The latest update for Dragon Age: Inquisition is currently live, however it seems that it breaks the visuals on the game’s PC version. According to various reports, the hair of some characters have some silver artifacts, while their faces feel ‘weird.’ And after trying it ourselves, we can confirm the existence of those graphical bugs. We don’t know whether this is happening only on NVIDIA GPUs or not, however we can confirm that this is a bug introduced by this latest patch. You can find some shots below showcasing this bug (courtesy of us, NeoGAF and Reddit).
UPDATE:
Bioware has issued an official statement and a workaround for these new bugs:
“Hey Everyone,
We’re working on getting a hot fix out for the PC graphics issue as soon as possible. In the meantime, here is a workaround you can try:
To start, make sure the quality setting you choose is equal to the setting set for Mesh Quality inside Options>Graphics
You will need to add a new command line parameter. To do this:
Through Origin:
Right click on the Dragon Age Inquisition title
Go to game properties
Type the command line parameter in the Command Line Properties box.
Through shortcut:
Right Click Shortcut
Go to Properties
Under target go to the end of the field and type the command line parameter into the box
Once there, add the following command line parameter: -ShaderSystem.ShaderQualityLevel <quality setting>
In this instance, <quality setting> should be one of the following:
Ultra
High
Medium
Low
An example of how to set your quality to high would be: -ShaderSystem.ShaderQualityLevel HighPlease note that once the hot fix is out, you will need to go back in and remove this workaround from your command line.
It’s also important to note that pre-patch 2, all users on PC were being forced to use the Ultra shader quality. This means that those of you playing on lower settings will notice a decrease in quality, particularly players using low or medium settings.
To achieve the same visuals as pre-patch, users on lower settings will need to change their settings to Ultra, which should likewise be used in conjunction with Ultra mesh quality. Mismatching the mesh and shader settings will result in other visual artifacts like overly shiny hair.
Please be aware that changing settings to Ultra may impact performance on some machines.Sorry about any frustration this may have caused.”
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
Contact: Email
Maybe an ageing spell was cast on them or something. Anyway I am not going to download the patch until this gets sorted out in a hotfix.
same, I think I downloaded the patch. But I haven’t launched the game since. Hopefully I wont get anything irreversible happen to my character.
…How does that even happen.
Well those NPC’s certainly aged quickly lol.
290x here. Didn’t notice any issues since downloading the patch. May be just a Green Team thing.
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-ibvT9BQAvbU/VFEkWy-priI/AAAAAAACdaM/oevQVU-UfOs/w426-h367/bQyT0Qf.gif
lmao gaming evolved title!
Just kidding but anyway its kinda funny!
Wow what a moron, doesn’t even come close to NVIDIA’s Way it’s meant to be played AC Unity bugs, no that’s a real joke for you. Farcry 4, the way it’s meant to be played stutter fest on 2xGXT980s.
And how are engine problems connected with NVIDIA. These statements are equal to Silvius one.
“stutter fest on 2xGXT980s”
This is the only one claim that is relevant from your comment because we should expect to have NV drivers prepared if NV cooperate on FC4 development. But blame NVIDIA for engine bugs which are many of you do is ridiculous.
Nope, FC4 is a stutter fest, he even admits his self and confirmed by John, ACU is even more of a mess but he claims FC4 is worse.
He then comes in here trolling because it’s an AMD Evolved title, meanwhile talking up NVIDIA logo games that run like Sh*t from Ubisoft.
But it’s the same as someone else trolling about NVIDIA because of their cooperation with Ubisoft. AMD and NVIDIA are responsible for their additional features and drivers. But not for game engine problems. For example that’s why I didn’t blame AMD because of BF4 state after release (and unstable state long after that). And that’s why I don’t blame AMD for bugs described in this article. And what I see, Silviu was sarcastically pointed on aggressive attacks from last weeks on NVIDIA according to UBISOFT titles state after release.
you can’t really talk to him about anything against amd… he used to be the same way about nvidia… he went from one extreme to another
John, he just saw the light is all. One day you will too.
