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Troubleshooting - SpaceEngine 0.96
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| SpaceEngineer | Date: Thursday, 05.07.2012, 20:10 | Message # 1 |
 Author of Space Engine
Group: Administrators
Russian Federation
Messages: 4800
Status: Offline
| The cause of the errors can be found in the "se.log" log file in the root folder of the SE program. It can be opened using a text editor.
1) Obsolete or incompatible drivers
These are the most frequent errors found in SE. You will get a popup window with one of these following messages:
- "You have old OpenGL version (2.1.1). Update your graphics card driver or install compatible hardware"
- "You have old GLSL version (1.2). Update your graphics card driver or install compatible hardware"
- "Critical extensions missing: GL_ARB_vertex_program GL_ARB_vertex_buffer_object"
- "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.
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 that 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
You can try to start the engine with some OpenGL extensions disabed, if your hardware does not support them: frame buffer objects (FBO), half floats, float textures and 3D textures. Information about this is written at the beginning of the log (se.log), after the list of extensions:
Framebuffer objects supported
Half floats suppoted
Floating-point pixel format: GL_RGBA16F_ARB
3D textures suppoted
If the log reads 'unsupported, then the extension is not supported and the engine will disable itself. If it seems to support float and 3D textures, but the atmosphere of planets has some monstrous bottleneck, such as the GeForce 6200 and GeForce 6600, then it is best to disable those extensions forcibly. This is done in the file config/main.cfg:
r_IgnoreFBO false // do not disable frame buffer objects
r_IgnoreHalfFloat false // do not disable half float
r_IgnoreFloatTextures true // disable float texture
r_Ignore3DTextures true // disable 3D textures
Reference:
- Atmospheres using float and 3D textures. Disabling any of them disables the atmosphere. HDR rendering mode uses a float textures, disabling them disables HDR.
- Stars, galaxies and all distant objects in the form of points use half floats. Disabling half floats do not disable stars, etc, but it leads to greater consumption of memory (using float vertex buffers).
- The Milky Way and other nearby galaxies and nebulae use FBO. HDR rendering mode also use FBO. Disabling it disables the 3D models of galaxies and nebulae, and disables HDR mode.
3) Spaceship disappear then 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 
4) Blury 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.
5) 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'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 se.log. 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.
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.
c)Disable the "Fast landscape loading" feature in the graphics config menu (Ctrl+F4). It is a test feature that is not completed yet and may lead to a glitches.
d)If this does not help, read the next paragraph.
6) 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:
Disable "Fast landscape loading" in Graphics settings (Ctrl+F4)
Disable "3D water" in Graphics settings (Ctrl-F4)
Reduce "Landscape LOD" to -2 in Graphics settings (Ctrl+F4)
Reduce value of parameter VideoMemoryMaxPercent in main.cfg to 70...80
If this does not help, read on:
a) Close any other programs that can consume video memory (IE 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.
b) Open se.log and look at the beginning of it to ensure that the amount of video memory is determined properly:
Total video memory: 1024 Mb
Available video memory: 981 Mb
Dynamic video memory detection disabled.
If 'Available video memory' is much smaller than the actual amount of your video memory, go to paragraph 'a'. If it reads:
Dynamic video memory detection unsupported. Value 1024 Mb from config will be used.
or:
Can't determine total video memory size. Value 1024 Mb from config will be used.
...it means that your drivers do not support the required amount of video memory. If updating the driver does not help, specify the amount of video memory in the config file config/main.cfg:
VideoMemorySize 768 // video card onboard memory (VRAM) in megabytes
VideoMemoryMaxPercent 85 // max VRAM consumption (percents)
VideoMemoryStartupDetect true // use auto detection of VRAM size on startup, otherwise use r_vram_Size value
VideoMemoryDynamicDetect true // use auto detection of available amount of VRAM in runtime
If crashing still continues, then try to increase or decrease this parameter:
VideoMemoryMaxPercent 85 // max VRAM consumption (percents)
...But do not increase it to 100, since Windows uses 20-30 MiB.
c) If you have less than 512 MiB of video memory, open Graphics settings (Ctrl+F4), and disable "3D water" and reduce "Landscape LOD" to -2. Then disable procedural stars and procedural galaxies. With these setting, you can fly in the Sun's vicinity and among the HIPPARCOS catalogue stars and visit their planets. Disabling these settings can done in the Show objects menu, which is opened by pressing F4 key. You must disable the procedural galaxies (Galaxies -> Procedural), the procedural stars (Stars -> Procedural) and the procedural planets (Planets -> Procedural). If you do not disable procedural planets, the procedural stars will continue to be used. Disabling of the procedural planets of the catalogued stars (Planets -> Procedural on catalog stars) is not required, as they do not affect this.
