpu work much harder than it could, causing lower fps

[Snow]

It's called pixels. Displays consist of them.

[Nïċḵ]

Both windows version and drivers are up to date.

As for details... I would say it looks like small long distance textures will move. Close trees or grass aswell. Edges on houses or things like fences... The textures do exactly what I say in the title: shimmer and flicker. It's as if it was a case of really bad antialiasing, but it really isn't, otherwise everyone else would have it in their games. I have tried both in-game AA or Radeon Settings one... Nothing did help. I have tried turning both off, and it just make things worse.


I have done maintenance like 3 times in the last year and every day I make sure everything is "ok".


I just checked to see the monitor model, it just says S19D300 led samsung. Can't really tell much more about it. And there's no much information on google. I think it's 18.5 inch... That's all I got so far.


I'm aware of the downsides of super resolution but so far it's the only thing that I found to be somehow useful when trying to fight this visual effects such as shimmering and flickering. And always lower graphic settings whenever I choose a higher resolution, always making sure games run above 60fps(but I think that's just personal preference).



And I don't have any other gpu/monitor to test, so... there's that. It's not that I didn't think of it, it's just that, I can't. My best friend's pc have it's own issues and I'm not really trusting it to put my gpu in his pc haha. Maybe I'll ask if I can use his monitor.


Oh, I am using HDMI. It didn't come with the monitor tho. It's one I had to connect my old laptop t the tv. The monitor had a VGA cable, maybe could try with that just to make sure, right?



And sorry for the very long comment, it's just that I'm really trying to address everything and hope I'm not missing anything.

[Nïċḵ]

Snow の投稿を引用：

It's called pixels. Displays consist of them.

10/10 would read it again

[Nïċḵ]

Snow の投稿を引用：

Nickkkkkkk の投稿を引用：

10/10 would read it agian

My $100 Chinese smartphone released couple of years ago has like 4 times higher PPI than your monitor, what did you expect?

I expected someone who could actually point out that my monitor is of lower quality and could potentially be the cause of these unwanted visual effects without acting like an idiot...



And I would believe it if I didn't previously visited a lot of forums filled with people talking about their $3k rig with GTX 1080 ti, RTX 2 bazillions cards with 144hz monitor 4k ultra blablabla... only to still get the same visual effects.

I need someone to point things that I could be overlooking when trying to fix my problem, not someone joking about it.

[Snow]

Nickkkkkkk の投稿を引用：

Snow の投稿を引用：

My $100 Chinese smartphone released couple of years ago has like 4 times higher PPI than your monitor, what did you expect?

I expected someone who could actually point out that my monitor is of lower quality and could potentially be the cause of these unwanted visual effects without acting like an idiot...



And I would believe it if I didn't previously visited a lot of forums filled with people talking about their $3k rig with GTX 1080 ti, RTX 2 bazillions cards with 144hz monitor 4k ultra blablabla... only to still get the same visual effects.

I need someone to point things that I could be overlooking when trying to fix my problem, not someone joking about it.

The thing is - there is no problem. Pixels changing their colour fast in high contrast places result in shimmering. As long as one's eye can separate pixels - it will look like that, hence they keep increasing the pixel density and inventing new forms of anti-aliasing. As of now temporal AA methods and SSAA give the best results.
The only thing you're overlooking is the very fact you're looking at a thing that switfly changes colours. If you turn the lights on and off fast enough - it will look like flickering. It's how displays work and most of the people simply don't care. The shimmering/flickering is indeed often ignored by one's mind as people don't see the world in pixels, they see it as various forms as are interpreted as objects and beings. No one really complained about PS1 games having low res and shimmering, but look at those games now, trying your best to find all the flaws, and it will look awful.
I hope this explains it a bit better than what I initially said. I'm sorry if I sounded rude initially, it's just that I have some experience with "flickering/shimerring" Russians, and they are almost religious about it, telling all kinds of stuff, to the point some of them believe NVidia put virus in their drivers and this virus then infects all the devices in the house via electricity.

[Nïċḵ]

Snow の投稿を引用：

Nickkkkkkk の投稿を引用：

I expected someone who could actually point out that my monitor is of lower quality and could potentially be the cause of these unwanted visual effects without acting like an idiot...



And I would believe it if I didn't previously visited a lot of forums filled with people talking about their $3k rig with GTX 1080 ti, RTX 2 bazillions cards with 144hz monitor 4k ultra blablabla... only to still get the same visual effects.

I need someone to point things that I could be overlooking when trying to fix my problem, not someone joking about it.

The thing is - there is no problem. Pixels changing their colour fast in high contrast places result in shimmering. As long as one's eye can separate pixels - it will look like that, hence they keep increasing the pixel density and inventing new forms of anti-aliasing. As of now temporal AA methods and SSAA give the best results.
The only thing you're overlooking is the very fact you're looking at a thing that switfly changes colours. If you turn the lights on and off fast enough - it will look like flickering. It's how displays work and most of the people simply don't care. The shimmering/flickering is indeed often ignored by one's mind as people don't see the world in pixels, they see it as various forms as are interpreted as objects and beings. No one really complained about PS1 games having low res and shimmering, but look at those games now, trying your best to find all the flaws, and it will look awful.
I hope this explains it a bit better than what I initially said. I'm sorry if I sounded rude initially, it's just that I have some experience with "flickering/shimerring" Russians, and they are almost religious about it, telling all kinds of stuff, to the point some of them believe NVidia put virus in their drivers and this virus then infects all the devices in the house via electricity.

