Affinity Photo Flickering in Workspace

[ralisdaum]

Randomly my document will flicker while I am working, but the flicker does not extend to the tool bar, or anything other the main canvas. (this happens in designer and publisher as well and not on any other app I use) I had updated my windows OS about a month ago and this same issue occurred. I reverted windows and it fixed my problem so I kept delaying the update but windows wont allow me to delay the update anymore. After updating a few days ago, the issues has come back.

 

Affinity is updated to the most recent build, Nvidia Driver is up tp date (466.27) and my Windows OS is on 19042.928. 

 

I'd appreciate it if someone could help me out, drives me crazy.

[GarryP]

Have you tried disabling OpenCL compute acceleration?
https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/133116-faq-how-can-i-disable-opencl-compute-acceleration-on-windows/

[Lee D]

@ralisdaum If disabling OpenCL doesn't resolve the issue can you please do a screen recording showing the flickering occur.

[ralisdaum]

@Lee D @GarryP Thanks for the suggestions but disabling OpenCL did not fix it. I noticed when screen recording that the flickering does not show up. Attached is a screen recording and video of my monitor showing the flickering. Both were taken with OpenCL disabled. I'm assuming this must be hardware related. I checked my monitor for a driver update but there is none. I tested another monitor and it doesn't flicker at all.

Any idea as to why a windows and affinity update is causing my monitor to flicker now? It seemed as if it was only flickering in the canvas but now watching my phone video I just wasn't able to perceive the entire monitor flickering. It is only this application, games and other software like Blender run like normal.

[ralisdaum]

[ralisdaum]

[GarryP]

Thanks for supplying the videos and extra information.
I can’t see any flickering in the screen recording, as you say, but I can see that the whole screen flickers on the phone video.
Since you can actually see the flickering with your eyes it’s unlikely to be caused by the phone recording itself so that can probably be ruled out.
It might be something to do with ‘refresh rates’ (whatever I mean by that) but I’m not a hardware person so I couldn’t start to give any good guesses on that.
Do you have another monitor which you can try (temporarily borrow)?
If you can try another monitor, try it without installing any model-specific drivers (if possible) first – just use the generic one.
Can you try switching display resolution (Settings → System → Display, on Windows 10)?
Have you tried any of these: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/troubleshoot-screen-flickering-in-windows-10-47d5b0a7-89ea-1321-ec47-dc262675fc7b

[R C-R]

8 hours ago, GarryP said:

Do you have another monitor which you can try (temporarily borrow)?

 

18 hours ago, ralisdaum said:

I tested another monitor and it doesn't flicker at all.

 

[GarryP]

Missed that one, thanks.

[ralisdaum]

Just bumping this thread. 

Is there a better way to receive dev support on issues like this?

[Lee D]

@ralisdaum We've had a few other reports of flickering within the app, most of them resolved by disabling gsync within their Nvidia drivers or setting monitors refresh rate to 60hz.

These may be worth checking on your system.

[mikeyguy]

On 5/17/2021 at 4:27 AM, Lee D said:

@ralisdaum We've had a few other reports of flickering within the app, most of them resolved by disabling gsync within their Nvidia drivers or setting monitors refresh rate to 60hz.

These may be worth checking on your system.

Loving the software, but I'm experiencing this same issue. However, crippling my 144ghz G-Sync display's capabilities overall is not an acceptable long term solution.

However, I did confirm two ways to resolve this problem in my case:

1) Left OpenCL enabled and switched the renderer to the "WARP" option. This alleviated the flickering, so I'm thinking the issue is not with my display but with how Affinity Photo is utilizing my graphics card (NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 TI).

2) Alternatively, I was able to again leave OpenCL enabled, but left renderer set to my video card, then changed my Nvidia driver settings for Affinity Photo specifically to use a fixed refresh rate, set to 60fps (see screenshot attached).

I just hope that a fix can be implemented in the software itself at some point to avoid this extra step.

Edited May 17, 2022 by mikeyguy

[JCCL]

I am having this exact same issue with Flickering on my screen and I know it's a not a computer bottleneck.  I'm running the same monitor the Dell2716DG and it should run at 144 hz.  
System Specs:
Windows 11 Home
i9 12900K
16 GB 5200 DDR5
12 GB 3080
And my main SSD I'm running this off is a 7000 MB/sec SSD.
Affinity Photo Version 1.10.5.1342
Changing the monitor Tech to fixed and max frame of 60 did not fix the flickering for me.
Currently running on 512.77 Game Ready Drivers for my 3080
Disabling Gsync does make a difference but I'd really rather not be disabling that then turning it back on every time I want to use photo or designer.  Disabling Gsync on a app by app basis has no effect.
I just picked up the software so I haven't used any other drivers or version in the past.

 

[Scotter]

I had same issue with a high refresh monitor. I turned off Freesync and voila, fixed!

[ralisdaum]

Sad to learn there are more with this issue and with the release of V2 that this is still a problem. Disabling G sync has worked for me but this is a terrible solution for someone who plays games and wants to use Affinity daily. Currently on a new monitor, Asus VG27AQL1A 170hz. This problem is annoying and has me using my ipad most of the time for Affinity. 

[Qhriz]

I can confirm flickering with all the Affinity 2.0 products and Gsync and 144 Hz refresh rate enabled, and this works:
- Warp renderer removes flickering, but performance takes a hit
- Turning off Gsync works
- locking affinity executables to 60Hz works
- Moving Affinity photo window to my second monitor, which is 60Hz, works but that monitor has so bad colors that its not an option
- turning off OpenCL acceleration does nothing
None of these should be necessary and all are inconvenient band aids.
Serif, please fix your products to handle high refresh displays properly. None of my other apps flickers like this, Affinity Photo 1 did not, so it should be possible to improve 2.0.

Edited November 18, 2022 by Qhriz

[rockafinger]

Any updates on this? I was hoping it's resolved with the 2.0 update, but so far it doesn't seem like it.

[mikeyguy]

On 11/18/2022 at 2:09 PM, Qhriz said:

Serif, please fix your products to handle high refresh displays properly. None of my other apps flickers like this, Affinity Photo 1 did not, so it should be possible to improve 2.0.

This is my exact sentiment about the situation. I really want to like the Affinity suite of applications, but so far my experience has been very mediocre.
It is for this reason that I haven't recommended them to anyone else yet.

[dapaca]

I have this issue on a new M2 Max Mac Studio with Studio display. What do I do?

[tims]

Any update on this? Very annoying to go and change monitor settings before I open affinity, then change back after when I'm finished with affinity.