Guild Wars 2

Hey! I have recently changed my toon’s hair to the newest Champagne blonde color and the non-exclusive wavy hair. I noticed, however, that the hair became pixelated as hell.

Nothing else is pixelated. Just this hair, under any lightning, on any graphic settings. It’s not my GEMFX, cause setting shaders to low gets rid of the pixels.
But i haven’t tweaked a single graphic setting on this computer recently so i have no idea what’s causing it.
Here’s the pics so you can see:

http://imgur.com/a/V0L1W

Is it the hair color being bugged? Is it the hair itself being bugged? Does it have to do something with the newest patch? Please help me, i don’t wanna buy another kit just to change a color :c

Hello! I have recently asked in a ticket about a pixelated hair issue, that i thought was the game’s problem. It might be, maybe the SAB patch broke something, but no one else seems to talk about this so i guess it’s not.

I started having terrible dithering (pixelated) edges of hair – not only mine, which i thought was the case in the beginning, but everyone’s.
I googled and scoured forums and reddit and everything, but didn’t find any solution for GW2. This happens in other games, where people suggested turning off AA or even using the heaviest setting of it. I tried all of these. Installed new AMD drivers too. But it doesn’t help at all.
So i am coming here hoping for some help with this, because this wasn’t happening before i came back to GW2, surely some graphic setting must be off on my computer or somewhere!

http://i.imgur.com/YK2G7qB.jpg showcase of the problem.

RAM: 8GB
Processor: Intel® Core™ i5-3230M CPU @ 2.60GHz (4 CPUs), ~2.6GHz
Operating system: Windows 8.1 64bit
Graphics cards: AMD Radeon HD 8600/8700M and Intel HD Graphics 4000
DirectX 11
newest drivers for both cards. reinstalled windows a month ago.
game runs on high performance settings

I tried 8x, 4x, 2x AA. Both multisampling and supersampling versions. even edge-detect ones. tried both overriding the game’s settings and enhancing.
i also tried only game’s FXAA or only game’s SMAA High. none of these things solved the issue.
the only thing that gets rid of jagged hair is putting shaders on lowest settings, but that affects my surroundings too and i hate it.

Try removed the radeon software crimson edition (I don’t have AMD, and right now I can’t remember the full correct name). And if that doesn’t fix it, run the game in full screen windowed mode, and at the same time run GPU-X to make sure the game is using your Radeon card.

After that, I’m out of ideas sorry.

Ellieanna.5027:

Try removed the radeon software crimson edition (I don’t have AMD, and right now I can’t remember the full correct name). And if that doesn’t fix it, run the game in full screen windowed mode, and at the same time run GPU-X to make sure the game is using your Radeon card.

After that, I’m out of ideas sorry.

Removing Radeon Software Crimson is like removing the drivers too, it comes with it, AMD no longer makes separate drivers. But i did it, basically reinstalled it and no change.
GPU-Z shows both of my cards, not sure how to tell which one it’s using though.
I’m really clueless now.. what else is there to do :/

Something is up with your bus interface. It should have things written there and not unknown. Usually says what slot the card is in, and what it’s running at.

Ellieanna.5027:

Something is up with your bus interface. It should have things written there and not unknown. Usually says what slot the card is in, and what it’s running at.

Sadly i am not a computer expert so i have no idea what bus interface is lol, how does it affect the pixels?

Here’s a radeon screen cause that mentions some Bus Type.

Either way, it’s getting VERY annoying and nothing i do seems to fix it. No one knows anything either. :c

Try disabling the Radeon software from running at start up (this won’t affect the graphics driver), then reboot.

More info here:

http://www.howtogeek.com/162446/how-to-manage-startup-applications-in-windows-8/

abomally.2694:

Try disabling the Radeon software from running at start up (this won’t affect the graphics driver), then reboot.

More info here:

http://www.howtogeek.com/162446/how-to-manage-startup-applications-in-windows-8/

Thanks for the tip! Did that, but it didn’t change a thing. Pixelated hair shenanigans continue.

So Bus interface is basically slot and speed the card is plugged into. Your GPU-Z screenshot showed nothing. It could be the video card having an issue. If the laptop is still under warranty, you could call the manufacture and explain the following

“Getting pixelated video on laptop, running GPU-Z shows bus interface as unknown instead of what slot the video card is in and speed it’s running at.”

If it’s not under warranty, calling will cost you money, so it would be better to take to a local computer repair and talk to some. Some of them can give an idea, and if they need to look at it you can go from there.

I don’t know of any causes why a computer wouldn’t show what slot and speed the card is running at.

Hairaky.6739:

abomally.2694:

Try disabling the Radeon software from running at start up (this won’t affect the graphics driver), then reboot.

More info here:

http://www.howtogeek.com/162446/how-to-manage-startup-applications-in-windows-8/

Thanks for the tip! Did that, but it didn’t change a thing. Pixelated hair shenanigans continue.

Sorry, but this is how the game renders hair alpha in the world, they look like that everywhere except for the hair/makeover kits/main menu/cc menu. There’s no way around this. The only problem here is that it gets worse with some new colours, right? I don’t have a kit to see for myself, but I think I heard more people having this problem when one of the latest updates broke character shaders, which is now fixed, have you checked how is that particular colour now?