And what is that light? AMD? 🙂
It’s called value. 🙂 AMD didn’t limit their memory bus or VRAM and it’s paying off still, getting more FPS with Omega driver and Mantle, that’s Value. Yes I’m disappointed that AMD only has driver features for the newer GPUs like 290 but hey, at least they cheap now. £230 for an R9 290 with 4GB of VRAM, even the GTX 760 with 4GB costs that much.
“AMD didn’t limit their memory bus or VRAM”
I partially agree with VRAM, but no with memory bus. It’s more connected with GPU architecture. And that’s influence VRAM too. Look at GTX 980 with 256bit memory bus which defeat GPU with 384bits.
They use some sort of memory compression instead of making the memory bus wide. I think that card would suffer under peak performance like the 660 did and their silly gimping of the memory bus. They like Intel, giving what you need and no more for the price. Titan has a 384Bit memory bus as well, then the 780TI came along and wasted it at half the price.
LOL.
Says you in an the AMD drivers thread giving benchmarks on the driver and yet you don’t even own an AMD system. I actually did see the light, it’s called value.
No idea what people labelled me as an NVIDIA fanboy Fanboys don’t critised their corps gods but in the past and right up till I sold my GTX 660, I criticised NVIDIA, especially over their hardware TXAA, their memory bus and VRAM and Compute performance, don’t do that. yes I was sceptical about Mantle and AMD’s ways of going about it but to me they have proved Mantle, I’ve seen it for myself.
I’ve been critical of NVIDIA right from the FX days when I used to own an FX 5800 Ultra. I also learned a lot on Beyond 3D forums about the time of NVIDIA driver to improve Pixel Shader 2.0 performance, that’s where I learned going AU bound by the big boys and why anti-aliasing was free performance during my own tests.
bla bla bla dude. Been doing this PC gaming thing for a long time. And all the omega is… is a freaking PR stunt. And who cares if I don’t own AMD hardware anymore…. Does that mean you will not talk bad about Nvidia anymore? I mean come on really.
Well NVIDIA’s shader cache wasn’t a PR stunt either, we all come here saying how CPU bound games gave us about 10fps improvement. If you look and read the small text of the test system, you know why and even NVIDIA said it’s based on CPU bound games on system being CPU bound, no lies or PR there.
You claimed my performance problems were because I had a pirated copy, so why should I take anything you say seriously any more? I’m the one posting screen shots of my frame-rates now, before they were sh*t., and I posted shots showing it.
Tell me what you have to say about the screenshots above in the new comments? Are you going to say my weak FX 8350 and R9 280 can’t do that or are you and Silva going to just say your Intel and NVIDIA are doing double the frame-rates so what, forgetting I spend more than half of what you both spent.
So someone will buy an AMD card due to the omega driver. Lol. Informing the community about a new drivers new futures is not a PR stunt. It would be if they were marketing it for 2 months lets say before release.
There is nothing to do with AMD. The game engine is one of the most optimized engines out there. It supports good technology’s even for Nvidia (multicore rendering through nvidia drivers) as also AMD specific stuff Mantle etc.. Because I follow the developers on twitter I know that they are so open to anything good out there either from Nvidia or AMD. They are not bias even when they receive AMD cards by the hundreds(they post pictures for this) and also even when they collaborate so close with AMD to develop Mantle. That proves that AMD doesn’t have strict rules with their partners. That is what makes AMD so awesome. Thats why I support them and I will continue to do. Evolve titles are always very good optimized games. They use Tesselation correctly, direct compute etc and all this are fully supported and perform equally for Nvidia. On the other hand Nvidia over do Tesselation, they use Tesselation even for flat textures, they do physx stupid effects that cripple performance even for their cards just to over do effects and particles. Actually physx lately transform from physics to an unrealistic overdone particle generator. They have the stupid TXAA that they market all the time. No one is using it. It looks like Vaseline on your screen. Hollywood effect they say. They made gameworks. A close technology stuff for their cards to do normal stuff the graphics cards always have done. They are like the apple for PC gaming. Nvidias direction for PC gaming doesn’t look good. Close technologies, overprice cards, unoptimized games. A game bug that caused by a patch that break some graphics doesn’t compare to unoptimized broken engines.
