Metal Gear Solid 4 [BLES00246] - Visual and Audio instabilities with Write Colour Buffers Enabled.

[Bjorn29512]

Quick summary

WCB seems to cause crashes when calling Otacon with codec and severe audio crackling in FMVs

Details

The very first commercial FMVs that play after selecting a new game will have severe audio crackling, Once you load into the game and get to control snake calling otacon on codec will always cause the "VM: Access violation reading location 0xff00000c (unmapped memory)" Crash.

Attach a log file

RPCS3.log

Attach capture files for visual issues

Audio Issue :

Desktop.2022.09.16.-.12.02.03.01.mp4

Crash :

System configuration

SPECS:

• 12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-12400F | 12 Threads | 31.82 GiB RAM | TSC: 2.496GHz | AVX-512+ | FMA3
• Operating system: Windows, Major: 10, Minor: 0, Build: 22000, Service Pack: none, Compatibility mode: 0
• vulkan-compatible GPU: 'NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER' running on driver 516.94.0.0
• Firmware version: 4.88

Other details

All these issues can be "fixed" by disabling WCB but i felt its still worth making a report for record purposes.

[solarmystic]

Can reproduce the crashing issue when calling Otacon with WCB enabled
RPCS3.log.gz

[Tarek2013]

I had the same pb before but I found that the balance between frequency and frame limit was the fact.

So, try with this settings :
Renderer : Vulkan
Frame limit : 60
Anisotropic filter : x16
Anti-Aliasing : Auto
ZCULL Accuracy : Relaxed
Resolution Scale Threshold : 512x512 (if you play up to original resolution) : it can display clouds and other things correctly
Write Color Buffer : On
Shader Mode : Async (Multi threaded)

Disable TSX and Accurate RSX reservation
PPU LLVM : ON
Silence All logs : ON
Force disable exclusive Fullscreen : ON
RSX FIFO Accuracy : Atomic
Driver Wake-up Delay : 200
Vblank Frequency : 60hz

Let me know if it could help ;)

[kd-11]

This bug is insane 😆
Even just locking one specific page causes the game to freak out. There are signs of memory corruption, where it seems the game is storing a list of pointers immediately after a memory block it is using as a rendertarget. I've checked WCB and it seems to be working as it is supposed to, now I just need to figure out why the memory is getting overwritten with opaque black (0xff000000) where there was a pointer address before.

[Bjorn29512]

This bug is insane 😆 Even just locking one specific page causes the game to freak out. There are signs of memory corruption, where it seems the game is storing a list of pointers immediately after a memory block it is using as a rendertarget. I've checked WCB and it seems to be working as it is supposed to, now I just need to figure out why the memory is getting overwritten with opaque black (0xff000000) where there was a pointer address before.

Appreciate your hard work 🙏 , WCB also causes audio issues in the intro FMVs not sure why it does that, if you need anything from my end testing/info etc feel free to ask.

[kd-11]

Fixed by #12746

[Jonathan44062]

Testing the PR build, but the audio kinda breaks when you pause the menu
https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/78843189/193476014-7292e879-504d-4c03-83ac-5baa8380ce3a.mp4
RPCS3.log.gz

Nvm, it also happens in the master build without using WCB

[Bjorn29512]

Fixed by #12746

the codec crashes have been fixed 🙏 but the audio crackling in FMVs still persists, that doesn't happen with WCB disabled.

i can split that issue and close this for codec crashes.

[kd-11]

That's a CPU utilization thing, I don't have it for example because I have enough cores, but it is a known issue with WCB enabled. WCB causes the game to interrupt whenever we need GPU data to get copied back, there is no way around that. We could pause the renderer when doing this and give the other threads more performance, but then we get a constant performance hit around the game. Try enabling time stretching in the audio tab, it helps a lot with crackling.

[Bjorn29512]

Alright thanks a lot, will close this issue then since the core issue is resolved

[AniLeo]

Pull request is still not merged

[Tarek2013]

@kd-11
Personally , I didn't manage any issues like you mentioned before with the config I posted.
But I play with a 5950X with a 3080TI and, as you said, maybe it could be a processors number issue
Could you confirm it ?

[kd-11]

Yes, if you have a wide cpu with many threads you are unlikely to encounter some issues such as the crackling audio one.

[TheSorrowJoy]

Yes, if you have a wide cpu with many threads you are unlikely to encounter some issues such as the crackling audio one.

Hello,

there's more to it I think. Switching from Ryzen 5600x to 5800x (6 cores vs 8 cores) didn't help at all, but i noticed one thing: this bug only appears when i use 60 fps limiter. Without it there're no sound problems, but fps is too high and cutscenes are unstable.
If i set fps limiter to Auto/PS3Native/Infinite or off then there are no problems with the sound, but when i set it to 30/50/60 or activate vsync i get a lot of sound crackling.

ryzen 5800x
rtx 3080 12gb
16gb ram ddr4 3200mhz
m2 ssd
Windows 11