Graphics Issue - Transparent Flickering...

[ShultzCity]

Hi all,

Haven't been active much lately. RL been getting in the way of many of my leisurely activities...

So. I received a new computer about 3 weeks ago, and have just gotten around to installing SC4. Unfortunately, the installation doesn't work anymore (damaged disk), so I just copy over all the program files, plugins, etc. Seems to work fine. When I load SC4 and open a city however, the strange graphical glitches begin - Automata starts flickering between normal opacity and almost totally transparent.  When building roads, rail, ploppable buildings, etc. the same flickering occurs while the building, road, etc. is selected. This has made the game almost unplayable.

After some searching on ST and SC4D, I have read about people with similar problems - it seems to come down to a driver issue on the newer lines of graphics cards, running DX11. I have checked and double checked my drivers, and they are all up to date. Install /reinstall SC4, run in compatibility mode, software rendering. I've tried it all, but none of it seems to work.

Dell Studio XPS 1645
Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit
Intel Core i7 Q740 - 1.73GHz
8gb DDR3 RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5730


Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers,
Jacob 

[Neal_911]

I'm having the same problem as you described, ShultzCity. However I only just started experiencing it randomly when I loaded my City. I thought it might be an issue with some recent plugins I installed so I removed them and ran the game again to find the problem still exsists! 

Its bizarre because I've been playing this same city for a few weeks for a little bit every day and its been completely fine up to this point.

I've been playing around with the graphics settings and trying going into different 'data views' in a hope it might fix the problem but nothing I've tried seems to work.

Its a shame coz it really does effectively ruin the game experience having buildings and lights at night flicker on and off constantly.

I hope someone out there can find a solution before I give up and hit that obliterate button... 

[WC_EEND]

hmm, I know that most computers that came with DX10/11 preloaded still need DX9c to run older games properly.
My guess would be that that's what's causing your problem ShultzCity.


Xander

[sumwonyuno]

I'm not in the same situation, but I have had the same issues.  I have damaged disks, and I chose to get the Steam version of SimCity.  I run SimCity (through Steam) on Linux via Wine.  Whenever I run the game in DirectX mode, automata and props are not rendered correctly.  You may want to try see if running it in OpenGL makes a difference.  Add -opengl to the target of a SimCity shortcut.  Right-click the shortcut, properties, target: "C:\...SimCity 4.exe" -opengl

Hope it all goes well.

[Neal_911]

I just did some tweaking with the graphics settings on my game and managed to solve the problem. I just switched render from Hardware to Software and reduced the resolution.

When I re-loaded the game everything seemed to be fine now. I tested the Hardware option again by restarting the game in that mode and the transparent flickering came back.

I have now left the renderer on Software and increased the resolution to what it was before and all seems to be good.

I don't know how the problem started but I'm glad I managed to solve it and so happy that I didn't hit that obliterate button!!  

I'm running Vista 32 Bit version, you might also want to try different combinations in the graphics settings if it doesn't work for you.

[ShultzCity]

I might just add that after installing a new DirectX driver, things seem to be running fine. Perhaps the DX11 driver version I was running previously was simply not happy with SC4. Either way, seems to be fixed now! Also, thanks for that tip on the -opengl sumwonyuno - I will have to remember that in future for other programs that I want to force to use OpenGL.