Dxvk: Overwatch Shadow Glitches

[linkjay]

Software information

Overwatch on low overall settings and low shadows.

Map is Lijang Tower on the 1st stage.

System information

• GPU: GTX 1070
• Driver: nvidia-vulkan (396.54.09-1)
• Wine version: Wine Staging 3.18
• DXVK version: 0.90

It appears that when you are playing, there are certain points where shadows appear on the other sides of walls that give away a players position. I discovered this on Lijang Tower, the bots would run behind the wall and there would be one circular shadow that traces them perfectly on the other side.

I think this is a potential exploit, and not just exclusive to this location. I would really not like to somehow get banned for this and have turned off shadows until this is fixed.

Here are some screenshots:

(2 lucios behind the wall)
https://i.linkjay.io/SnqcNX.png

(another 2)
https://i.linkjay.io/ExlEJD.png

(using widows alt, i show a lucio behind the wall with a shadow right above him)
https://i.linkjay.io/CppbtI.png

[doitsujin]

Have you tried an older driver? People have been playing Overwatch for months without noticing any such issues. If this is a regression, please find the last working version.

Also, it's impossible for me to debug this game, and I don't think this is my bug.

[AsuMagic]

Did this happen somewhere else than in Lijang Tower? I'm going to test on a RX580.

[AsuMagic]

I tried this with Las and we can't reproduce it, in a custom game on Lijiang in the exact same spot. Tried wallriding at different heights, messing around, etc. RX 580 for us both.

Did it happen really often or only occasionally?

[L-as]

This seems to be a bug in the Nvidia driver, since we can not reproduce it with an RX 580. Using wine-staging 3.18 here with dxvk 0.90.

[linkjay]

I can only seem to reproduce this issue at that specific part of Lijang Tower. It seems to be that hard lighting. I assume this is a driver issue with NVIDIA going off of what you guys are reporting.

I am using the nvidia-vulkan pack which uses a sort of outdated version of the drivers, so this may have been fixed in the actual NVIDIA pack. I cannot test it with anything else, this is what works for me to be able to launch Battle.net and Overwatch.

I leave it up to you to decide how to proceed on this. Maybe is there a better repository or somewhere I could report this issue like an NVIDIA repo or something?

More screenshots showing it happening all around that room and in that same area.
https://i.linkjay.io/RxVIzJ.png
https://i.linkjay.io/TnnRak.png
https://i.linkjay.io/ytuTgg.png

[Leopard1907]

Can you try with another driver that isn't 396.54.09 ( which has TF extension ) ?

[Guy1524]

I occasionally experience the bug myself with 396.54.04.

[L-as]

@varris1 also experiences this with his GTX 970. This is most likely an issue with the Nvidia drivers.

[Anti-Ultimate]

This game's anti-cheat is blocking apitrace or banning you if you use it, right?

I might be able to reproduce this and post a apitrace, but I do not want to get banned.

[JDC2389]

You should move to 410.73 and test again

[AsuMagic]

I think Overwatch crashes when you attempt to attach apitrace to it.

[JDC2389]

wine 3.19 staging is out

[linkjay]

Using all the master nvidia packages now from the official arch linux repo. I am now using drivers version 410.66-3 . It seems like this issue does not occur in Overwatch anymore with these drivers. Although performance is shafted rather heavily in some cases because of the lack of vulkan fixes.

It still does when using the nvidia-vulkan package. Now, the nvidia-vulkan package is supposed to be basically more up-to-date than the nvidia ones. It's as if they took nvidia, added some vulkan-related fixes to it, and then it will be merged into the 4XX drivers when they are done.

This has to be an issue with the nvidia vulkan drivers then. Maybe somehow its how its implemented within DXVK also? The regular nvidia drivers are still using vulkan, but just not as good as nvidia-vulkan.

[JDC2389]

Using all the master nvidia packages now from the official arch linux repo. I am now using drivers version 410.66-3 . It seems like this issue does not occur in Overwatch anymore with these drivers. Although performance is shafted rather heavily in some cases because of the lack of vulkan fixes.

It still does when using the nvidia-vulkan package. Now, the nvidia-vulkan package is supposed to be basically more up-to-date than the nvidia ones. It's as if they took nvidia, added some vulkan-related fixes to it, and then it will be merged into the 4XX drivers when they are done.

This has to be an issue with the nvidia vulkan drivers then. Maybe somehow its how its implemented within DXVK also? The regular nvidia drivers are still using vulkan, but just not as good as nvidia-vulkan.

