Subterranean Animism "flicker line" graphics issue

[Socob]

Hello everyone,

I'm having a little graphical issue with Subterranean Animism: Pretty far up the screen, even above the POC, there is a horizontal line of "black flickering" which becomes visible when using shots or, for example, ReimuA's bomb. Not all objects are affected by this, it seems like a background(-ish) layer issue; it looks sort of like tearing, but limited to the same horizontal lime at all times. I've tested it on my PC (AMD Athlon 64 X2, Radeon HD 4650, 2GB RAM) with both Windows Vista and Windows 7, and it seems to be the same issue on both OS. A quick test on another machine (Windows 7) reveals that it seems to be limited to my PC. One thing I've noticed is that it only occurs in fullscreen mode or when I turn off Windows Aero (which also happens in fullscreen, as far as I know). Everything I've tried so far (compatibility mode, graphic/driver settings, different resolutions, VSync Patch (that just caused tearing all over the background) etc.) have had no effect. To make matters even worse, it doesn't appear on recordings/screenshots which leads me to believe that it's some sort of graphics card -> monitor (I'm using a 22" 16:10 (native resolution 1680:1050) LCD, DVI connection) interaction problem like image tearing. The only thing I could do to demonstrate it is probably film my monitor.

It doesn't really hinder gameplay in any way, but since I noticed it it's driving me nuts. I would run the game in window mode, but for some reason it runs somewhat choppy on the highest resolution despite reporting a constant 60FPS. If anyone has an idea as to what the issue is or what I could try, any help would be appreciated.

[Chen]

Try changing things in the custom menu.

[Barrakketh]

Hello everyone,

I'm having a little graphical issue with Subterranean Animism: Pretty far up the screen, even above the POC, there is a horizontal line of "black flickering" which becomes visible when using shots or, for example, ReimuA's bomb. Not all objects are affected by this, it seems like a background(-ish) layer issue; it looks sort of like tearing, but limited to the same horizontal lime at all times. I've tested it on my PC (AMD Athlon 64 X2, Radeon HD 4650, 2GB RAM) with both Windows Vista and Windows 7, and it seems to be the same issue on both OS. A quick test on another machine (Windows 7) reveals that it seems to be limited to my PC. One thing I've noticed is that it only occurs in fullscreen mode or when I turn off Windows Aero (which also happens in fullscreen, as far as I know). Everything I've tried so far (compatibility mode, graphic/driver settings, different resolutions, VSync Patch (that just caused tearing all over the background) etc.) have had no effect. To make matters even worse, it doesn't appear on recordings/screenshots which leads me to believe that it's some sort of graphics card -> monitor (I'm using a 22" 16:10 (native resolution 1680:1050) LCD, DVI connection) interaction problem like image tearing. The only thing I could do to demonstrate it is probably film my monitor.

It doesn't really hinder gameplay in any way, but since I noticed it it's driving me nuts. I would run the game in window mode, but for some reason it runs somewhat choppy on the highest resolution despite reporting a constant 60FPS. If anyone has an idea as to what the issue is or what I could try, any help would be appreciated.

Have you tried forcing V-Sync for the application only (or temporarily on the system as a whole for testing) via the Catalyst Control Center?  Which release of the drivers are you using?

[Socob]

Try changing things in the custom menu.

By that, do you mean custom.exe? I can't really think of anything to change there since almost all of it are input-related settings.

Have you tried forcing V-Sync for the application only (or temporarily on the system as a whole for testing) via the Catalyst Control Center?  Which release of the drivers are you using?

I'm using the official Catalyst 10.2 drivers (which are the most recent ones, I think). Unfortunately, neither forcing V-Sync nor completely disabling it seem to affect anything.

[Barrakketh]

Could you borrow another DVI cable and monitor for testing?  The cable just to rule that out (sometimes those problems can be subtle and rarely rear their head), and a monitor just to see if it still happens with your existing video card and cable.

Keep in mind that when you run full-screen on an LCD your monitor will scale the image up to it's native resolution so it could, in theory, be that something in SA trips up the scaler.

Does the VSync patch cause tearing in windowed mode, too?  I hadn't used it yet with SA, but I didn't have a problem with UFO.

[Aisha]

Is it possible that the extra bit of vertical resolution from the 16:10 monitor is the cause? I have a 16:10 monitor and also experience this--a little horizontal tearing at the very top of the playing window when in full screen, but it's hardly noticeable for me.

[Socob]

Is it possible that the extra bit of vertical resolution from the 16:10 monitor is the cause? I have a 16:10 monitor and also experience this--a little horizontal tearing at the very top of the playing window when in full screen, but it's hardly noticeable for me.

Hm, the odd thing is that it also happens in window mode, though (if Windows Aero is disabled, that is). Also, The other PC I tested it on also has a 16:10 monitor (1440:900). This is just weird...

Edit: Okay, an update. I went back to the custom.exe one more time and toyed around with some settings, and lo and behold: after selecting "normal" as the input latency, the problem seems to be gone. I'm using the English patch, by the way, who knows if that might turn out to be important. However, then the game started randomly locking up at the loading screen at the very beginning, so I switched to "stable", and that seems to work out perfectly. Now, my next question would be if this affects reaction times, since this input method seems to gather input from the "previous frame", apparently. During a quick test, there didn't seem to be much of a difference, but maybe the effect is similar to that Reimu's hitbox? Should I put up with a weird line or should I ignore a slight input delay, if it even exists?

Edit2: Hm, now it even locks up with "Stable", but started working again when I enabled "Don't use DirectInput" in the options. I'm beginning to think that my Computer just doesn't like this game in particular, especially since I've never had problems with any other Touhou game (including newer ones like UFO).

Edit3: Ooookay, now that doesn't seem to work reliably, either. Does anyone have an idea as to what the heck is going on, no matter if on the flicker thing or the lockup issue? This is getting more ridiculous by the minute.