Textures not loading?

[BloodFlow82]

i have had the game since day 1 and it would freeze a lot and textures would not load on a lot of thing right away, i could walk up to a sign or person and i would have to stand there for about 5 sec for the texture to load. so i returned the game for another copy, still did it, i returned my xbox 360 for another one. the freezing seemed to stop, but the texture problem is still there, just not as bad. is this an issue with the UT3 engine? or something else?

[BloodFlow82]

bump. any others with this problem?

[Vorspan]

Hi,

I have the same problem on my PC. Takes a good 10 secs for textures to load after loading a level/quicksave. Also random textures during a level won't load sometimes, then you wait and they do.

Geforce 8800GTX
Athlon 64 3100+
Running @ 2560 x 1600

[elfranche]

Some textures are black but I dont know if its the same issue

[JMD FLA]

I am on the PC and I am also experiencing a similar issue. In my case the level will load but not all the textures are loaded. They usually continue to load as I move around for about, in some cases for up to about another minute or two.
I find that the old trick of “spinning” in place, as in other games, seems to help the process load slightly faster. All I can say is that although it is a bit of a nuisance it is not a show stopper by any means. I can only imagine that with such a vast array of highly detailed texture we are pushing PC systems specs

Would the more tech savvy readers venture to guess if this is a CPU, ram or vid card issue? Or maybe a little of each?

Best

JMD

[BloodFlow82]

well i am on the xbox 360. so not sure what the cause is.

[Einhanderkiller]

The same thing happened in Gears of War. I think this is just a problem with Unreal Engine 3 and its texture streaming system.

[IdlePye]

I have the same problem on my 360 it mainly happened in arcadia where texturs were taking ages to be loaded in, when i saved the game and loaded back up again later i found 2 bodies were the textures just wouldnt load

[Yabbering Yeti]

I can answer your problems peoples! I know what the issue is and it ISNT a bug or error. Infact its a good thing!

Bioshock keeps a low res texture & shader map for all the items in the game. It holds this in memory. When the high res texture isnt loaded in to memory yet it places the low res one in its place untill the high res is ready.

Using this technique prevents the game from hanging when loading textures. If it werent for those low res textures the game would simply halt until the high res textures are ready, like most games.

This lets people use higher res textures at playable frames without jerking about. It also reduces load times.

Now if this dynamic system is a pain in the ass for you there is a way to reduce the amount of time the ugly textures are on screen: Reduce your Texture detail (biggest one), resolution and AF levels. This will free vid ram and means the High res textures are less likely to be bumped out of vram and have to be reloaded, causing the ugly textures to show up in their place.

There is no way to stop it from happening on an initial game load, altough subsequent loads of same level (for a short period of time after initial load) can be improved using above steps.

So to sum up: This is a good thing, it lets you play the game with a higher level of detail, with minimal texture load hitches and precaches than normaly possible. For a fec secs of ugly textures you get a sharper and more fluid gaming experience... sounds like a good trade-off to me! O and did I mention shorter load times (because the load doesnt wait for all the high res textures to be in memory)?

o and the higher level of textures your using the longer it will take for the nice textures to show up.

Hope this clears things up!

[conantheking]

I have the same problem on my 360 it mainly happened in arcadia where texturs were taking ages to be loaded in, when i saved the game and loaded back up again later i found 2 bodies were the textures just wouldnt load

I had the same problem next to the "power to the people" machine there. There were two bodies that just stayed plain textureless brown.

[IdlePye]

well i knew that its just that most of the tinme the game manages to load the textures in a good amount of time before you see the boject but the more i play it worse it gets

[Yabbering Yeti]

o and as for objects where the detail stays low? Yeah, thats just the dynamic system tripping over itself... hopefuly this will be patched!

360 users, its important that this system was in place so you could get your high level of detail. A game HAS to run fluid on a console, otherwise it doesnt get licenced for release. They could have either dumbed down the visuals or implemented this dynamic system. Im happy with their choice.

Bioshock isnt the first to use this, many games do (but mostly always console games), such as halo 2.

[IdlePye]

I had the same problem next to the "power to the people" machine there. There were two bodies that just stayed plain textureless brown.

thats exactly were it happened

[Yabbering Yeti]

well i knew that its just that most of the time the game manages to load the textures in a good amount of time before you see the boject but the more i play it worse it gets

yeah, that all depends of your amount and speed of vid ram and your texture details. The more you move through the game the more textures are loaded in to ram. when your ram is full its going to start kicking some of the old ones out (the engine decides which texture/s are best to kick, so it takes a bit longer) and then loading the new, which will make the problem more apparent.

Purging the vram when it gets to be an issue will clear it up. Easiest way to do that it power off for 30 secs.

[Yabbering Yeti]

well ya, its bugging for you thats for sure. As was the OP's, due to malfunctioning hardware. Most users are just noticing the normal operation, especialy those with low end cards with texture detail set too high.

Looks like, for whatever reason, the system doesnt like your setup. This is the first time on this forum ive seen anyone with your problem. From what youve said it looks like it'll initialy cache all the textures but wont dump the old to make way for the new. A tech may be able to post you a dev command, if you PM one, for purging the textures from memory or a command for reloading the dynamic system, the same as when you change resolution.

but at least, if you want a 2k tech to help you with it, and maybe provide a solution, post your system info.

[Napper]

Sadly the same thing happens to me(PC version). I load a game(or enter a new area) and the game runs REAL slow(12 FPS) for 3 minutes while textures begin to form on screen. Then through out the level i get constant hitchs. If i play through the level then reload the level again, it will run fine. Its real annoying. Is this an expected bug can someone tell me, cause im worried it was my system.

Windows xp pro service pack 2
Geforce 8800gts 640mb
2gigs RAM
Intel Duo Core E6600

[CodeMonkey]

Same here with the Xbox version. Oddly the textures sometimes will be there, then it unloads them and then reloads them, taking about 3 to 5 seconds to do so. Fairly annoying.

[Hadrian]

I get this to, I had attributed it to the long load times bug I have been having. My rig that has BioShock on specs are;
AMD 64 3200 @ 2.4ghz, 2gb ram, 7900gs 256 ~163.44 drivers, Audigy SE, 200gb SATA 300 HDD, Xp pro SP2 & all updates.