[UPDATED 11 August 2012]
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| spikeyhat09 | Date: Wednesday, 11.07.2012, 09:11 | Message # 2 |
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Observer
Group: Newbies
United States
Messages: 6
Status: Offline
| Not sure if this is a bug, or if i just have patience issues, but the game doesn't seem to load on 0.9.6. It keep saying creating mesh or creating textures, and the loading bar is always at 0. I let it run for a long time but it still hasn't finished creating whatever its creating. all the videos I've seen show it loading up instantly, but for me it keeps creating and creating and creating...
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| HarbingerDawn | Date: Wednesday, 11.07.2012, 10:04 | Message # 3 |
 Cosmic Curator
Group: Administrators
United States
Messages: 8717
Status: Offline
| Hello spikeyhat09, welcome to the forum. Please take a moment to read the forum rules.
If you are having problems, please attach a copy of your se.log file to a reply post below, along with your computer specs.
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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| spikeyhat09 | Date: Wednesday, 11.07.2012, 19:04 | Message # 4 |
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Observer
Group: Newbies
United States
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| Quote (HarbingerDawn)
Hello spikeyhat09, welcome to the forum. Please take a moment to read the forum rules.
If you are having problems, please attach a copy of your se.log file to a reply post below, along with your computer specs.
Thanks for responding, and i read the forum rules.
I'm not sure what an se.log is, but my system specs are:
Processor: AMD Phenom II X4 N970 2.2GHz (quad core), 256 MB on board memory, but 2 GB of shared memory
Graphics card: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4250
RAM: 4GB DDR3
Hard drive (not sure if it matters): 500 GB HDD
OS: Windows 7 home premium 64 bit, Service pack 1 (not sure what Service Pack is, but w/e)
Edited by spikeyhat09 - Wednesday, 11.07.2012, 19:07 |
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| Talyn | Date: Wednesday, 11.07.2012, 19:10 | Message # 5 |
 Explorer
Group: Users
Portugal
Messages: 207
Status: Offline
| Look inside your Space Engine Folder. You will find a file named se.log 
PC: Intel Core2Duo E6850 @ 3.00 GHz & 4GB DDR3 @ 1333 - NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS with 640 MB VRAM
Laptop: Intel Core2Duo T9400 @ 2.53 GHz & 4 GB DDR @ 1066 - NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT
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| spikeyhat09 | Date: Wednesday, 11.07.2012, 19:26 | Message # 6 |
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Observer
Group: Newbies
United States
Messages: 6
Status: Offline
| forum says message is too long when i try to put it in a spiler, and its like 2.5 times the limit for attachment size (1.6 MB)
Edited by spikeyhat09 - Wednesday, 11.07.2012, 19:27 |
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| Solaris | Date: Wednesday, 11.07.2012, 19:46 | Message # 7 |
 World Builder
Group: Global Moderators
France
Messages: 731
Status: Offline
| Hi spikeyhat09,
Your se.log is in SpaceEngine 0.96 folder, it's a text file ( notepad) and should have a size of ~ 150ko or less .
I've attached my se.log as an example.
Otherwise, about your loading problem , did you tried to play with the LOD ? ( graphic windows : Ctrl + F4 ) .
Also make sure your Loading Mode is interleaved, you can set it in the SpaceEngine 0.96/config/Main ( top down ), or with the ingame shortcut key " : " .
Edited by Solaris - Wednesday, 11.07.2012, 19:59 |
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| spikeyhat09 | Date: Wednesday, 11.07.2012, 21:03 | Message # 8 |
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Observer
Group: Newbies
United States
Messages: 6
Status: Offline
| Quote (Solaris) Hi spikeyhat09,
Your se.log is in SpaceEngine 0.96 folder, it's a text file ( notepad) and should have a size of ~ 150ko or less .
I've attached my se.log as an example.
Otherwise, about your loading problem , did you tried to play with the LOD ? ( graphic windows : Ctrl + F4 ) .
Also make sure your Loading Mode is interleaved, you can set it in the SpaceEngine 0.96/config/Main ( top down ), or with the ingame shortcut key " : " .
for some reason, my se.log shrinked down to 68 KB:
My loading mode is interleaved, and ctrl f4 didn't seem to do anything.
