[Save corruption] Textures Disappearing

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Update: I've edited the title of this thread because I'm still not sure
weither the issue has been caused by .ini tweaks or in another way.
(Old title: .ini-Tweaks Got Stuck to Save Files)

If a person is experiencing a similar issue, they're now invited to
use this thread even if there hasn't been any mods installed.


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Hello! It would be great if more people could help figuring this out.
Somehow this .ini-tweak from Nexusmods got tied to my save files.

Interesting... I assume the issues where the ones you reported above: "...flickering reflections of sunlight. (like the sunlight when you look into trees, or reflections on cars.)". Did you have any other issues?
I've encountered these three issues:
#1)
textures and objects flickering and disappearing (This is the main issue)
#2) flickering sunlight (probably not persistent with save files, but not entirely sure)
#3) every second time I loaded the same exact save file, issue #1 was gone, but occurred again with the very next quick-load.

Cause of the issue:
#1)

[Streaming]
Distance Boost = 50.000000
_Note: I've tried values from 42.000000 to 60.000000, not sure which one got stuck)
#2)
[DLSS]
Enable = true
EnableCustomMipBias = true
EnableMirrorScaling = true
MirrorScaling = 1.000000
Sharpness = 1.00000
_Note: As mentioned earlier, I'm not sure if this particular one persisted with the files, but it might explain issue #3 in some way. The Draw Distance Boost remains the one that started causing the issues.
#3)
Not sure what was causing this. Maybe different versions of rendering.ini got stuck to the same save files.

Videos:
#1)
The DLSS mod [#2)] was not installed when I made this video.

# 1 ; 3)

Reproduction:
I was able to solve the issue by deleting the affected save files and by rolling back to version 1.22, although rolling back might not have been necessary.
Unfortunately I wasn't able to reproduce the issues yet. Like I said earlier my possibilities are limited.

In case you want to help figuring-out how to reproduce it:
  • Set the value of [Streaming] DistanceBoost between 48.000000 and 60.000000,
    • get inside Delamain HQ, stand close to the reception and create a manual save-file,
      then fast-travel to Charter ST, there you create another manual save-file.
      • At Charter ST, keep an eye on objects and buildings in the distance, as well as textures on the ground.
        • If you see textures missing or flickering, close the game, remove the tweaks from the ini, launch the game again and load the save-file at Charter ST to see if the issue persists.
        • If you don't see any issues after the fast-travel to Charter ST, quick-load the recent save file by pressing F9 once to see if it makes a difference.
          • To avoid issues on future save files: delete all auto-saves and quick-saves, as well as the manual save-files that have been created while the mod was installed.
          • differential diagnosis: Clean-install GPU drivers
          • Assumptions:
            • If the issue also occurs on old save files: Deleting the new save files (that have been created while the mod was installed) might be enough to solve the issue?
            • Pressing Continue in the main menu might not show any of the mentioned issues?
            • Saving over an existing save-file might be causing it ?


------------ ----------- ---------- --------- -------- ------- ------ ----- ---- --- -- -
System: Ryzen 9 5950x ; rtx 3090 ; 4x8gb ddr4 3600 cl15 ;
Win10 20H2 ; Cyberpunk v.1.23 /1.22 ;
All drivers and BIOS are up-to-date ;
Resizable Bar enabled .
------------ ----------- ---------- --------- -------- ------- ------ ----- ---- --- -- -
 
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Thanks for creating this thread :) I think it's important to sort this thing out, either to help new users, narrow down the issue or maybe help CDPR in fixing it.

At the moment I don't really have the time to test with your saves, because I'm not that often on my gaming PC and when I'm there I also like to play games XD. But I might come back to your offer later...

That being said, thanks for this very detailed explanation and also for providing videos of the issue. How does the saying go? A video says between 30-60 pictures a second.

My experience with DrawDistanceBoost was that it did cause issues but I have yet to notice them persisting in save files even though I had similar issues as the one in the video. The next time I'm gaming, I will also try the quicktravel thing and see if anything happens.

  • If the issue also occurs on old save files: Deleting the new save files (that have been created while the mod was installed) might be enough to solve the issue?
  • Saving over an existing save-file might be causing it ?
Could you elaborate on that? I don't 100% understand it

Pressing Continue in the main menu might not show any of the mentioned issues?
???

