[BUG][5.10 HF3] GFX - Screen suddenly white (mostly)

[user1679]

https://i.imgur.com/XSLcRx3.png

GPU: Nvidia 1050 Ti (4gb VRAM)
RAM: 24 GB
CPU: i5 7500
Modded: Yes
Save: See below
Current Action: Destroying mines for a mission
Time played: 1hr 40min

As you can see from the afterburner stats, the GPU is not overheated or using all the VRAM. Also, the first column
in the CPU section is the temperature of each core, the second is the usage. You can see that none of the cores
are overheated.

The FPS shown (34) is not typical, it happened when the gfx went white. I was sitting in empty space looking at the map,
when I closed it I was getting about 59 fps.

I use several mods but most of them are behavior mods or mods like VRO, ROR, FOCW. None of these should have any
impact on gfx. I do use STARS which changes the backgrounds and "Fire and Smoke" which changes explosions.


* Save info:

I do not have a save because shortly after the screen went white, it stopped accepting input. I have a save from
about a half hour prior to this issue but the mods I use total 7.58 GB and I could not upload all that to support
loading the save.

[CBJ]

Issues like this are pretty much always caused by hardware or driver problems. If it doesn't happen again, then you can safely assume it was a one-off glitch. If it happens more often, then you will need to reproduce it in an unmodified game, since as you have pointed out yourself, and despite your initial statement, you are using mods which affect graphics.

[user1679]

Issues like this are pretty much always caused by hardware or driver problems. If it doesn't happen again, then you can safely assume it was a one-off glitch. If it happens more often, then you will need to reproduce it in an unmodified game, since as you have pointed out yourself, and despite your initial statement, you are using mods which affect graphics.

For the record, I didn't say I wasn't using any gfx mods. My statement about not having impact on gfx was regarding the VRO, ROR and FOCW mods I listed.

But I suspect it is the Vulkan implementation by Nvidia on what they consider "legacy" cards (eg: 1050 ti) and updated drivers
probably won't help because they're no longer releasing bugfixes for that line of GPU. I've been using drivers that are a few
revisions old because the final release drivers were unstable. I have a couple revisions to move forward though.

I might actually try removing STARS too. It's possible it consumed all the VRAM, crashed the driver and then the numbers
shown in afterburner reflected the VRAM that got dumped when the driver restarted.

[user1679]

Just updating for others having this issue:

I unpacked the STARS mod and ran the DDS files through Photoshop to convert them to 1k (Most of them are 2k or 4k) with
auto-generated mipmaps and it seems to have helped. I left the game running for a couple hours with my pilot just patrolling a
sector and I didn't get the white screen that was posted in my OP.

NOTE:

I also changed the Nvidia control panel AA settings that I had set to "enhance the game settings" to "use the game settings".
Also, if it is a driver issue, it might be random enough that 2 hours isn't enough time for it to trigger.

[user1679]

New update:

I finally got a crash report from the Nvidia driver listed in the Windows logs. This does look like a driver issue.
The interesting thing about this error is msi afterburner always reported my VRAM usage below maximum.

Also, I knew this crash was coming because I was looking at the map and all the ships disappeared. After
a couple minutes of seeing just stations on the map, the game crashed.

Event ID 2, Nvidia OpenGL driver:

The NVIDIA OpenGL driver has not been able to initialize
a connection with the GPU. This might be due to out of memory error,
an exhaustion of system resources or too many graphical applications running.
The application will not render correctly.

[user1679]

It looks like there is something in 5.10 that is incompatible with either the 1050 ti, Windows 7 or both. I've been playing since 3.0 and have had no GFX issues, in fact
I even had better performance with the same system. Since the 5.10 update, I can get about 45 minutes of gameplay before I crash to the desktop and the error
about OpenGL is posted to the event log.

I've tried uninstalling / reinstalling the drivers, I even rolled back 5 revisions of driver and each one eventually crashes with the same error.

[Imperial Good]

Windows 7

Windows 7 is end of life . Maybe an update to Windows 10 might help.

Although X4 still supports Windows 7, it is recommended to use Windows 10 as mentioned by the steam system requirements. This support also does not mean that other companies and products that X4 requires also support Windows 7 fully and correctly given that Windows 7 is end of life. It could well be an Nvidia driver bug that Nvidia does not care about due to the end of life status of the platform.

in fact I even had better performance with the same system

If you own DLCs then each additional DLC that is added does slightly raise the CPU requirements to achieve the same performance. This is due to increases in universe complexity due to additional sectors and factions.

[user1679]

Windows 7

Windows 7 is end of life . Maybe an update to Windows 10 might help.

Although X4 still supports Windows 7, it is recommended to use Windows 10 as mentioned by the steam system requirements. This support also does not mean that other companies and products that X4 requires also support Windows 7 fully and correctly given that Windows 7 is end of life. It could well be an Nvidia driver bug that Nvidia does not care about due to the end of life status of the platform.

in fact I even had better performance with the same system

If you own DLCs then each additional DLC that is added does slightly raise the CPU requirements to achieve the same performance. This is due to increases in universe complexity due to additional sectors and factions.

Yes, I've been exploring wether my system is "compatible" with windows 10 and debating if I should dual boot because I still have some apps that don't run on Windows 10.

[Imperial Good]

Yes, I've been exploring wether my system is "compatible" with windows 10 and debating if I should dual boot because I still have some apps that don't run on Windows 10.

Your hardware certainly should be compatible.

[user1679]

Yes, I've been exploring wether my system is "compatible" with windows 10 and debating if I should dual boot because I still have some apps that don't run on Windows 10.

Your hardware certainly should be compatible.

While I agree it's time to move on from Windows 7, it is looking more and more like a driver issue. I rolled back to 461.40 and not only did I see a 5 to 10 fps increase,
I was able to play for a few hours without this GFX glitch. Unfortunately that driver does not support hevc_nvenc in OBS Studio, it gives a "function not implemented"
error.

Since Nvidia stopped releasing bugfixes for Win 7 on October 2021, I'm testing the final driver released around that time until I can buy myself a copy of Windows 10.
This driver supports hevc_nvenc and seems a bit more stable than the 473.62 driver that was released with a security fix earlier this year.