1.32 Graphics glitches - Inadequate graphics cards

[Busterguy]

The game is currently running and sometimes when teleporting or changing scene like using the transporter or opening up the ship build menu or the plan build menu for stations. My graphics will gltich out like in the below video

https://youtu.be/r5Dd6qdXlcM
(in the video you can see I have a mod running, this is just the satalites mode because im lazy. I still get the same glitch without this mod.)

Now I can sometimes play the game for 1-2 hours and nothing will happen my frames will be ok I can go into combat and have no issues with performance. But randomly this gltich happens and i have to quick save and restart my game.
The glitch happens randomly so I can't think of a way to reproduce this.

A few people have said its due to only having 2GB VRAM which I can see is the issue. But like I said I can play the game normally and run it just fine, so just wondering if the devs have a fix or plan to optimize the use of VRAM?

My specs:
i7-3770
16GB RAM
GTX 1050 2GB

[samfur]

I have the same problem. Some times it happend after 30 min of playing, some times after 2-3 hours of playing. After Save/Load all running good.

My PC
Ryzen 7 2700
16 GB memory
GeForce 960 GTX 2 GB.

Is that problem related to the amount of video memory? Then why developers didn't reports of minimal VRAM to play in system requrements?

Can i resolve this problem with changing some paramemter in graphic settings?
I'm playing with middle settings.

[Wiesel No1]

Hello,
Im playing on an
GTX770 6 GB
Core i3 3.4 Ghz
8 GB RAM
Randomly in the order of 15 min to 1 hour the gaphics starts to vanish.
E. g. only the eyes of the persons remains
I can look through parts of the stations
Text and colors in all menus are vanishing
Bad case all text become hieroglyphs
Only Save + kill X4 + restart Game works so far.

[CBJ]

Everyone in this topic has graphics cards that do not meet the minimum requirements for the game because they don't have enough VRAM. As has been explained a number of times, there are no guarantees with hardware that doesn't meet the requirements, but you may be able to delay the issue by lowering your graphics settings, particularly texture quality and anti-aliasing.

Wiesel No1, your graphics card has 2GB, not 6GB. Shared memory does not count for these purposes.

[samfur]

Everyone in this topic has graphics cards that do not meet the minimum requirements for the game because they don't have enough VRAM. As has been explained a number of times, there are no guarantees with hardware that doesn't meet the requirements, but you may be able to delay the issue by lowering your graphics settings, particularly texture quality and anti-aliasing.

Wiesel No1, your graphics card has 2GB, not 6GB. Shared memory does not count for these purposes.

Then tell me please where in system requrements of game a note aboute the minimum amount of video memory?
Before selling the game in steam we didn't read about that.
see "SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS" in stram.

[Kadatherion]

Then tell me please where in system requrements of game a note aboute the minimum amount of video memory?
Before selling the game in steam we didn't read about that.
see "SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS" in stram.

Graphics: Nvidia GTX 780/970 or AMD equivalent

This is the minimum requirements written on Steam. They both are 3gb VRAM GPUs. I agree this could have been clarified better for those who aren't very familiar with the tech, but it means pretty much that.

But if you keep textures at low - like CBJ suggested - I believe it will work: even at 1440p on ultra VRAM usage never reaches - for me - full 3gb, at 1080p it's just a little above 2gb, so with lower textures/resolutions you should be relatively fine. You still are under minimum requirements so you can't expect great performance or to be able to play at high settings, but it should more or less work.

[CBJ]

Then tell me please where in system requrements of game a note aboute the minimum amount of video memory?
Before selling the game in steam we didn't read about that.
see "SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS" in stram.

As a general response, Kadatherion's point is correct. But in your particular case, the requirements specifically state that you need at least a GTX 970 and you only have a GTX 960. Regardless of the memory issue, your graphics card doesn't meet that requirement.

[skullwarrior]

I have a GTX 680, with 2Gb of VRAM, I know I don't meet the requirements, but I have +8GB of shared memory and the game still had glitches, sometimes when I play for some time, sometimes when I just load, the particular annoying part is the menus, missing names, options.
Here is my question:
Can you make the game to start recycling VRAM before it reaches the 2gb maximum? or even take into account the shared memory? I play tons of game, with more graphics demand than X4 and I can play those even in High graphics profile (Witcher 3, TitanFall 2, Shadow of Mordor 2, etc). And with no visual problems, but this game VRAM management is deficient at best. Seriously guys, do something. Is not worth to buy a brand new graphics card for just one game that doesn't had that much visual richness, just for the VRAM, that makes no sense. As a game developer, you should make your game playable in the biggest range possible.

I even set the graphics to high, except for the textures and the game runs the same as low/off settings, meaning your game doesn't fully uses the graphics card CPU, It just no handle correctly the available amount of VRAM.
Please, make you game playable, like XRebirth or X3 (same card, those games, high settings == GOOD), why X4 don't?