Thanks a lot for taking the time to answer.

I actually came across some guys talking about electricity and virus messing with their computers, tv and phones too


I just saw a video that another guy linked me to, and it gives a solid(atleast imo, I think it makes sense) explanation to why all of this happens. In the video the guy is focusing on AA more than the resolution games are rendered on but still it kinda helps me to understand it more... And maybe just... get over it and realize there's not much I can do, except get a better gpu and monitor to play on a higher resolution


Here's the video if you want to take a look
https://youtu.be/NbrA4Nxd8Vo

[Aliquis Freedom & Ethnopluralism]

You mean lack of antialiasing?
Use whichever works best.

[Snow]

Nickkkkkkk の投稿を引用：

I just saw a video that another guy linked me to, and it gives a solid(atleast imo, I think it makes sense) explanation to why all of this happens. In the video the guy is focusing on AA more than the resolution games are rendered on but still it kinda helps me to understand it more... And maybe just... get over it and realize there's not much I can do, except get a better gpu and monitor to play on a higher resolution


Here's the video if you want to take a look
https://youtu.be/NbrA4Nxd8Vo

I love DF and I linked this video to a lot of people as well, although most of them claim games were looking better back in the day and stuff like that. Well, I have all kinds of hardware here starting with the slot-type Pentium 3, and the games look on all the systems exactly the same, so that sure is out of the question.
Technically, resolution is exactly the point of the video. Basic methods like SSAA and MSAA
and those based on them render the game at higher resolution and then downscale image back using the excessive colour information to give smoother transitions. Post-FX methods like FXAA and SMAA work in different ways, but sure are little helpers I love to keep around.
Actually, have you tried injecting extra AA in your games? ReShade can do that pretty well, and it even lets you adjust the settings. Works with pretty much any game out there. I absolutely love SMAA, it works not per pixel but per subpixel, so technically it increases your horizontal resolution up to 3 times with really small performance difference.
Still I think tweaks should be done by game developers, not by users. Here[imgur.com] is a nice example of developers caring about visual presentation. Look at the transition between objects and sky on the left part of the image, trees and building's tops. It almost looks like objects glow, and they absolutely do - devs added so-called "black bloom" which only works on high-contrast places to avoid the shimmering. As you can see, mountains, tree tops and buildings don't have that on the second screen, where sky is darker. It's such a clever system and it adds so much to the game's looks, yet it remained unnoticed by everyone except few mod makers. Also thanks to modders this game doesn't look like a bright yellow piss, which PC version initially was.

[Nïċḵ]

Aliquis Freedom & Ethnopluralism の投稿を引用：

You mean lack of antialiasing?
Use whichever works best.

Well, you could say it looks like if the antialiasing is not doing it's work properly. It does, but the games still look like they could use some more.


I tried every possible settings, the one time I notice improvement, is when I put higher resolutions. But as the RX 560 4GB can barely deal with 1080p, I cannot go higher than that...


In the other hand, if it really is all about games Anti Aliasing and screen resolutions... I guess I'll have to let it go and atleast find comfort in the idea that maybe there's nothing wrong with hardware or software, and there's nothing more to do about it, except to... get used to it.

[GunBoat]

It appears to be a Windows issue with a recent update. Even if you roll back to a previous update it appears to leave some updated files behind. It happens with both AMD and NVIDIA GPUs as well AMD and Intel CPUs.

I found that if you remove the background Theme and use a sold color instead, it drastically reduces the screen flicker. None of the other MS help or changing monitor settings did anything.

IMHO

[TheMotherFricker]

Nick の投稿を引用：

Please, I really need some help here. I'm going crazy with this issue cause I don't know what else to do. I have been trying to fix this problem for months. The only thing that got me close was to use AMD's VSR(Virtual Super Resolution) so I can render games at higher resolution than the display's native resolution.





PC Specs:

MB - GA-AB350M-Gaming 3

CPU - Ryzen 5 1500X

GPU - Gigabyte RX 560 4GB OC

RAM - Crucial 8GB 2666Mhz

HDD - Blue Wd Western Digital 1TB

PSU - XFX XT 500W 80 PLUS BRONZE

Monitor - Generic Samsung 1366x768


I have been looking in a lot of forums(and I mean it, a damn lot, even 15 years old forums) and I honestly haven't found a single person who could actually asnwer this... nightmare of a riddle.

Some said it could be hardware related, but other people said they changed the entire rig(including monitor) only to find that they still had the same problem. Others recommended to do what I did(the super resolution thing) but it only reduced the issue, didn't really fix it. Some, like usual, talking about lack of antialiasing(even tho I have tried with everything at highest).

Some random guy in a Nvidia forum, even said that this was a brain trick. That games actually look that, and that the problem is not a "problem", it's just that our eyes noticed that texture shimmer/flicker in games, and once we see it, we can't unsee it anymore. Explaining why some(literally 90% of the gaming community, because I haven't seen few that actually talk about this issue) didn't get any troubles with their games, but it is still there, just that they didn't notice... That's some nazis were the good guys level of bullls**t theory.

yo did you find anything? heres a link to our discord group if you want to join: https://discord.gg/z7w7feCc

[tom_pritchard]

Hey Nick, any progress with this issue? I've been having the same problem for the last few months.