Sorry, but this is how the game renders hair alpha in the world, they look like that everywhere except for the hair/makeover kits/main menu/cc menu. There’s no way around this. The only problem here is that it gets worse with some new colours, right? I don’t have a kit to see for myself, but I think I heard more people having this problem when one of the latest updates broke character shaders, which is now fixed, have you checked how is that particular colour now?

Hey i’m sorry but that’s not true, that’s not how the game looks like.. This is way too noticeable even from afar, i’m sure half the people wouldn’t be able to endure this and i wouldnt be the first one to bring this issue to the table.
It wasn’t like this for me before. I’m trying to trace back what could change this, but it doesn’t seem to be any of the AMD settings nor the drivers.
What i did was reinstall Windows like a month ago, but i surely do not recall hair being this pixelated.

I thought the issue were the new colors, but color doesn’t matter, it happens on all hair, all colors. The more strands and layers the hair has, the worse it is.

This is how things were from the day one (?). I have two desktops at home with very different setups: hair always looked like that, and I specifically pick those less problematic hairdos for my toons exactly for this reason.
I doubt you have a software/hardware problem. Try repairing your game client and/or DirectX if you feel like, I didn’t see you trying that earlier. Get more people to look at the thread to compare differences.
You’d be surprised knowing that few updates back the whole game’s environmental maps were nerfed, and I know only of three people who noticed it.

Well that only confirms that the two of us have the same issue in our computer. I know this is recent, because i always take close up screenshots of faces, and the brown hair which i linked above reaches into face too much. I’ve had it before and it wasn’t like this (because if it was, i would have been godkitten enraged years ago). So i suspect few things:
- either the recent shader update which i’ve heard of screwed something up
- SAB update might have screwed something up
- We got some software problem, because this isn’t AA problem, but likely a shader problem (similar issue has happened to me in TESV:Skyrim, where shadows dithered, but it was solved by changing the shadow’s resolution and view distance.)
Since this is just hair and nothing else, i’m pretty much lost. I’m sorry you had to endure this terrible hair thing for the entirety of your GW2 stay, but trust me, it’s not how it always been like :/

I assure you this is not an “issue”. It’s how the game works and renders transparency in the world.

Another thing is, as far as I know the hair in the CC/hair/makeover kits use completely different set of textures, or maybe different meshes even. I made several attempts in data mining and direct model ripping to get my character as a 3d statue.
The hair that are used in the world take very little space on the textures. They are squished among all equipment parts and face, in the left upper corner of a 1024×1024 texture. The alpha channel/transparency mask (wahatever they use) wasn’t ripped, so I don’t know how it is defined, but if it is as low res as the rest, only huge downsampling could’ve improved the looks. Maybe.

As I said, I have two computers at home, one with ATI one with NVidia card, and both give me the same result. Look up for official screenshots that are done outside CC/hair/makeover kits, you’ll see the same thing:
https://d3b4yo2b5lbfy.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/6e9b401-New-Hair-Example-1920x1080.jpg
http://waverunnersfastpitch.net/guild-wars-2-screenshots-hd-32.jpg

There are fluffy hairdos where this is more visible, there are hairdos that don’t use transparency, and there are hair that uses little transparency. Different shader settings may affect the edges a little. Clothes and other world elements are usually designed carefully to avoid this kind of rendering showing. This is why we don’t have half-transparent materials in the game (edit – and I don’t mean glass, I mean material as in fabric).

Sure there’s not much topics about this, I found one that’s two year’s old. Yeah, there was time I thought something was odd, but that was long before new hairstyles were even introduced. But I looked for screenshots from the beginning and compared them – turned out I just haven’t paid attention from the start, and once I spotted something I didn’t thought it’s right, I saw the issue everywhere

As a bonus, a screen of my main at the game’s launch – the “usual” pixelated transparency is there. I had even a different graphic card back then.

Thank you for the answer. I’m not gonna lie, i’d probably still lowkey think this is an issue in our computers even after you told me all this, but my two friends confirmed that if they zoom in my face they see the pixels too. So it’s a game thing. Now i just need to know how to minimize it, like, is resolution the way to do so? Or something else? I don’t really know, but i know the effect should be lessened by something. :/

Three things come to my mind:

There’s a small difference in dithering between FXAA and SMAA anti aliasing (game settings). FXAA will blur things a bit, SMAA will make the pixels sharper. Additionally, external AA injectors like GemFX or SweetFX, or stand alone injectors also smooth edges of models in hero/preview menus (and fonts I think? Not sure if injectors work on 64bit client, well, mine stopped applying AA, but maybe I haven’t found proper place for the files, and had no time to fix that for now).

You may want to try resolution downsampling. There’s many tutorials on that on the web, I tried this only on my NVidia card. I use this for making screenshots only, but a good hardware is needed for continuous playing.

Lastly, game shader quality settings. On the lowest quality, you’ll only see hard edges, no dithering at all. A bit dithering on medium, and things from the screenshots above on highest setting.

That’s all I can think of. Hope it helps in anything. These forums aren’t too lively, I’d wish some more people could join in, how about posting about it on reddit?

Sorry, my asura has the fluffiest hair among all my characters, I hope the screenshots show the difference. Don’t look at the outfit when comparing shader quality – for some reason few outfits aren’t affected by shader settings, it’s a bug. Also, if you’re comparing with friends, ask them to apply the same ingame graphical settings you have (or you can apply the same settings they have) and to send screenies. o/

Edit: it just occurred to me… Since lashes use transparency and stay unaffected by settings, why hair isn’t rendered the same way? Now I’m gonna have nightmares.