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.
Here's one I haven't seen reported yet. At one point I was flying around near a planet's surface and found a strange little black triangle among the craggy peaks of a mountain range. It was only a few meters across and looked like it wasn't a natural part of the landscape, but I kind of shrugged and moved on. It was such an isolated little glitch it didn't seem important at the time.
But I just came across a more extreme example. The moon RS 8409-1792-7-215462-162 4.1 has large areas that are speckled all over with similar black polygons. From very high altitude it's just a bunch of dark pixels scattered around, but as I lower my altitude the pattern randomly changes and then when I get to within a few kilometers I can see that the black spots are variously-shaped polygons.
My guess would be that the new texturing system that reduces the appearance of tiling is leaving "gaps" in some rare circumstances?
I also notice that not one person who has reported this problem has posted their log, or even their system specs! This is necessary information for determining the cause. Like it says in the OP, everyone, PLEASE POST YOUR LOGS!
I'm one of the ones who's encountered the aurora framerate problem. I fixed it with the DETAIL/TEX_NOISE swap in the aurora shader that SpaceEngineer suggested earlier in this thread. Attached are two logs, one made with DETAIL enabled and the other made with TEX_NOISE enabled. I did my testing with the camera down near the surface of the north pole of RS 0-0-0-251-25161-7-2016163-527 B6.1, which is a close-in moon of an ice world where both moon and parent have aurorae. I figured this was a good way to maximize any impact aurora shaders might be having.
Graphics error. When I land on the planet and look up into the sky, I see these black dots appear. Is this a bug or a GPU error? My graphics processing unit is Intel HD 4000 integrated.
The picture is the first attachment the second is my log.
Why not let SpaceEngineer decide what information is useful... not to mention that it contains details about what hardware and drivers you're using - important information! - none of which you included in your post. So please, just post your log with your report. Don't assume that you don't need to just because you see nothing useful to you in it. Just include it and let SpaceEngineer/myself/others decide what to do with it.
I should have guessed someone would say this. Here's my SE.log. Fair warning, you guys are probably going to read it and immediately think "Oh, this idiot's running on a crappy computer and thus his complaints are invalid." I'll point out, however, that 0.972 ran fine for me, and in the time before it crashes SpaceEngine runs at an impressive 85 FPS. So there's clearly a bug of some kind, my guess being in the terrain loader. ...ahem. If any of this came across as mean I apologize in advance. I keep reading this forum and seeing posts that strike me as mean and then realizing that the people typing them probably didn't mean it at all, so it may be the case with me too ^^;
P.S. I looked it over again and the only error I saw was with the ship textures, and those actually worked perfectly well. And as before, it has no reports of anything going wrong at all until it suddenly ends as SpaceEngine crashes. Also, if it helps: SE hangs for a few seconds, then resumes for a second or two, then a "SpaceEngine has stopped working" window pops up. Previously I've noticed hangs and what seem to be memory leaks when generating planet surfaces, particularly when using the system browser to generate several at once. More specifically, I think it's some sort of atmosphere or water thing, as I tried running SE with atmospheres, auroras, clouds, etc. all turned off and it was able to load a selena or two before crashing. I'll run some further experiments to see if I can identify the source more specifically.
P.P.S. It says so in the log, but I have Intel HD. I messed around with the mipmaps setting (including turning them off altogether) and while it helped in 0.972 it didn't seem to prevent 0.973 from crashing.
P.P.P.S. My video card drivers are 100% up to date and I gave SE tons of memory to work with.
Update: I continued messing with the configuration files. Now I can successfully go to comets or asteroids, but the object itself doesn't appear, and if I try to go to a planet or star, not only does it not appear but the game crashes as above.
Update again: Since I keep messing with this thinking I can fix it. I've run SE a few more times. I can successfully visit asteroids, comets, and selenas. Star surfaces do not appear, and when I visit any other class of planet, SE crashes just after logging "Creating ... Surface/Diff/base. I have also stopped getting error logs about loading shaders, but of course something's still going awry. Thanks in advance to whoever figures this out.
