According to my experiences with nVidia in the past, when they can reproduce a problem it is usually fixed in the next or the next-but-one driver update. I could not easily reproduce the problem here. I tried it on several machines but it happened not very frequently. I hope that nVidia has some worst case configs where they can better reproduce such problems.

I am mostly worried that it will take a couple more months to get this fix. Nvidia's last driver release was back in December. It looks like they are readying another one for release soon(I downloaded the beta but it did not fix it). And considering this thread was started 2 months ago, and they never responded yet, it would seem a long shot that this will be fixed. If this is a problem with the 8800 series, it would most likely affect the new 9800 series as well, which is alot of graphics cards without post-processing. I am looking for a publisher very soon for my project and this is a real bad bug, especially considering I want to showcase the latest effects(bloom, DOF, haze) in my project.

I noticed that it is extremely frequent on this machine, and it definitely must be connected to the 3dgs particle system somehow. As the anomalies on the screen are usually directed at particles, and my game uses alot of them for both gameplay and level effects. The anomalies appear very heavy with the more particle effects going on. I tried setting the NOPARTICLE flag for the post processing views but it did not change anything. What was the test system you had it on? Did it at least contain an 8800 card with the latest updates, and many different types of particle effects? Perhaps it's not an Nvidia problem but something related to the engine and particles(other games must have effects chains.. and they run fine)?

Yes, I'm afraid we can't do much to speed this up. You can argue that this problem only happens with A7 and you're possibly right, but this does not help - we can't fix it here because we are not connected to nVidia and don't have the source of the code where this happens.

The problem is probably unrelated to the 8800, it happens with the driver version 169 and is caused by rendering 3D and 2D together - I can tell this much. That's why you have it with postprocessing, which is 2d rendering, and why it happens more frequently when you have particles active, which are also rendered in 2D. You can try to improve the behavior by switching to 3D particles - for this set the experimental particle_mode variable at 1.

ooh, "experimental"! sounds cool. what does it do? is there any noticeable difference, or is it just how the particles are handled? and how is it different?

julz

I tried setting the flag but it made no difference on the bug. However, I must say, the 3d particles really look great! Although many of my effects don't work, and many are overly bright, I like the extra definition it seems to give. Please continue with this as an option.

As for the bug, would you be able to at least give me an assurance that this will be fixed(Nvidia will get back to you)? In the meantime, I think I will try out some older drivers and see if it's a driver problem, at least if it's a driver issue I will be able to work with an older driver for the time being. Thanks JCL.

I tried installing the old "163.75_forceware" drivers from November of last year and this is still a problem. It's not exclusive to the 169 drivers, or the latest ones. Did Nvidia reply back to this yet?

No results yet, but they asked for an app to better reproduce the problem, and I'm trying to put something together for them. It's sort of difficult as at the moment I can not see the effect here at all - there's something random to it. It only happened on two machines that both had the 169 drivers, so I assumed the driver was the reason.

I will continue until the problem is resolved or at least the reason is definitely determined. When there's something new I'll post it here.

The problem occours more frequently when there are many particles at many different positions in the level. And it also has to do with the number of stages on top of the main view.
The problem occours very badly in this project: http://files.filefront.com/DemoLevel+V05rar/;10064920;/fileinfo.html especaially if I also activate DoF and blurred Stencilshadows. This version is without source but I could give it to you if needed. Or just the postprocessing part (each effect can be applied through one function call) or something like that.
I already got used to the error, but within thisproject it is just too bad if even the movement seems to lag because of this (the fps stays nearly the same...). And it is hard to create screenshots with each effect visible and without any strange obstacles...

Thanks for the new file. Anything that reproducibly causes the effect can help.

Even with the new file I can't reproduce the effect here anymore. I've tried all machines that we have. First I thought that's because the engine I use is slightly different, but I also can't reproduce it with the 7.07 release version. nVidia couldn't reproduce it either.

I know that I've seen the effect, but it seems to be mysteriously disappeared.

Can everyone whose PC is suffering from this effect post his 3D hardware type and driver version here?