Please post here all of your reports about bugs or crashes in SpaceEngine. Before you post any bugs, please follow these steps:
First of all, make sure you make a clean install of SpaceEngine and update your video card drivers. This may solve 99% of all isues.
Read the Fixing common issues section below. It is possible that your problem can be solved there.
Read the List of known issues section below and make sure that your bugs are not on in it. You can use your browser's word finder to help search the list.
If the bug is not on the list then please post it in this thread. Attach to your message a screenshot (if possible) and a log file (it's called the se.log and is located in the SpaceEngine/system/ directory). Only the log file will help us to understand your problem and find a solution!
Fixing videocard-specific issues
If you do not know which videocard do you have, open the system/se.log file in the text editor and read the Vendor information in the beginning:
INITIALIZING OPENGL [MT] Vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
Then look for a solution for you:
Nvidia: Major lag spikes
To prevent major lags with Nvidia, go into Nvidia control panel, and in SpaceEngine's profile set Threaded optimization to off.
ATI/AMD: Transparent or invisible planets, no landscape
ATI/AMD: Crash on approaching to the black hole, neutron star or white dwarf, on using ship's hyperdrive, or when enabling the Oculus Rift mode or the Fish Eye mode
First, try the solution in in the previous paragraph. If this didn't help, open config/user.cfg and change this parameter value to false, so that it looks like this:
EnableMipmapsWarp false // use mipmapping for warp effects rendering
If crashes on enabling the Oculus Rift mode or the Fish Eye mode still remains, change these two parameters to false as well:
EnableMipmapsGUI false // use mipmapping for GUI FBO EnableMipmapsFrame false // use mipmapping for scene FBO
Intel HD: Glitchy landscape and textures on planets
Open config/main.cfg and change this parameter to 13:
PlanetHeightmapFormat 13 // format of the terrain heightmap textures: 13 - R32F, 16 - RGBA32F
If this didn't help, open config/user.cfg and change this parameter to true:
- "Error loading surface generator shaders. Press YES to run program with procedural planets disabled. Press NO to exit"
Download and install latest drivers for your video card. If you still get this message, it could be that you have an incompatible video card (see next paragraph).
But you still can try and run SpaceEngine by disabling checking of critical errors at startup. Open main.cfg and change value of this parameter to 'true':
IgnoreCriticalCheck true // ignore checking of OpenGL version and critical extensions supporting
NOTE: I can give no guaranties that SpaceEngine will be stable and work correctly if you do make this change.
If you have an "Error loading surface generator shaders" error and press Yes, SpaceEngine can run, but it will not be able to render procedural planetary landscapes.
After updating or rollback of the drivers, you must delete the cache folder in the SpaceEngine directory.
2) Weak system
Most of the forum posts I receive are from users that report an inability to start SpaceEngine, This is because those users have inbuilt Intel graphics card, or some old GeForce 5700 series, or not a proper "gaming" laptop. There is no way but to update your hardware system. There are no plans to make a second version of the engine for weaker systems with simplified graphics, CPU texture generation, etc. It would be like coding another engine from scratch. Once again, I would remind everyone that the minimum system requirements can be found on the Home page, but I will mention it here as well:
CPU 2.0 GHz RAM 2 GB Video GeForce 8600, Radeon HD 2600 VRAM 512 MB
I stress the special role played by videocard onboard memory (VRAM). 512 MB is the absolute minimum. The engine uses a large amount of data that must be in video memory (textures, meshes, vbo, etc). If your system meets the recommended requirements, the engine will work, because its development is made for this hardware:
CPU 3.0 GHz RAM 4 GB Video GeForce 9800 GTX, ATI Mobility HD 5730 VRAM 1024 MB
If you have a Intel HD graphics card, it is better to disable asynchronous loading in the main.cfg as well:
3) System with hybrid graphics (NVidia/ATI + Intel HD)
If you're running SE on a laptop with dual graphics, make sure SE runs on NVidia or ATI chip instead of Intel HD. You may see it in the beginning of "SpaceEngine/system/se.log" file. If it says: Vendor: Intel Renderer: Intel® HD Graphics 4000
then you should open Nvidia Control Panel or ATI Catalyst and force SpaceEngine.exe run on NVidia/ATI graphics card. If you do not found SpaceEngine profile there, create a new one.
4) Artifacts on procedural planets
If you get missing landscape blocks, blurry or blinking textures, random spikes sticking out of surface, check out these recommendations here:
a) If you have a laptop with hybrid graphics, read item #3.
b) Make sure that you make a "clean" installation of SE. If you install a new version overwriting the old one, you may get many bugs and glitches. If you get some glitches after the patch is installed, remove the folder called cache from SpaceEngine's directory.
