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]
SE didn't use HDD at all, only for logging, as Harb said. This looks like a problem per your system. Massive error logging or too low physical RAM available, so Windows going to use swap. Can you send a log file and type your specs? Also, do you regularly update the graphics card driver?
Yes I'm running 347.09 Specs are i7 930 GTX 970 4GB 6GB of DDR3 Windows 7 64bit
Video on a surface, screens took at 1 second intervals, was stationary for 5-10mins but its still doing something, you think its done then it'll just tank down to single digits. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccZ9nzFe6eI
I've uploaded the SE.log
Here's some pics of RAM
with SE running
I don't see how it can be not enough RAM, SE 0.96 can use this much and runs very well. Interestingly in the SE log it say my system has 4GB of DDR3. Every other program detects 6GB.
Do you remember me telling you about the problems with NVidia drivers many months ago and SE needs updating to run? You replied back with odd suggestions of changing my BIOS. It turned out after more came forward that Nvidia's drivers weren't working. Then you told people to use old drivers, its a bug. We waited and waited, no fix. I told you opengl had changed, SE needs changing. After months of waiting I made an account on NVidia forums linking all the issues and your post on the matter. Within days the Nvidia guy signed up here and told you about changes and how you should change your program. I was right all along. We'd probably still be here waiting for this non bug to be fixed. Point is I do understand computers enough to know BIOS change and other stuff would do nothing and nothing was wrong my end. I'm running SE 0.96 no problem. I run all games and programs well and even bad press games like Assassins Creed Unity which is 64bit. My system is in very good order. Everything benchmarks very high scores.
I've also tested my HDD speed and its above average.
SE in my view became resource heavy and quickly gets tangled. When 0.97 is the only program causing issue, I don't think a BIOS change or other token advice will do anything.
Having trouble with my game (ver 0.9.7.2) in that no planet or star seems to show up. When I click the planetarium button on the main menu it seems to load forever (i've left it on for up to 3 hours) until I press escape, where the game seems to work perfectly, except for a lack of planets. First time installing Space Engine on this system, my graphics card is a Nvidia GTX 970, latest drivers.
Here's how all stars look
The Earth
Some planet
The atmospheres and Auroras show up, just nothing else. No error messages, just missing planets.
Hamshot, you beat me to post that. But if it will help, I have some more information.
The stars will reappear as black objects if you turn off emissive textures/night side lights. My problem, though, is restricted to stars. The atmospheres and clouds will show, but nothing else. Log and images follow:
Alright, I've tried reinstalling. Some planets show up, but most don't. It doesn't seem consistent, though I might hazard lunar and desert looking ones show up? It's so inconsistent they might've been showing up in the previous install too but I just didn't find any. I even saw a star, though most are still missing their surface.
SE is a 32-bit app, so it doesn't care if you have more than 4. It just displays however much total ram there is that it could potentially use.
Quotechromatic9 ()
I was right all along. We'd probably still be here waiting for this non bug to be fixed.
Except that I happen to know that, by the time the Nvidia guy posted here, SpaceEngineer was already well aware of what the issue was and had fixed it for 0.972.
I'm not saying that you don't understand computers, and certainly nobody here thinks that you're making up any of the issues you have or the observations you made, SpaceEngineer and I are just pointing out that SpaceEngine simply doesn't use the hard drive in such a way as to account for what you're describing. If the HDD usage is still high even when you're sitting still and doing nothing in SE, then I suggest going into the shader cache folder and checking the times that files are modified. If you sit still, don't move the camera, have time paused, etc., then check the shader cache after 5 minutes, probably the last file modification would be at least 5 minutes prior.
You should also enable timestamps in the log (in main.cfg, at the bottom). Most likely the last entry in the log would be stamped 5+ minutes prior as well. If both of those things are true, and if you check the entire SE install, and it didn't write to anything, then that would almost conclusively rule out SE doing things internally with the HDD as the cause of your observations. In that case, you'd probably be looking at some weird issue with Windows, some weird interaction with SE perhaps (though I can't think of anything that would do that), rather than something SpaceEngine does on its own as a consequence of its design.
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, im so excited playing 0972 version, but there is one thing, when i approach or approaching to the Earth, SE just crashed, everything's fine, it's just the earth that crashing everytime. Can someone help?
my pc is a amd processor with 3 GHz, 2 GB of RAM, video card ati 3870 hd.
I have been trying for several days either version 0.95 that subsequent engine of space but I have problems. In all of them after 5, 10 minutes I slowdowns and sometimes the program freezes. I tried all the different versions without installation in "manual mode (download zip file)". 0.97 in some planets are seen in blocks, the installer displays an error message: "folder does not exist" but if I click on ok the installation can continue. the texture of the planets is absent if I land. the number of frames / sec is very high around 60. Sometimes, after installation (version 0.95 and 0.96) navigation is smooth and the graphics are stunning; other times it is impossible to navigate because it's all jerky.
I have to set something? if so what is the file to edit?
what I do not understand is why these problems do not always occur.
thanks for your help.
post scriptum: sorry for my english. I don't speak english, i'm italian. if someone can answer me in Spanish, French or Italian is better or else i'll translate in English with google translator with some errors!
You could try disabling options in the config files and see if that helps. I haven't had time to experiment with them all however for Intel chips.
I'm not sure if that's the problem. Once SE starts trying to load the shaders, it prompts me with the option to turn off procedural planets or quit. That's why I was wondering if when I downloaded it, something went wrong with the shaders, because when I checked the folder where they'd be in the older version, I didn't see anything.
Has atmospheric flight model changed in this version?
No
aldebaran5070, your PC does not have good hardware for running SE. You will not be able to get good performance with it.
isdebesl, as stated in the OP, you need to post your log.
QuoteiTz ()
Once SE starts trying to load the shaders, it prompts me with the option to turn off procedural planets or quit.
Yes, this is what SE does when your hardware/drivers are not capable of executing the shaders. As Doc said, you can edit some config entries to try to bypass this (see the OP), but my guess is that it probably would not work. If it doesn't, then the only option you have for using this version is upgrading to proper gaming graphics hardware.
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
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