Why did you rollback to 1.22? Was this required to fix the issue?

Also, please update this thread if there are any news from CDPR's support.

Edit: For anyone interested this is my ini file:

Code:
[RayTracing/BottomLevelCache]
Budget = 3221225472

[RayTracing]
GeometryUpdateBufferSizeMB = 8176
ScratchBufferSizeMB = 8176

[Streaming]
EditorThrottledMaxNodesPerFrame = 3000
MaxNodesPerFrame = 1800
MinStreamingDistance = 50.000000

Apparently both Nodes setting serve to reduce flickering. Please be advised that with these settings 17-20GiB VRAM will be allocated. (Please also be aware that allocation does not reflect usage.)
 
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Thanks for creating this thread :) I think it's important to sort this thing out, either to help new users, narrow down the issue or maybe help CDPR in fixing it.
Pleasure!
At the moment I don't really have the time to test with your saves, because I'm not that often on my gaming PC and when I'm there I also like to play games XD. But I might come back to your offer later...
Yea, gaming should be fun, right? There are certainly some bugs in CP that are more entertaining than this one.

That being said, thanks for this very detailed explanation and also for providing videos of the issue. How does the saying go? A video says between 30-60 pictures a second.
I'm glad to see there are more people interested in solving issues like this.

My experience with DrawDistanceBoost was that it did cause issues but I have yet to notice them persisting in save files even though I had similar issues as the one in the video. The next time I'm gaming, I will also try the quicktravel thing and see if anything happens.
So far you seem to have been lucky :)

Could you elaborate on that? I don't 100% understand it
Hm.. I can't remember. I think, the issue was more present on the save files that have been created while the ini-tweak was installed, e.g. on ManualSave-475 is was present but less or not present on (chronologically) old files like ManualSave-200...

Why did you rollback to 1.22? Was this required to fix the issue?

...which made me think that it might be related to the game's version. (1.23) I also wanted to prevent myself from accidentally loading an affected save file because I didn't know if it would then potentially "poison" either the old non-affected files or new-game-save-files.

Regarding the other mentioned assumption ("Saving over an existing save-file might be causing it ?") :
When there's a save-file that is linked to a certain rendering.ini, and and then gets overwritten in-game with a new save-file that is linked to another rendering.ini, The result might be that there are two different versions of rendering.ini linked to the new save-file, or alternatively that the DistanceBoost somehow get's added to the same rendering.ini (e.g. 42.000000 + 60.000000 = 102.000000) , but all of that is pure speculation.

Also, please update this thread if there are any news from CDPR's support.
I will do so!

Edit: For anyone interested this is my ini file:
[...] these settings 17-20GiB VRAM are allocated.
Cool! The allocation comes close to Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War
 
Cool, seems theres more ini tweaks then i thought in this game since most of the inis are pretty empty for the start. Gonna have too test some i guess. would be nice too make use of those 24gigs of vram -.-
 
Hm.. I can't remember. I think, the issue was more present on the save files that have been created while the ini-tweak was installed, e.g. on ManualSave-475 is was present but less or not present on (chronologically) old files like ManualSave-200, which made me think that it might be related to the game's version. (1.23) I also wanted to prevent myself from accidentally loading an affected save file because I didn't know if it would then potentially "poison" either the old non-affected files or new-game-save-files.
This would be very odd, because from a programming perspective you open a file for reading or writing. Loading a save file just requires reading the save file and no data should be written to them. Thus, it should not be possible for them to get corrupted. An easy way to test if the loading changes a save file is to execute the following command in Window's PowerShell before and after the save has been loaded:

Code:
Get-FileHash <full path to save file> -Algorithm MD5

If both values are the same, the save file has not changed. I've noticed however that the user.gls file which resides in the directory where all saves are located changes every time I game. Thus, it could be that this file persists certain ini tweaks in certain cases.

When there's a save-file that is linked to a certain rendering.ini, and and then gets overwritten in-game with a new save-file that is linked to another rendering.ini, The result might be that there are two different versions of rendering.ini linked to the new save-file, or alternatively that the DistanceBoost somehow get's added to the same rendering.ini (e.g. 42.000000 + 60.000000 = 102.000000) , but all of that is pure speculation.
🤔 I would find it odd that they would these values in those files. Maybe the initial idea of CP2077 was to have a more consistent world with a more consistent item model. Therefore, every item the user interacts with would need to be saved in those files. This could of course lead to bugs and weird inconsistencies if certain objects are loaded sooner than expected.