5) Frequent crashing while generating planetary surface
If you have frequent crashes on planets, or get an "OUT OF MEMORY" message on screen, or "Unexpected deleting of child node" in the log file, try taking these steps first:
- Close any other programs that can consume the video memory (games, video players, graphics editors, etc.). SpaceEngine is not a small flash type game, video memory is the most important resource for it. It may help to disable the Windows Aero theme too, as it consumes a lot of video memory. - Disable "3D water" in Graphics settings (Ctrl-F4) - Reduce "Landscape LOD" to -2 in Graphics settings (Ctrl+F4) - Set up the amount of video memory in the main.cfg file:
VideoMemorySize 2048 // video card onboard memory (VRAM) in megabytes
The value must not be less than 1024, but not more than the total amount of physical video memory plus amount of RAM. For example, if you have a graphics card with 1024 MB of video memory, and more than 2 GB of RAM, you can increase VideoMemorySize to 2048.
6) Spaceship disappears when far from a star
It is not a bug. Current version have not yet completed spaceships rendering system - they cannot be rendered if there is no stars or planets in the renderlist. Just imagine that ship becomes invisible in interstellar flight
7) Blurry textures on Solar system planets
It is not a bug. Our Solar system planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Moon, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and its satellites) have no procedural textures, only real ones with limited level-of-detail. You can download addons with high resolution textures to increase level of detail of real planets.
8) Crash on entering the Display menu
If you experience a crash when trying to open the Display menu, open config/main.cfg and change the Maximized parameter value to true, so that it looks like this:
Maximized true // start with a maximized window
9) Problems with very high resolution displays
If you're using a very high display resolution and have problems selecting things with the cursor, or your screenshots are being output at a lower resolution than you're using, try the following:
1) Open Windows Control Panel, navigate to Display, and set the DPI scaling to "Smaller - 100% (default)" - it should look like this.
2) If you want to adjust the DPI scaling, click on "Set custom text size (DPI)" in the sidebar and change its value to suit your preference.
List of known issues
Green items have been fixed for the next release
Not real bugs, but effects caused by limitations in the engine:
- Star mode "points" and "sprites" looks the same. This is right! This switch changes the rendering technology, not the visual appearance. - Ships do not render in interstellar space - Star catalog has many errors in star classification, so there are many "giant dwarfs" and "dwarf giants" - Many real binary stars rendered as single, and many single rendered as binary - SE simply have incomplete catalog of binary stars - Comet nucleus star-sprite will shine through planets [example]. - Galaxy/nebula sprites will rotate when seen from certain angles - Skybox edges are visible when near the center of galaxy - Auroras, comet tails and rings can be rendered in front of ships/moons sometimes - Lens flares are distorted by gravitational lensing (black holes and ship warp drive effect) - Text editor for Wiki descriptions is not working - it is not implemented yet - Solar system moons don't have extremely accurate orbits (requires implementation of custom orbit models, e.g. VSOP-87) - Sunspot distribution is not always realistic - Ocean tag not yet implemented in planet editor - Rounding errors (e.g. 30° in catalog rounds to 29°59'59.99" displayed on HUD) - "Normal" autoexposure mode is unfinished - Bloom effects from the bottom of the screen are replicated at the top of the screen in anaglyph mode - Many HIP and HD stars do not appear in the search menu
Real bugs:
- Inaccurate tidal heating calculations, makes some moons too hot (e.g. asteroid Dactyl) - Crash when entering the Display menu for users with single-monitor setups - Does not work in Windows XP - Menu button sound doesn't work - Lens flare color in Normal or Super diffraction spike mode is inaccurate when close to a star - Changing "modes" between simulation and orbital when piloting ships can cause glitches - Few issues with asynchronous loading (stars don't always generate properly, especially when flying to new galaxies) - Flashing landscape LOD on a planet when Wiki for it is displayed - GUI response issues with some users (interface items glitchy or not respond easily) - GUI toolbars may completely disappear when pressing pin button while half-hidden - Flickering flare color in close binary systems [example] - Auto-exposure does not react when a sun is blocked while diffraction spikes are set to normal or super - "Eclipse bug" on distant planets (weird dark shimmering on outer planet caused by inner planet crossing the sun or two suns eclipsing) - Cloud cyclones have cut edges sometimes - Level horizon command (End key) doesn't work properly on oblate objects - Problems when releasing Left + Right click - Lines or junctures are visible on planetary surface - Switching to fullscreen doesn't work sometimes - Weird behavior of movement keys in tracking mode (T) and after releasing it - Automatic reference object setting with spacecraft doesn't always choose the best object (for example, when near dwarf moons or debris asteroids close to a planet you are trying to orbit) - 3D water fog sometimes starts above the water surface - Problems with the skybox export interface, and with the planetarium after using it, for some users - Music player will unpause when SE window is minimized and restored, or when entering and exiting the main menu - If a galaxy model is selected, the camera is not following any object, and the program is in Edit Mode, closing and restarting the program will cause the WASDRF movement keys to behave incorrectly until the camera is set to follow an object - Visual atmosphere heights are inconsistently and unrealistically generated - Physical atmosphere properties are inconsistently and unrealistically generated, and are not tied to the visual models - Cyclones are not generated in the southern hemispheres of gas giants - Shimmering bloom splotch when very close to the surface of a planet [example] - Lighting errors in system browser when viewing from outside the system - "Opacity spot" in the subsolar region of atmospheres - Strange behavior of fish eye and cube map views when near planets (only when a planetary object is in the neg_z face) - Only one planetary nebula model is used per galaxy - Camera will be set to 90° FOV when returning from fisheye or cubemap view sometimes - If spacecraft .sss Length is very different from its .cfg length, there may be rendering glitches - Eclipse shadows on atmosphere not occluded by planet [example]
First I want to say thanks I really appreciate the new updates!
