Flickering Lake Utuqaq

[geggis]

So far I'm really, really enjoying Penumbra: Overture and haven't had any other problems but I thought I'd let you see what's been happening at Lake Utuqaq on my ATI Radeon X1950 card.

Firstly the frozen lake textures are flickering all over the place and some appear really blurry or stretched. I've stripped all the graphics settings down and it only appears when the shaders get raised from Very Low to Low.

My apologies for the screenshot resolution, I'm widescreen!

Spoiler below!

It's worst when motion blur is on, when I turn it off the textures are a lot more stable but still with some stretching and flickering.

Spoiler below!

What has struck me though after following all the troubleshooting steps to no avail (including new drivers, the hotfix and card tweaks) is that the problem disappears if I bring up the inventory UI or I examine the lake; blurring the image and overlaying it with text. See below:

Spoiler below!

Spoiler below!

I'm not sure if this narrows some things down for you but any pointers would be great as it's quite annoying! If it can't be solved in a hurry then it's not a problem as I can stomach it, but hopefully it may be useful for future reference.

This is also the last engine log, it has a couple of errors which may mean something to some of you!

Spoiler below!

------- THE HPL ENGINE LOG ------------

Creating Engine Modules
--------------------------------------------------------
Creating graphics module
Creating system module
Creating resource module
Creating input module
Creating sound module
Creating physics module
Creating ai module
Creating gui module
Creating haptic module
Creating scene module
--------------------------------------------------------

Initializing Resources Module
--------------------------------------------------------
Creating resource managers
Misc Creation
--------------------------------------------------------

Initializing Graphics Module
--------------------------------------------------------
Init low level graphics
Setting video mode: 1280 x 768 - 32 bpp
Init Glee...OK
Setting up OpenGL
Max texture image units: 16
Max texture coord units: 8
Two sided stencil: 1
Vertex Buffer Object: 1
Anisotropic filtering: 1
Max Anisotropic degree: 16
Multisampling: 1
Vertex Program: 1
Fragment Program: 1
NV Register Combiners: 0
NV Register Combiners Stages: 11
ATI Fragment Shader: 1
Creating graphic systems
Creating Renderer2D
Renderer2D created
Creating Renderer3D
Load Renderer3D gpu programs:
Extrude
Diffuse Vertex
Diffuse Fragment
Fog
Creating fog textures: Solid Additive Alpha
init sky box
Renderer3D created
Creating screen buffers size 1280.000000 : 768.000000
Creating programs
CG ERROR : The compile returned an error.
-----------------------------------
core/programs/PostEffect_Motion_fp.cg(32) : error C5013: profile does not support "for" statements and "for" could not be unrolled.
-----------------------------------
CG: Error loading: 'core/programs/PostEffect_Motion_fp.cg'!
ERROR: Couldn't create program 'PostEffect_Motion_fp.cg'
Dynamic loops in motion blur fp not supported, loading static instead.
RendererPostEffects created
Adding engine materials
--------------------------------------------------------

Initializing Sound Module
--------------------------------------------------------
Initializing OpenAL.
Trying to open hardware device... Success!
Device name: Generic Hardware
Number of mono sources: 32
--------------------------------------------------------

Initializing Game Module
--------------------------------------------------------
Adding engine updates
Initializing script functions
--------------------------------------------------------

User Initialization
--------------------------------------------------------
WARNING: Language entry 'EventKeyInNoPower' in category '01_10_small_shaft' already exists!
Initializing Penumbra: Overture Episode 1
Version $Rev: 1789 $
Date $Date: 2007-11-13 03:43:19 +0100 (ti, 13 nov 2007) $
Trying to load vertex program!
Success!
--------------------------------------------------------

