Flickering Buildings

[Baselerd 1]

Been having a small issue with the game. A minor annoyance, but a problem nonetheless. In each of my cities (and even the tutorial cities) there are a few (one or two) buildings in each city that appear semi-transparent and flicker continuously. I don't have quite enough data points yet, but it seems to be restricted to a few types of high-rise buildings - I've never noticed the problem with smaller buildings. Sometimes I can rotate the camera to a spot where it seems to go away temporarily. If I destroy the building, the next one to go up in the spot has the same issue.

 

 I am currently running an NVIDIA GTX570 with all settings max - I have tried adjusting the in-game graphics settings with no luck. I have also made sure my drivers are up to date. Anyone else run into this issue?

[mayorgeek 18]

I have this problem as well. I read something about switching from 59 hz refresh to 60 or vice versa, but haven't had a chance to try it yet.

[Catchin22 299]

Yes just change your refresh rate, or resolution, or framerate cap. It doesn't really matter what you change it to, just change it to something different.

[Bergrar 9]

i solved the problem with a little trick, i went to window mode and back, and the flickering disappeared, i think is related to our Nvidia cards.

[TuPhat 27]

I have this problem too.   For the first couple days, I had the graphic settings set to high and 30 fps and never seen any problems.   Last night I went through the settings again and maxed out the couple options to the 'ultra' (cant remember which ones had settings better than high) and 60 fps and noticed flickering buildings.   This only occured on a well estiblished city with tall buildings, on another area with a young city without tall buildings I didn't have any issues.   I also have nVidia cards in my system.

[Catchin22 299]

I don't understand why people complain about this that much, I posted the fix, it's incredibly easy and takes 10 seconds to fix.

[flyer2359 92]

I noticed flickering as well and also have a Nvidia card.

[perafilozof 143]

Same here, but I only get the lights to turn off and on randomly on buildings and only for short periods of time. While the other cities that are visible in the region, they flicked like, entire buildings go off and on. Half the city of my neighbors flicker off and on.

[Dostoyevsky77 0]

I don't understand why people complain about this that much, I posted the fix, it's incredibly easy and takes 10 seconds to fix.

 

Hello, Catchin22. Some people might have the same problem that requires a different "solution".  That said, changing the frame rate cap (60 to 30) worked for me.  But understand, I don't consider this a solution.  We are forcing our games to run crippled or less than optimum.  Not because we have chosen to, but because we have to.

[curres 0]

Yes just change your refresh rate, or resolution, or framerate cap. It doesn't really matter what you change it to, just change it to something different.

 I have the same issue, I changed some settings (can't recall which at the moment) and no joy.

[Darmok 34]

Have the same recurring problem, my workaround is to close and reopen the game.

It works, but it is indeed annoying.

[Captain 32]

All this advices does not work for me (beta driver, vsync on+framerate cap off, vsync off+framerate cap 30 or 60 fps). Even after restarting the game.

 

My config:

- Windows 7 Ultimate Edition ‎(X64)‎ Service Pack 1

- AMD Phenom II X4 925 2.80 ГГц (SysBoard GA-MA770T-UD3P)

- 4 GB DDR3 667 MHz

- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275 (driver v.314.07) 1920x1200 (59Hz or 60Hz with other config variants)

 

It has happened NOT to all buildings - only some of them!

 

 

But I found the cause of this glitch - blinking depends of the light setting. Check this screenshot:

 

[McFluffy 4]

I had flickering issues as well. It got worse over time. Sometimes it helped changing the tilt, but they usually came back.

The common thing for all (most?) with problems is nVidia cards.

