Missing track textures, help needed

[DSQ]

I am having some issues with missing track textures and was wondering if anyone else has experienced this and knows how to fix.

On certain tracks particularly around the start finish straight I am getting missing textures, mostly edge of track and other places strange textures poking up out of the ground.

I got these errors on my Steam RFactor installation, then tried a fresh Ultralight install with trackfiles downloaded from the Trippteam server. Same issue.

This makes me think it may be something to do with my humble computer which is an old Lenovo laptop. Windows 10 64bit. AMD A4-6210 APU with AMD Radeon R3 Graphics 1.80 GHz. Ram 8GB. SSD hard disk.

See the screenshots.

Has anyone else seen anything like this before? It looks super weird. As far as I can tell it does not affect all tracks, but it does seem to be mostly ISI tracks (not all, eg. Brianza/Monza seems fine). The only add-on track I've seen it affect is Indy 1960 which is missing the first 20-50 metres of track texture after the S/F straight.

Any advice is of great assistance.

 

[jgf]

The weird 3D objects look like corrupted files, a vid driver issue, or failing vid card. Lower the game resolution and see if anything changes.

 

[DSQ]

The weird 3D objects look like corrupted files, a vid driver issue, or failing vid card. Lower the game resolution and see if anything changes.

Thanks JGF, I changed the resolution from 1366x768 to 1024x768 and the textures and weird 3d object disappears.

Very strange issue. I am going to cross out the corrupted files scenario as the issue is repeated whether on my Steam Rfactor install or a UL Rfactor installation as. Which then potentially points to my vid drivers or the board itself failing.

My AMD drivers are saying they are fully up to date. Maybe there is a way to reinstall to see if that might be the culprit. Perhaps it does point to the hardware failing but that would be strange also as some other more graphically demanding tracks seem fine at the 1366x768 resolution.

I appreciate the advice JGF, gives me something to look into.

 

[jgf]

After removing the drivers, use driver uninstaller (https://www.guru3d.com/files-details/display-driver-uninstaller-download.html) to remove all traces of vid drivers, then reinstall. Might also try a different version of the drivers.

More resource intensive games may work well if they are newer; rfactor is ancient and uses DX9 so may exhibit idiosyncrasies with some modern hardware/software combinations. There's the possibility rfactor just doesn't like that resolution on that system.

 

[DSQ]

Thanks again JGF. I'll give this a try. Interesting note, Rfactor has been working fine for 2 years plus on this old laptop. I did a recent full virus scan so I'm wondering if that affected anything.

Also if I switch from Cartfactor to GTPC mod and restart Rfactor to reset the menus the problem does not occur. Then if I switch back to Cartfactor, and reboot Rfactor to reset the menus the issue returns.

That doesnt explain why it did it on a clean ultralight install with original ISI cars.

I'll report back on any results.

 

[jgf]

If all was working previously we can rule out any basic incompatibilities, and consider corrupt files, ailing vid card, or recent updates (W11 is notorious for such things). Unless you changed your anti-malware I wouldn't suspect it; but check its logs for any quarantines or deletions.

A long shot but never hurts, run a system file check (sfc /scannow from command prompt); this will test crucial windows files and replace any that are corrupt/missing.

 

[DSQ]

Thanks again for the advice JGF. I performed the full driver reinstall using the display driver uninstaller and reinstalled the latest drivers from the AMD website for my old Radeon R3.
No fix unfortunately. That doesnt mean I dont appreciate the advice. It started a thought process that I can follow at least.

I'll keep trying to follow the breadcrumbs around the fact that it seems to only affect some mods and not others. Whether it has anything to do with me installing the TCL mod recently. And why it seems to affect a clean ultralight install also.

I'll post if I find a solution just incase anyone else has this issue.

The good news is that it only seems to occur on a few tracks, not all and if I go back to 1024 x 768 the issue goes away entirely.

 

[jgf]

....

The good news is that it only seems to occur on a few tracks, not all and if I go back to 1024 x 768 the issue goes away entirely.

That leads me to think the tracks in question have very large textures, very many textures, and/or a complex 3D model which is overloading your vid card; at the lower resolution it has less to process. Have you tried lowering the graphics detail in-game when using those tracks?

 

[DSQ]

That leads me to think the tracks in question have very large textures, very many textures, and/or a complex 3D model which is overloading your vid card; at the lower resolution it has less to process. Have you tried lowering the graphics detail in-game when using those tracks?

Thanks for the suggestion I've tried that Unfortunately no luck. I recently tried a fresh Steam install and the error persists.

I've mostly found the issue on stock ISI tracks (90% of tracks are fine). I have lots of more demanding tracks like Longford or Gnoo Blas and they don't seem to be affected.

I'm thinking the issue is somewhere in my laptop and not necessarily the rFactor files themselves.

Something about how my laptop is opening the track .mas files is not ok I recon.

 

[DSQ]

Just in case anyone has similar issues in the future I'm posting what eventually fixed this issue for me.

My old laptop has an AMD Radeon R3 shared graphics. I opened the AMD settings application and while trying to optimise the settings for framerate, I checked the option to clear the shader cache.

Everything is fixed now.

I'm not sure if this may assist people who have a similar problem on Nvidia cards but it worked for me.

Happy driving.