Blurry Game all of a sudden

[Learn2Play]

Hello,
About 2 weeks ago the game is showing blurred text on startup. Strangely, switching the game to my second monitor in the in game graphics settings fixes the blurriness. If it loads on screen 1, switching to screen 2 clears up the menu text. If it loads on screen 2, switching to screen 1 clears it up. Seems odd, but whatever it worked. And this is new, this wasn't happening when I first bought the game and for 700 hours it's been fine.

Now, the game is blurring when moving around. The alt images are hard to see when running, the whole screen is difficult to look at as it blurs and makes my eyes feel weird. Switching to the other screen again doesn't fix this.

I have downloaded quite a few mods, so I wonder if one of the mods is causing this? I've disabled all of them and tried starting a vanilla game and it still has the same issue. Would the mod just being present change anything that would cause this?

Attempting to reinstall the game and wipe away old save files if I can figure out how, but I'm not optimistic that this will work.

Any help on this? I'm stoked about the expansion, but won't be buying it if I can't resolve this before release.

[r3nt5ch3r]

Blurriness only when moving? Do you have the right (highest) refresh rates active for both monitors? Maybe try disable VRR, as this will limit your monitors refresh rate to that of the game. Also Monitors usually have some kind of "overdrive" setting, which helps pixel responsiveness.

Which monitors do you have?
Which refresh rate?
VRR in use?
Which overdrive setting are you using?
Does this happen to other games as well?
To avoid any multi-monitor issues, try using a single monitor first.

[Learn2Play]

Thank you for taking the time to reply

I have two monitors, both Dell S3222HN. One connected by HDMI-HDMI, The other DP-HDMI. I've tried running only one monitor with each type of connection independently and same result.

My graphics card is a Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060.

My Desktop Mode: 1920 x 1080, 60 Hz (75 Hz Now)
Active Signal Mode: " "
Bit Depth 8-Bit
Color Format RGB
Color Space Standard Dynamic Range (SDR).

There's an option to change the refresh rate from 60 Hz to 74.97 Hz, 59.94 Hz or 50 Hz. Following are the results testing each rate:
50 Hz: Same as 74.97 Hz
59.94 Hz: Same as 60 Hz
60 Hz: This is where it has been set. Blurry text upon startup (fixed by switching the game to the other monitor via settings). Blurry when in motion (Main issue).
74.97 Hz: Game is crisper. Same issue with text on startup. Fixes the blurred motion sickness but replaced by an issue of jitteriness. Like the game pauses then starts every millisecond and it's noticeable. Definitely not playable like this.

I'm not seeing an option for VRR. A google search revealed this is only available to those monitors with 144 Hz+?

My monitors have 3 overdrive settings: Normal, Fast and Extreme. Changing these settings had no effect. Default has been Normal.

Satisfactory, Dyson Sphere Program, Civ VI, all working properly without issues. Actually, after finding the 75 Hz option, I've set this as my default and every other game besides Factorio seems to be performing better - visually.

I'd suspect hardware issues if it wasn't a sudden onset. 9 Months of playing this game and this only began in the past month.

I think I covered all your questions. I was researching last night and came across Lossless Scaling that may be a solution. I'm not techy enough to understand if this will work or not for Factorio, and am fearful I'd end up breaking something trying to use it. If it will work, I wouldn't mind putting out the $7 to be able to smoke my Cracktorio again.

Thanks again,
J

[r3nt5ch3r]

I'm not seeing an option for VRR. A google search revealed this is only available to those monitors with 144 Hz+?

Your model has AMD FreeSync. It MIGHT be that Nvidia G-Sync is compatible, but you might try also switching it off/on in your Nvidia Control Panel.

grafik.png (68.64 KiB) Viewed 185 times

My monitors have 3 overdrive settings: Normal, Fast and Extreme. Changing these settings had no effect. Default has been Normal.

From my experience the middle setting is most often the sweet spot. I would stick to "fast" here.

grafik.png (70.55 KiB) Viewed 185 times

I was researching last night and came across Lossless Scaling that may be a solution. I'm not techy enough to understand if this will work or not for Factorio, and am fearful I'd end up breaking something trying to use it.

You don't need any resolution scaling or frame generation for Factorio since it's not hardware-intensive. Always run it in your native screen resolution without any scaling (I hope you are doing so - and that there is no scaling active on any monitor).

Can you somehow catch the blurriness on a photo and/or screenshot for both cases (static image on startup / moved image)?

[Learn2Play]

Good news to report. I reinstalled the most recent graphics driver and the text is no longer blurry on startup, and the game is far less blurry whilst moving around.

The timing of the driver lines up to when the problem started, so perhaps it was a bad install of the driver? Is that a thing?

Anway, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to respond. I learned a lot researching into the ideas you presented. Hopefully I can pay it forward one day.

Video of motion issue:

Factorio.mp4

(47.78 MiB) Downloaded 12 times

Best,
J