Have encountered some terrain related graphical issues and recorded them below. Does anyone have any input or know of any workarounds to avoid the flickering? It looks similar to when several 3D texture faces are overlapping.
I've followed the sticky threads on the forums for troubleshooting and have updated my Nvidia drivers, disabled threaded optimization and forced the selection of "High performance nvidia" graphics card in nvidias 3D program options. Might have missed something though. Running on an Asus laptop, please see DxDiag below.
The only way to avoid this flickering for me that I've found is to completely disable 3D water but that doesn't look as fancy
I uninstalled my graphics driver then reinstalled them using Intel Driver Updater and a different error message popped up and said my OpenGL version is 2.1 and is not new enough to be compatible with Space Engine and im not sure how to install a new OpenGL version. I would love to use this simulator and extremely excited for it to work.
Hello again! I heard about problems with intel graphics cards before, so i can't say much to this. Sorry. But may you tell me, which graphics card you own? Maybe it helps investigating or other people know sth. about that model.
Look at those happy sunflowers . . . Now you should be happier than before!
Here to report that I'm getting the same problem as some people before like chromatic9 mentionned. When it generates planet surfaces, there are major lag spikes, freezes and the generation takes a lot of time. However unlinke chroamtic9, it only started happening with 0.9.7.2 for me.
This is weird because up until last version I tried (0.9.7.1) it was very smooth, very quick (10 second average) when generating planet terrain, and I was at LOD 2. And now it takes almost minutes and freezes a lot for almost a second, even at LOD 0. Nothing changed on my computer, so it must be coming from the latest version of SE itself I guess ?
I have quite a good gaming computer: -windows 8.1 64bit -MSI GTX 760 2GB OC (latest drivers) -Intel quad core i5 4570 3.4Ghz -8Gb RAM
I did disable Threaded Optimization for spaceengine.exe in Nivida's control panel, and it didn't change anything. I have also noted that the menus and controls in general are not as responsive as before on 0.9.7.1. I get quite a lot of bugs, very often, where I need to click twice or three times on a cross to close a window or press esc a lot of times to display the menu. Sometimes I can hear the menu music start playing but it's not displayed and I still need to press esc more to get it displayed. This might be related ?
Is there anything else I could try to resolve it and maybe find what the issue is ?
Hey I love this game and I can some what run it. But since the latest update my menu looks like this. Its hard to play a game when you cant see the menu.
Ok so i went and took a screen of the Irr galaxy that's crashing. Then print screen they error i got, and im also attaching the SE file (im guessing this is the log file). This is exactly whats happening when i try to fly into this Irr galaxy. I am going to try to find more and see if the error happens on others. Is there any way to fix this without having to edit the registry? I dont want to do something that may over heat the gpu or cpu. Went in another time really slow with LOD all the way down (Although i dont think that effects me flying into a galaxy) and i got some what in the bottom right you see in the screen. Then i got the error. Note that i do get lag when i fly around and through nebula, which im thinking this galaxy is just a massive nebula basically. Makes since that way. Having lag flying through a smaller cloud of gas with little stars or planets, crash going into a massive cloud with billions of stars and planets. Its just these are my favorite types of galaxies. I loved finding them on 0.9.7.1 they are just so beautiful. I would love to be able to go into it and sit on a planet with a good view of the night sky as a gas cloud with so many colors.
Sorry for all the edits i just keep seeing things that catch my eye. Why does the log say max ram 4gb when i have 12gb? Is it only using 4 of the 12? If so is there a way to change this? Will that have any effect on loading the Irr galaxy/Nebula any better?