I still think that this is not an issue with the save files (with the exception of the user.gls) but rather with the game files or the cache (../AppData/Local/Cyberpunk -> I'm just guessing the folder, might be wrong).

Cool! The allocation comes close to Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War
Yeah, but as I've said allocation ≠ usage.
 
Yeah, but as I've said allocation ≠ usage.

Isent that huge memory usage in COD basicly shader cache? i remember i hade huge problems with the game since i got the blocky textures then it loaded the nice ones and back too blocky. Since my virutal memory was set too low i think.
 
I have no experience with CoD but what I wanted to point out is that in programming you can allocate an arbitrary amount of data, without actually using it. When it comes to normal system memory, it makes sense to be less greedy obviously, but as a game developer you could very well allocate most (if not all) of the available VRAM.

This could end up in the game having 24GiB VRAM allocated, which would be shown in MSI Afterburner, while actually only 8GiB are used.
 
ah right ok im with you. Thing is when i hade my problems with cod my memory "usage" in afterburner allways started at 4 gb with blocky textures and then increased rapidly when textures got better up too 24 gb and then reseted again. i figured it was my virutal memory that couldent keep up with my manual settings (when i set it too auto VM it worked fine and took up most if not all of my v-ram). I was thinking the lod/streaming issues ppl are having might be because similar problems, some ppl have reported blocky textures and slow updating lods and ive hade problems with RTX shadows that is invisible from some angles. Was thinking it might be related too the way this game uses memory/streams data...
 
Update:
The issue from my original post has probably nothing to do with patch 1.23.
After a complete reinstallation, rolling back to 1.22 and then updating back to 1.23, the issue still occurs on the affected save files, and it also occurs when creating a new save file from an already affected save file. (video)
But it doesn't occur on older save files from 1.22, and it probably also doesn't occur on files from before the mods. However, I'm not sure when exactly the issue started, so I'm simply going to avoid all the save files from my previous 1.23 installation.
 
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Update:
The issue from my original post has probably nothing to do with patch 1.23.
After a complete reinstallation, rolling back to 1.22 and then updating back to 1.23, the issue still occurs on the affected save files, and it also occurs when creating a new save file from an already affected save file. (video)
But it doesn't occur on older save files from 1.22, and it probably also doesn't occur on files from before the mods. However, I'm not sure when exactly the issue started, so I'm simply going to avoid all the save files from my previous 1.23 installation.
Thanks for updating this thread again. I'm really interested on how things will unfold and while I do hope that CDPR will fix this issue - 1.3 perhaps? - I still think that already corrupted saves won't be repaired. Since you were also able to verify that 1.23 is not the issue and also verified that the issue does not corrupt already existing saves it seems more likely that it is something that is written to the save files instead of the game itself or the user.gls file.

Anyway, one thing that you could still do - if you are interested - is to use CyberEngine Tweaks and get the BoostDrawDistance value when the corruption occurs. I would be interested if it is at 0 or some higher value. If it is higher than 0, use CET to set it to 0 and see if this solves the issue. If the issue still exists use CET to get the BoostDrawDistance value again. If it is not a 0 but higher the game might have issues overwriting the the value for some reason and this knowledge could help the devs in fixing the bugs immensely.
 
Thanks for updating this thread again. I'm really interested on how things will unfold. [...]
Me too!
Since you were also able to verify that 1.23 is not the issue and also verified that the issue does not corrupt already existing saves it seems more likely that it is something that is written to the save files instead of the game itself or the user.gls file.
Well, I wasn't able to load the affected files in 1.22, so I'm not entirely sure. But I agree, it's probably the save file itself.
Anyway, one thing that you could still do - if you are interested - is to use CyberEngine Tweaks and get the BoostDrawDistance value when the corruption occurs. I would be interested if it is at 0 or some higher value. If it is higher than 0, use CET to set it to 0 and see if this solves the issue. If the issue still exists use CET to get the BoostDrawDistance value again. If it is not a 0 but higher the game might have issues overwriting the the value for some reason and this knowledge could help the devs in fixing the bugs immensely.
I thought about that, too. :) But the tech support suggested to avoid the affected files. They are currently looking into it.
 
