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 issues.
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 graphics card-specific issues
If you do not know which graphics card (chip) 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.
Intel HD: Glitchy landscape and textures on planets
Open config/main-user.cfg and change this parameter to true:
Note that this is an experimental feuture and may cause glitches; collision detection also works incorrectly in this mode. Also, read Fixing common issues #3.
Intel HD: Red clouds on Earth
Install the latest driver for Intel HD.
Intel HD: Black screen
Disable comet tails. Go to the main menu, then Settings -> View, and uncheck "comet tails". If you even don't see the main menu, close SE, delete the file config/main-user.cfg, and try again.
Fixing common issues
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"
- "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-user.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 or Radeon with at least 1 GB of dedicated video memory
I stress the special role played by graphics card's onboard memory (VRAM), and 1 GB is the absolute minimum. The engine uses a large amount of data that must be in video memory (textures, meshes etc). The good 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 flights. CPU does not significantly affect the landscape generation speed because it is done completely on the graphics chip.
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 chip. If you can't 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.
c) Just restart SE. It helps in 99% of cases.
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. - Reduce "Landscape LOD" to -2 in Graphics settings (Ctrl+F4) - Set up the amount of video memory in the config/main-user.cfg file:
VideoMemorySize 2048 // graphics 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) 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).
7) 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:
a) Open Windows Control Panel, navigate to Display, and set the DPI scaling to "Smaller - 100% (default)" - it should look like this.
b) 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" look the same. This is right! This switch changes the rendering technology, not the visual appearance - 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 - Galaxy/nebula sprites will rotate when seen from certain angles - Lens flares are distorted by gravitational lensing (black holes and ship warp drive effect) - Solar system moons don't have extremely accurate orbits (requires implementation of custom orbit models, e.g. VSOP-87) - Solar eclipses on Earth, Moon, Jupiter and other real planets are inaccurate (the same as above) - 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) - Many HIP and HD stars do not appear in the search menu, as well as procedural objects (RS xxxx) - Camera sometimes falling through the surface - Collisions detection between ships is not implemented yet; and between ship and planet is inaccurate
Real bugs:
- Lines or junctures are visible on planetary surface of real planets - 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 - 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 - 3D water fog sometimes starts above or below 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 - 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.
I discovered a bug this morning on my Windows 10 Pro - when I am at the surface of a distant planet, selecting a star in the planet's sky causes the planet to disappear until it is reselected. I am attaching a GIF highlighting the problem:
Here are my PC specs:
OS: Windows 10 Pro CPU: Intel Core i5-3380M @ 2.90GHz RAM: 16 GB GPU: NVS 5200M [Nvidia] VRAM: 1024 MB
Help me. Planets keep doing this when I get in close. I have the newest patch, but I cant find anything on the internet about this particular bug... and this isn't me far away from the planet. there is a black sphere in most planets when i get in close...the same planet from a distance is the other attached file.
You can't export textures of real planets, only of procedural ones. Earth and other real planets already have textures stored in files, so exporting them back have no sense.
I am exporting for use in KSP. But thank you for your response.
QuoteJackDole ()
The 'export' folder is now directly in the 'SpaceEngine' installation folder.
There are almost no breathable worlds in SE. For instance, the CO2 levels on planets with terrestrial plant life are too high when they should be lower due to plants converting the CO2 to O2. Also such a high level of CO2 would raise the greenhouse effect of the atmosphere. I had raised this concern earlier during RC3, but it seems it wasn't fixed. (I was heard by people though.)
3.14% of all seafarers are PIrates. *** Got Mole Problems? Call Avogadro at 602-1023 *** Google Search my picture to discover whom it depicteth.
Discovered a bug where when you have a ship selected and the ship is entering a planet shadow, the planet dissapears from view (i.e. becomes invisible). The bug does not occur when you have the planet selected and the ship in view (i.e. camera follows ship) and when orbit lines are enabled and the ship selected. Auto exposure on/off does not affect the bug. Ship selected
This can be seen from the fact that 1208 times this line: Code [MT] WARNING: System of star "Sgr A*" appears multiple times in the render list!
I get the same warning and after 5-20 min my game crash. I have a 1070 card. Most of the time I get a crash at the universe view. Or when I try to look at the sky from a planet.
I am having a similar issue as 'nObOdy' above with some planets disappearing when in front of a star.
For me though the planet comes back only if i turn on Markers or Orbits OR go further from the planet OR rotate the camera so the planet is not in front of the star (i.e the star is visible)
Discovered a bug where when you have a ship selected and the ship is entering a planet shadow, the planet dissapears from view (i.e. becomes invisible).
I can't reproduce this bug...
QuoteSpaceHopper ()
There are almost no breathable worlds in SE. For instance, the CO2 levels on planets with terrestrial plant life are too high when they should be lower due to plants converting the CO2 to O2. Also such a high level of CO2 would raise the greenhouse effect of the atmosphere. I had raised this concern earlier during RC3, but it seems it wasn't fixed. (I was heard by people though.)
Actually, there are almost no planets with life in the Universe (probably) :) I know what SE code for atmospheric composition should be completely changed. It is just first iteration, so please forgive it these inaccuracies.
Quotecalebwsartin ()
Help me. Planets keep doing this when I get in close. I have the newest patch, but I cant find anything on the internet about this particular bug... and this isn't me far away from the planet. there is a black sphere in most planets when i get in close...the same planet from a distance is the other attached file.
Is this happen when you landing of a gas giant?
QuoteDestructor1701 ()
Is "Flight Assist" on the helm menu disabled this version? I compared its functionality in an old version, and it seems to do nothing in 0.9.8.
Kill rotation doesn't actually work all the time. Only occasionally do I see all rotation in y stop but it is not reliable. x and z rotation almost always happens, causing my ship to spin uncontrollably. This could be due to no deadzone or the kill rotation not being strong enough for atmospheric flight (if it's the atmosphere causing the wobbles).
No option to set camera to joystick (gamepad) for camera rotation in ship mode. You can only set the left/right/forward/back looks like a hat button on a normal joystick.
Please, if anyone can help me. I really wish to use Space Engine, but I can't use it for more than 5 minutes without my PC freezing like a blue screen. (Sound glitches, but continues). Every time I use Space Engine for more than 5 minutes, my computer will completely freeze up, but it will still play sound (though not normal, but a persisting glitched sound you'll get from a blue screen of death), before it automatically restarts. I checked some logs and noticed a PAGE FAULT IN NONPAGE AREA. Now I know this is not hardware related because it doesn't happen anywhere else at all, in any game, in any software, just nowhere, only in Space Engine. Is there anyone that can help me with this? My specs are:
GTX 980 16GB of RAM (Installed in an SSD Drive) i7 3770k
I use Space Engine in a 2560x1600 resolution. Please note that wandering around will trigger this freeze. If I am idle in Space Engine, it will not freeze (even if I stay on a planet, and fast-forward time).
(Do let me know if you require the Space Engine log. I need to trigger the crash first)
This is an issue to do with your ram or/and page file but not with space engine. So try the link below i've used this little guide to solve that issue a couple of times (not always the solution though but try it anyway)
ENG
New site
Russian Federation 
United States 
Pirate 
United Kingdom 
Ireland 
Germany 
