Game assets loading in and out randomly

[Zodiak.6875]

 

Hello,

Just to preface, I've tried contacting Arenanet through official ticket means. They have asked me to run the following for them and have not been able to resolve my issue.

According to Arenanet, Guild Wars 2 does not support Windows 11

I provided the following that they requested:
*  Hijackthis reports
* Dxdiag reports
* Launching the game as administrator
* Launching the game in compatibility mode with previous windows

I have many games and this ONLY happens with Guild Wars 2 and I am also on the naitive gw2 client, not using Steam.

CPU and GPU are around 40C during gameplay and at around 15% Utilization during gameplay.

I am hoping that someone else from the community has encountered this problem and has been able to resolve it. I've found other accounts of something similar happening by searching online, but never a solution and the threads just went cold.

I've just built a new computer with an Intel i9 13900k CPU, RTX 4090 Founder's Edition Video Card and 64GB of RAM.

I've Installed Guild Wars 2 on the computer and whenever I'm playing, I've noticed that not only do textures, but complete 3D game assets keep loading in and out of the game, as in, something is making assets spawn and de-spawn as I rotate around the game.

I have the game 100% fully downloaded and have download streaming set to maximum in game and it's making the game almost unplayable. I used to have a much slower laptop that had trouble running the game and didn't have this issue with game assets loading and unloading. and I have all LOD settings disabled or set to maximum assets/distance. This asset loading problem appears to not be affected by which graphical options I set the game to. It happens on lowest settings, highest settings, in windowed mode and in fullscreen mode. Floors will vanish, revealing water underneath, walls will disappear, stairs will vanish, etc.

The RTX 4090 has 24GB of Ram and my system has 64GB of ram. I've also been monitoring my CPU and Video card temperatures and they remain in the 40-60C range and in the 30-40% utilization range.

I've tried both uninstalling and reinstalling the game, doing a repair, uninstalling and reinstalling my video drivers, etc and I've also done a Memtest on my ram with 0 errors.

Assets just keep vanishing and reappearing. I've looked for solutions online and I've found other accounts of people with the same problem, only several years earlier, simply with no solutions. I just can't find any answers online.

I'm not a streamer or know anything about video editing, but Arenanet asked for a video and managed to put one together and put it on Youtube.

I hope anyone can help

 

Edited July 11, 2023 by Zodiak.6875

[Zodiak.6875]

I've tried booting into safe mode, uninstalling nvidia drivers using Display Driver Uninstaller (DDU), reinstalling nvidia game ready drivers 536.23, repairing gw2, uninstalling and reinstalling gw2, none of it helps.

Funny enough, this ONLY happens with Guild Wars 2 and doesn't even happen with more demanding games like Cyberpunk 2077, etc.

I thought this could be related to that rumored gw2 memory leak reported going around, which is the closest I've gotten to finding something similar happening to people, but never a solution.

[Nate Anabe.6091]

  May sound silly but, try running the game as admin

[Zodiak.6875]

Hello Nate,

Yes this is one of the things that I listed to have tried above. Sadly it does not help 😞

You would think with 64GB of DDR5 6400 RAM and the 24GB of RAM on the 4090, that this would not happen.

I had a potato laptop that I USED to play on before building this computer. It had trouble running the game and still didn't suffer from 3D Asset flicker. I can SEE people THROUGH assets sometimes, especially in WvW, I can see how many people are in towers and keeps lol.

It doesn't happen ALL the time, but when it does, it doesn't stop.

I just wish it would go away 😞

[Ashantara.8731]

(nvm)

Edited July 12, 2023 by Ashantara.8731

[Nate Anabe.6091]

1 hour ago, Zodiak.6875 said:

Yes this is one of the things that I listed to have tried above. Sadly it does not help

Bah. I even read that too 🤪

Make sure you video card is properly seated in the slot and pushed down all the way, also a bit of dust in the slot can  make things go wonky

 

[Chaba.5410]

Try running the game in DX9 from the command line to see if it's something with the DX11 changes.