This is the screen of the error
This next one is the Irr galaxy that i discovered this error from
So i found another one. Got a bit further into this one before the error, but i still got it. I added the log for that trip as well. The first attachment is the first log, and second this new one. Here are some screens of the short trip.
The Irr galaxy
About how far i got before the crash
And of course the crash itself. Same thing, same error
Has anyone figured out how to improve performance with evaporation trails/comet tails? Any config lines I can change that might improve performance? I find that turning TRfloat to false helps a little as well as give the space engine an over all better look (IMO)
Man, has it been a long time or what? Now with SE 0.972 out I've gotten back into this planetary mapping project I had begun ever since I swapped out my old potato for something crazy powerful. But in doing so I noticed something: Why is all the polar ice on planets rendering on the equator, and the equatorial deserts only loading on the poles? It doesn't matter what the axial tilt is, it just is always in the wrong spot. I can fix this with the Editor and then map the fixed planet, but I'm getting pretty tired of doing this and it gets really annoying when I just want to sightsee. Is this coded into the game?
I promise I'm not trying to spam i have a new problem. Now for some reason when it go to Display the engine crashes. Doesn't matter if i go through esc menu, hot key, or GUI button. Every time i get an error saying it suddenly crashed for unknown reason. The only thing i changed was I'm my Nvidia controls the thread optimizer. Turned it off, then later back on. That's the only changes that i have made to anything related to SE
Hello again! I heard about problems with intel graphics cards before, so i can't say much to this. Sorry. But may you tell me, which graphics card you own? Maybe it helps investigating or other people know sth. about that model.
I have an Intel® HD Graphics. I have 1696 MB of available graphical memory, and haven't had much trouble with other things. I hope this can help!!!
Does it continue to do the same if you restart the program? IF so it may be just the usual "Zed fighting" I think its called. Although if its constantly this violent I think it may be another issue, I sometimes get similar flickering issues where even the HUD and FPS counter will flicker black and stuff but a restart of the program fixes that right up.
So I downloaded the installer and followed its instructions, then whenever I tried to open up Space Engine a page pops up saying:
Error (null) (2.1). (null)
I click OK then it proceeds to load, then close the window. I tried uninstalling and re-installing the game, then I tried re-downloading the installer itself. Every time I open Space Engine, I get the same thing, over and over. I tried looking for some help through the site, but posting this thread is my only hope right now. Anyone care helping me out how I can fix this?
Every time I run SE, the screen is fully white. The sound works and the cursor appears and I can move it too. Anyone can help me figure out what is the problem here?
So I downloaded the installer and followed its instructions, then whenever I tried to open up Space Engine a page pops up saying:
Error (null) (2.1). (null)
I click OK then it proceeds to load, then close the window. I tried uninstalling and re-installing the game, then I tried re-downloading the installer itself. Every time I open Space Engine, I get the same thing, over and over. I tried looking for some help through the site, but posting this thread is my only hope right now. Anyone care helping me out how I can fix this?
You need to update your driver software. I just had this problem as well. First find your pc model and OS version at computer>system information (Mine is an HP Compaq 6005 with Windows 7 x86). Second find out what your graphics card is by going to computer>system information>device manager>display adapters (Mine is an ATI Radeon HD 4200, I know crappy). If you have NVidia, you may be able to get a newer version of your driver at their website, but for now just I would just get it from your pc vendor's website. Use your information there to find your driver. Download and install it. If it asks you to restart, do so and try running it again.
Hope this helps.
"If you arrive at a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong." - Ayn Rand "It may be that our purpose on Earth is not to find God, but to create him." - Arthur C. Clarke
The same issue is already mentioned in this forum section, Rules state NOT to create duplicates and to use the search engine first before posting a new thread, I'm sure an admin will close this.
Here is the other thread literally a couple posts below this.
May I request your logfile? You can find it in the SE folder -> System. The log file says many things and I forgot to ask for it, sry !!! I am not sure if I can help but I am trying hard... From above, you could try this: 3) System with hybrid graphics (NVidia/ATI + Intel HD)
If you're running SE on a laptop with dual graphics, make sure SE runs on NVidia or ATI chip instead of Intel HD. You may see it in the beginning of "SpaceEngine/system/se.log" file. If it says:
Vendor: Intel Renderer: Intel® HD Graphics 4000
then you should open NVidia Control Panel or ATI Catalyst and force SpaceEngine.exe run on NVidia/ATI graphics card. If you do not found SpaceEngine profile there, create a new one.
Look at those happy sunflowers . . . Now you should be happier than before!
Edited by Lord_Darkflame - Sunday, 11.01.2015, 11:38
ENG
New site
United States 
It looks like (null) 2.1 (null).
Sweden 
Germany 
France 
Canada 
!!!