[2.1.14] Seam in space background

[Woggle]

There is a visual glitch on space backgrounds that appears to be on some sort of seam both vertical and horizontal, and now that I've seen it I can't unsee it.

The vertical glitch is always at the platform centerline, and the horizontal glitch progresses down the screen as the background moves. The glitch changes with movement both of the camera and the space platform, flickering between what appears to be 100% light and 100% dark space clouds.

It's been most noticeable at Nauvis and Vulcanus, but appears everywhere I've seen while creating this report if I look hard enough while scrolling the view around.

Attached a recording and a trimmed down GIF for demonstration, as well as a save with platforms all over. The save has mods but the glitch still reproduces for me after disabling all except the Space Age core mods.

These are the current graphics settings if relevant:

08-15-2026, 22-31-25.png (149.97 KiB) Viewed 1053 times

[Rseding91]

I tried to reproduce the issue however it works perfectly for me every time I load the game. Does it reproduce every time you start the save file?

[Woggle]

I tried to reproduce the issue however it works perfectly for me every time I load the game. Does it reproduce every time you start the save file?

Yes, every time I load any save, including this brand new game with just the expansion mods.

Would a DxDiag report, remote debugging, or anything else assist in duplicating it?

08-19-2026, 09-04-06.png (388.16 KiB) Viewed 890 times

[Rseding91]

I'm not sure what's next with this. It works perfectly when I try to reproduce it and I don't see any reason it should render different on your system vs mine given the config file shows we're using the same settings.

[nighthawk2400]

OP, are you using an AMD gpu? I also have this issue, but only since I switched from Nvidia to AMD (9070 XT).

[Fletch]

It looks to me like screen tearing related to monitor refresh rates, but that sort of problem wouldn't be captured in a recorded video (I would think?). Is there a 3rd party graphics overlay involved messing with the frame pipelines? Steam overlay, Discord overlay, etc...

Shot in the dark idea: can try disabling VSync in Factorio's graphics settings (and/or the "use flip presentation model" under Advanced in the same panel) and see if it clears up the problem on your specific hardware / monitor / GPU configuration.

[Tertius]

Screen tearing doesn't appear as vertical lines. Instead it appears always as one horizontal ragged sloped line, because unsynchronized the upper half of the screen is the previous frame and the lower half is the next frame and the seam is the transition of both. Transmission is from top to bottom, not horizontally.

If it was screen tearing, it would not be possible to take a screenshot of it, because it is created as artifact in the monitor, not in the GPU.

[Woggle]

OP, are you using an AMD gpu? I also have this issue, but only since I switched from Nvidia to AMD (9070 XT).

Yes this is using a 5700xt on Win 10 (with extended support), and if Rseding is on nvidia that suggests it's probably a bug or misconfiguration somewhere in the chain of game->SDL->driver->AMD hardware.

[nighthawk2400]

I tried a bunch of versions, and I'm not able to reproduce the issue when using the standalone zip downloaded from the website. But I can reproduce on the steam version at least as far back as 2.0.77:

2.0.7 - working
2.0.55 - working
2.0.77 - working
2.1.7 - working
2.1.14 - working

2.0.77 (steam) - broken
2.1.7 (steam) - broken
2.1.14 (steam) - broken

I don't have steam overlay enabled.
I tried copying the config.ini to the standalone, and was still not able to reproduce on the standalone.
I tried uninstalling and re-installing on Steam, and was still able to reproduce.
I tried "Reset Shader Cache" in AMD software, and was still able to reproduce.

[Woggle]

I tried a bunch of versions, and I'm not able to reproduce the issue when using the standalone zip downloaded from the website. But I can reproduce on the steam version at least as far back as 2.0.77:

2.0.7 - working
2.0.55 - working
2.0.77 - working
2.1.7 - working
2.1.14 - working

2.0.77 (steam) - broken
2.1.7 (steam) - broken
2.1.14 (steam) - broken

I don't have steam overlay enabled.
I tried copying the config.ini to the standalone, and was still not able to reproduce on the standalone.
I tried uninstalling and re-installing on Steam, and was still able to reproduce.
I tried "Reset Shader Cache" in AMD software, and was still able to reproduce.

That's very weird, for me steam 2.0.77 does *not* have the issue, and 2.1.14 standalone is broken. I had started playing again on steam 2.0.77ish and copied just the save and blueprints over to new standalone 2.1 in case experimental happened to bite.

So I went from steam->standalone, is it correct that you first installed/ran standalone then steam? If so, that might point towards some global config/saved state that is *mostly* based on .exe name but doesn't deal properly with multiple instances installed simultaneously in different paths.

[posila]

It seems like the same or similar issue I fixed in 2.0.8, which was caused by forced anisotropic texture filtering through driver/driver control panel settings. I don't remember how I fixed it and I don't know if this is regression, or some other setting in GPU software causes it, or maybe Steam somehow causes it, since it doesn't happen on standalone, or something else...

viewtopic.php?t=116707

[nighthawk2400]

Can confirm: Setting Anisotropic Filtering from Enabled to Disabled in the AMD software fixes it in Steam for me. I had it enabled globally, so it's no clear why it only affected the Steam version.

It's weird that there's no "Use application setting" for that setting, only enable and disable. Also weird that the AMD tooltip says "Only applies to DX9 applications.". Pretty sure Factorio isn't DX9...

[Woggle]

Yes, turning off driver 16x anisotropic fixed the lines in the background.

Guessing there are some tweaks applied when the exe is first detected by the driver but they're associated with the specific install path, and thus it breaks if you run the same executable from a different directory later.