[Zodiak.6875]

4 hours ago, Nate Anabe.6091 said:

Bah. I even read that too 🤪

Make sure you video card is properly seated in the slot and pushed down all the way, also a bit of dust in the slot can  make things go wonky

 

Ok, I will try to open my case, take out the video card, reseat it and look at the power connectors again in the morning. I know that I saw Gamer's Nexus video on the 12vhpwr connector before putting my computer together. To push on the connector until you hear a Click and then push on it some more to make sure that it is properly connected.

[Zodiak.6875]

1 hour ago, Chaba.5410 said:

Try running the game in DX9 from the command line to see if it's something with the DX11 changes.

I will try this too.

Sadly, I am scared of having to RMA the card 😞

[SoftFootpaws.9134]

2 hours ago, Zodiak.6875 said:

I will try this too.

Sadly, I am scared of having to RMA the card 😞

you can also try dxvk on any operating system to make it use vulkan instead of directx to the hardware.

[Zodiak.6875]

On 7/11/2023 at 10:03 PM, Nate Anabe.6091 said:

Bah. I even read that too 🤪

Make sure you video card is properly seated in the slot and pushed down all the way, also a bit of dust in the slot can  make things go wonky

 

I took everything apart, make sure all the connections were seated back properly. Sadly this error is still happening in Guild Wars 2. I have tried other games since putting everything together and other more demanding games work fine.

RIP Guild Wars 2 😞

[Zodiak.6875]

17 hours ago, SoftFootpaws.9134 said:

you can also try dxvk on any operating system to make it use vulkan instead of directx to the hardware.

Hello,

How would I go about trying to use dxvk?

Thank you

[Kal Durak.2830]

On 7/12/2023 at 2:42 AM, Zodiak.6875 said:

 

Hello,

Just to preface, I've tried contacting Arenanet through official ticket means. They have asked me to run the following for them and have not been able to resolve my issue.

According to Arenanet, Guild Wars 2 does not support Windows 11

I provided the following that they requested:
*  Hijackthis reports
* Dxdiag reports
* Launching the game as administrator
* Launching the game in compatibility mode with previous windows

I have many games and this ONLY happens with Guild Wars 2 and I am also on the naitive gw2 client, not using Steam.

CPU and GPU are around 40C during gameplay and at around 15% Utilization during gameplay.

I am hoping that someone else from the community has encountered this problem and has been able to resolve it. I've found other accounts of something similar happening by searching online, but never a solution and the threads just went cold.

I've just built a new computer with an Intel i9 13900k CPU, RTX 4090 Founder's Edition Video Card and 64GB of RAM.

I've Installed Guild Wars 2 on the computer and whenever I'm playing, I've noticed that not only do textures, but complete 3D game assets keep loading in and out of the game, as in, something is making assets spawn and de-spawn as I rotate around the game.

I have the game 100% fully downloaded and have download streaming set to maximum in game and it's making the game almost unplayable. I used to have a much slower laptop that had trouble running the game and didn't have this issue with game assets loading and unloading. and I have all LOD settings disabled or set to maximum assets/distance. This asset loading problem appears to not be affected by which graphical options I set the game to. It happens on lowest settings, highest settings, in windowed mode and in fullscreen mode. Floors will vanish, revealing water underneath, walls will disappear, stairs will vanish, etc.

The RTX 4090 has 24GB of Ram and my system has 64GB of ram. I've also been monitoring my CPU and Video card temperatures and they remain in the 40-60C range and in the 30-40% utilization range.

I've tried both uninstalling and reinstalling the game, doing a repair, uninstalling and reinstalling my video drivers, etc and I've also done a Memtest on my ram with 0 errors.

Assets just keep vanishing and reappearing. I've looked for solutions online and I've found other accounts of people with the same problem, only several years earlier, simply with no solutions. I just can't find any answers online.

I'm not a streamer or know anything about video editing, but Arenanet asked for a video and managed to put one together and put it on Youtube.