P.P.P.S. All of the above "P.S." crashes do still occur even if I turn off atmospheres, clouds, auroras, comet trails, water, lens flares, diffraction spikes, 3D water, mipmaps, and planet shine, indicating it isn't a problem with any of those. P.P.P.P.S. This might help, as it seems to have identified which DLL caused the crash: [aspoiler] Problem signature: Problem Event Name: APPCRASH Application Name: SpaceEngine.exe Application Version: 0.9.7.3 Application Timestamp: 55303748 Fault Module Name: ig7icd32.dll Fault Module Version: 0.0.0.0 Fault Module Timestamp: 4f67b1c8 Exception Code: c00000fd Exception Offset: 000251ea OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.48 Locale ID: 1033 Additional Information 1: 1d05 Additional Information 2: 1d05fc076722d28464fc2c602c621b95 Additional Information 3: fca6 Additional Information 4: fca6e613e6caa1800085d3e62dc6f1d5 [/aspoiler] That DLL appears to be a graphics driver DLL or some such, but the report also lists "Exception Code: c00000fd" which Google says is a stack overflow.
For those concerned, I actually managed to stabilize it, but I had to be naughty and install a graphics driver that was "not recommended" for my PC. SpaceEngine is now free of game-breaking bugs, although I still have those pesky red clouds ^^; I'm leaving my bug report up here since there's still some sort of loophole in the generator that's going to need attention sooner or later
Intel HD Graphics 4000 ;P
Edited by parameciumkid - Tuesday, 21.04.2015, 19:00
Since I applied the 0.9.7.3 update to Space Engine, I am experiencing massive stutters during any planetary landscape generation: it's impossible for me to "fly" around a planet (or any generated celestial body) smoothly. But my framerate is "over the top" (80 fps) when all the landscape around me is fully generated, or when I'm travelling around the interstellar void. I've never had these stutters on the 0.9.7.2 version of Space Engine.
I first tried to lower my LOD setting: no deal, stutters are happening as a landscape "tile" is generated. I tried to tweak most of the "loading" parameters that I could understand into the Main.cfg: no success. So I enabled the LoaderBenchmark and it seems that sometimes, some tasks that are qualified of "creating image" are taking more than 20 ms to be performed:
Example:
[01] Creating stars block "S 1792-7-1060650" [MT] 22.508 ms
Hi folks. First of all, I wanted to say how impressed I am with Space Engine - it's amazing. I'm sad to say I know very little about astronomy, but I'm just enjoying the fantastic views that the program generates.
Anyway, I think I've encountered a bug. I installed the .973 patch a few days ago, and I'd not experienced this issue with .972. After I first had the problem, I updated my video driver, but the problem persists.
What's happening is that when viewing the sky from a particular planet's surface, while moving the camera, the sky will suddenly flash from blue to almost completely white. Angling the camera around reveals what appears to be an enormous sun as viewed through cloud, and the sun that was visible when the sky was blue was much smaller. After a few attempts at moving the camera to get the sky to switch back to blue, Space engine will go completely black, except for the text. This has happened on a few occasions (I have stayed on this planet for a while as it's a nice one, so I'm not sure if it will happen on others). When SE goes black I have always exited. I'm attaching a log file copied just after the most recent 'blackout' occurred and before I exited.
Here's a screenshot of RS 0-0-0-312-11134-8-11262404-126 B4 with a blue sky...
moving the camera angle slightly flashes the sky to white...
moving the camera a bit more reveals the giant ghost sun...
Then, as mentioned above, after a few more camera moves to try to regain the blue sky, SE goes completely black (except for the text).
Thanks for all your hard work on this fantastic creation!
Galaxus, for starters, your video card is a bit on the low end, with not a huge amount of memory, so make sure to keep the LOD setting low. The white sky issue is probably the clouds having to switch to the base map, which would make them solid white, before regenerating. It's a memory-related issue. I have no idea what the ghost sun might be.
This may or may not improve things, but I suggest updating your graphics drivers.
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