Text goes blurry

[Jimmy C]

Since I got a 4k monitor and been playing at beyond 1080p resolutions, I've run into an issue of the text going blurry from time to time. It even happens at 1080 nowadays though I think I hadn't run into it before I got my new monitor.

Restarting my PC seems to reset the text to clear, although it sometimes seems to happen on its own. I do not consider this to be a fully satisfactory workaround.

While white, green and blue text are still mostly visible when the text goes blurry, red is rather badly off.

I took screenshots, but I don't know if it's because of jpeg compression or some other reason, but it doesn't show the same blurriness as while I'm playing. Still, here are the pictures. For comparison, these are when the text is clear. I've looked at them and the difference doesn't seem to show in the pictures.


If anyone knows a better way of dealing with this than restarting, do let me know.


I have to say, the text is barely readable at 1440p when clear, so I would be most grateful to keep this problem away.

[Alan Phipps]

From the 'Common Problems and Resolutions' Sticky:

"Illegible Text at High Resolutions

If text looks as if it is written on a tube with the top and bottom of the characters fading away, then look in your graphics card control panel under gaming 3D settings, and see if 'Morphological Filtering' is set to on. If so, turning it off may improve text legibility."

See if that applies and helps for you. Good luck.

[Jimmy C]

I'm using an Nvidia 980 GTX. I can't seem to find 'Morphological Filtering' in the settings.


Also, in my case, the distortions are on the vertical sides rather than the top and bottom.

[Alan Phipps]

Sorry, I have an AMD card and so I'm not familiar with Nvidia settings. Having said that, it sounds so like the same type of issue, even with a different axis, that I would try playing around with various gaming and display settings in the Nvidia Conrol Panel to see if anything helps. In very general terms, the graphics card settings as 'application-managed' and using the in-game options are often superior to forcing a setting in the control panel.

The other thing I can possibly think of is to maybe try a different font. I'm not sure what links still work though.

[Jimmy C]

I have tried other fonts, they're susceptable to blurring too.

[Alan Phipps]

Sorry, I did an edit as you posted.

[Jimmy C]

Found a more acceptable workaround. When the text goes blurry, restart the game, but turn off antialiasing on the graphics settings on the launcher first. Text will remain sharp even if I restart the game with AA back on.

I would have preferred a more permanent solution, but not needing to restart the whole PC is acceptable.

[Alan Phipps]

Well it is indeed an improved workaround but that rather indicates to me that the AA setting or its implementation-on-command in your graphics driver might be failing or resetting while playing. I can think of two areas to perhaps try for a more lasting improvement:

1. Try again using different in-game AA types and settings.

2. Try forcing the AA type and setting you want in the graphics card control panel rather than using 'application-managed' there and turn the in-game AA to off. (Yes, I know that is the opposite of what I advised earlier!)

Good luck!

[Jimmy C]

It turns out, I was premature in celebrating. The text went blurry again, and disabling the AA didn't work this time. It looks like it may have been a coincidence that it worked last time.

Still, I'll try and see if flipping the AA settings on the card does anything.

Edit: Flipping settings did nothing. Now, I find out restarting doesn't work anymore as well.

[Alan Phipps]

OK, this is starting to sound very much like a graphics driver issue. The behavioural changes at least indicate that you are probably doing something in the area with the problem. Try a clean update or reinstall of your latest suitable driver, and if that does not help perhaps try rolling back to an earlier suitable driver version.

If nothing here helps then please post your current DxDiag to help us to see what is going on in your system.

Oh, and one other guess about why effects and workarounds might appear to be either changing in behaviour or not responding as expected to file changes is that you *might* be using cached versions of files and drivers rather than reloading them each time from the hard drive. Just a thought.

[Jimmy C]

Any way to force it to reload from the HD?

[Alan Phipps]

Clear your virtual store for the game folder and any Nvidia folders and then run the Windows Control Panel 'Free up disk space' tool on your OS and boot drive(s). That should remove any relevant cached stuff (if any), but then the possibility of that being a cause was only a tenuous guess of mine anyway.