I hope anyone can help

 

It's happening to several in our guild /and including the entire screen turning black. 

[Andy.5981]

To the OP, having watched your video I don't think there is anything wrong with your machine.

Personally I think its a rendering issue in GW2 itself.

For some reason it reminds me of some issues that some players were experiencing quite a few years ago in GW2 where a similar sort of problem occurred with high end graphic cards that were released after GW2.

Do you have access to another graphics card? Perhaps one a few years old? If so take out your existing card, fit that older card and the necessary drivers and see if there are still rendering issues in the same area with same graphic settings. I suspect there won't be.

If there aren't then its likely to be GW2 itself, particulary in view of the fact that you aren't having any issues in any other games with your existing 4090.

If it is GW2 then unfortunately its going to be a case of waiting until the Devs can fix it.

Edited July 13, 2023 by Andy.5981
Edit to change 3090 to 4090 and also lol at the muppet who put a confused face on this. If its a rendering issue with the graphics card it makes sense to swap it out to an older card to rule out incompatibilities with the 4090......

[Chaba.5410]

17 hours ago, Zodiak.6875 said:

Hello,

How would I go about trying to use dxvk?

Thank you

Before you go that route, or with RMA, please just try the DX9 command line option.

None of the info you provided so far would seem to indicate the card needs to be RMA'd.

[Chaba.5410]

BTW, I don't think this is random.  It happens as you move your camera, as if certain shadows/shaders are being replaced and then end up not rendering as you move.

[Zodiak.6875]

On 7/13/2023 at 6:18 AM, Andy.5981 said:

To the OP, having watched your video I don't think there is anything wrong with your machine.

Personally I think its a rendering issue in GW2 itself.

For some reason it reminds me of some issues that some players were experiencing quite a few years ago in GW2 where a similar sort of problem occurred with high end graphic cards that were released after GW2.

Do you have access to another graphics card? Perhaps one a few years old? If so take out your existing card, fit that older card and the necessary drivers and see if there are still rendering issues in the same area with same graphic settings. I suspect there won't be.

If there aren't then its likely to be GW2 itself, particulary in view of the fact that you aren't having any issues in any other games with your existing 4090.

If it is GW2 then unfortunately its going to be a case of waiting until the Devs can fix it.

Unfortunately no, I don't have another video card to try out 😞

I agree that it has to be a problem with gw2, I can play Cyberpunk 2077 just fine on the highest settings without any problems.

[Zodiak.6875]

21 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

Before you go that route, or with RMA, please just try the DX9 command line option.

None of the info you provided so far would seem to indicate the card needs to be RMA'd.

I will try adding -dx9 to the launch shortcut but I think I've tried that in the past. My memory is not so good 😞

On 7/13/2023 at 12:18 AM, Areoh.7495 said:

It's happening to several in our guild /and including the entire screen turning black. 

Thank you for letting me know that others are also experiencing this problem! I keep asking in game and nobody answers.

21 hours ago, Chaba.5410 said:

BTW, I don't think this is random.  It happens as you move your camera, as if certain shadows/shaders are being replaced and then end up not rendering as you move.

I'm not sure if it's shader or shadow related. I say this because this will happen on "Best Performance" mode, which I believe sets shaders and shadows to None, and also happens in "Beast Appearance" mode which cranks everything to highest. Only thing that it doesn't crank is the Sampling, which I set to Supersample because I play in 3440x1440.

I will be showing this to my support ticket to try and have them investigate further.

[Chaba.5410]

5 minutes ago, Zodiak.6875 said:

Only thing that it doesn't crank is the Sampling, which I set to Supersample because I play in 3440x1440.

According to old pre-DX11 investigation done by that_shaman, supersampling cuts off at 2880 pixel widths and bugs out bloom effects above that.  So at that resolution, it may not actually be scaling up the sampling.

