Whole scene goes black for a frame in Hyrule Town, more often under 30 FPS  #47

What happens

When I walk around Hyrule Town the whole 3D scene goes black for a frame, then it comes back. Navi's glow and the button prompts still draw on those frames, so it's only the scene that disappears (Link, the ground, the buildings). Other than this the game runs fine for me.

I put the frames in a comment below. Each row goes previous frame, flash, next frame.

My guess is the scene colour or the lighting ends up black on that frame and it's not a dropped frame, but I can't tell from my side.

When it appears

The black flicker seems to show up when the game drops below 30 FPS. I'm seeing it on the character and the environment in Hyrule Town.

I checked this against the detector log by splitting the FPS reports (one every 120 frames) into under 30 and 30+:

So I get a bit over twice as many flashes under 30 FPS, but it still happens above 30. Those FPS numbers are averages, so short dips could be hiding in them.

Detector log

I ran it with the built-in flash detector and walked around for about 3 minutes:
RX_VK_FLASH=1 RX_VK_FLASH_REGION=40 RX_VK_SHOT_EVERY=1 RX_VK_FLASH_DUMPS=0

• 63 flashes, between presents 1654 and 4225
• 27 of them covered almost the whole screen (1000+ of 2304 cells), 14 going darker and 13 going brighter. In some of my captures there's one good frame between two black ones, so "brighter" might just be the picture coming back.
• I had Resolution on 50%, Handheld profile on and Catmull-Rom on for this run and it still happened.

The worst ones:

vk: flash at present 2001: 2223 of 2304 cells differ from both neighbours, 2223 brighter, peak 251, cells 0,0-63,35 (now present 2003, texture frame 2004)
vk: flash at present 1821: 2197 of 2304 cells differ from both neighbours, 2197 brighter, peak 252, cells 0,0-63,35 (now present 1823, texture frame 1824)
vk: flash at present 2631: 2192 of 2304 cells differ from both neighbours, 2192 brighter, peak 243, cells 0,0-63,35 (now present 2633, texture frame 2634)
vk: flash at present 2641: 2180 of 2304 cells differ from both neighbours, 2180 brighter, peak 243, cells 0,0-63,35 (now present 2643, texture frame 2644)
vk: flash at present 4021: 2059 of 2304 cells differ from both neighbours, 2059 brighter, peak 227, cells 0,0-63,35 (now present 4023, texture frame 4024)
vk: flash at present 3473: 2015 of 2304 cells differ from both neighbours, 2015 brighter, peak 237, cells 0,0-63,35 (now present 3475, texture frame 3476)
vk: flash at present 3475: 1998 of 2304 cells differ from both neighbours, 1998 brighter, peak 237, cells 0,0-63,35 (now present 3477, texture frame 3478)
vk: flash at present 3487: 1828 of 2304 cells differ from both neighbours, 1828 brighter, peak 240, cells 0,0-63,35 (now present 3489, texture frame 3490)

FPS while I was playing:

1680 presents, 15.6 fps; 666 draws
1800 presents, 24.1 fps; 2047 draws
1920 presents, 25.0 fps; 2667 draws
2040 presents, 28.6 fps; 2308 draws
2160 presents, 29.8 fps; 2186 draws
2280 presents, 28.9 fps; 2305 draws
2400 presents, 34.7 fps; 1933 draws
2520 presents, 32.7 fps; 1906 draws
2640 presents, 26.3 fps; 2059 draws
2760 presents, 10.2 fps; 2589 draws
2880 presents, 30.3 fps; 1811 draws
3000 presents, 38.5 fps; 1501 draws

VRAM was almost full in an earlier run (5746 of 6141 MiB in nvidia-smi). Textures getting retired during this run:

vk: 5 textures retired (1302 left, 2340 MB)
vk: 2 textures retired (1305 left, 2336 MB)
vk: 7 textures retired (1304 left, 2333 MB)
vk: 15 textures retired (1293 left, 2306 MB)
vk: 1 textures retired (1307 left, 2337 MB)

Might have nothing to do with it, but I only have 6 GB and the card you tested on has 16.

Shaders that didn't translate

2 in this run, both Mesh output topology 1 (SET_MESH_SHADER_A 0x00040201) is not implemented:

vk: mesh program 02ee95fbf9e0050d not translated: Mesh output topology 1 (SET_MESH_SHADER_A 0x00040201) is not implemented
vk: mesh program b0b3b40244c71ec7 not translated: Mesh output topology 1 (SET_MESH_SHADER_A 0x00040201) is not implemented

My setup

• Release: important (HookshotBuilder), built from a .nup, build e0f3ccfa
• CPU: i5-12450H (4P + 4E)
• GPU: RTX 4050 Laptop, 6 GB, driver 621.14 (32.0.16.2114)
• RAM: 16 GB
• Windows 11 Home, build 26100
• Display: 144 Hz
• In-game options: Frame generation Off, Frame pacing On, Game speed Real time, Handheld profile On, Resolution 50%, Upscaling Catmull-Rom, Sharpness 0, Ultrawide 16:9

vk: subgroups: default 32 lanes, 32-32, pinned to 32 on stages 0x3fff
vk: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPU, Vulkan 1.4, driver 0x9b438000; mesh shaders yes, host memory import yes, pipeline libraries yes
vk: swapchain 1280x720, 4 images, mailbox
vk: replay ready (window; push descriptors yes (32), extended dynamic state 3 yes, custom border colours yes)

How to get it

Load a save in Hyrule Town and walk around it
could be related to #20 and #11