Don't know if this has been discussed before (I've only sifted through topic titles for anything similair), but I'm encountering some kind of vertical tearing - there seems to be a vertical line which divides the screen into two halves with a noticable difference in drawing quality, and the line moves upon panning the camera.
I've recorded a little vid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-xTq3WyzoU
The glitch could have something to do with the "distance of clipping" setting, since the drop in quality gets even more noticable when DOC is set to "low" (though that doesn't really indicate a causal connection).
Is this a common problem? If so, anyone found a resolution, yet?

Do you by any chance have any of your anti aliasing settings in your graphics card control panel forced on? Because that line looks to have something to do with antialiasing if you notice how the jagged lines get alot smoother after it passes over it.

Yup, but it wasn't the cause of the problem (I've turned it off but to no avail). Looks more like a problem of the engine. Doesn't it render everything in software? I would think the video card's 3D settings shouldn't have any effect on the rendering (but I'm not sure, of course).

No your right it is all renedered in software, I just wasn't taking that into account. I have no idea why its doing that with a software render then.

I've just tried this on my other PC, which has a totally different setup: different CPU vendor, different GPU vendor, different OS, same glitch. Am I really the only one to encounter this phenomenon?

No, I have it the same.

Same problem here. I was told it is simply a normal issue with the game.
Though, I wonder if it also occured when you played Outcast on a common computer at the time of its original release. Can anyone say anything about that?

Oh, THAT problem. I get the same thing. I just assume it's a quirk with the engine.
It bothered me slightly at first, but I stopped noticing it after a while. I completely forgot this was happening at all until I was reminded by your video.

As far as i can tell you, that is not a vertical tearing glitch or whatever you guys are calling it :).
It is in fact a feature in the engine with which the game gets anti-aliased. I'm guessing that
there were not many options to put AA into a non hardware accelerated game (frankly you
cant AA voxels even if you did have HW for some of the polygons in game).

Ok, I see. Ah well, not a big deal really. Just thought maybe someone's found a way to get rid off the phenomenon (by fiddling with ini files or something). If not, I can live with some jaggedness here and there (though the jags sure are enormous, geez).

Exactly. All your fancy graphics card settings won't do any thing because Outcast runs, essentially, with a software renderer.
The AA is done via software and was ahead of it's time (as were a few other effects the engine could do) but worked only correctly at a certain angle.
But this also means it looks exactly like it did back then which I think is actually quite beautiful.

That tearing is absolutely normal. Byproduct of the voxel engine. I had the game in 1999 and it was the same. *shrug*