Another AMD fanatic who now nothing about NVIDIA tech. I am not telling you that you are not partially right but in the most cases you are only repeating some fanatic stuff far from reality.
“good optimized games” vs “unoptimized games”
What is this? Isn’t it matter of game engine developers? Why AMd or NVIDIA should be responsible for game engine bugs? NVIDIA and AMD only cooperate on supporting of tech which is important for them and from which they take advantage. But they are not developing games at all.
“Tesselation correctly” vs “Nvidia over do Tesselation”
This is partially true. But only partially. In some cases for more detail you need to use high tessellation levels. And in some cases even on flat surfaces if you use displacement mapping. You should blame AMD that they don’t support tesselation as good as their competition. NVIDIA use it of course. In some games for good reasons (like Batman Arkham City) in some games not (Crysis 2). It’s not simple black and white view.
“the stupid TXAA”
Stupid like what? I don’t like this AA tech too but saying it’s stupid? Why? Only because it’s from NVIDIA. Very cheap.
“they do physx stupid effects that cripple performance even for their cards just to over do effects and particles.”
PhysX is used for additional effects so it’s completely normal that it’s not performance free. Show me another physics API which can handle in real games 10 thousands of particles in way like PhysX? There is nothing like that. PhysX make much better atmosphere in games where it is really used. Yes there are games which declare PhsyX support but they use it only for trash or levitating papers. But in games like Batman series, Mafiia 2, Metro Last Light, Sacred 2 or Borderlands 2 and Pre-Sequel is really good example od PhysX usage and it makes better atmosphere while playing the game.
“Actually physx lately transform from physics to an unrealistic overdone particle generator.”
PhysX has more modules like particle ones. All of them are good. But it’s true that mainly APEX Particles, Turbulence Clothing and destruction are used. In last time mainly particles modules. It call for a change or something new. Well we will see in new Batman and Witcher games.
“A close technology stuff for their cards to do normal stuff the graphics cards always have done.”
Which stuff were always done befroe Gameworks? Yes you can find something like that but Gameworks included new advanced features like Fireworks, Haorworks, Faceworks or all GPU PhysX stuff which are not common now (and I don’t speak about past).
Havoc’s physic engine is pretty impressive as well. They don’t have as much advertising but they have some cool tech demos.
Havok is geat too. But Havoc doesn’t deliver detail in level of PhysX. Not in all cases of course. It doesn’t have something like APEX Turbulence and possibility to manipulate 50 000 of particles as PhysX on GPU. That’s the difference. I never see nothing of this in any game excluding some with PhysX support. And it’s not only about particles. Clothing is the same. PhysX advantage is GPU power which can be used to achieve more immersive and more detailed features.
Because games are actually using those features right?
Right. Borderlands Pre-Sequel uses up to 50 000 particles for fluids when PhysX Ultra is set. Or 5 or 6 year old Dark Void used, if I remember, about 100 000 particles on jetpack smoke. Or look at APEX Turbulence in X-Com or Batman Arkham Origins. Another example are cloths in many games with GPU Physx, that are more detailed and can be used for more characters in scene.
PhysX is impressive but it only works with NVIDIA’s video cards. It isn’t GPU-agnostic like AMD’s TressFX. Also, the majority of console GPUs were made by AMD. That’s going to have an effect on the desktop GPU market.
“PhysX is impressive but it only works with NVIDIA’s video cards.”
