How to Fix Z-Fighting (Flickering Surfaces) in a Game

Z-fighting is a depth-precision problem: the GPU cannot resolve which of two nearly-coplanar surfaces is nearer. Separating them or improving precision fixes the flicker. Here is how.

How to fix it

1. Separate the surfaces

If two faces sit at the same depth (a decal on a wall, two overlapping planes), offset one slightly so their depths differ. A tiny gap is usually enough to stop the flicker.

2. Tighten the near and far planes

Depth precision is concentrated near the camera and stretched thin at distance, and a tiny near plane wastes it. Move the near plane out and the far plane in so precision covers the range you use.

3. Use depth bias for overlays

For decals and coplanar overlays you cannot move, apply a depth bias or use the engine's decal system so they render reliably on top instead of fighting the surface beneath.

Catching the ones you can't reproduce

The hardest version of this to fix is the one you can't reproduce — it only happens on a player's hardware, OS, driver, or save state, under conditions that simply aren't present on your machine. A report that says “it crashed” or “it froze” gives you nothing to act on, so the bug survives release after release while quietly costing you players.

Automatic error capture closes that gap. Each failure arrives with its full stack trace, the device and OS, the build number, and a breadcrumb trail of what the player did right before it broke, so even a failure you have never seen becomes a specific, reproducible issue. Fold identical failures into one signature ranked by how many players each hits, and your worklist sorts itself worst-first instead of arriving as a stream of vague complaints.

This is where a tool like Bugnet earns its place. Its SDK captures every your game error automatically with the full stack trace plus device, OS, memory, build, and game-state context, folds duplicates into one grouped issue with an occurrence count, and ties each to the build it first appeared on — so you fix the problem that hurts the most players first and confirm it is gone when its signature disappears from the next release.