So, there's a couple of people on the forums having trouble with Z-fighting with some mountain snow LOD in Skyrim: http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1256362-shimmering-lod-textures/

The real question is: can modders solve it, if Bethesda can't? It seems it was a problem in Fallout New Vegas too and as far as I know it never got solved.

I got the problem myself and it's destroying my experience of the game...

Apparently it can be solved in some cases by shaders, I read here: http://www.ogre3d.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=47733
Therefore I thought I could ask the talented modders more

At the very core of z fighting is simply 2 objects trying to occupy equal space, this flickering can be from a rounding error, but I doubt it. Since vertex shaders can modify the 3D position of vertex, it would seem logical shaders could solve the problem. This however, is easier said than done with LOD. This is an issue with the renderer (gamebryo), and thus will be hard to correct without causing more problems. Also, multiple people getting it in the same areas consistently indicate more evidence on the engines/LOD generation side rather than say graphics drivers.

tl;dr I really hope bethesda patches it, it would be much more easier and possible for them than a modder (this is for every case though lol)

EDIT: Hmm, actually, I might be thinking of *this* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-fighting. I'm not sure if that's the same thing you are talking about or not.

The only time I see it in terrain is when the terrain is made of actual objects, such as in dungeons and other interior cells.

Usually I solved this by either covering up the spots where the flickering occurred with other objects, or by reducing the scale of two overlapping objects. For example, if I made a long table out of two ordinary tables, where they overlapped would flicker horribly because of z-fighting. So, in Morrowind for example, I would reduce the scale of one table by a few hundredths, which would usually get rid of the flicker (although sometimes from greater distances it would still be visible). Such a small change in scale not only helped reduce the flicker, but was also so small that you couldn't easily tell they were sized differently. It pretty much require zooming in on the seam from within the editor to notice, so it was a decent fix in regard to game play.

Lol.... when I saw Z Fighting I immediatly thought of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXzooTdJ3U0 rather than what you guys ment...

and i this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obj6S18gNfI

I've seen this in FO3 and New Vegas too and quite a few other games for that matter. I doubt that there will be a fix.

Not sure how you would even go about it either. I've noticed in games for years and years, but from what I understand, there's not many ways to fix it, especially in the case of coplanar polygons like my example above discussed. But then I'm not certain if I'm talking about the same thing as the OP. That's the part I was hoping for clarification on.

As a programmer it's easy to fix: move the far-plane, done.

Well, it's still going to stretch the precision you have...

But heck, sounds good to me. On a side note, any luck with sorting out Bethesda's apocryphal programming?

Suggested this in the H/W issues thread, but we might be able to hook the device create and force a 32-bit depth buffer if Skyrim isn't already using one. Ideally I'd like to flip the near and far planes so the FP inaccuracy cancels out, but one thing at a time.

so is anyone working on this?