[posila] Headache-inducing: New ore on belts flickers/progresses/is out of sync with video

[brevven]

Hello,

Ever since the new ore graphics were released, they've been causing (or surfacing) a graphical glitch in the game on my system. It happens when the ore is on belts. There's a visual "progression" that makes the items look like they are moving faster or in the opposite direction. It actually gives me a headache if I look at the screen for more than a few seconds at a time.

• It's especially prevalent on blue belts, but can also show up on other belts.
• The more saturated a belt, the worse it is.
• It's almost exclusively on vertical belts, not horizontal.
• It almost exclusively shows up at the highest zoom level.
• This does not happen with any other items in the game, I suspect it's because all copies are identical, but I'm not sure.
• This is not a simple vsync issue. I have tried with vsync on and off, as well as g-sync on and off, etc.
• I've tried flipping a variety of other graphics settings including "Use flip presentation model", "High quality animations", "Sprite resolution", etc.

I've attached a video of the effect, see the example banks of belts. I've also attached the save file used for the video (though it shows up in all my saves), as well as the log file.

[Merssedes]

Or i don't understand what's problem, or i don't see it... And it seems not default zoom level, but zoomed out.

[Dominik]

Isn't that what any computer graphics do?

[BlueTemplar]

Ugh, Moiré...

[posila]

I made a change that alleviates the problem in the highest zoom level (or in general zoom levels in between 0.5 and 0.25, bellow that - map editor levels - is just out of practical scope of the engine).

To solve this for 0.17.61, I added one extra mipmap level for icon sprite atlas, but without doubling padding, which may cause color bleeding from neighbouring sprites, but hopefully that won't happen so much that it would create noticible problems (since in this size icons just smudges of color anyway)

However, similar visual artifacts can still happen even on other zoom levels and it's not caused by one thing but many things that add up together. In the past, this was somewhat hidden by slightly larger spacing between items.

[brevven]

Yes, moiré! I could not for the life of me remember that term.

Thanks for adding the fix to 0.17.61. I'll let you know how much it improves for me.

[brevven]

@posila, I tried out 0.17.62 and didn't see much improvement. But I also didn't see your change in the patch notes for either release. Should I keep looking out for it?

Not trying to rush you or anything, just checking.... I realize the issue could just be a peculiarity of my system, just hoping it's not

[posila]

The change is in 0.17.61 and 0.17.62 (unless you are on macOS ... where it exposed some other issues so it was temporarily reveted for 0.17.62)

[BlueTemplar]

No, it's not just you, I have it too :
(EDIT : my bad, in 0.17.59, will get you updated when I update when I get around to redoing my rocket fuel production....)

This effects happens when you have grids with spacing similar to your screen pixels. In this case, probably the spaces between ore ?
Note that you can slightly see the effect on plates too (probably because their "grid" is a higher multiple of the ore "grid" ?)

Not sure why the effect seems to be more pronounced with the new ore graphics,
maybe because the "chunk" sizes are actually more uniform than before ?
(EDIT : my bad, somehow missed that earlier post explaining it...)

[brevven]

Thanks for the update, I appreciate it. Looks like my issue may be here to stay...

BlueTemplar, out of curiosity, whenever I eventually upgrade monitors, would you recommend one with smaller or larger pixels to avoid this effect? Anyways, I hope your issue gets resolved!

By chance, does anyone know of an existing mod that switches back to old ore graphics? If not I can try making one at some point.

[BlueTemplar]

I guess that in theory smaller pixels (and especially space between pixels) is better... but since there are many potential factors involved, you have to actually test this in practice !