[0.17.58] Screen flickers with other window in foreground

[Mimos]

Recently I realized that Factorio starts to flicker as soon as another window or even a small Discord notification is in the foreground. The flickering is just a completely black window intead of what factorio should usually show. The frequency ist about 5-10Hz. In the start screen it is only showing black for a short time and the correct content most of the time, but when the map generator window is open (no matter if the preview is enabled) it is pretty bad, the window is black most of the time with just a few frames showing the correct content. When the game is running it is also pretty bad, showing the correct content just for small fraction of the frames. Sometimes it doesn't start immidiately but it needs a few seconds or switching between Factorio and the foreground window a few times.

I went back a few versions as it is a new issue and 0.17.46 definitely has the issue, .45 seems to be ok.

Forcing open gl fixes the issue for me, so I was hesitant to report it but as it is a newly introduced problem I thougth it might still be interesting for you.

Regards
Mimos

factorio-current.log

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[posila]

Thanks for taking the time to write up the report.

Windows 10 version 1607 is not supported anymore (I am surprised you don't have other, more game breaking issues), and I would be interested to know if the issue persists on more up-to-date version of Windows 10. So if you ever let Windows 10 to update itself, please try the game again without force-opengl option.

(Thanks also for pointing out the issue first appeared in 0.17.46, that probably when we added "Use flip presentation model" graphics option, so disabling it would probably fix the issue for you too)

[Mimos]

I am using Server 2016 which is still supported with the newest version being 1607, as it happens I am downloading a patch called 2019-07 ... right now. (I use Win Server as I use deduplication, Hyper-V and also because I like not having to install upgrades which broke things for me twice already on another computer). Probably it is not used widely enough for you (or other game developers) to really support it, though .


Disabling "Use flip presentation model" fixes the flickering, thanks for the tip! Now I just have to find out what is better for me, dx+blit or opengl. If it is even significant.

[posila]

On Windows, DX should be more efficient regardless of presentation model used.