It's anyone's guess what happens with that setting under DX11 these days.

https://blog.thatshaman.com/2021/11/sub-and-supersample-resolution.html

[Zodiak.6875]

58 minutes ago, Chaba.5410 said:

According to old pre-DX11 investigation done by that_shaman, supersampling cuts off at 2880 pixel widths and bugs out bloom effects above that.  So at that resolution, it may not actually be scaling up the sampling.

It's anyone's guess what happens with that setting under DX11 these days.

https://blog.thatshaman.com/2021/11/sub-and-supersample-resolution.html

I thought the same thing and thought to myself, why bother using it.

Then I went into Shing Jea and messed with the sampling. Only there did I notice any significant difference, especially on the large mosaic carpet like ground textures. So I decided to leave it on.

Like i said, I run into the same problem no matter what graphical options I end up using. It's not impacting performance a great deal for me and since I do get a difference (only here and there mind you), I decided to leave it on.

I pointed the Arenanet support to this forum thread and pointed out to them that others are also experiencing the same problems.

Hopefully something will come from this for all of us experiencing this 😞

[Andy.5981]

1 hour ago, Zodiak.6875 said:

Unfortunately no, I don't have another video card to try out 😞

I agree that it has to be a problem with gw2, I can play Cyberpunk 2077 just fine on the highest settings without any problems.

Hmm a shame since swapping out the video card could narrow down the issue. As you say your machine is running fine with everything else and seems to be running cool and stable. Its not as if even GW2 is causing it to crash.

I definately think it something to do with your card, the 4090 and the way GW2 is rendering to it. I suspect the card is fine, its just that its such a high end card that very few people are using it and as a result not many people are reporting similar issues and as such its flying under the radar so to speak.

Hopefully the Devs might be able to get to the bottom of it.

[Noxin.9276]

Join us in linux gw2, there are literally dozens of us I found out 😛 - and no weird graphics.

[Zodiak.6875]

Hello everyone,

I have returned!

Unfortunately for the Guild Wars 2 support team, they were not able to diagnose the problem or source of my 3D asset flickering. I will give them major props however. They did stick with me for WEEKS, going through several levels of technical support and having me try different things.

Thank you to the Support Team!

Update of what has happened since

I've contacted Cooler Master, maker of my PC Case, Power Supply and PCIE Riser Cable (Since I have the Cooler Master NR200P Max case, that comes with all 3 built-in) : It was determined that the fault was not theirs, but they did tell me they could contact their people at NVIDIA. Have not heard from them since.

I've contacted Cablemod, since I use their 12vhpwr to 3x8pin CPU Power Cable: It was determined that it was not their fault.

ODDLY ENOUGH, while I was on IMDB, looking up trailers for upcoming movies, I noticed that even though I WASN'T watching the trailers in fullscreen, that every 5-10 seconds, my ENTIRE screen would briefly flash with a random still from the movie trailer. So I then started searching for a solution regarding google chrome screen flicker or flashing. The solution had me go into Google Chrome settings and DISABLE Hardware Acceleration of all things. I've since then went back to IMDB and youtube and the screen flickering there has ceased.

Unknowing to me, by DISABLING hardware acceleration IN Google Chrome, when I went back into Guild Wars 2, with the exact same settings enabled. I can say that after playing for 2+ days (which 3D asset flicker always occurs after a few hours and then gets worse), the 3D Asset Flickering appears to have stopped entirely. Now I know that Chromium is heavily embedded into Guild Wars 2, but I would have never thought in a million years that by disabling a setting that's enabled by default in Google Chrome, that it would fix my issue in Guild Wars 2.

The Mistlock Sanctuary and World vs World would trigger  3D Asset Flicker like clockwork before.

To Anyone experiencing this type of 3D Asset flickering, open Google Chrome, Go into Settings, Type Hardware Acceleration and Toggle it OFF.

After 2+ days of playing pretty intensely, I can say that I am no longer experiencing this issue.

I SERIOUSLY hope that this helps anyone else out there and thank you everyone for trying to help!

Now I just hope that this really was the issue and that this doesn't reoccur, but after over 2 days, I'm calling it good.

Edited July 27, 2023 by Zodiak.6875