Camera juttering in region view

[Muftobration 0]

When I go into region view and move the camera around, it doesn't move smoothly. It's hard to describe, but picture the camera moving a few inches, then instantly skipping back an inch and moving over a few more inches, then instantly skipping back an inch, et cetera.

While in region mode I have pretty high FPS (in the 70s). I wanted to make a video with FRAPS so you could see the problem, but when I start recording the FPS drops to 30 and the camera jutter goes away. It also doesn't do it in my cities, where the FPS stays around 30. That makes me think this is an FPS related problem.

I'm running Vanilla SC4 with no patchs. I had SC4 fully patched and had this problem, so I uninstalled and reinstalled without patching and the problem persists.

My system specs (although I think they are irrelevant since SC4 used to run perfectly on this same machine):

AMD Opteron 165

ASRock 939Dual Sata II

2GB Corsair XMS

ATI Radeon X850 XT PE

Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic

600GB Maxtor HDDs (2x 300GB)

I have the latest DX9 (9.0c June 2007)

I have the latest ATI drivers (Omega catalyst 7.4. I know 7.5 is the newest, but 7.4 is the newest Omega)

I don't remember having this problem before now. I just started playing SC4 again and it was there when I went in. I would really like to get this fixed, so if you have any ideas I may not hae though of then please tell me. Thank you.

P.S. Sorry, forgot to say that I have tried other games (S.T.A.L.K.E.R., StarCraft, and Counter Strike) and I have no graphical issues with any of those.

EDIT: When I went back into the game after writing this (the game was minimized) I saw a huge cloud wall. I made a video of it and put it on youtube, so I'll link you to that in a bit. The video will also help you see the stutter I'm talking about. Just after 3 seconds you can see the camera stutter like I was talking about. I believe the cloud wall and the stuttering are related graphical issues just because they are both in region mode and it would be pretty coincidental if they were not related.

Here is the video:

[tungston 19]

I don't know about the issue you are having. But I do have to use software rendering in the game options, with the recent ATI drivers. That includes, Radeon X800, X850, and X1900.

[Muftobration 0]

That might explain it. I manually changed it to hardware rendering when I turned up the options, so that could be the thing. I'll go change it back to software and report back with what happens.

EDIT: Changing to software rendering mode did not help. It just decreased my FPS and turned off some stuff like clouds and other effects. The camera jutter was still there.

I figured if I couldn't make a FRAPS video then I could just use my digital camera to film the screen. It came out well. You can clearly see what I'm talking about if you watch it. I'll add a link in just a moment.

EDIT:

[tungston 19]

I am not able to help, I am just not familiar with the issue you are having. Hopefully someone will stop by that can help.

[zzsim 3]

I've had it jitter alittle bit in the region view on occasion, but never anything like what is in your video.  Unfortunatly I think the problem lies in your video card, or namely its drivers.  Many people on this site have reported problems with ATI cards with the latest patches and SC4.  The only solution that has been found is to go back to using an older ATI driver (I don't know which version, but I would search the forums as I remember somebody posting it before).   However this may be a problem unless you can run both the old and the new driver at the same time, since the old driver probaly isn't optimized very well for new games.  If all else fails you might have to just run it in software mode .

[Muftobration 0]

It does it in software mode as well. I've found another application that has the same problem, so you are right about it not being SC4 related. My drivers must be screwed up somehow. I'll go look into a solution. Thanks for the replies guys.

[JakeMD 107]

ive had that happen before, i just reinstalled the game, and it worked ok after....note:you do not have to uninstall your cities, just the game, and then reinstall...

good luck!!!

[Muftobration 0]

Hey guys, I fixed it! I just minimize the game after I go in and set the affinity to only one processor and it works fine.