What is causing this?

[Komb.at]

http://members.chello.at/c_mottl/stuff/glitch1.jpg

Thats the picture in the bonus level of MP. I experienced these effects in many games, and mostly when i'm far away from the texture/polygon/whatever. I also see this much in Operation Flashpoint, when i fly high above the ground, and the coastlines get all messed up (looks like a lot of polys).
A second weird effect i have is, when i'm far away from objects, the sides seem to be flipped, that means the the inside of the object is mapped, while the outside is "see-through".

Any ideas of the origin of these errors?

(newest drivers, geforce ddr, win2k (had them in win98 too)

[Komb.at]

*cough cough*

*bumpage*

[Mark Rejhon]

Hi,

This is Z-buffer fighting. Basically, the Z-buffer is used by games to know what comes in front of what (on a per-pixel basis).

However, when you are far away from two objects overlapping each other, such as a sign on a wall, or two overlapping 3D objects, you get some Z-buffer mathematical round-off errors, which means that the farther object (the wall) is in front of the closer object (the sign on the wall) .... This causes the ugly artifacts. The further you are away from the object, the more imprecise the math is.

A solution is to switch to a 32-bit Z-buffer which provides more precision in the Z-buffer. I do not know if you can force Max Payne to use a 32-bit Z-buffer (maybe you can, via your graphics card driver, via Control Panel)

A 16-bit Z-buffer is usually used by default. A big disadvantage of a 32-bit Z-buffer is increased video memory usage (and the associated bandwidth bottlenecks and reduced texture RAM - slowing down the game)

[ 09-28-2001: Message edited by: Mark Rejhon ]