I've stumbled over a peculiar bug that might be related to this issue, but I'm not sure. So, since I'm waiting for the patch I'm not really playing the game but rather strolling around and this evening I visited an area in Japantown I've never been to before and this happened:

japan01.jpeg

japan03.jpeg

japan04.jpeg

japan05.jpeg

japan06.jpeg

japan07.jpeg


I've put the map and the stairway that leads up to it on the post as well. Anyway, as you can see objects on the right disappear when facing this wall and the only materialise when the player steps from the wall. I've tried reproducing this on older saves and it is always reproducible for me.

Now I'm wondering if this is the case for everyone and I was one of the first to find this buggy wall, or if it is more related to my system/game. Naturally, I've also reported this bug.
 

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I've stumbled over a peculiar bug that might be related to this issue, but I'm not sure. So, since I'm waiting for the patch I'm not really playing the game but rather strolling around and this evening I visited an area in Japantown I've never been to before and this happened:
I know it won't mean much because I'm on Series X (although all or most of the bugs are present on all platforms), but I just went to look in this area and no, everything is "normal" :(
 
I know it won't mean much because I'm on Series X (although all or most of the bugs are present on all platforms), but I just went to look in this area and no, everything is "normal" :(
That's definitely interesting, thanks.

Have you been hugging the wall and strafing in from left to right similarly to screenshots 2-5?
 
That's definitely interesting, thanks.

Have you been hugging the wall and strafing in from left to right similarly to screenshots 2-5?
Yep, I placed myself where the wall is "normal" on your screenshot (japan06) and I walked forward (and left) to see if the wall became transparent (japan05), but no. (I even tried everywhere around the stairs and the catwalk, to see if it made any difference)
Edit :
I had some doubt so I went back. Screenshots approaching (not super fast from an Xbox) ;)
 
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That's definitely interesting, thanks.

Have you been hugging the wall and strafing in from left to right similarly to screenshots 2-5?
I think it's unrelated. It also happens on my end, on save files that seem to be healthy. There might have been an object next to the wall which has been removed later on. However, I wonder what happens if we create a save file on that specific spot, but I don't dare to try it. :D
 
So yeah, It's present on Series X too :)
It's a very little spot, the bug became even more enormous by moving forward a little... Even in Photo Mode, who normally "force-load" textures.
All "normal"
e4577a76-218e-47e2-9bd0-d941e5247ac6.PNG

Here we are.
c11c446c-776d-4858-b108-650b5acb00a9.PNG cb08d293-dcdb-4b1a-98d3-90e1bc9dab98.PNG
In Photo Mode (even the character disappear...)
7d9c5e53-0231-4d05-b274-c93f7ec6dc7b.PNG ffed648b-3dd3-4c97-97dd-85c148d77af7.PNG
We're not going to lie to each other, between your screenshots and mine, we feel a clear difference in graphic quality... :D
 
I think it's unrelated. It also happens on my end, on save files that seem to be healthy. There might have been an object next to the wall which has been removed later on. However, I wonder what happens if we create a save file on that specific spot, but I don't dare to try it.
I think the issue may have a similar nature, maybe CDPR is better able to resolve the save game issues once the cause of this is narrowed down. But I'm just guessing. Anyway, I have created a save game at that particular spot, but not with the objects gone. What would you like to test? Making a save when the objects are gone and then strolling through the city?

Also, I think you are right that this could be an object they forgot to remove completely...

So yeah, It's present on Series X too :)
It's a very little spot, the bug became even more enormous by moving forward a little... Even in Photo Mode, who normally "force-load" textures.
All "normal"
It's "good" to hear that it's on all platforms because it reduces the probability of a corrupted save on my end and it also makes it more likely of getting fixed soon.
What I've also noticed is that when you activate photo mode the head of V also does not appear...very curious.

We're not going to lie to each other, between your screenshots and mine, we feel a clear difference in graphic quality... :D
Well, they haven' released the next-gen patch yet which will update the graphics for your console a bit. But still, that's one of the reasons I prefer PC over console. But then again, my PC cost significantly more than an XBOX. Thus, as long as one knows the pros and cons of the platform everything's cool :)

Edit: @DC9V and @LeKill3rFou please also submit this error as a bug report. The more information they have the better.
 
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