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 updated 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.
Nvidia: Water missing on terras, clouds are below the surface
This is becasue of Nvidia driver update. Revert back to 365.19.
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
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
ATI/AMD: Crash on Startup on Windows 10
Open the system folder in your SpaceEngine directory and delete the file atioglxx.dll.
Intel HD: Glitchy landscape and textures on planets
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"
To fix that, 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
SpaceEngine needs a modern "gaming" graphics card to run. Weak cards like Intel Graphics (many laptops have it) or 10 year old devices like GeForce 5700 will not run SpaceEngine. There is no way but to update your hardware. 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 etc). The goo performance will be only with a dedicated video card with 1024+ MB of onboard memory. Almost all modern $100+ devices can run SE smoothly. CPU power is not so important for SE, but having many cores could improve performance on fast interstellar and intergalactic flight. CPU does not significantly affect the landscape generation speed because it is done completely on the video card.
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 the "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 find a 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 it is a full version, not a patch!). If you install a new version overwriting the old one, you may get many bugs and glitches.
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.). The video memory is the most important resource for SpaceEngine. 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
This is not a bug. The current version does not yet have a completed spaceship rendering system - they cannot be rendered if there are no stars or planets in the renderlist. Just imagine that the ship is in hyperspace, so cannot be seen :)
7) Blurry textures on Solar system planets
This is not a bug. Our Solar system planets and its satellites have no procedural textures, they use real ones with limited level-of-detail. You can download addons with high resolution textures to increase the level of detail of real planets. But don't expect 1 cm level of detail; these addons also have limited size, and thus limited resolution (up to 150 meters per pixel for some bodies).
8) 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.
9) Problems in Windows 10 + AMD/ATI
Delete the file system/atioglxx.dll
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" look 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 - 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) - 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:
- Cloud cyclones have cut edges sometimes - Lines or junctures are visible on planetary surface - 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) - 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) - Level horizon command (End key) doesn't work properly on oblate objects - Weird behavior of movement keys in tracking mode (T) and after releasing it - 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 - Problems when releasing Left + Right click - Music player will unpause when SE window is minimized and restored, or when entering and exiting the main menu - Switching to fullscreen doesn't work sometimes - 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 - 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 - "Sky lighting shadow" in the subsolar region of atmospheres - Problems with the skybox export interface, and with the planetarium after using it, for some users - 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 - VSync doesn't work after usage of Oculus Rift in the Direct mode, sometimes it doesn't work at startup when Oculus Rift is connected.
terrain auto generating in front of you is annoying
Hi expando, This is a common effect with procedural generation, As far as I know every software has it, more or less pronounced. your computer is calculating a massive number of graphical elements in real time, when you are exploring surfaces of procedurally generated objects. These elements are recalculated while you're moving towards them, by multiplicating the number of components, in order to have a better final shape. All of this using the RAM and GPU of your graphic card, which could be the problem. If you provide your se.log as described above we could see how much RAM can be used by SE. After that, I believe it's only a matter of searching the best settings for your machine.
"Time is illusion. Lunchtime doubly so." Douglas N. Adams My mods Asus x555ub: cpu i5-6200u - ram 4gb - gpu nvidia geforce 940m 2gb vram
First off: I LOVE this program!! I'm extremely new to it however and I'm running into the following issues:
I've noticed about 99.9% of all stars I visit and come close to, they all look like globs of molten metal - there's no actual surface of the star so to speak (with no sun spots, flames, etc). I've taken two screen shots - one of Betelgeuse up close and one of it from it' orbiting planet Betelgeuse 3 (I've disabled "actual lighting" for sun/planet to easily show what I'm referring to.
There are some stars (white dwarfs, for example) that are simply untextured white circles that are simply bright but just plain white circles (I can take screenshots of this later if required, I'm just strapped for time right now).
Betelgeuse is a giant star which doesn't look like normal stars (this is realistic). Go to Sol if you want to see a normal star. As for being untextured, I think you're confused by their overexposure. Low the exposure value if you want to see the surfaces of stars.
