Why Your Games Are Suffering From Pop-In (and How to Fix It)

If you’ve noticed objects appearing out of nowhere or textures not loading correctly in your games, what you’re experiencing is called “pop-in”. Here are a few ways to fix this issue.

Pop-In Is a Common Visual Error

Pop-in is a visual glitch that occurs when a game fails to load certain objects and environmental assets. Normally, game assets are supposed to load before they appear in view of the player’s camera, but some issues can delay this process.

If this happens, you might see the game render an asset right in front of you, appearing as if it “popped” into existence. In extreme cases, you may notice multiple assets being rendered at once.

Pop-in can appear in a few different forms. Along with pop-in for 3D objects, texture pop-in is another common issue that occurs when certain textures aren’t loaded properly. In most modern games, textures that haven’t loaded correctly will be temporarily replaced by blurry, low-resolution surfaces until the game finishes loading the correct texture.

In more severe cases, pop-in can affect large chunks of a game’s environment. This problem is most common in open-world games, and can occur if the game is struggling to load environmental details or if you find an exploit that lets you move faster than the game can process.

Furthermore, how the world geometry is affected can differ depending on the game and the severity of its pop-in. Sometimes a segment of the world won’t appear, but its collision will still be active, allowing players to progress through an area while its visuals are still being rendered. In other cases, the world geometry and its collision will fail to load, causing you to fall outside the game boundaries if you enter the unloaded area.

How Draw Distance Affects Pop-In

You may be wondering why games don’t just render everything at once to avoid pop-in. The problem is that this approach wouldn’t be feasible for any normal system. If open-world games like Cyberpunk 2077 or Grand Theft Auto V tried to render their entire map at once, they’d be way too technically demanding for even the best gaming PCs to run.

Instead, games will only render the area currently surrounding the player. As you move around a level, nearby objects get rendered while distant objects are culled (or “de-rendered”). To determine exactly when objects are rendered and culled, every 3D game is designed around a specific draw distance.

The draw distance (or “render distance”) of a video game refers to the set distance that can exist between the player and a 3D object for it to be rendered. A high draw distance allows games to render assets from considerably far away, while short draw distances only allow nearby objects to be rendered. Neither is inherently better than the other, as every game is suited to a different draw distance. However, both high and low draw distances have disadvantages that can lead to pop-in and other visual issues.

Short-draw distances are less performance-intensive, allowing individual assets to be rendered faster. The downside to short draw distances is that objects are given less time to be rendered. If implemented poorly, short draw distances can suffer from frequent pop-in with objects, NPCs, and even parts of the map visibly popping in as you move forward.

Some games like Silent Hill and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas hide their low draw distances with fog or other visual effects, which helps mask any instances of pop-in or a lack of distant rendering.

Larger draw distances allow for games to render 3D assets within a much wider range. Many modern open-world games utilize large draw distances to render assets before you can see them and allow you to interact with characters or objects from longer distances.

Large draw distances also come with their own drawbacks. With more objects being rendered simultaneously, some games can suffer from various performance issues. These issues can cause a game to take longer to render, resulting in occasional pop-in.

Many graphically-intensive games with large render distances attempt to prevent pop-in by rendering simplistic models and textures for distant objects, swapping to fully detailed models as these objects become closer. This rendering technique is known as level of detail (LOD), making the game less demanding to run and allowing for individual assets to be rendered faster.

However, some games struggle to quickly swap between different LODs, which can lead to the appearance of simplified 3D models and noticeable instances of texture pop-in.

Game-Specific Pop-In

Most forms of pop-in can be easily fixed or even prevented. To determine the exact cause of a game’s pop-in, you should determine whether the problem is limited to a specific game or if it is present across all games on your device.

If you only encounter pop-in on one or a few specific games, then the problem is likely related to the game itself. Some games are poorly optimized for specific systems or suffer from bugs when played with certain settings. You may also encounter issues if you attempt to run games at higher graphical settings on low-end hardware.

In either of these cases, lowering the graphics quality and disabling other visual effects, such as ray tracing and post-processing, will improve general performance and minimize your chances of encountering pop-in.

You can also try changing a game’s draw distance to improve rendering speeds or distances. Most games don’t include an option to adjust the draw distance from their settings, meaning you have to manually change it within the game’s files or by downloading a mod that expands the draw distance.

It should be noted that most games are designed with a specific draw distance in mind, so changing this setting may lead to other visual errors. Additionally, increasing the draw distance will cause the game to render more objects at once and make it more demanding on your hardware, so be sure your PC can handle these changes.

System-Wide Pop-In

If you experience pop-in on most PC games, it’s likely that your hardware is the source of the problem. The simplest way to mitigate widespread pop-in is by storing your games on a solid state drive (SSD). SSDs read data faster than a traditional hard disc drive (HDD), allowing for faster load times and smoother performance in most games. Additionally, the increased read speed of an SSD also allows for games to load textures and other asset data at faster speeds, which can help prevent some instances of pop-in.

Depending on your current PC specs, you may also want to consider upgrading your RAM. RAM—which stands for Random Access Memory—allows your PC to quickly access game data, including textures and other visual assets. Modern games often require a sizeable amount of RAM to quickly load textures. If there isn’t enough RAM available, most games will struggle to even run, and those that are playable will experience constant stuttering, long load times, and egregious pop-in.

To avoid these problems, be sure to check that your PC contains enough RAM for gaming. Almost all modern games require at least 16GB of RAM, though some will need more space to run on higher graphical settings. If your current RAM doesn’t meet this requirement, you may experience frequent texture pop-in due to the lack of space needed to store and quickly load texture files.

If you’re facing more serious pop-in issues involving 3D objects, character models, or chunks of world geometry failing to render, your problems may be tied to your graphics card. The graphics card—also known as the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU)—is responsible for rendering 3D models, lighting effects, textures, and basically every other aspect of a game’s visuals.

While you could just replace the GPU, that’s not always necessary. Even if you have a powerful GPU capable of running high-fidelity games at the best graphics settings, you may still occasionally encounter pop-in. A common reason for this is that you’re using an outdated graphics driver. Not only do driver updates come with significant performance enhancements, but they also include bug fixes that address pop-in and other common issues in newer games. Learn more about how to update your graphics drivers.

Console Players Have Fewer Options

Unlike PC releases, console games are developed to fit specific hardware specs and are lacking in graphics and performance options. While this means consoles are more likely to receive well-optimized games, it also limits your ability to manually fix pop-in or other technical issues. In most cases, you’ll need to wait for an official patch to fix any significant pop-in.

Different console versions of the same game can also vary in their performance and graphical quality, though the next-gen releases aren’t always better. For example, the PS5 version of Fortnite initially launched with severe texture pop-in issues that weren’t present in the PlayStation 4 version.

On the other hand, some visual issues will only be present on the last-gen versions of cross-gen releases. If you have access to the last-gen and current-gen versions of a game, you can try swapping between them to find out which one is less affected by pop-in. Selecting different versions of games is limited to the PlayStation 5, Xbox gamers will always get the best version of a game for their hardware.

You can also try flipping between performance and fidelity modes on your console of choice. While performance mode is likely to have a shorter draw distance, it’s also likely to suffer from less pop-in than fidelity mode.

Pop-in can be a difficult problem to diagnose and even harder to fix, but you don’t have to deal with it forever. Pay attention to the signs that indicate why it’s happening, and be sure your hardware and graphical settings are suited to the games you want to play.