Colorful flashes, flickering and other unpleasant artifacts with FIX (sort of )

[R3vange]

Hello folks, I have discovered yet another bug which people don't seem to notice much. As with my previous discoveries Shitty lighting in 1.52 and Flickering shadows in the older versions prior to 1.5 and again I was able to verify it by browsing through youtube videos for hours. In short the bug is this:

Here are just two examples from different people with different hardware. At first I thought my GPU was on its way out then I started digging deeper.

At 9:30 mark look at the palms in in the top right corner.

At 3:45 again near the top of the palms in the left corner

And here is mine, brightness and gamma are lowered so the flashes can be seen more easily. Notice that it happens almost exclusively on NPCs with umbrellas and only those that are actually standing in the rain...The rest which do hold the umbrellas but are not under the rain do not seem to flash.

I somehow don't believe that all those separate instances are of dying GPUs

 

[ReudenAndo]

Hello folks, I have discovered yet another bug which people don't seem to notice much. As with my previous discoveries Shitty lighting in 1.52 and Flickering shadows in the older versions prior to 1.5 and again I was able to verify it by browsing through youtube videos for hours. In short the bug is this:

Here are just two examples from different people with different hardware. At first I thought my GPU was on its way out then I started digging deeper.

At 9:30 mark look at the palms in in the top right corner.

At 3:45 again near the top of the palms in the left corner

And here is mine, brightness and gamma are lowered so the flashes can be seen more easily. Notice that it happens almost exclusively on NPCs with umbrellas and only those that are actually standing in the rain...The rest which do hold the umbrellas but are not under the rain do not seem to flash.

I somehow don't believe that all those separate instances are of dying GPUs

@R3vange I recognise this, it happens in my game, too. However, to me it seems that the „flashes“ are not artefacts but rather lights (auto, fire, reflection of strong lights in rain) viewed from a certain angle. I am not sure if it is a bug or just the game trying to simulate blinding lights and eye adaptation.

Sorry if this has been brought up already, but have you submitted a visual issue report to the CDPR support regarding the shitty lighting issue? This one seems unintended for sure. I would not expect changes to the lighting system to make a scene go from bouncy volumetric to neon 2D lighting.

Post automatically merged: Jun 2, 2022

got it again later on... just like first time it happend for me.

Loads another npc when i save/reload and no bug. really weird must be something with lizzies bar. Or very specific models/light/meshes. Seems too happend when looking in the same direction...

This is now the 4th or so different report of this flickering NPCs issue in Lizzie‘s Bar, interesting.

The support said they are investigating the issue. I suppose your additional research on the bug combined with my initial bug report helped to state the issue clear enough that they can try to find the root cause.

Speculating does not seem promising, but spawning t-posing NPCs should (and can) not relate to a faulty mesh or some lighting issue. It’s very clear to me that the management and query of asset loading inside the engine gets borked. What exactly makes the engine freak out, however, is still a puzzle to me.

 

[SigilFey]

And here is mine, brightness and gamma are lowered so the flashes can be seen more easily. Notice that it happens almost exclusively on NPCs with umbrellas and only those that are actually standing in the rain...The rest which do hold the umbrellas but are not under the rain do not seem to flash.

I'm gonna call this as very similar to the mip-map "glittering" that could occur in TW3 on stuff like chainmail.

Clearly, if the REDengine's rendering system can draw even a single, lonesome, pixel to display light reflecting off of an object, then -- gersh dern it! -- that pixel is getting drawn! And we'll see little, white pixels shimmering all over Geralt's armor, like it's studded with tiny diamonds.

I think something similar might be happening here. Looks like the umbrella is catching one or two rays being cast from a light source behind the camera and reflecting it back. Due to the fact that they are flickering in unique colors (green then amber at the very beginning of the video, for instance), I think what we may be seeing is hyper-sensitive reflections, maybe stemming directly from the increased reflective properties of the "wet" effect.

 

[R3vange]

I'm gonna call this as very similar to the mip-map "glittering" that could occur in TW3 on stuff like chainmail.

Clearly, if the REDengine's rendering system can draw even a single, lonesome, pixel to display light reflecting off of an object, then -- gersh dern it! -- that pixel is getting drawn! And we'll see little, white pixels shimmering all over Geralt's armor, like it's studded with tiny diamonds.

