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SimCity seriesSim City 4 Blinking(28 posts)solved(28 posts)solved
(28 posts)solved
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This is my favourite topic
Posted May 29, 2014
Hello,

I have an odd problem with this game, and before I ask this I have to mention that while I do not own the game on gog, I have actually owned the CD version for years now.

Whenever my graphics are set on hardware mode, the screen blinks and flickers a lot.

Also, I've tried various combinations of other settings, there's no blinking, only lots of lag, and/or the buildings disappear when the camera is moving.

The only reason I'm asking here is because I have searched all over the place for eons with no solution.

Thank You in advance for any help!
This question / problem has been solved by Thievimage
Posted May 29, 2014
I believe you're going to have to run this in Video Software mode.
Posted May 29, 2014
I had the same problem and fixed it rather simply:

- when the game starts, press alt+tab on your keyboard to switch to desktop
-press alt+tab again to go back to the game (or click on SimCity 4 icon on your taskbar)

And that's it.
Posted May 29, 2014
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wanderer_27: I believe you're going to have to run this in Video Software mode.
While that does fix 90% of the issues when it's on that setting, it really begins to lag when my city gets big
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smajnaric: I had the same problem and fixed it rather simply:

- when the game starts, press alt+tab on your keyboard to switch to desktop
-press alt+tab again to go back to the game (or click on SimCity 4 icon on your taskbar)

And that's it.
Funny enough, that fixes the blinking issue, now the only problem is the buildings disappear when the camera is moving.

I can play it on software mode, but it lags and it doesn't look as nice.

But, oh well, if anyone can think of a solution I would love to hear it!
Posted May 29, 2014
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wanderer_27: I believe you're going to have to run this in Video Software mode.
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Starving11: While that does fix 90% of the issues when it's on that setting, it really begins to lag when my city gets big
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smajnaric: I had the same problem and fixed it rather simply:

- when the game starts, press alt+tab on your keyboard to switch to desktop
-press alt+tab again to go back to the game (or click on SimCity 4 icon on your taskbar)

And that's it.
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Starving11: Funny enough, that fixes the blinking issue, now the only problem is the buildings disappear when the camera is moving.

I can play it on software mode, but it lags and it doesn't look as nice.

But, oh well, if anyone can think of a solution I would love to hear it!
Hey, instead of switching to software mode, try adding this the commandline parameters :
-d:OpenGL
(it switches from the default DirectX to the OpenGL renderer, it works waaaay better from what I've seen)
Posted May 29, 2014
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Starving11: [...] now the only problem is the buildings disappear when the camera is moving.

But, oh well, if anyone can think of a solution I would love to hear it!
What GPU do you have? That issue is caused by game mistaking some cards for older unsupported ones. I thought I fixed it for AMD though...
Posted May 29, 2014
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Starving11: [...] now the only problem is the buildings disappear when the camera is moving.

But, oh well, if anyone can think of a solution I would love to hear it!
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Thiev: What GPU do you have? That issue is caused by game mistaking some cards for older unsupported ones. I thought I fixed it for AMD though...
I have a AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series
Posted May 29, 2014
I have the same issue in hardware mode (the game is blinking until I go to desktop with Alt+Tab and go back to the game, then it runs perferctly).
I have got a Radeon HD 7850 with Win7 64b & 13.12 drivers.
Not the biggest problem, but it would be cool to fix it since that game in particular may be run thousands of times :) !
Posted May 29, 2014
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Starving11: Whenever my graphics are set on hardware mode, the screen blinks and flickers a lot.
Your card might have forced Anti-aliasing. See if you can disable it in its configuration tool, then try again. I was just having a similar issue, that seemed to be the culprit.
Posted May 29, 2014
This is another slim possibility, but I've noticed that some tray apps that frequently refresh will have a "blink" effect on fullscreen games. Stuff that maybe updates a temperature every 1.0 seconds, or a task manager with a little in-built CPU graph, things like that.
Posted May 29, 2014
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Starving11: Whenever my graphics are set on hardware mode, the screen blinks and flickers a lot.
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Spinorial: Your card might have forced Anti-aliasing. See if you can disable it in its configuration tool, then try again. I was just having a similar issue, that seemed to be the culprit.
Checked it, it's on "use application settings" which I'm assuming means it's turned off
Posted May 30, 2014
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Starving11: I have a AMD Radeon HD 7900 Series
- go to game folder
- open Graphics Rules.sgr in any text editor (notepad will do)
- search for line property noPartialBackingStoreCopies
- add # at the beginning of the line (thus commenting it out)
- save the file and try launching the game now

EDIT: actually, to fix potential other problems (that one above works for scrolling only), edit line 566 ('stringMatch cardIdentity "*Radeon*"') and change it to :
stringMatch cardIdentity "*ATI*"

That way it won't recognise newer cards as slow / unsupported;
Post edited May 30, 2014 by Thiev
Posted May 30, 2014
YAY!

The suggestion that Thiev wrote worked!

That took care of the scrolling issue, it still blinks but luckily smajnaric was able to fix that issue by using Alt+Tab.

No blinking, and nothings disappearing!

Thank you all for your help and suggestions!
Posted May 30, 2014
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Thiev: ...
Is there any way to sticky this info, or do you think that's not necessary? :)
Posted May 30, 2014
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tfishell: Is there any way to sticky this info, or do you think that's not necessary? :)
In GOG build it's done by default. :) As for blinking / Alt-Tab, I notified Support guys about that before release - I'll ping them again and hopefully they'll add the info to the support notes.
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SimCity seriesSim City 4 Blinking(28 posts)solved(28 posts)solved
(28 posts)solved