**FIXES** For Post DX11 Lag, Black shaders, too dark gameplay

I'm a little confused by this one. My eqclient.ini file already had TextureQuality=1, when I went into the settings it said "High". When I changed it to "Low" then my ini file had TextureQuality=3.

To me it looks like 1 = high and 3 = low? what is happening

I was planning on making a very similar post with some of my findings over the past few days. Lots of good info here already so will add some of the things I've done to make things playable again.

1) gamma issues.
I've seen a lot of posts about adjusting gamma in your video card settings (Nvidia control panel for example). My main system is a 2023 gaming laptop with integrated radeon gpu for most things and Nvidia RTX 4050 for gaming. My Nvidia control panel doesn't have the options required for gamma adjustment so thankfully someone else posted about how to adjust gamma on an OS level. I don't see that above so will mention it.

On win10/11 you can search on the windows search bar for "Color Management"
Open that widget and go to the "Advanced" tab.
Hit the "Calibrate Display" button.
If you have 2 monitors (or like me use laptop display for 1 and an external monitor for a second display) you'll want to do this on the display you are trying to adjust.
Hit 'next' 3 times to get to a screen with a vertical slider bar which most likely is centered.
Adjust accordingly and continue on through the process until done.

This is not an ideal fix as it will adjust gamma for this display for anything on it. If you use your PC for things other than EQ this will affect those things as well. On the other hand, increasing this slightly can help mitigate some of the more severe darkness issues in EQ and maybe not make things outside of EQ unbearable. I was able to find a happy medium for now. Hopefully DB will come up with a better fix soon.

2) missing textures (guild hall, I was seeing a few armor pieces etc.) or black objects.
I have 2 auxiliary Dell micro PC's that I use for EQ only. Exactly the same (other than serial number ;p)
Both running Win10, fully patched with updated drivers.
Intel i5-4590T CPU
8gb ram
Intel HD Graphics 4600 gpu

Not high end gaming PC's for sure but also not ancient. Both of these ran EQ beautifully prior to the patch. I didn't go crazy maxing out video settings but I could easily run through the guild lobby with tons of AFK players without seeing much lag and for normal playing they were both perfectly fine. good frame rates etc.

after the patch I started seeing the black objects on 1 and not the other, also HORRIBLE video tearing/clipping.. not sure what to call it. Will get into that in a minute.

Digging through EQ settings on both, looking for differences, what I finally was able to do on the one to clear up the black objects is as follows:

When starting EQ on the initial launcer window (with the big green 'play' button) open 'advanced tools'.
The first thing I did was run the "validate game assets" option. This SHOULD go through and make sure you don't have any corrupted files. I doubt this fixed my issue but worth doing.
Second step (where I found differences between the 2 pc's) go to "Game Configuration"
Select the GPU you use to play EQ
Here I saw that the PC with issues only had half the character models selected, I selected them all to match the PC which didn't have issues.
Next screen, you can set Mip Mapping and Texture Compression options here (vs. manually updating the .ini file as mentioned in OP). For me, I checked everything to match the machine that didn't have issues. Set Texture Quality to high, and (this is kinda important) changed the default 640x480 to whatever your current display is set to (you can do this in game but resetting it to 640x480 here is kind of annoying).
Hit finish and load EQ.

This fixed the missing texture/black objects for me on the PC that was having problems with that. My suspicion is (and I could be wrong), is that there may be a 'new' character model texture that I wasn't using that is used in some non-character textures that were working before the DX11 update but isn't any longer and by enabling all character models fixed the issue. Again, I could be wrong and would have to do a lot more testing to find out but it is what worked for me.

3) horrible screen tearing on my 2 auxiliary PC's.
I do not think that this is the same thing as many have been talking about, it's not an issue where there are pauses really, but any time I turn or move it's like the gpu is having a hard time drawing everything smoothly. Certain parts of the the screen get a horizontal tearing effect, more so with more moving npc's etc. Also, scrolling through agent selection in Overseer, or scrolling through text in a chat window is very 'jumpy'. A smooth scroll will cause text to jump up and down quite a bit.

What I found here was that this only happened in fullscreen mode for some reason. In windowed mode it doesn't happen at all. I would think it would be the other way around but unfortunately it is not. I have not found a setting that fixes this (tried some of the above options in this thread and others) and no changes. The only thing I was able to do here was to start using windowed mode. I HATE windowed mode (personal preference) but in a pinch you can switch to windowed mode (alt-enter), use the same resolution as your monitor, move the window up so that there is only a very small (1 or 2 pixel) line at the top and get it to look ALMOST like FS mode. You have to rebuild your entire UI to match what you have in FS which can take a good bit of time (took me a good hour or so to do it on 2 PC's for 1 character on each) but if you are suffering from the same problem this may be the best solution for now. Would love to see a fix that would allow me to play in FS again.