I think something similar might be happening here. Looks like the umbrella is catching one or two rays being cast from a light source behind the camera and reflecting it back. Due to the fact that they are flickering in unique colors (green then amber at the very beginning of the video, for instance), I think what we may be seeing is hyper-sensitive reflections, maybe stemming directly from the increased reflective properties of the "wet" effect.

Indeed it happens on mostly reflective and wet surfaces I should also note that it occurs only from 1.5 onwards. I extensively tested my backed up version of 1.31 with or without raytracing or dlss and it doesn't ever occur. If I had to compare it to anything it would be the flickering in the top right corner when said corner crossed a reflective surface at an angle, which existed since day 1 and still occurs regardless of the other flashes in 1.52 (Here's a reddit link with it happening.) The main difference is that those flashes are always in the same place.

Post automatically merged: Jun 2, 2022

Ok ok, I think I've got it. I mentioned that it look like the flashing in the top right corner? It turns out those are indeed related. And I read up that seemingly turning Color Precision to medium fixes the flashing in the top right corner. Guess what else it fixes:

So, if anyone would be so kind could you please direct me to the proper place where I can submit a full bug report to CDPR and hope they fix it in the upcoming updates

Additionally there seems to be another thing that causes flashing in very small light sources and that's DLSS. I can only theorize it's because DLSS runs in a lower native resolution then upscales that when the light source is about the size of a pixel the lighting system overcompensates and it just flashes.

 

[Notserious80]

So, if anyone would be so kind could you please direct me to the proper place where I can submit a full bug report to CDPR and hope they fix it in the upcoming updates

https://support.cdprojektred.com/en/cyberpunk/pc

Should give you what you want

 

[krashlog]

So, if anyone would be so kind could you please direct me to the proper place where I can submit a full bug report to CDPR and hope they fix it in the upcoming updates

btw you really should report your, ahem, "shitty lighting issue" as well, if you haven't done so already.

 

[SigilFey]

So, if anyone would be so kind could you please direct me to the proper place where I can submit a full bug report to CDPR and hope they fix it in the upcoming updates

Here's the category directly, unless you've already sent it:

I want to report a visual issue — Cyberpunk 2077 | Technical Support — CD PROJEKT RED

Welcome to CD PROJEKT RED Technical Support! Here you will find help regarding our games and services, as well as answers to frequently asked questions.

support.cdprojektred.com

Out of curiosity, are you using DLSS? Or any form of screen scaling?

 

[R3vange]

Out of curiosity, are you using DLSS? Or any form of screen scaling?

Yes I am, as stated I noticed two distinct causes for flickering and flashing. One was as said the Color Precision related one, the other one was DLSS related one which is most noticeable on cars and small light sources (abundant in the afterlife). Running the game at a higher than native resolution (i used nVidia's DRS factors to run it at 1440p) did minimize it a lot. Another thing which minimizes the flashing was updating the DLSS .dll to 2.4.3. This however in no way affected the other flashing which still occurs unless the Color Precision is set to "medium". And yes both of the issues are reported, thank you so much for the help. Maybe one could sticky the solution, I myself don't have any issues thank God but I can see someone light sensitive having altercations due to the flashing.

 

[ReudenAndo]

Yes I am, as stated I noticed two distinct causes for flickering and flashing. One was as said the Color Precision related one, the other one was DLSS related one which is most noticeable on cars and small light sources (abundant in the afterlife). Running the game at a higher than native resolution (i used nVidia's DRS factors to run it at 1440p) did minimize it a lot. Another thing which minimizes the flashing was updating the DLSS .dll to 2.4.3. This however in no way affected the other flashing which still occurs unless the Color Precision is set to "medium". And yes both of the issues are reported, thank you so much for the help. Maybe one could sticky the solution, I myself don't have any issues thank God but I can see someone light sensitive having altercations due to the flashing.

Regarding flashing lights when using DLSS: I can confirm that this issue existed all the way back. First time I spotted DLSS-related flickering artificial light sources such as the lights in the Arasaka building where you start as a Corpo was in December 2021 when I bought the game. Newer iterations of DLSS and newer patches of CP2077 fixed the flickering light sources for me in these specific instances.

The (supposedly) Color Precision-related flashing lights / reflections are still an issue for me to this day, but I never considered it a bug but rather a feature, lmao.

