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]
bzzommbo, there is a bug which prevents this version from working on Windows XP. You have to wait for a patch (hopefully this will be soon). Also, there was no need to post this twice.
QuotePortalmell ()
Crash whenever I try to open display options
Doc had the same issue, go into main.cfg and change the state of the Maximized parameter (if false, set to true). At least, that's what he said works for him.
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
bzzommbo, there is a bug which prevents this version from working on Windows XP. You have to wait for a patch (hopefully this will be soon). Also, there was no need to post this twice.
AMD Radeon HD6800 series with driver version 14.4 (never updated because no issues) and, after setting the "EnableMipmapsWarp false" solution, no technical problems with SE (or other games). Having said that, terrain generation appears to be a bit slower than in 0.971 but it's no big deal.
I did run into a couple of interesting issues with the volcano generation, however. See screenshots for visual explanation. I get the impression they're not so much part of the terrain as just more or less stapled on there, especially since they all pretty much look the same..
Mybe this is not an issue of SE per se but rather a problem involving the drivers, but perhaps you can help me with this. I surely would apreciate that. I downloaded last night the new version and found one million different bugs in just an hour, then I understanded that it was time to change drivers to acomplish the requirements. I'm totally ignorant of how this thing is done but here is the information about my problem:
So, I have a Windows 8.1 with an Intel Pentium G2020T Dual-core 64 bits-x64 system with 6 GB of RAM and an Intel HD graphics card (with a total avaiable graphics memory of 1792 MB and a Dedicated Video Memory (¿this is VRAM?) of 32 MB). I think I acomplish by far many of the requirements to use SE's new version but obviusly I need to acomplish others. So, I went to Nvidia's page and downloaded a driver for my computer and didn't worked (it said that it was not compatible with my system so it didn't installed), then I dwonloaded different drivers all the day and always with the same problem. Finally I get sicked and went to AMD page to download an equally valid driver (from what I see for the system requirements of SE). First I downloaded a little program from AMD that survayed what driver was optimal for my system but it telled me that there where no products valid for me. I just ignored that and downloaded an AMD driver, and installed it without any trubble. The problem is that nothing has changed and I have tried to reinstall it several times, rebooted the computer, searched for a manual installation but nothing happens, it only displays the intel pentium newest driver as if the AMD driver wasn't really installed.
What is happening? Do I have to buy something? a Nvidia circuit or something? Could someone explain to me what to do? this is very important to me. It means not having something I think is incredibly awesome in scientific terms. Thanks in advance
Edited by FastFourierTransform - Saturday, 27.12.2014, 17:49
You said in your post that you have Intel graphics. Obviously you cannot use drivers for AMD or Nvidia hardware with it.
Anyway, as the OP says, SE is not made to run on integrated Intel graphics hardware. If you want it to run properly, you need to buy proper gaming graphics hardware (AMD or Nvidia graphics card).
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
I do have a knack for picking out obscure flaws, heh. I've noticed similar things with the swirls in the cloud layers - them getting cut off, I mean - in previous versions of SE. I don't expect it's a driver issue since it's visible long before the actual terrain geometry is generated (it happens that this was a world with a very high density of volcanoes so the odds of finding anomalies then becomes quite high). It would appear to me that the volcano was generated too close to the edge of a tile (possibly after the regular terrain generation). Like I said, I have the impression the volcanoes get added separately rather than as an integral part of the terrain. This would also explain the strange transition (or lack thereof) from the lava field to the volcano in the other images.
Anyway, as the OP says, SE is not made to run on integrated Intel graphics hardware. If you want it to run properly, you need to buy proper gaming graphics hardware (AMD or Nvidia graphics card).
Well, that makes me extremely sad. It costs 700€ I can't afford it by any means My whole computer price was lower than that and I don't want to throw it and buy a new one just for this (even if it would worth the pain if I where rich).
Any suggestions of what can I do? It's impossible to have this awesome simulator with my specs really?
What does? You should easily be able to find a card for 100€ or even less, only the most expensive ones should be >300€.
You're totally correct. Now I see. I would try to buy a GeForce GT 730, it looks optimal for me. I would have to wait to have it but finally I'm going to fly across the universe
I meet all the Recommended settings for running space engine, but every time I click on the planetarium it gives me a message that Space engine has stopped working almost immediately. I have no idea what is going wrong here, and I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling multiple times.
RobertJ, I'm not sure what the issue is in your case. No other Nvidia users have reported this issue that I know of. But as you pointed out, your card is old and low-spec, and doesn't support the latest drivers, so that may be a factor. And as stated in the OP, please include your log file when posting about issues.
So I guess it is the age of my graphics card, I have included the latest SE.log The program does not crash, and what works, works like a charm, so this is a real bummer at the moment.
My Mistake. Here is the log and my original statement repeated "I meet all the Recommended settings for running space engine, but every time I click on the planetarium it gives me a message that Space engine has stopped working almost immediately. I have no idea what is going wrong here, and I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling multiple times."
ENG
New site
United States 
It looks like (null) 2.1 (null).
Australia 
Pirate 
Netherlands 
Spain 
My whole computer price was lower than that and I don't want to throw it and buy a new one just for this (even if it would worth the pain if I where rich). 
