[0.17.34] Blurry image when walking, stutter, odd frametimes

[Xeanoa]

Hello everyone,

I'm having graphical issues with the game. I'll try to sum up some of the things I noticed, and hopefully someone can make a picture of it.
- Blurry image when moving around
- Something I percieve as Microstutter
- Issue persists through Windowed and Fullscreen modes, setting the Monitor to 60, 90, 120, 144Hz, enabling and disabling Vsync, low and high graphics settings
- Is worse when forcing openGl instead of D3D
- Is slightly improved when setting a Freesync range of 35-90, which can apparently buffer some of the frame time variance, but introduces heavy stuttering when setting a Freesync range of 56-144, which I assume comes from dropping below 56 FPS multiple times a second

I noticed that the game thread frequently sleeps for 17+ms. Reported frame times often exceed 18ms, with the occasional jumps above 30.
I can't find a root cause. The map is freshly generated in 17.34, CPU and GPU are barely loaded. Task manager report 2.6-2.9% CPU usage, and the GPU is running at idle clocks of 21Mhz.

If there's any information missing, please let me know. Thanks!

System specs:
i7-5820K
Radeon VII
16 GiB system memory
Windows 10, Version 1803

[Xeanoa]

Added log files

[guggens@gmail.com]

Same Problems here, just my setup to help find the issue:
Intel Core i7-8550U
Windows 10
AMD Radeon RX 570 with latest drivers

[Rseding91]

Try disabling freesync/gsync/anything like that. I've only ever heard them causing problems when used with Factorio. Even though we don't do anything specific for them - all we do is tell the GPU driver "please use vsync" if you have the option enabled in graphics settings.

[Xeanoa]

Try disabling freesync/gsync/anything like that. I've only ever heard them causing problems when used with Factorio. Even though we don't do anything specific for them - all we do is tell the GPU driver "please use vsync" if you have the option enabled in graphics settings.

To expand on what I've written above:
I've tested all combinations of Vsync and Freesync on/off.
With Freesync enabled, Vsync only activates outside of Freesync range.
Freesync off, Vsync off, 60Hz refresh rate: moderate blur, moderate amounts of heavy stuttering
Freesync off, Vsync on, 60Hz refresh rate: heavy blur, light stuttering, noticeable input delay
Freesync on, 56-144Hz range, Vsync off, 144Hz refresh rate: moderate blur, moderate-heavy amounts of heavy stuttering
Freesync on, 56-144Hz range, Vsync on, 144Hz refresh rate: heavy blur, heavy amounts of light-heavy stuttering. This almost makes me nauseatic.
Freesync on, 35-90Hz range, Vsync off, 90Hz refresh rate: light-moderate blur, very light-moderate stuttering
Freesync on, 35-90Hz range, Vsync on, 90Hz refresh rate: moderate-heavy blur, moderate stuttering, noticeable input delay


From these tests I draw the following assumptions:
1) Vsync makes everything worse, under all circumstances. I never noticed any tearing Factorio ever, so it's not needed in its intended function. The reason for this is that Factorio always runs in a window (Framed or Borderless Window), and the Windows DWM with its built-in Vsync is always active.
Therefore I highly suggest disabling the Vsync setting on all Windows builds when running on Win 8 or newer for all Windowed modes.

2) When running the high Freesync range, the game seems to drop out of Freesync range constantly, even with LFC active. This introduces the mentioned heavy stuttering. The ingame UPS/FPS counter shows an almost stable 60.0/60.0 with an occasional drop to 59.x. I don't have an idea yet, why.

3) When running the low Freesync range, the display seems to be able to soak up most of the variance. This improves things notably. What I could see is, that when walking, the camera position seems to 'vibrate', what would explain the blur. Multiple hints for this include: Features that parallel to the movement direction do not blur, while everything else does. Screen captures are always sharp.
This suggests, that player/camera movement don't follow steady motion. This is most likely cause by very large frame time variances.

This happens on my computer (Radeon VII), my wife's (Radeon VII), and user "guggens@gmail.com" reported the same issue with his RX 570.
This leads me to my final assumption: the new renderer has some issue or the other with AMD cards/the AMD video driver, on Windows 10, that causes constant, 'extreme' frame time spikes.

Can this be looked into?
Also, can a mod please move this over to bug reports? Thank you!

[guggens@gmail.com]

For me, the stuttering appears only when moving around, so some new tiles are loaded. Maybe it has something to do with that.
Additionally, occasionally a completely invalid frame is shown for some milliseconds. This behaviour is very strange and appears as short flashes, which is very irritating. hope you can figure out the problem. can provide logs or so if helpful.