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]
LOL FastFourierTransform, can you give a location?
Yes. The object is called RS 665194-5-3-148-75 6.3 and it is located in the galaxy SDSS 1237658302742200429 (this is in the recomended zooniverse catalogue of the SDSS thread)
I've noticed this occurrs in all the ice planets and selenas, and also occurs in procedurall galaxies and not only the SDSS galaxies.
xionor, I have never encountered this issue nor has anyone else ever reported it that I know of. Please post your log file as described in the OP
Screenshot1 Screenshot2 Screenshot3 - Planet's satellite, disappears at different distance. Also planet silhouette visible against a light source. Screenshot4 - And it disappears. Screenshot5 - This is what happens when i get closer to a sun. Notice the tiny white dot in the middle disappears as well if i get even closer. Log(dropbox)
It gets black as soon as I get below a certain distance. Notice the planet is still actually there and will occlude stars and all, it's just completely black. They also seem to disappear at a rounded-number distances, like at 22,000km for the satellite or at 48,000km with the planet. I've tried a clean reinstall and all, doesn't help in any way.
P.S. Log seems to display my RAM as 4GB whereas I have 16GB. Should this be an issue?
Original post for reference:
Hi!
I get this weird bug only in Oculus mode. I tried every single other and they all work fine, even the non-oculus stereoscopic mode.
When I get close enough to planets, they turn completely black. If i zoom out everything suddenly appears again with all its textures and shapes and things. As soon as i get close again it immediately disappears into blackness.
I tried to edit and tweak each setting but nothing seemed to work out.
I'm running it on i7 cpu with a realtively new Nvidia card and 16gb of ram. I've rolled back to the previous-than-current nvidia drivers cause of a bug in the newest one that puts a double image on the dk2.
Code ERROR: Script::Load(): Can't open the file "config/main.cfg"
Check to verify that the file exists, and possibly try reinstalling SE.
Huh, no idea where the file went but indeed it wasn't there. Weird tho how the program would run absolutely normally for 99% of the time without it and only bug out in Oculus mode.
But reinstalling it for the Nth time actually did solve the problem!
As the title says, I can't run SE properly, every time I get into the Planetarium, game gets into the 'not responding' status, loads up after a few minutes, but that's it...whenever I look around the place I am at/try to go to some other, the game just doesn't respond, but in the Task Manager says it functions properly(sure, does take a lot of CPU and RAM, but I couldn't see anything strange). I used to run SE previously with much less RAM, even with high LOD, and had no problems, now I have everything down to low, and it's still the same... Any idea what's the problem?
FossilSpark, I don't know what to suggest. Can you give more information? What are your system specs (CPU and GPU)? And what location did you install SE into?
Thanks. for trying to help. Here is my system info and the location it is installed:
Processor: Intel® Xeon® CPU W3520 @ 2.67GHz (8 CPUs) Installed memory (RAM) 12.0 GB System type: 64-bit operating system
The exe file is located here but as I mentioned there's no log file (I'm guessing because it has never actually launched successfully.) C:\Program Files\se\SpaceEngine 0.972\system
Graphics hardware:
Name: NVIDIA Quadro FX 580 Manufacturer: NVIDIA Chip Type: Quadro FX 580 DAC Type: Integrated RAMDAC Approx. Total Memory: 4071 MV
When I try to run 0.972, the game crashes shortly [Usually around 2-5 seconds] after starting up. I get a "SpaceEngine has stopped working" error. I was able to play 0.971 fine with the same computer.
Below are my specs: Processor: Intel® Core™ i3-2120 CPU @ 3.30GHz Installed memory (RAM): 8.00 GB Adapter Type: ASUS EAH6850 Series Total Available Graphics Memory: 4849 MB Dedicated Video Memory: 1024MB
Thank you for your help and please let me know if additional info. is needed!
Zamachi, you need to post your se.log file as described in the OP.
FossilSpark, SE does have problems running on Quadro cards, but I've never heard of it not even starting. Sometimes people seem to encounter weird issues running it from Program Files, try moving it to a different location (maybe just to the desktop as a test) or a different hard drive. If that doesn't work, try to make a fresh install.
mzonic, what graphics driver version are you using? Since you're using an AMD card, maybe try installing 14.4 if possible. Also try to disable atmospheres and see if that has any effect.
All forum users, please read this! My SE mods and addons Phenom II X6 1090T 3.2 GHz, 16 GB DDR3 RAM, GTX 970 3584 MB VRAM
Hi guys, This isn't a bug, more just a problem I'm experiencing, and I'm already assuming there's nothing I can do to solve it, but I'm wondering if there are any settings I can change to help improve things:
I've noticed that your velocity is directly related to your frame rate, which essentially forces me to run with v-sync enabled if I want to maintain a constant speed.
My monitor runs at 60Hz, and I can generally maintain 60fps (I'm using SpaceEngine's built in FPS counter to measure the frame rate). But every now and then, the frame rate drops by half, to 30fps, halving my velocity. This makes flying manually across galaxies, and between galaxies, very difficult, because my velocity keeps halving, then returning to normal, then halving etc...
I've experimented with turning 'RealTime mode' to false, but this doesn't help at all. It just seems to change the way velocity is calculated, but I can tell when the frame rate drops to 30fps my velocity has still effectively halved.
When at the 'edge' of a galaxy, close enough such that the galaxy fills my whole screen (default FOV), it's obvious the the 'halving' tends to happen if the centre of the galaxy is straight ahead. If I glance left, right, or backwards, away from the galaxy, the frame rate immediately returns to 60. When travelling at incredibly high velocities between galaxies (e.g. >1Mly/sec) the problem seems to occur completely at random, swapping between 30fps and 60fps.
This problem generally only occurs for me when travelling at speeds >1ly/sec. It doesn't seem to happen when exploring a planet's surface for example. It never happens while I'm stationary.
I love travelling 'manually' to selected planets, slowing down from over 1Mly/sec, to slowly entering a planets atmosphere, but this problem makes travelling like this somewhat impossible, with my velocity constantly halving, doubling, halving etc...
I can switch v-sync off, which eliminates the halving & doubling, but it means that velocity is anything but constant. Looking to the left or right when entering a galaxy completely changes my velocity, regardless of the RealTime mode. As I sometimes like to use my Oculus Rift DK2, it somewhat defeats the purpose of VR if I have to keep looking forward to maintain a constant velocity!
I assume the problem can't be fixed, but are there any settings I've missed that could potentially help the problem? I've tried turning ALL the graphics settings down as low as possible, but it makes virtually no difference to having everything maxed out. Sorry if this has been asked before. I did search the forum but was surprised to not find anything.
Thanks! Awesome program btw As someone who spent hundreds of hours playing Noctis IV back in the day, SpaceEngine is like the stuff of dreams
Specs: Intel i7 3930K (3.2GHz) nVidia GTX690 4GB (Up-to-date drivers at time of posting 347.25) 32GB DDR3 RAM
Thanks HarbingerDawn! I installed 14.4 and it worked! I had an ASUS 8.861 driver before.
I do have some lag and flickering of textures from time to time. Would that be due to my hardware's limitations? (i.e. if I had a more powerful computer they would go away)
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