The most features from PhysX works on CPU and now quite effective. For example see particles (except APEX Turbulence) or cloth in Lords of the Fallen. It runs well on CPU. And this is the way how it should work. And if NV make some features exclusive, I have no problem with that.
If you can show me a game that has more impressive physics (not particles) than Crysis that came out in 2007 then i will by nvidia for physx. Crysis uses the cpu and it was programmed for 2007 tech. Tech demos are impressive but they are not games. Particles can be done easily without physx. The can be used and is used is a totally different thing.
Was it scripted physics or simulated? That’s a big difference. Ok. I know what you mean. You want better interaction with environment. But this does not depend on PhysX. PhysX is used to make game world more alive and whole atmosphere is better but it doesn’t influence gameplay. The physics usage in general depends on developers decision. They decide how physics API like PhysX or Havok will be used.
Did you play 2007 crysis? Nothing is scripted.
Yes I played it and finished the game 3 times. The physics in this game was in good level. My question was misleading. I wanted to ask on physics in general, not in concrete game. My fault. As I said, the way how developers use their physics API is up to them. In general developers don’t focus on physics much in games. And mostly nobody implement physics into gameplay. It doesn’t matter if it’s PhysX or Havok or somebodies own physics API. Take in mind that I don’t consider repetitive animations and skripts as physics. If there is no interaction of “physics” objects with environment or player, it not really interesting me.That’s why I like PhysX. It isn’t use in the level I wish for now, but it brings something which is closer, to what I want to see, as anything else.
Let’s be fair here, NVIDIA didn’t make PhysX, they brought AGEIA and called it PhysX. The performance is bad because it uses a portion of CUDA cores but at least they made it available to on a single card. The problem is the performance is so bad on a single card, even SLI can’t really do it properly, especially when they do a half arsed job like AC Black Flag.
WEll I have only few performance problems with PhysX in 7 years. In AC Black Flag and XCom Declasified. But that’s solved too now. It’s not seems so bad from my point of view. But I have GTX 460 as dedicated PhysX GPU, so it’s advantage.
“Let’s be fair here, NVIDIA didn’t make PhysX, they brought AGEIA and called it PhysX”
This is not fair at all. NVIDIA rewrite whole source code from the ground. What they have now is a different API according to one they bought. They even improved significantly CPU PhysX acceleration. Look at Lords of the Fallen. The most physics effects run on CPU and performance is really good according to past.
So they claim but they needed to anyway to make it work with their CUDA. John Carmack had a dig that them about it, saying that AGIEA as a startup were looking to be acquired anyway, hope NVIDIA got their money’s worth, LOL
I am not AMD fanatic. I just like the way they do stuff. The way that they are more open. I am not saying that Nvidia is to blame for unoptimized games. Its clear that is the developers fault. But it became a trend to be this way with Nvidia. What really bothers me is that a PC certric hardware manufacturer supports bad console ports that bring nothing to PC gaming. They bandle Assasins Creed with their cards. A broken game that sells a lot. They are chasing sales instead of truly supporting the PC. This was always the case with Nvidia. They have great technology and great drivers but they were always overpriced and always on the attacking side with no reason.
Tesselation is a technology to boost image quality with no performance cost, if used correctly with distance to objects, the closer you are the more the detail. Nvidia because they are faster the over used it. This is a fact.
About TXAA and what I don’t like is how they market it. I am an AA junkie and to see something marketed so much and with every game everyone saying to just disable it, I don’t understand the point.
You post technology videos to prove Physx? I was very exited when Physx was bought from Nvidia, I thought it will get pushed and be amazing. Wrong, and yes it became a particle generator. I am not saying it can not do awesome stuff but in games its is what it is. A particle generator. If you think without Physx you can not have dynamic smoke and awesome particles you are wrong. And to just put cloths around the level, to be blown by the wind to show cloth simulator and if this is game changing then Physx is for you. They announce 2 games with Physx exclusive when the bought it. Never came out. The best games that used good physics and integrated them in gameplay is Crysis, Half-Life 2, Frosbite base games. No Physx supported games come even close to these games and they are so old.