Check out this guys stuff, he sets up all the things we want to build for us better than the arch repos https://github.com/Tk-Glitch/PKGBUILDS we're on 410.73 atm

[tannisroot]

I can’t reproduce this with the exact same setup but wine ( i use tkg-3.19 from lutris). https://streamable.com/r5mpo

[Anti-Ultimate]

@tannisroot You have to enable shadows, they don't seem to be enabled in your clip

[tannisroot]

Yep, I enabled it and I see the issue now. Happens with 410.66 too.

[doitsujin]

This is not fixable, and I highly recommend switching to wined3d for this game. I will consider blacklisting Overwatch from DXVK in the future to prevent this.

[L-as]

What about AMD users?

[linkjay]

@doitsujin ok like I get that this is an issue that cannot be fixed on your part, but is blacklisting the game in DXVK really a good option at all? AFAIK, this is the only problem with vulkan and overwatch, and it can easily be fixed by disabling shadows in-game.

Performance is significantly worse in Wine3d and it would pretty much kill all support for overwatch on linux if you blacklisted it on DXVK.

If you cannot fix this issue, maybe it can be brought up to Blizzard or Nvidia for them to develop a fix?

[Askannz]

If that helps, I have just tested with an old Nvidia driver (390.48) and the bug is still there. This does not seem to be a driver regression, this bug has been there for a very long time (assuming it was not introduced by a game update).

[Anti-Ultimate]

Even performance with DXVK isn't optimal, but I guess nothing can be done if it's impossible to trace the game and figure out what it does. I'd try contacting Jeff Kaplan, but he prolly doesn't care about this.

But please don't take my freedom away of playing the game using DXVK, shadows in OW are useless and while they tell you where someone is if they're behind a wall, the game tells you 20 times a minute where someone from the opposing team is at via outlines.

[tannisroot]

@Anti-Ultimate do NOT CONTACT ANYONE from Blizzard

[linkjay]

I would just like to add that I did test the game without DXVK and using wine3d. I got about 30 fps on the main menu when the 3d part loaded and I got at most 20 fps where I was averaging about 12 fps in-game.

If you blacklist Overwatch on DXVK, you will effectively be killing support for Overwatch on linux. Wine3d is NOT a viable alternative to DXVK for overwatch.

[Anti-Ultimate]

There's tons more issues with the game on Wine, like not being able to crouch, DEs messing with getting raw mouse input, window focus issues (winex11 smh), phantom mouse input, mouse cursor locking issues (the cursor disappears sometimes and doesn't stay correctly inside the windows)

I think those affect the game much worse than FPS.
But since this is a NVIDIA bug, I'll gladly make my next GPU be an AMD one just so I can get rid of NVIDIA's nonsense.

[tannisroot]

Lutris’s installer for Overwatch will get an update soon to workaround this issue by disabling shadows all the time. Please don’t worry.

[doitsujin]

Small update: For some shadow-related rendering operations, this game uses a shader data type that is incompatible to the render target format. Still not sure if this is actually the problem, but if it is, there's basically no viable way to work around this.

[linkjay]

There's tons more issues with the game on Wine, like not being able to crouch, DEs messing with getting raw mouse input, window focus issues (winex11 smh), phantom mouse input, mouse cursor locking issues (the cursor disappears sometimes and doesn't stay correctly inside the windows)

I think those affect the game much worse than FPS.
But since this is a NVIDIA bug, I'll gladly make my next GPU be an AMD one just so I can get rid of NVIDIA's nonsense.

That's a fair point. These bugs exist right out of the box, but all of them have fixes.

• Fix crouching by using an xmodmap workaround.
• Not sure where I saw this raw mouse input bug but there's gotta be a fix for it.
• Window focus issues can be fixed by setting the "Automatically capture the mouse in full-screen windows" setting in your Winecfg
• Phantom mouse input is usually caused by the aspect ratio of the game being different than the desktop/monitor aspect ratio
• Mouse cursor locking could be fixed by changing fullscreen around to windowed/windowed borderless and/or setting the "Automatically capture full-screen mouse" setting.

So yeah, fair enough that these issues do exist, but all should have some sort of fix. This shows real progress with the game and it's very playable other than maybe performance which could be better. Although performance is pretty damn great right now!

[doitsujin]

Update 2 on the original shadow issue: What I posted yesterday isn't what causes the issues, and I'm out of ideas for this one.

[Askannz]

If anyone at Nvidia cares, the bug also occurs with a Kepler card (GT650M).

Driver : 396.54.09

[varris1]

@doitsujin worked around that issue in the possible-ow-fix branch. It seems to have fixed the shadows for several people.