Game Running
--------------------------------------------------------
Loading collada for 'maps/level01_15_icecave.dae' took: 669 ms
ERROR: Couldn't create SoundEntity 'unbreak_impact_snow_med.snt'
WARNING: Couldn't preload sound 'unbreak_impact_snow_med'
WARNING: Texture 'lambert1-fx' was not found!
WARNING: Texture 'lambert1-fx' was not found!
WARNING: Texture 'lambert1-fx' was not found!
WARNING: Texture 'lambert1-fx' was not found!
WARNING: Texture 'lambert1-fx' was not found!
WARNING: Texture 'lambert1-fx' was not found!
WARNING: Texture 'lambert1-fx' was not found!
WARNING: Texture 'lambert1-fx' was not found!
WARNING: Texture 'lambert1-fx' was not found!
WARNING: Texture 'lambert1-fx' was not found!
WARNING: Texture 'lambert1-fx' was not found!
WARNING: Texture 'lambert1-fx' was not found!
WARNING: Texture 'lambert1-fx' was not found!
WARNING: Texture 'lambert1-fx' was not found!
WARNING: Texture 'lambert1-fx' was not found!
WARNING: Texture 'lambert1-fx' was not found!
WARNING: Texture 'lambert1-fx' was not found!
WARNING: Texture 'lambert1-fx' was not found!
WARNING: Texture 'lambert1-fx' was not found!
WARNING: Texture 'lambert1-fx' was not found!
WARNING: Texture 'lambert1-fx' was not found!
WARNING: Texture 'lambert1-fx' was not found!
WARNING: Texture 'lambert1-fx' was not found!
WARNING: Texture 'lambert1-fx' was not found!
WARNING: Texture 'lambert1-fx' was not found!
WARNING: Texture 'lambert1-fx' was not found!
WARNING: Texture 'lambert1-fx' was not found!
WARNING: Texture 'lambert1-fx' was not found!
WARNING: Texture 'lambert1-fx' was not found!
WARNING: Texture 'lambert1-fx' was not found!
WARNING: Texture 'lambert1-fx' was not found!
WARNING: Texture 'lambert1-fx' was not found!
WARNING: Texture 'lambert1-fx' was not found!
WARNING: Texture 'lambert1-fx' was not found!
WARNING: Parent 'group3' couldn't be found! Failed to attach 'artefact01_pointLight1' to 'artefact01'.Attaching directly to mesh.
--------------------------------------------------------

Statistics
--------------------------------------------------------
Medium framerate: 39.691465
--------------------------------------------------------

User Exit
--------------------------------------------------------
Saving to config
Saving keys
Saving to config
Saving keys
Reset maphandler
Exit Player
Exit Button Handler
Exit Map Handler
Exit Game Message Handler
Exit Radio Handler
Exit Inventory
Exit Fade Handler
Exit Save Handler
Exit Trigger Handler
Exit Attack Handler
Exit Notebook
Exit Numerical panel
Exit Intro story
Exit Death menu
Exit Graphics helper
Exit Main menu
Exit Player hands
Exit Music handler
Exit Map Load Text
Exit PreMenu
Exit Credits
Exit Demo end text
Saving config
Exit Effect Handler
Exit Game
--------------------------------------------------------

Exiting Gui Module
--------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------

Exiting Scene Module
--------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------

Exiting Input Module
--------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------

Exiting Sound Module
--------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------

Exiting Graphics Module
--------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------

Exiting Resources Module
--------------------------------------------------------
Done with tilesets
Done with fonts
Done with scripts
Done with particles
Done with sounds
Done with meshes
Done with materials
Done with Gpu programs
Done with images
Destroyed all textures
Done with sound entities
Done with animations
All resources deleted
--------------------------------------------------------

Exiting Physics Module
--------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------

Exiting System Module
--------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------

Deleting game setup provided by user
- Deleting lowlevel stuff.
Physics
Sound
Input
Resources
System
Graphics
Haptic
HPL Exit was successful!
Saving last config

|--Memory Manager Report-------------------------------|
|
| No memory leaks detected. Memory left: 0
|
|------------------------------------------------------|

Deleting ATI shader to 0
Deleting ATI shader to 0
Deleting ATI shader to 0
Deleting ATI shader to 0

Thanks in advance!

[Thomas]

Thanks for the report. The ice has a special shader on it that is not used anywhere else in the game (or other games) so should only be in this map. Will see if I get any time to look into it.

[geggis]

Thanks for the report. The ice has a special shader on it that is not used anywhere else in the game (or other games) so should only be in this map. Will see if I get any time to look into it.

Ahh. It seemed unusual because the rest of the game has been flawless. Thanks ever so much for the response and I'll be sure to let you know if any suggestion resolves the issue.