Gameworks. The worst think they ever do. Again I am not saying that the thinks you can do with Gameworks are not amazing, awesome, realistic. But not this way. Not thinks like that in PC. No close stuff to sell more. I know Nvidia is doing only one think, Graphics cards and they need to make profit, unlike AMD that is doing all PC stuff. But again Gameworks and thinks like that have no place in PC gaming. Even Ubisoft remove the Nvidia preset for far cry 4. Why? It makes the game looks like it will work only for Nvidia and thats not the case.
I hope this clears that I am not AMD fanatic in any way. If they open their tech more I think only good will make to PC games and I will fully support them with my money.
” I am not saying that Nvidia is to blame for unoptimized games. Its clear that is the developers fault. But it became a trend to be this way with Nvidia.”
It’s developer dependent. UBISOFT has problems with games on release, but other developers release games on the same level. Every game now has problems in the start. It doesn’t matter if they are supported by AMD or NVIDIA.
“You post technology videos to prove Physx?”
“I am not saying it can not do awesome stuff but in games its is what it is.”
Look at my other comments. I am mentioning real game usage which brings stuff which is not being seen in other games with other physics APIs. PhysX has advantage of GPU power usage and in many games it is see.
“If you think without Physx you can not have dynamic smoke and awesome particles you are wrong.”
No I don’t think that. It could be implemented but nobody has it done in the level like NVIDIA in PhysX. It’s not trivial. Everything what we can see could be implemented in many other ways, but somebody has to do it. You can say on everything that it could be done in other way and you will be right. This is not the argument.
“And to just put cloths around the level, to be blown by the wind to show
cloth simulator and if this is game changing then Physx is for you.”
It’s not only this. Cloth, particles (fluid, smoke, turbulence, rain, snow,…), force fields – this all together make the game world alive. Not static. Look at Borderlands 2. Try implosive grenade in close to cloth or fluids. PhysX FleX is the next step.
“Even Ubisoft remove the Nvidia preset for far cry 4. Why?”
We don’t know why. You can only write what you think. That’s all. Maybe they need to improve it more.
“If they open their tech more I think only good will make to PC games and I will fully support them with my money.”
This is what I understand. And it’s fine. For me it doesn’t matter if it’s close or not. If is something very interesting for me, I bought HW which support it. PhysX is one of the main reasons why I’m buying NV GPUs.
Clear, you like physx I don’t. Its not a problem that you like it. To be clear I don’t like the way it is used in games and not the technology. The technology seems that is on another level from anything else. But the way is used in games I find it unrealistic and overdone and forced in. If they open it it will be amazing for pc games. I am not gonna try to find water or cloth in B2 and through grenades in it just to get wow.
What I really find game changing is Mantle. Going from 60 fps to 100+ in BF4 was game changing for me.
Also here is the list of AMD/ATI innovations and why i like them:
First with Surround gaming, Eyefinity (Nvidia had to follow)
64bit computing is an AMD thing
First 64bit multicore processor
First 8 core desktop cpu
Integrated memory controller on CPU (Intel criticized them as not needed, then they follow)
Mantle a true new generation API (Microsoft was saying that is not needed, after Mantle they anounce DX12)
True Audio (needs to prove it self yet)
First APU
Freesynch (It will not supported by Nvidia because its free)
There whole idea as a company is to innovate.
i experienced the silver hair thingy before the patch although it was full hair silver. i didn’t mind it though.(and still don’t)
Wow. Thats one cool bug. 😀
It seems that not only the skin and hair are affected. In those images are clearly missing DoF, Texture, Blur,etc. They were intended or it’s from the patch ?
WTF did I just see..Old as F*CKS ..LOL!
That was a great patch ..LOL!