 

[R3vange]

I am making this thread to summaries all my findings investigating the issue on my end, so perhaps it may serve to help someone experiencing the same issues. The issue has been reported to CDPR's tech support so hopefully they will fix it in the coming updates.

PREMISE: Recently I got back to Cyberpunk 2077 after not playing for about 3-4 months. And when I did I was almost immediately annoyed by flashing blinking and other visual noise artifacts which really detracted from my experience. I was pretty sure I didn't notice them before so some investigation was in order.

The BUG: Or rather the Bugs. I noticed two distinct instances of colorful flashing. One that appeared mainly during rain on reflective surfaces and mostly on NPCs having an umbrella. The second one mainly appeared on light sources and the reflective parts of the vehicles. Here's an example of the first kind:

Now to some it might seem like a dying GPU, and if you are having that sort of issue, rest easy your GPU is fine (probably don't hold me accountable)
Browsing on YouTube I was able to verify that it was indeed not an isolated instance and that it did occur to various degrees of severity on a variety of different configurations. In my instance it was RTX 2070 ROG non-super which is good for absolutely playable experience at the RT Ultra preset with DLSS Auto @ 1080p - remember this, this is important.

THE FIX: Now this sort of colorful flashing reminded me of the flashing in the top right corner when the spot crossed a reflective surface which existed in the game since day 1. I found This thread on Reddit about a user experiencing the top right corner flashing, and somewhere down in the comment suggested turning the setting called "Color Precision" from High to Medium (the only two available settings). So I tried it and would you have it know it fixed the flashing umbrella NPCs completely with very little graphical fidelity impact. Here's proof:

So if you experience this kind of flashing: Color Precision to Medium

This however left the other kind of flashing, light sources and chrome part of vehicles. I saw this video:

Which linked it directly to DLSS. And sure enough the second I turned off DLSS, the second type of flashing was gone too.

But I've always played with DLSS and I don't remember it being that obnoxious. The first kind of flashing I was sure wasn't in 1.31 so I decided to see if the second one - the DLSS related one isn't there as well. Imagine my horror when I booted 1.31 and saw the second type of DLSS was in 1.31 and exactly the same as in 1.52. I am sure I wasn't going crazy and there is no way I could have played the game like this, so I started thinking what have I changed in my PC between 1.31 and 1.52 and did the following test, look at the lights on the bottom side of the bar:

RUN 1:

RUN 2:

As you can clearly see the settings and game versions are exactly the same, both are loaded from the same save file, so what causes the annoying flickering in RUN 2, compared to RUN 1. It was the GPU driver. Run 1 is done with the earliest nVidia driver that can run Cyberpunk namely 456.71. Run 2 is done with 512.77 which I believe is the second to last version.
I very rarely update my GPU drivers (to be fair things like that only reaffirms why) because I feel like nVidia way too often optimizes for brand new titles breaking things for the old ones, so I update only when absolutely necessary (i.e the game outright says "DUDE NEW DRIVER NOW"), and such update was done between my playthrough of 1.31 and 1.52. So there you have it - not everything is CDPR's fault. nVidia must have changed something in the way DLSS interacts with light sources and the result is seizure inducing.

THE SORT OF FIX: So what if you don't want to play with an antiquated driver, well there is a solution which minimizes the problem and that's updating the DLSS .dll. Originally 1.52 ships with DLSS version 2.3. I believe the latest one is 2.4.3. If you are updating your drivers through GeForce Experience and optimizing the games through there Cyberpunk's DLSS should automatically be updated to the newest working version, but however if you are like me and updating the driver is a dirty thought you have to do it manually. PLEASE NOTE THAT ANY CHANGES YOU MAKE TO THE GAME FAILES AND DOWNLOADING DLLs OFF THE INTERNET IS ENTIRELY AT YOUR OWN RISK. But yeah doing so in my case reduced the flickering significantly almost to a playable level.

So there you go, I will continue to investigate the issue and post updates as edits to this post, if it helps at least one choom until CDPR fixes things I will be a happy man. See ya around.

 

[krashlog]

Thanks for the incredibly detailed bug report, stellar work.

But I have to correct one thing you said :

If you are updating your drivers through GeForce Experience and optimizing the games through there Cyberpunk's DLSS should automatically be updated to the newest working version, but however if you are like me and updating the driver is a dirty thought you have to do it manually.

You do NOT need GFE installed to update the DLSS version. Simply the updated drivers. It was thoroughly investigated in this thread.

