Game Mode View bugs out when enabled

Hi, I recently converted my project to 4.11.2 and I’ve noticed when using game mode view the graphics can become quite unstable/glitchy.

An exact image of what I mean:

Left side is game mode view enabled, right is normal.

These graphics issues are not present when I PIE. However when I play in a packaged game or standalone game, if my resolution is 720p or less, I get very strange artifacts on the screen, which can be seen in this video:

Increasing the game viewports resolution will get rid of this error.

I never saw this issue on 4.10 before converting my project to 4.11

Tried to help higuy on slack as well… but… mind blown

Hi Higuy,

Are you by chance using any Distance Field shadowing in this project? If so, can you do the following:

  • DFAO Visualization
  • Mesh Distance Field Visualization

Also try disabling Distance Fields if enabled and see if you get the same results (Directional Light, uncheck the DF option, and in Skylight, bring up the console and enter r.distancefieldao 0)

If you’re not using Distance Fields do you see this same thing if you create a new level in this project or in a blank project? If so please include any detailed information to reproduce the issue here or sample project files. You can also try deleting the Intermediate and saved folder (back these up if you need) and let them regenerate to see if the issue persists.

If that doesn’t work and you’re willing to provide the project or a sample project that can reproduce as a test it can sometimes be more helpful than trying to reproduce not knowing if it will or not.

Thank you!

Tim

Hi Tim, sorry for the late reply.

I’m actually not using any Distance Field Shadow mapping.

If I delete my saved and intermediate folders, this actually fixes the game view mode bug. HOWEVER, this does not fix the glitchy/vibrating graphics shown in the YouTube video I linked unfortunately.

When I create a new level in this project, I still get the vibrating view. When I create a brand new, blank project, it actually does not occur at all, so seems like its something specific to the project.

There was another user that had the same issue as shown in the YouTube video on the forums as well I should mention:

As for providing my project, here you go: [Removed Link]

It’s 570~ MB, so might take a little while to download for you, but I hope it helps in figuring out the issue here. Let me know if you have any issues opening it.

  • Lucas

Thanks, I’ve got the project. I’ve removed the link. I’ll respond back once I’ve had a chance to look at this.

After a bit of troubleshooting the project, it looks like it’s something to do with your Character. I’ve not narrowed down exactly what yet, but there is something in there that is causing it to flake out like this. You can easily test this yourself by opening the World Settings tab > Game Mode > Default Pawn Class > Set it to ArchVisCharacter or Default Pawn. You should now see the issue is gone. This would explain why you see it in every level you create and I wasn’t seeing this initially until I set the default character to be this.

I’m not sure if there is an actual engine bug here or if this is something in your characters logic/components that is causing this, but it’s something worth investigating on your end as well since you would know the BP much more readily than I would for everything you have set.

I’ll let you know when I find out more.

Hey Tim,

I just tried your method of setting the default pawn to either the ArchVis character or the Default Pawn. In both, I’m still getting the screen errors in a standalone game. Were you doing a packaged project or a just a standalone game as well, and were trying this in a new level or one of the levels included when I sent it?

Only tried with standalone game mode vs PIE, so no packaging whatsoever.

Using the link your provided with the project and 4.11.2 and trying in 4.12 preview 3 I was only getting the issue with your character BP. I tested this on multiple levels that you had already in the project and newly created ones. If I switched to any other character pawn class in the World Settings it would work without fail so at the moment I’m not sure and without narrowing down this looks like something that I’ll not be able to reproduce from scratch with test projects. I’ll let you know once I’m able to set some time aside to look at this further.

Hey Lucas,

This looks to be like the issue that has been reported with UE-26778 related to UI widgets that use render targets.

I wasn’t able to really narrow down fixing this in your project other than using a character that didn’t reference it in the test first person template map you had. It was still broken in the hub map you have. This issue started with 4.11, but was working correctly in 4.10. It’s on the To Do list to resolve, but currently there is not a target version set for the fix yet.

Tim

Hi Tim, thanks for the reply. Sorry for getting back to you so late on this, I’ve been traveling for the past month. Glad to see that these is an issue in the system for it and at least on the To Do list. I’ll be checking the change logs to see if it gets put in a future release. Thanks.

Hi Tim, wasn’t sure where else I should post this besides here, but I figured out the problem (it still seems like a bug though) more specifically. The issue arises when you use a UI widget that is using a render target, but the viewport only seems to glitch out when the height and width are less then the the render textures resolution. So in my case the render target was set to 1024 x 1024, and since the viewports height was less then that, it began to freak out. For the time being I’ve set it the render target to 512x512 (ideally it needs to be higher to get rid of artifacts and aliasing), which seems to be the highest I can go at the moment without it affecting a wide range of monitors. I hope this helps if the issue has not been investigated further or fixed yet.

Thanks!

Thanks for the notes. That’s similar to the notes in the JIRA.