S.T.A.L.K.E.R shadows messed up

Hello all,

I know Stalker has many issues but I have not seen this before and can't find a post about it. I have been playing the game for several, weeks now and 2 days I ago the shadows appeared screwed up. Shadows cast from trees were floating around with my movement. A lot of flickering of shadows as well. I guess I noticed around the time I went into the Wild Territory. It is still playable but very distracting. I updated the FW drivers from the stable 163.75 to the most recent and that did nothing. I played with shadows settings. Obviously without shadows on there are no shadows to show, but I would prefer not to play this way. I also installed the floatingpoint32 patch and did nothing as well. I started a new game, nothing. I clean installed the game ran without patching, nothing. With patching again, nothing. The messed up shadows are everywhere now. I assume it is either something I installed recently a game possibly which may have "updated"Direct X or the area I am in with the game is buggy.


Details:

Stalkerver 1.0005
Windows Vista (updated)
XPS 1710 (2.0 ghz w 7950gtx card) updated to the most recent
Forceware 163.75 to 169.09 to 169.12.

If anyone has any suggestions it would be greatly appreciated.

Eyeglaze

 

Is your GPU OCed?

 

No never.

It is not tearing. although it looks similar at times. It is the weirdest thing I have seen. Literally the shadows, when I am outside, float around as I look around. Inside, they move too, depending on the light source. but it looks more like flicker. When the environment is cloudy or rainy, there are no shadows to make unstable.

Thanks though

Eyeglaze

 

Any mods installed?
Could be the patch though.

 

No mods either.

I have installed other games. Hmmm, I installed Call of Jaurez and Gun. If I am not mistaken Gun auto installed direct x9. The game is 2 years old. Although i did install it using Steam so I assume all would be up to date with this game. I am not sure if direct x9 has changed in 2 years. I do believe that it was 9.0c that was auto installed. These are the latest, correct? When I get home I will reinstall directx 9.0c again.
These are the only apps I have installed since I noticed this mess.

Thanks man.

Eyeglaze

 

Are you getting the latest DX9 from offline? I'd do that. The games DX version are probably dated a bit.

 

Generally I don't. But when I installed GUN, it didn't give me an option not to install. That really pisses me off! Some games detect DX and don't install. Some may not detect but at least leave you with the option of not installing.
I am not sure why I didn't think DX9 could be the reason. I guess I just assumed all would be well with DX9. I am hoping reinstalling the latest DX9 will fix this. I won't know untill tonight.

Anyway, I will post whether it fixes or not just to follow through with the post.

Thanks to everyone who posted! Greatly appreciated!

Eyeglaze

 

I reinstallled the latest DX9 from Nov and nothing happened.

Not sure what else to do other than a complete wipe down of my laptop.

Thanks again!

Eyeglaze

 

Clean out your laptop, it´s the GPU that´s probably overheating. Or your memory on your GPU is starting to give up. I know it has happened to a few people on notebookforums, even if they haven´t had their GPU overclocked at all.