From this it would appear the answer to your question is no. GFE is unnecessary. I'd assume when first launching the game some type of check is going on in the background to pull down the DLSS file where applicable. I suppose all of this kind of makes sense if you think about it. GFE is just a utility.

 

[SigilFey]

Thanks, @R3vange ! I was just going to suggest opening a separate thread about this.

Also, while I'm pretty sure the devs are aware of this one, can everyone experiencing it send in a Support ticket?

I want to report a visual issue — Cyberpunk 2077 | Technical Support — CD PROJEKT RED

Welcome to CD PROJEKT RED Technical Support! Here you will find help regarding our games and services, as well as answers to frequently asked questions.

support.cdprojektred.com

This is a really distracting issue, so the more people contact Support about it, the more likely it will be looked at sooner rather than later.


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Really interesting that DLSS makes it better...but I guess that makes a sort of sense, considering that some of the rendering that might be causing it would be scaled out. I was thinking it might have been caused by scaling...but there goes that guess. Good, mostly! As that's heavy evidence that it's happening at the engine or driver level. That will hopefully make it much easier to track down.

EDIT: Moved in the posts from the other thread.

 

[R3vange]

EDIT: Moved in the posts from the other thread.

Thanks for that. Just a small thing is it possible to make my original opening post first in this thread as I feel it better summarizes and proposes fixes for problem than the separate ones merged from the other thread.

Also a quick heads up. CDPR Tech support replied saying they are aware of the issue and investigating it. In a couple of days I will write a separate ticket with my latest findings that the DLSS related flickering is dependent on the driver version.

Really interesting that DLSS makes it better...but I guess that makes a sort of sense, considering that some of the rendering that might be causing it would be scaled out. I was thinking it might have been caused by scaling...but there goes that guess. Good, mostly! As that's heavy evidence that it's happening at the engine or driver level. That will hopefully make it much easier to track down.

I don't think that DLSS makes it better per say. Newer versions of DLSS do minimize it but that's only the DLSS related ones. It's weird because the two kinds of flickering can appear so similarly they can be easily mistaken but playing for a while with the Color Precision to Medium and normal DLSS and the reverse DLSS off (or newer version of DLSS or older GPU driver) and Color Precision set to High you will quickly gain an understanding which type of flashing is related to which setting. I believe that the fundamental cause is the same, akin to the moiré effect in cameras. If an object which has to be drawn is less than a pixel the camera goes crazy flicking between 0 pixels 1 pixel and 2 pixels because simply it cannot draw half a pixel it cannot decide on which of two or more neighboring pixels to assign the value to. That creates a flickering effect. I theorize that in Cyberpunk's case when DLSS is enabled and the game runs at lower than native internal resolution and the light source is just on that border between being 0 pixels and 1 pixel the game switches between giving a glow and not giving it one which is why it only occurs at a certain distance from the light source - you walk closer it stabilizes and it's all normal, you walk further away you see just the core of the light source and no glow so it's ok again. That's how explain it to myself especially in the case of the Afterlife in the video I've posted. Now the other kind, the one which is related to Color Precision and occurs on NPCs I believe the Color Precision setting is trying to draw a pixel perhaps of reflected light with some color value to make it blend better and again when it's less than a pixel the lighting engine goes haywire assigning high glow values to something that should really have them. Again I apologize if that sounds idiotic I have no idea how the different systems in the game work or how they are coded, I am merely trying to deduce based on things I do know.

 

[Notserious80]

Noticed this today while doing The Heist!

Top left some odd lights that move around a bit, not entierly sure its the exact same since its not flashing but it seems pretty similar.
Im using 512.15 and DLSS 2.4.3 running performance DLSS.

 

[R3vange]

Noticed this today while doing The Heist!

Top left some odd lights that move around a bit, not entierly sure its the exact same since its not flashing but it seems pretty similar.
Im using 512.15 and DLSS 2.4.3 running performance DLSS.

Yep totally related. those too go away with Color Precision, at least in my case

 

[SigilFey]

Thanks for that. Just a small thing is it possible to make my original opening post first in this thread as I feel it better summarizes and proposes fixes for problem than the separate ones merged from the other thread.

Is that this post you're referring to?

I don't think that DLSS makes it better per say. Newer versions of DLSS do minimize it but that's only the DLSS related ones. It's weird because...

