Texture Flashing is driving me nuts

It seems that my textures will not settle down.

They keep flashing back and fort, usually to something around me or, worse, something in me. It's quite disconcerting to see female AVs wearing my beard.

I've tried flushing the cache, and not flushing the cache. Various cache sizes, and other settings. Anybody have any ideas?

Running on an iMac G5 1.8Ghz, 1GB Ram.

...yep!..

...the same thing drove me insane for as long as i've been on SL, and the only remedy i worked out on my own was to completely power down my computer and restart, forcing the video card to reset itself...that, of course, was totally inconvenient and oftentimes the randomly-cycling texture glitch would kick in within minutes, so i frequently found myself just gritting my teeth and bearing through it...

...just last week, though, someone on the forums made an offhand comment which, through experimentation, is nearly a miracle cure...it doesn't make the problem disappear permanently, the bug's still there, but it manages to reset the videocard from within the game so everything's better until the cycling textures eventually creep up on me again: switch from fullscreen to windowed mode, or vice-versa...

...i prefer to run SL fullscreen, it generally seems a bit more stable to me that way, so i usually do a quick run-in-window/apply/fullscreen/ok to pop my flashing textures back into order...my only caveat is that occasionally when switching from windowed mode back to fullscreen i experience a crash, so i usually wait until i'm certain that the flashing textures are persistently severe before resorting to the fix - since 1.7, i've noticed that the milder flashing texture problems occasionally go away on their own, particularly when moving to a new environment and giving everything time to load...

...try teleporting to a new sim, for milder cases...

Thank you Myrrh!

I'll give your ideas a try.

What I find infuriating about the texture flashing is that it will seem to settle for a while, then return with a vengeance.

Myrrh Massiel seems to run the exact same system I do, dual 2 Ghz mac, GeForce 5200 63mb card. Texture flashing is so frustrating that I simple cannot build past the object stage. I am sitting with a yard full of plywood buildings, or depending on SL's mood, the plywood changes to whatever texture it wants.

I have tried the window switching idea, and it works for a short while. I get textures flashing in less than two minutes on a minor scale, and within 10 back to all sorts of crud jumping abouts.

Are the Lindens recognizing this issue?

Same here, I sold all my land and downgraded my account a few weeks ago because I haven't really been able to enjoy SL anymore for months now due to this texture problem (not to mention SL being extremely slow, unreliable and crashing randomly). I just use SL to chat with my friends in game currently (even when looking at the floor on an untextured piece of land and window set to 320x240, SL drains my CPUs as if I was computing the question to the answer to life, the universe and everything).

I am getting myself one of those high end graphics cards next week and hope that will fix the issue (5200 Ultra on Dual 2GHz G5 at the moment).

I can only hope that Lindens will some day start to build a working SL client that's up to par with the windos version (yeah I'm optimistic and I can't believe I just said up to par with Windos ... ).

Through Trial and Error, asking around, and extensive testing of multiple graphics cards I have found these results...

...Its the Dual 2 Ghz machine.

With the same configuration on the 1.8 dual, it doesn't happen. My ibook it doesn't happen.

But my dual 2 machine with several different low end graphics cards it seems to happen. Now that's just odd.

So I change resolution, switch full screen to window. Empty cache.

What a pain.

Hello, all. I'm the one that discovered that switching from full screen to windowed mode (and back when it happens again) is a temporary fix for this stupid flashing problem. I checked this forum hoping that someone had found an answer, and read What graphics card do you have in the Dual machine? I don't have a dual, but my graphics card is a GeForce FX 5200. Maybe we have the card in common? Let me know!

Okay, so I'm not going crazy, as this same problem has had me contemplating quitting SL until I get a new machine. I have a 20" iMac G5 with the GeForce 5200 FX and the flashing textures are making SL pretty much unplayable. I was asking in the main Technical Issues forum and someone thought it was because my neighbor had a 16MB (!) texture on his walls, and the flashing usually started with the wall before spreading to my head, the ground, etc. Today I was on and the wall is gone, but the flashing was still happening after a few minutes. I will try the fullscreen toggle trick the next time it happens, but does anyone (Lindens?) have an idea if there is some way to resolve this? I have done all manner of very demanding things with my video card with no problems, so the "your card is overheating" argument I've heard doesn't seem right.

GeForce FX 5200
and my card is not over heating.

But a buddy of mine has the GeForce FX 5200 on a 1.8 dual machine and has not experienced these problems.

argh

It seems to me that we can narrow this flashing problem down definitely to Macs. Then, it seems that, since it's not on ALL Macs, it has to be with something those of us with this problem have in common. So, let's narrow this down a bit further.

Those of you with the flashing problem, please post the basic info you have in your machine by going to the Apple menu and looking at "About this Mac." Then, if those of us WITH the problem have the same setup, we'll narrow it down a bit more to see what those who don't have the problem but still have the same setup are doing differently.

So, my basic set up is the GeForce FX 5200, Version 10.4.3, 1.8 GHz PowerPC G5, 1.25 GB DDR SDRAM.

Next?

My specs seem to be identical to Sophia's: 1.8GHz G5 (20" iMac), 1.25GB DDR SDRAM, GeForce FX 5200 graphics card, OS 10.4.3

GeForce FX 5200, Version 10.4.3, Dual 2.0 GHz PowerPC G5, 2.5 GB DDR SDRAM.