[Imperial Good]

I have a GTX 680, with 2Gb of VRAM, I know I don't meet the requirements, but I have +8GB of shared memory and the game still had glitches, sometimes when I play for some time, sometimes when I just load, the particular annoying part is the menus, missing names, options.

As people stated before, shared memory does not matter. I know it really should matter as almost every game and graphic vendor recommends letting it matter, but it just does not with X4. It is pretty much 3GB or bust with X4.

Can you make the game to start recycling VRAM before it reaches the 2gb maximum?

I think it does this already. The issue is that in some scenes it may need to reference over 2GB of assets. For example near a big station where practically 1 of every ship model is nearby.

In theory what could happen is that high quality textures are evicted when out of graphic memory since 1 high quality texture is enough storage for 4 lower quality textures. However this would require considerable programming to implement which is not easy for a small development team running on a reasonable budget.

or even take into account the shared memory?

The issue is that unless an IGPU is used then shared memory is very slow. Frame rate might be 60FPS but once even a little shared memory is used it could easily hit 20FPS or lower. Instead of people complaining the game is unplayable due to them having insufficient hardware, people would be complaining it is unplayable because it performs badly. One is easy to explain and cannot effect reviews (their fault for using a GPU below minimum requirements) but the other can easily negatively and unfairly effect reviews (poorly optimized, performs badly) and it is hard to detect and prove.

I play tons of game, with more graphics demand than X4 and I can play those even in High graphics profile (Witcher 3, TitanFall 2, Shadow of Mordor 2, etc).

And any one of those games likely was created with a budget larger than the entire X series and with orders of magnitude more people.

It does not help that Vulkan is very new and so where as people might have a decade of experience with D3D11 they will only have a few years max with Vulkan. With APIs like D3D11 shared memory was automatically used and the drivers would move buffers around as required. With Vulkan this must be explicitly programmed to happen and even detecting when memory is low is tricky. The work arounds are also often platform dependant. For example on NVidia cards you have explicit memory types which the driver recommends using so it can share resources, but AMD and Intel does not have these.

Please, make you game playable, like XRebirth or X3 (same card, those games, high settings == GOOD), why X4 don't?

XR and older X games did not use Vulkan. OpenGL and D3D11 or D3D9 will automatically manage GPU memory and shared memory. However by it doing so this comes at a potential performance cost since it might move the wrong resources out of GPU memory and when it moves resources out of GPU memory there is a significant delay. It also complicated the driver code compared with Vulkan meaning more CPU time spent with graphic API calls. The advantage of and reason to use Vulkan is that it can be significantly faster than D3D11 and OpenGL while still being cross platform like OpenGL.

[skullwarrior]

thanks for the detail reply, but I don't think the memory recycling is happening like you said.
I notice the glitches even with only the map open, giving orders to ships and designing stations, no even close to any big station, and when the glitches occur, they stay forever, for example:
1- The map began to show colored triangles over the sectors hexagons, when that happens, no matter what I do, it never clears, not until I close the game and restart it.
2- Ships and stations missing textures, became invisible forever, I even wait a long time away from an station and when I return, is the same. It never clears, not until I close the game and restart it.
3- When the menus began to flick the text, is really hard to see where I'm clicking, what menu choice I select, etc. it never clears, not until I close the game and restart it.

I'm currently playing with all graphics settings in low or off. And the game stills looks great.
That's what I meant when I said that the memory should recycle earlier, It didn't release resources at all.
and that's when I start to see another thing that affect performance and may help you guys, why in the 7 hell did you render everything?, only when you had my texture issues and when walk around glitched stations you start to see doors, panels, corridors invisible and notice that I can see the entire station behind, why is that? if in that place you can never see the station, because you are inside the corridor, why did you guys render everything?.
I you want I can send you some pics (just tell me where or how) when the game start glitching so you can see the abnormal behavior, the textures getting stretched, with only one color. Ships and stations that you can only see surface elements, etc.
I don't mean to criticized in the wrong way, I just want to help you guys and help me to better enjoy your game, that I still play despise the graphics glitches.

And you said that if you make the game compatible with lower card the game became slow, because of the recycling, I don't think that, you should only recycle when the used memory is near the maximum, the game will behave exactly the same with the rest of the video cards that actually had your needed specs.

[skullwarrior]

I think I found a little way to improve the game performance, has I said earlier when the game start glitching I begin to see invisible doors and corridors, and that let me see the entire station behind, so if you cut the rendering when in station of the things you will never see, that will be a massive improvement. Even with ships, yesterday I was capturing a behemoth and I approach from behind, destroy the engines and stay there, of course I only see the engines and the back part of the ship, but in that moment, de ship texture disappear and I see all the surface elements the ship had, why? they should be rendering because the ship occludes them or suppose to, so why did they get rendered?, I know that this can be difficult to filter and detect, hard to code, etc, but in the end this will help your game to run smoother.