4) alt-tab issues, overlay issues.
alt-tab is pretty much broken, it is possible to get to a place where you can open a browser but is a real pain. What I have found works best for me is to switch to windows mode (if you do not already use it) and move the window off to the side a bit, allowing you to click on a shortcut or get to the search bar (getting to the search bar seems to be one of the best ways for me to get into something other than EQ if I need to).

If you switch to playing in windowed mode (as described in 3 above) it will also give more options including the ability to minimize your EQ window.

Prior to the patch I was able to get GINA overlays to work in FS (which admittedly doesn't normally work in my experience) on my main gaming system by running in FS mode on my external monitor which is set to primary display. This no longer works. Switching to playing in windowed mode, again, fixes this problem but is, again, really annoying.

The above options are obviously not for everyone but it works for me for now so figured I'd share in case it helps anyone else.

Dropdown array index. 2 different texture settings

TextureQuality = game configuration
[1] High
[2] Medium
[3] Low
0 is not a valid option as can be verified when you run the configurator again the drop down is empty.

TerrainTextureQuality = in-game options
[0] Minimum
[1] Low
[2] Normal
[3] High

Ok but the post says to set TextureQuality, not TerrainTextureQuality, to "1" or "LOW", but 1 = high, 3 = low, so which is it? If the setting doesn't matter if its high or low why mention to change it?

It means the incorrect name of the setting was given (most likely based off of a ranked assumption or matching in-game options) and that textures are missing/failing to load at low and medium, and only functional at high. This could also be GPU dependent failing to load certain quality textures.

TextureQuality is the correct setting and was mentioned. Terrain Texture quality is part of the alt+o -> advanced settings like water quality, etc.

TextureQuality set to 2 or 3 is what is causing the black bars blacked out npcs/objects. I changed mine to LOW (which should equate to 3) and fixed it. but explicitly setting it to 3 or 2 in the file causes the problem. LOW or 1 fixes it. So I don't know that 1 = High, 2 = medium and 3 = LOW. If that were the case, setting it explicitly to "LOW" should also induce the problem and it does not. I think that setting is specifically lookig for a 1, 2, or 3, and if there is a string value it simply throws its hands up in confusion and goes with 1 (default for eq, assuming no client data is set).

[edit]
That's exactly what is happening. I changed TextureQuality=Frank, and it loaded textures fine without problem, and I'm positive "Frank" has no correlation to quality. So it's looking specifically for an INT and not a string and if it encounters that situation, it just defaults to the preset, which is 1.

1 is HIGH, 3 is LOW. Run config, set low, check eqclient. Run config, set high, check eqclient. The numbers are the order in which the dropdown displays, and high is the first entry.

You are still saying 1 is low, but also saying 3 is low. OP says 1 is low.

TextureQuality=1, HIGH
TextureQuality=2, MEDIUM
TextureQuality=3, LOW
Not the words high, medium, low, the number is the index of the drop down settings.

If the LOW and MEDIUM quality textures are missing/not loading it would explain why it is only happening with those 2 settings.

I have not said, as the OP or other posts that 1 = Low. If I have let me know and I'll fix it.

What I am saying, is that if TextureQuality=2 or TextureQuality=3 in the eqclient file, it causes problems. If TextureQuality=Low in the file, it does not cause a problem - but only because strings are not supported and it's defaulting to the game default (which is 1). So the solution is setting TextureQuality=1 to explicitly ensure it's doing the correct thing. until the Devs get us an actual fix.

Thanks everybody for the suggestions. I'm done. Nothing has worked for me other than borking up my display for everything else. My specs are at the top range, Win11, DX12, everything should work but it doesn't. The only possible thing that I can come up with is DX12 isn't allowing the backward compatability into the new DX configuration the game is using for the slider to work the way it is intended. Before anybody says it, DX12 xxxx, DX11xxxx, DX10xxx, DX9xxx are all showing on both systems. I'm throwing up my hands. This retired workstation geek is done.

Might be worth noting to backup UI settings, as opening EQ in a very low resolution may cause issues when one camps out and it saves window locations at the new resolution.

YAY Thank You!! I use 2 computers, an ancient i7 desktop (started building it in 2011 and updated over the years, was working well pre-patch), and a new i5 laptop (just bought it a few months ago). New Laptop performing well. Ancient Desktop works fine in empty zones, but cannot move in the Guild Lobby.