That's three of us (or more?) so far with the GeForce FX 5200 SINGLE processor machines. Anyone else?

If this is the case, I'm not sure what we can do. As far as I know, there's no way to update the graphics card in these G5 iMacs. Anyone familiar with this? This is what a guy at a local Mac store told me, but he's been known to be wrong. A lot.

I just wanted to say that I like your approach to solving this problem. Good luck to all of you!

Any chance this started happening with 1.8 and ripply water checked ?
If so try unchecking and relogging.
after rezhell is over recheck for le ripple.

Hey, guys, I just found this thread:

/164/2b/77916/1.html

I haven't tried it yet, but if it works, I'll let you know.

Oops, sorry. I just noticed that's for ATI cards. Still, maybe it'll help those folks.

This problem was definitely around before the ripple water thing was available, and I never turned it on after that software update.

It's true, you can't really upgrade the video card in the G5 iMac. Are those of you with the 5200 video card having any other issues with your iMacs? There appears to have been some serious manufacturing defects with that model, which had me getting the logic board replaced twice, and after the third failure they replaced the iMac with a newer model that has a different video card and has no problems in SL. When I opened up the back of the iMac there were *bulging* capacitors all over the board. I don't know if that was the cause of the video problems, but I do wonder.

What do you mean by "bulging"?

I have a hard time believe a video card can't be replaced (even though I was the one that said that because I had heard that from a Mac store guy). Why can't someone open it up and put a new one in?

I think that's going to be the answer, tho. I don't really care about the warranty if that's all it is. Maybe I'll check into this.


Peace, Sophia

Folks,
I am having the exact same issue with the same hardware and behavior as everyone else. Just talked to Lee at SL on tech support 800 line. He said he would pass it on to their QC folks and suggested I submit an email tech support request as well, I think we should ALL submit an official support request by email to raise this issue up the queue Let's all hope they can put some attention to this and that this *is* fixable by a change in the SL client.

I am so hooked on SL at this point that I would be happy to upgrade my video card, but I am not going to do that until we have confirmation that there is no other possible fix.

- OSX 10.4.2, G5 dual 2GHz, GeForce 5200
- 2GB of RAM
- textures on objects and avatars randomly cycle after 5 to 10 minutes of being logged on
- restarting the client, or switching to full screen and back to window usually clear it up for a while
- this has been happening since before ripple water feature was added, but in anycase that feature is disabled

The attached screenshot (good_001.bmp) is what the mural is supposed to look like) and (not_good_0003.bmp) is what it looks like as it cycles though other textures.

Thanks! I'll be watching this thread for more possible solutions...

Jason (Tinisi Lightworker)

I thought it was just me this was happening to. It's been driving me nuts too and has been getting progressively worse the longer I stay online.
Im running a G5 Imac and yes a GeForce FX 5200.
But, do have friends on SL with exactly same set up who never experience this at all.

The texture flashing seemed to get worse after buying land and only seemed to happen when I was there but in the last couple days seemed to spread to other sims/ or stores that I visited.
I contacted Live help but have held off contacting Sl support until this latest update.
Logged in today ( after update) had a wonderful hour with No flashing anything. Logged of for a while and then back in.. flashing occuring but less than before. At the moment a couple windows on the house seems to be it. just waiting to see if it gets progressively worse

I'd like to know if you who have the same problem, experience this on land that you own, or all over SL areas that you go to. Maybe it's connected to the AV's. Is it happening in any stores that you go to in particular.
Is it small things such as trees, clothes, hair and/or larger areas such as whole regions/grass areas, house/castle walls. I have all of these things happening. I took a load of snapshots to show what I could see happening.
It make the game unbearable after a while having to constantly relog in, or tp to another area just to give the eyes a break. PLUS I would really like to see the land that I own!

Slimmie

Slim and All,
Hey. So, I submitted an official tech support request, and the Lindens I have dealt with have all been very cook about it. However, I suspected that a fix would not be forthcoming anytime soon, since aparently our video card is near the low end of spec.

I am so hooked on SL (I just bought land as well) that I thought I'd throw some money at it. I will let the folks at SL support know this too, but I changed exactly one thing, bought a new Radeon 9800 Pro for about $240 and the problem is gone. Of course that doesn't mean that there is no way that a client upgrade will fix the issue, but it certainly pins it for me that there is nothing spooky going on, just a specific video card that flakes in a very impressive way

Tinisi Lightworker

Dual 2gig with ATI X800 ( interesting note is that flashing did not happen ever on same machine with 9600 XT... )

My texture flashing stopped entirely after I downclocked my video card 10% using ATIcellerator II. It hasn't noticably impacted fps, but the card definately runs cooler, the cpu fans hardly ever come on now.

I mean to upclock again one of these days to see if it starts again and validate my assumption that the downclocking was what fixed it.

Something you might want to try. If it works for everyone that would be strong evidence that texture flashing is mostly caused by slightly subpar hardware.

OK, I've got a 1.8Ghz G5 with the GeForce 5200 card and the flashing texture thing is awful. When it gets bad the whole system crashes with a kernal panic. I had discovered the switching from windowed to full screen and that helps, but the flashing starts up again not too long after and I can only switch back to windowed and then to full twice when I try and switch back to windowed the program crashes.

I'm beginning to thing that there are defects in some GeForce 5200 cards that is causing the problem. I've got a G4 @ 1Ghz and have no problems. I'm figuring a switch in graphics cards will fix the problem most likely.