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
Betelgeuse is a giant star which doesn't look like normal stars (this is realistic). Go to Sol if you want to see a normal star. As for being untextured, I think you're confused by their overexposure. Low the exposure value if you want to see the surfaces of stars.
Thank you for the clarification! It helped clear up my misunderstanding!
I have one other (minor) issue. In the screenshot below, periodically I'll see a sort of "texture tearing" in space (it happens with some planets too) where it looks like the "edge of the texture" is cut/pasted next to another texture, leaving a long line through the image. I find it doesn't disappear by changing angles (for reference, that's the black hole at the center of the Andromeda galaxy) just to the right of center).
Is it just how the texturing is or is there perhaps a setting I'm missing?
That's a seam in the skybox, you should only ever see it near the center of a galaxy. If I'm not mistaken that issue was fixed, you should update to at least 0.9.7.3.
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
taylordonovan11, terrain doesn't look spectacular everywhere you go. Like in real life, some places have amazing terrain, some places have boring terrain. The one place you showed screenshots of just happens to have boring terrain. You should explore more. Also, your computer specs make a big difference regarding the level of detail you can generate terrain at. As mentioned in the opening post, you should attach your log file so we can have more information to help you.
Ah, alright! I see...
Well, my hardware may be outdated, I am using a 6 year old PC, but here is the log
Your specs look decent, but LOD 2 is insanely costly in terms of video memory usage. You might use up 3-4 GB worth on one scene. Read what I wrote here concerning LOD and screenshots: https://www.reddit.com/r....czmggy9
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
Added (05.02.2016, 03:02) --------------------------------------------- I have a new question. I am running version 9.7.4 build 8, and when I find a planet with more than one moon, but most of them are asteroids, the system viewer will only show satellites that are big enough and round enough to classify as moons.
Is there a setting to change this and show all satellites? Thanks!
Hey there, I downloaded Patch 8 on version 0.9.7.4 and it was fine until I went out of the Milky Way, everything disappears, it also crashed when I left the Milky Way for the first time on Patch 8. When I try to reload the game everything is still gone, not even the side menu's will work. Just a plain black screen, I have the latest drivers.
Hi, maybe it is of interest for Nvidia users. I use 09.7.4 beta and I started using SE with Nvidia Driver Version 353.62 and everything was good. I updated to the latest one (361.75) and got massive Screen tearing issues - especially during faster pans. I think Nvidia screwed it up...
Intel i7-2600K@4,6GHz, Asus P8Z68-V Pro Gen3, 8GB 1866 RAM, Samsung 840 EVO SSD, Asus Strix GTX 970, Corsair TX850W
if you have a file with the name 'atioglxx.dll' in the system folder of 'SpaceEngine', delete it. Otherwise post the 'se.log'. You will also find this file in the 'SpaceEngine' system directory.
I don't know if this is the correct thread, I'm trying to made a video of Space Engine but i'm having trouble in the configuration of the codec. In all the video codecs I try to use, the result video is poor. The only way i find to the video looks good is the Uncompressed frames, but the final video archive have problems with the frames index and only VLC player can barely reproduce them. Well... what is the best codec and it's configuration to a good quality final video?
If you want a good result, you'll need to install a codec from the internet. Lagarith is a good codec for lossless video, but it results in large file sizes, so you'll need a lot of hard drive space if you want to make long videos. The DivX codec is good for producing good quality video at small file sizes, but it's extremely difficult to find the DivX codec pack these days.
Also, there are threads which talk specifically about making videos in SE, this would be the best place to discuss this.
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 got space engine and for some reason, every object (stars, planets, asteroids) are invisible. I am a computer idiot and can't figure out how to put the image in a post, so it is just an attachment. As you can see, the Earth is nothing but an aurora. The sun is a splotch. I updated from 0.9.2 to 0.9.3, but it didn't fix anything.
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