It's moot, whatever that train of thought was. I was initially asking because I thought it might be a result of DLSS blending pixel data for scaling purposes. But since it's worse in true resolutions, that's definitely not it.

If an object which has to be drawn is less than a pixel the camera goes crazy flicking between 0 pixels 1 pixel and 2 pixels because simply it cannot draw half a pixel it cannot decide on which of two or more neighboring pixels to assign the value to.

No -- you've got the general idea, I'd say. Half-pixels aren't a thing, but I think rather what you go on to say is probably what's happening. If there's any confusion, it will draw the single ray of light, the same way that it creates specular map "glitter" when using rasterization instead of ray tracing.

I've also pinged the team internally about it and linked to the stuff here. No harm in following up, but no real need for a new ticket. What would be better is if anyone seeing this has not sent in their own ticket, please do so!

 

[R3vange]

Oh well. It was worth the shot. I'm just super super bummed out right now. I've spend my time investigating the issue (this and the one with the sub par lighting in some indoor areas compared to 1.31) wrote extensive reports, damn near pointed out the exact culprit of the bug, CDPR reps assure me that BOTH are being looked at. Download the latest version boot up the game, and see that those things have been untouched. Sure I'm just one guy, other people seem not to notice or care about it too much apart from the occasional reddit thread.
I love you guys, I have supported you and I will continue to support you and I'm genuinely excited for the future of Cyberpunk 2077. I was not one of the salty ones on launch, I enjoyed the game. I just wanted a bit of help to my make the gaming experience pleasurable as it was before and perhaps help some other folks who might be bothered as well. But saying something is "a known issue" and it's "being looked at" then doing nothing about it is just poor decorum.

Edit: To put my money where my mouth is. It's even more severe now, and yet it's still fixed by altering the same setting. I will write one last report and then that's it.

 

[SigilFey]

If the issue is with the actual Nvidia drivers / firmware, which it seems to be, then that's something that may take a long while to isolate and sort out, if it's possible at all. What seems like "a simple, straightforward issue" is often not, in any way. Ray tracing is still not standardized tech. There will be more bugs to come, in lots of titles. It will take whatever time it takes, unfortunately.

At the very least, the problem can be completely worked around by altering one setting. (On your end, that is!)

 

[R3vange]

If the issue is with the actual Nvidia drivers / firmware, which it seems to be, then that's something that may take a long while to isolate and sort out, if it's possible at all. What seems like "a simple, straightforward issue" is often not, in any way. Ray tracing is still not standardized tech. There will be more bugs to come, in lots of titles. It will take whatever time it takes, unfortunately.

At the very least, the problem can be completely worked around by altering one setting. (On your end, that is!)

Indeed it is. However it is an issue which first appeared about a year into the game's existence, so something before must have worked right and something implemented at a later stage broke it, be it switching to DXR based raytracing for all cards instead of the dedicated NVidia one or something else entirely. But you would agree with me that If you buy an 8 cylinder car and you get a misfire on two cylinders you don't just pull the two sparkplugs outs and carry on driving on the remaining six cylinders, you would actively seek a fix. I will persevere, and I will continue to enjoy the game regardless.

 

[SigilFey]

Indeed it is. However it is an issue which first appeared about a year into the game's existence, so something before must have worked right and something implemented at a later stage broke it, be it switching to DXR based raytracing for all cards instead of the dedicated NVidia one or something else entirely. But you would agree with me that If you buy an 8 cylinder car and you get a misfire on two cylinders you don't just pull the two sparkplugs outs and carry on driving on the remaining six cylinders, you would actively seek a fix. I will persevere, and I will continue to enjoy the game regardless.

It's likely both, I would imagine. CDPR's ongoing work on building in the next-gen updates to the engine, tweaking it to run better for last-gen consoles, Nvidia working on their drivers, new RTX techniques, DLSS stuff, not to mention hardware and APIs being updated, DirectX becoming 100% native on Windows 10 / 11...

...viola. Sparkles. That's all a soup of things that can result in some crazy issues.

Your cylinder analogy is sensible if we look at this one issue in isolation. In reality, this is probably never going to be a priority. Considering all the things being worked on presently in the engine, this ranks more like: "the PCV valve rattles whenever I hit 65mph."

It also seems to happen in a few other games. The fix, I would guess, will need to come from Nvidia.