Not sure what to say, but I've just started back to EQ about a month ago. I run 2 identical PC's, playing two chars. Never had any issues before As soon as I arrive "in game" in any zone, I turn around, and the back ground, the NPC's, other toons, trees, buildings etc, all appear as just an outline, with either a grey or white filling. After a few seconds, some of the NPC's or toons will start appear. This seems to be in stages, as if each layer of clothing is appearing one after the other Similar effect with the trees, buildings or the general background. It happens on either PC, no matter which I load first It happens both PC's, if they load at the same time. It happens predominantly at the start of any session. It does appear to be worse in Pok, or the Lobby It does appear to get better the longer I play a session.
That happens to me especially just after leaving the guild lobby or porting in to pok. Really should not take that long especially considering Im using a SSD and a decent machine. Stuff like this makes me wonder if EQ has wait times actually programmed in to the code to prevent it from running too fast.
I've been having the same issue for the past few weeks, and it's definitely not my computer. I can enter PoK or the guild lobby and run through the zone before textures actually load. I've seen more naked ogres than anyone should ever have to see! /shudder
It could be the memory mode resetting on your computers. Folks used to set this to low to help older computers run better, load faster by not loading all the graphics into the zone at one time. Back in 2016 DB made changes to the memory mode settings which now result in some folks having this happen here and there. Check and see if "memory mode" flipped to least under "options" then "advanced"
Under 'Options | Display | Advanced': 1. If 'memory mode' isn't already set to 'Most memory usage', increase it. 2. Make sure 'Stream item textures' is disabled. Fanra's web site has a good guide to display settings at: http://everquest.fanra.info/wiki/Graphics_and_performance_settings_guide Note that these changes will increase EQ's memory usage and may require lowering other graphics settings to keep the game stable.)
Note 2: disabling 'Stream item textures' will probably increase the amount of time it takes to zone, since EQ will be loading the textures all at once, rather than waiting until they're actually needed. (I spent most of yesterday tweaking EQ's display settings to fix problems with crashing and graphics hangs in some zones. I think I've finally got it all straightened out, so I can concentrate on playing EQ again.)
Stream item textures off seems to have fixed it. Had to relog before it worked. Zoning seems unchanged. Is that a new setting? I dont remember seeing that before.
Stream item textures off does seem to increase the speed of loading, but it still seems like something is wrong. When I port to pok then turn around the players that come into view are all grey for about a second. It seems like the textures do not load until you look at the players.
I have had this same problem as well. Are both your PC's using built in video? Mine are and they work great except for this problem now and then. You can fix this and leave stream item textures on by downloading and using BitSum Technologies, Process Lasso. This will also allow you to run, more instances on EQ on the same machine. I run 3 on each for 6 boxing.
I can run 6 EQ clients on one machine without any third party software. I launch each session with a separate icon with this in the target line under the shortcut tab: C:\Games\DBG\EverQuest\eqgame.exe patchme /login:YourUserid Obviously you would change the path to match your install folder and YourUserid would be different for each account. (And of course you would need to launch EQ once normally after a patch to get the updated files.)
I run 2 copies fine. But it doesnt matter whether Im running one or two, the textures still dont load until I turn around and look at people in pok (for first time, after that its ok). Using a geforce 980, ssd, I5 6500 @3.2Ghz. Its like the game just doesnt choose to load them until needed. Streaming textures off. And yea, this doesnt greatly affect gameplay. Its just annoying that it works this way.
I think the effect you are seeing is just the result of the devs trying to correct the memory issues that were causing some people to crash. Textures are slower to load, and we see it now.