 

Then I did this

 

1  Got the newest beta driver 314.14-beta

Make sure your card is listed as supported

http://www.nvidia.com/object/win8-win7-winvista-64bit-314.14-beta-driver.html

or if you have 32 based windows

http://www.nvidia.com/object/win8-win7-winvista-32bit-314.14-beta-driver.html

 

2 Turned off vSync

 

3 Limited frame rate to 30

 

4 Changed tilting to anything other than what it was (guess that forces some kind of update in the game)

 

Now I do not have flickering. Well it does happen, but its sort of like when my camera is in a position where its unsure whether to show the building or not

 

Hope this works for someone else as well

 

Edit: Noticed that pretty much the same has been posted. My card is a now aging mid range card. GTX 460, I can run the game maxed out. The "correct" settings i believe also depends on your monitor. Have a flickering building in view while changing settings. Change one, and only one at the time and see what helps for you.

[Catchin22 299]

All this advices does not work for me (beta driver, vsync on+framerate cap off, vsync off+framerate cap 30 or 60 fps). Even after restarting the game.

 

My config:

- Windows 7 Ultimate Edition ‎(X64)‎ Service Pack 1

- AMD Phenom II X4 925 2.80 ГГц (SysBoard GA-MA770T-UD3P)

- 4 GB DDR3 667 MHz

- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275 (driver v.314.07) 1920x1200 (59Hz or 60Hz with other config variants)

 

It has happened NOT to all buildings - only some of them!

 

 

But I found the cause of this glitch - blinking depends of the light setting. Check this screenshot:

 

You didn't say, did you change your refresh rate? Under your resolution you will have your resolution in 59hz and 60hz, change to the other, same resolution.

[Captain 32]

I tried everything that is possible, but nothing. 59 Hz and 60 Hz setting have the same effect. I tried to choose 1024x768 with 59 Hz and 60 Hz - and nothing too. Only 2 type (brown) 3D-models of buildings for high density R$ zones are flickering. Sometimes these buildings work as they should , but this is rare and on some time. I think the reason in the not properly configured material or texture compression on these buildings - there are only 2 types missing models for all game content.

[Catchin22 299]

Yeah, I know that building specifically seems to have more issues than others. Have you tried alt tabbing out and in, or changing your refresh rate on your display outside the game in your video settings?

[Captain 32]

I did it, of course. Alt+Enter method too. I've already tried it. And it seems odd that this helps someone. It is obvious that the problem is specific models. 

Here the problem is so many people have described. I'm not the only one

 

http://answers.ea.com/t5/Graphic-Issues/Buildings-blinking-flickering/td-p/636460

[specializedguy 193]

So I was a late purchaser. I have this issue as well. Like the others, it seems to have shown itself after my city became greater in population. I have a Nvidia GeForce GT 610, running Windows 7 (64-bit). I have the refresh rate set to 60 Hz, 30 FPS. 

[SockoJr53 51]

It's been confirmed that it's a problem with NVIDIA cards, you can mess with a few settings as others have suggested, it may work for a few minutes, but always reverts back to the flickering. The only permanent solution must come from Maxis, and they're too busy creating even more problems with Patch 2.0 than actually fixing anything, so I think this fix will be even further off.

Funny how it only happens to high-density, low wealth buildings, that's oddly specific.

I'm on a GeForce GT240 by the way.

[specializedguy 193]

It's been confirmed that it's a problem with NVIDIA cards, you can mess with a few settings as others have suggested, it may work for a few minutes, but always reverts back to the flickering. The only permanent solution must come from Maxis, and they're too busy creating even more problems with Patch 2.0 than actually fixing anything, so I think this fix will be even further off.

Funny how it only happens to high-density, low wealth buildings, that's oddly specific.

I'm on a GeForce GT240 by the way.

 

Where is it confirmed? Do you have a link?

 

I thought the 2.0 updates were helpful.

 

What's oddly specific about that building type?

[SockoJr53 51]

There's some info here, as well as some suggestions, but they haven't worked for me yet:

http://simcityhall.boardhost.com/viewtopic.php?id=556

I meant it was odd, because it is just one specific type of building that flickers, the low wealth-high density towers. No other buildings do this, at least for me or others on the link I posted.

[perafilozof 143]

After the 2.0 patch my cities in the distance no longer flicker. YAY!

[PanthDK 0]

I had an issue when I moused over buildings, they flickered. Had AMD CrossFire enabled, disabling it helped.