Made a backup copy and edited the original eqclient.ini file. Didn't see anything about "useD3D..." so I tried these 3 things:
This may not work for everybody, but I suggest TextureQuality to 1 to fix the shaders, MipMapping off to reduce the severe lag, and ShowDynamicLights=1 (ON) to help fix some of the darkness issues.

Immediately much better, but still stuttering in the lobby. Checked my laptop settings which does not use "Use Advanced Lighting" in the Display > Advanced Options. Adjusted ancient desktop to match.
That fixed it. Working almost as before. Still darker than my old eyes would prefer but I can turn around in the guild lobby again! I see that not everyone is having luck with these settings, hoping everyone can find solutions!

You don't have only DX12 installed. It's not an "only one version" kind of situation like only having Windows 11 or only having Windows 10 installed or whatnot. You should already have DX12, DX11, DX10, and DX9 installed at the same time and they're likely not going to need any intervention or even inspecting by you on a game this old unless your OS is very old as well.

TMBuzzard - Please re-read what I said .... but thank you for educating others. As for my specs, My comp is Win11, meets the top end of their sys requirements, is current with all drivers, etc. This is on their end since the patch.

Have the dev's acknowledged this problem yet? A lot seem to have the same issue then you here people that have zero issues ? Its just sad the a pc that has a 1080TI cant run a 25 year old came without issues anymore .. The lag an stutter is so terrible

Please send (PM) me your Logs\dbg.txt file and I'll review it with you. Thanks!

@ Cairbrae

For what it's worth, my posted 'fixes' have helped alleviate the blackened banding (it does make campfire look funky now) issues and has reduced the stuttering for mipmapping for me (and many others - but not everybody) and helped for the group game. Your memory strategy post has helped (with extreme downgrades) to further improve FPS/play.

However my experience is that i can get 45-60 FPS with a 1070 card in most situations. Once a raid forms im down to 20-30 FPS which, while doable, it is playable. The instant a boss/event is engaged (We're TLP.. it happens on every TBL raid + GMM raid) fps still reads 20-30FPS, but the game is hitching with delayed emote text, mob mvoement/etc, everything "chunks" every 2-6 seconds even where user input becomes mashing one button over a course of up to 20 second for it to activate. That sort of lag was never a thing prior to DX11 patch and frankly I have no idea where to even begin looking since it's strictly when raid events spin up on engage.

The Memory.ini settings that should help your scenario are the PerFrame variables:

TextureLoadsPerFrame=1
AnimationLoadsPerFrame=1
BitmapsPerFrame=1
DownsamplesPerFrame=1
UpsamplesPerFrame=1

BitmapsPerFrame throttles image load management (resampling) count. I.e. what's in the queue for both DownsamplesPerFrame and UpsamplesPerFrame processing.

Raise those values little by little until you're happy with FPS and rendered resource latency.

The NV GTX 1070 has 8GB of VRAM. Raising the threshold for image resampling consideration saves processing time too. It doesn't need to be any higher than MaxHighQualityTextureMem (=512).

DownsampleTextureMem=512

Thanks Cairbrae. Solid feedback that works. Follow his instruction and you will eliminate your hitching/stuttering.

If you want a better understanding of more advanced settings/options, please refer to every post myself/Cairbrae have made and the extensive testing provided on the primary DX11 thread (page 8 and 9) over at https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq...ering-makes-the-game-unplayable.295587/page-8

I actually followed those steps and reduced everything down as suggested. In fact, my fps/latency is wonderful under the current load.. *until* a raid renders, then it halves. and is still playable. but engaging a raid mob with a raid causes the fps to stay stable but the game hitches significantly. with the below settings:

TextureLoadsPerFrame=5 (this was 1, but i was staring at a white world on zonign far too long)
AnimationLoadsPerFrame=1
BitmapsPerFrame=1
DownsamplesPerFrame=1
UpsamplesPerFrame=1
DownsampleTextureMem=1
MaxHighQualityTextureMem=40

Raiding may be a whole other beast (logs, text flow, etc). I know the settings work for group and especially non-DPS environments, but I don't know if it overcomes all hitching on raids, which is due to factors beyond anything seen in the group game. The hitching this addresses is purely the graphical hitching, hense the GPU memory budgetting settings to overcome only graphical-based hitching (not text, log file, event-related lag).

It's definitely a fair assumption that it will not overcome all raid lag, which has other causes and is a far more significant type of lag/hitching.