Now has a personal request: I can live with textures glitching in stations and ships, but in the map and menus? this is really annoying, I drop playing this game 3 times because of this. I pick the game again with every major update but the map and the menus glitching discourage me a lot. An maybe this is a memory leak. yesterday later at night, after I capture the behemoth, I restart the game to "fix the glitches" and reload, I was in the middle of nowhere, there where no asteroid, no gas cloud, no ship no station, no nothing, I just open the map and begin to do some management operations, order some ships build, do some manual trades, assign ships to stations, etc, and the game start to glitch again, of course the map and menus, WHY?, the sector hexagons began to show pink triangles, the text in menus began to disappear, as I saw (correct me if I'm wrong) the menus and map are just flat 3D objects and the info showed is the texture this objects had, so maybe that's a memory leak, the textures are getting created but not recycled, that's the only explanation why my game glitch only using the map and station menus. I was really in the middle of nowhere, there where no ships of any size, no station in the distance, no nothing. If you can fix this, if you can make the game dont glitch the menu and map, I will be more than happy, I really don't mind to much the other stations and ships glitches. I can live with that, just make the map and menus stable, pleaseeeeee

[skullwarrior]

Just another question, there is a way to reset, flush, force reload o whatever to allow me free VRAM without close the game and reload it?

[Imperial Good]

I think I found a little way to improve the game performance, has I said earlier when the game start glitching I begin to see invisible doors and corridors, and that let me see the entire station behind, so if you cut the rendering when in station of the things you will never see, that will be a massive improvement. Even with ships, yesterday I was capturing a behemoth and I approach from behind, destroy the engines and stay there, of course I only see the engines and the back part of the ship, but in that moment, de ship texture disappear and I see all the surface elements the ship had, why? they should be rendering because the ship occludes them or suppose to, so why did they get rendered?, I know that this can be difficult to filter and detect, hard to code, etc, but in the end this will help your game to run smoother.

They already do this. Walk past a person on a platform and then turn around to face them. It actually reloads the person between then since they are only loaded and drawn when you are roughly facing them. This is especially noticeable when running from a mechanical drive.

Drawing a few extra turrets or shield generators for objects in the field of view than necessary is trivial for modern GPUs.

Now has a personal request: I can live with textures glitching in stations and ships, but in the map and menus? this is really annoying, I drop playing this game 3 times because of this. I pick the game again with every major update but the map and the menus glitching discourage me a lot. An maybe this is a memory leak. yesterday later at night, after I capture the behemoth, I restart the game to "fix the glitches" and reload, I was in the middle of nowhere, there where no asteroid, no gas cloud, no ship no station, no nothing, I just open the map and begin to do some management operations, order some ships build, do some manual trades, assign ships to stations, etc, and the game start to glitch again, of course the map and menus, WHY?, the sector hexagons began to show pink triangles, the text in menus began to disappear, as I saw (correct me if I'm wrong) the menus and map are just flat 3D objects and the info showed is the texture this objects had, so maybe that's a memory leak, the textures are getting created but not recycled, that's the only explanation why my game glitch only using the map and station menus. I was really in the middle of nowhere, there where no ships of any size, no station in the distance, no nothing. If you can fix this, if you can make the game dont glitch the menu and map, I will be more than happy, I really don't mind to much the other stations and ships glitches. I can live with that, just make the map and menus stable, pleaseeeeee

Be aware that graphic memory is shared with all other applications. As such if one were to have 2GB of it used by other applications such as web browsers then even a 4GB video card would not have enough video memory to run X4 well or reliably. I suggest looking at how much GPU memory is used when idle as the remaining is the amount available for X4 to use during play.

[skullwarrior]

Of course, but I mean I only play the X4, no browser no other app running in background, no nothing, just the x4 and only using the map, the game start glitching again in a matter of minutes, there are a memory leak somewhere in there, because that's not possible, last night I tested again, I moved into a far location, with nothing nearby, save and close the game, open again and load, then start using the map, manual trades, etc, etc, moving one ship from here to there, you know, the usual stuff, and few minutes later, the map began to show the same glitches again, colored triangles all over, sometime when you zoom out then disappear and the map look great, but if you zoom in or stay in the map some time, it fully glitches, no matter if you see all the sectors or just one. If you can reach the game devs, please notify them this, If you wish I could make a video for you to see.

[radcapricorn]

The map indeed does have some rendering issues, and as far as I know, the devs are aware of those. Whether (and when) they will be fixed is anyone's guess though.

[Stroichik]

I got GTX 1070 with 8 GB VRAM and i got same issue woth CoH and my main HQ with many modules. I played Split Vendetta with huge stations and never had anything like that.

[CBJ]

Please don't dredge up two year old threads of limited relevance. If you're having trouble with the game then start your own thread, and make sure you provide the information requested at the top of the forum.