Is it because of my graphics card? I know it needs to have a gig of memory, but it only has 256 MB. however, it shares 2 gigs with the rest of my system, will it still work?
Edited by spikeyhat09 - Wednesday, 11.07.2012, 21:07 |
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| kingbumi | Date: Wednesday, 11.07.2012, 23:41 | Message # 9 |
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Observer
Group: Newbies
United States
Messages: 2
Status: Offline
| I have an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4200, running with OpenGL 2.1
The card is supported, but I don't know how to update OpenGL(I've googled for days on end.)
help ples 
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| Krazy-Killa | Date: Wednesday, 11.07.2012, 23:41 | Message # 10 |
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Observer
Group: Newbies
United States
Messages: 7
Status: Offline
| Quote (spikeyhat09) for some reason, my se.log shrinked down to 68 KB:
My loading mode is interleaved, and ctrl f4 didn't seem to do anything.
Is it because of my graphics card? I know it needs to have a gig of memory, but it only has 256 MB. however, it shares 2 gigs with the rest of my system, will it still work?
I get this from time to time.
At least for me there appears to be no rhyme or reason to the constant 'Error disposing memory'. Most of the time I just close and re-open and it fixes the issue, and in some cases reboot the PC.
My GeForce 9800GTX+ has 512MB of RAM, but shares about 4GB of System Memory (16GB DDR3 RAM), your 256MB ATi is below the required amount of VRAM to run SpaceEngine sufficiently.
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| kingbumi | Date: Thursday, 12.07.2012, 02:43 | Message # 11 |
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Observer
Group: Newbies
United States
Messages: 2
Status: Offline
| bump(Lel)
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| HarbingerDawn | Date: Thursday, 12.07.2012, 02:55 | Message # 12 |
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Cosmic Curator
Group: Administrators
United States
Messages: 8717
Status: Offline
| spikeyhat09, SpaceEngine requires at least 512 MB of dedicated video memory. There has been an issue reported in the past for AMD/ATI cards, at least with most drivers, that SpaceEngine will not use shared memory (a driver compatibility issue apparently) so even a 512 MB card would only give you minimal usability. Nvidia cards with the latest drivers are not affected by this, so a 512 MB card would at least work in that case. In order to use SE effectively, you should have a video card with at least 1024 MB of dedicated video memory.
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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| HarbingerDawn | Date: Thursday, 12.07.2012, 03:07 | Message # 13 |
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Cosmic Curator
Group: Administrators
United States
Messages: 8717
Status: Offline
| Hello kingbumi, welcome to the forum. Please take a moment to read the forum rules. There is no reason to bump a thread that is 3 hours old.
The Mobility Radeon HD 4200 can only support OpenGL 2.1; SpaceEngine require 3.0 or later. It also does not have the dedicated video memory required to run SpaceEngine. Therefore, you cannot run the program with the Mobility 4200. Sorry 
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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| spikeyhat09 | Date: Thursday, 12.07.2012, 05:46 | Message # 14 |
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Observer
Group: Newbies
United States
Messages: 6
Status: Offline
| Quote (HarbingerDawn) spikeyhat09, SpaceEngine requires at least 512 MB of dedicated video memory. There has been an issue reported in the past for AMD/ATI cards, at least with most drivers, that SpaceEngine will not use shared memory (a driver compatibility issue apparently) so even a 512 MB card would only give you minimal usability. Nvidia cards with the latest drivers are not affected by this, so a 512 MB card would at least work in that case. In order to use SE effectively, you should have a video card with at least 1024 MB of dedicated video memory.
could it possibly work if i allocate more RAM to my GPU? I've heard you can do that with on board graphics, Like going into the BIOS and increasing the dedicated graphics memory. Or maybe use some sort of virtual graphics card program, if such a thing exists?
Edited by spikeyhat09 - Thursday, 12.07.2012, 05:48 |
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| spikeyhat09 | Date: Thursday, 12.07.2012, 06:04 | Message # 15 |
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Observer
Group: Newbies
United States
Messages: 6
Status: Offline
| Quote (spikeyhat09) could it possibly work if i allocate more RAM to my GPU? I've heard you can do that with on board graphics, Like going into the BIOS and increasing the dedicated graphics memory. Or maybe use some sort of virtual graphics card program, if such a thing exists?
well, the problem mustn't be my graphics card, as i restarted the game (with low expectations obviously), but it actually started up and was fairly playable. Now i really don't know whats going on...
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