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Game breaking, Bugged Shadows

Randolph Junior shared this bug ago

Solved

This seems to happen since one of the recent updates. At least I've never seen this kind of bug in my games before now.

Shadows render with the wrong texture. Only seems to affect voxels and doesn't happen with every game start i.e. after multiple restarts of the game shadows / voxels eventually render properly.

Log Files are attached.

Complete system check was performed (AMD Ryzen 5 5600X, Radeon RX 6750, 32GB), there are no issues and no problems with any other games on this system. Nothing was changed recently. Drivers are up to date.

I can't upload a game save as I currently play on official servers (EU#1). I haven't tested whether this also occurs in single player.

0d2f61bd5e94edde244cfa2ce9b8a56f

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I have the same bug

Replies (17)

Michael ●

Me too!

Also, a few others:

https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers/pc/topic/41118-weird-texture-issue

https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers/pc/topic/41187-major-graphical-errors

https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers/pc/topic/41259-stoneasteroid-voxel-textures-and-lighting-are-corrupted-on-first-loading-into-a-world

You can change graphics settings down, then up, to fix temporarily. Seems to be AMD related.

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Randolph Junior ●

Not sure that this is really an AMD / Driver related issue. More convinced it's a game bug.

It seems that deleting the mipMapTextureCache2.B5 file in %appdata%/SpaceEngineers/ prior to starting the game temporarily fixes the issue, too. So there seems to be something wrong with SE's texture caching. Particularly for shadow maps.

Also explains why we're seeing different random actual textures in place of the shadow maps, rather than just visual glitches / artifacts.

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Randolph Junior ●

Okay, did some more testing and can now reliably reproduce the issue.

Starting the game while the %appdata%/SpaceEngineers/mipMapTextureCache2.B5 file exists results in bugged shadows on voxels with seemingly random textures being rendered in place of the proper shadow maps.

Deleting this file prior to game start is indeed a fix, albeit temporary. The file is generated / saved when the game is shut down. Thus, on next game start issue is re-introduced and persists across game starts until the aforementioned file is deleted again.

So, this means we're dealing with a game bug.

KSH, please fix.

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QA KeenSWH ●

Hello, Randolph Junior

I am sorry to hear you and others are experiencing problems with shadows and corrupted voxels. Can you please provide me with the file you have mentioned?

Thank you in advance.

Kind regards,

Keen Software House: QA Department

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Randolph Junior ●

It's the %appdata%/SpaceEngineers/mipMapTextureCache2.B5 file that gets generated by the game after game launch. I attached it.

However, the temporary fix I mentioned (deleting the file prior to game launch) stopped working yesterday, so my earlier assumptions about it causing the error are probably incorrect.

Turning the texture quality to low and then back to high is (not always) is a temporary fix until next game start.

I have since done a complete re-install of the game. No change.

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Ondrej Borz ●

Hello, Randolph Junior,

thank you for all the information you have provided.

We have reported this issue into our internal system.

Kind Regards

Keen Software House: QA Department

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Tino Claassen ●

I hope it gets fixed quickly. I have the same problem and it's extremely annoying.

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phil ●

Same types of artifacts for me too, you can reliably see it in the crater shadows on the mars planet.

AMD Radeon RX 7600 [23.9.1]

i9-9900K

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Tino Claassen ●

I Have AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT..

I have no idea if it has to do with the new drivers or if it's the game itself. But I hope it gets fixed quickly and we don't have to wait weeks.

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Steven ●

Same issue here - Radeon RX 7900 XTX - all settings on high or ultra. sometimes turning everything down to low will fix the issue. Might have to do with Voxel Quality as adjusting that option seems to cause changes to the shadows that sometimes fixes this, and other times doesnt. Changing Voxel Quality also causes a huge hickup sometimes when approaching a new (im assuming uncached) asteroid as it renders the newer quality layers.

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Steven ●

Did some more testing - might be related to Shader settings. when setting Shader Quality to medium and all other settings to high, the visuals are fine.

When moving it to high, the shadow artifacts appear - see attached

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phil ●

I can confirm this, the artifacts are only present when shaders are set to High.

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Metazare ●

Also have this problem after switching to an AMD card from Nvidia.

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Tokehgekko ●

The issue is still unfixable for me.....

5950X, 6800XT LC, 64GB DDR4 and NVMEs for everything.

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Mert Ersoy ●

I'm having the same problem. Even deleting and reinstalling the game didn't work. Many people in our Space Engineers discord group stated that they had the same problem. AMD 6700xt

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Niles Walter ●

I also have this voxel texture problem on a Radeon 7900XTX GPU + Zen 4 7900X CPU. Current Adrenalin 23.11.1 drivers. From the reports so far it seems any RDNA series GPU (5000 series, 6000 series, or 7000 series) is affected by the shader cache.

It only occurs when the "Shaders" graphic option is set to "HIGH", and the world is loaded or re-loaded while shaders are set to "HIGH". No other graphic setting appears to have an effect on the bug.

To fix the bug, I have to change the Shaders setting to Medium, then unload and reload the world. And even then- it's only bout a 70% fixrate, sometimes it doesn't seem to change anything until I fully restart the game.

Pretty embarrassing. My little Lenovo laptop literally runs this game better because it doesn't have these ugly game-breaking render errors. If anything, the latest SE update has actively made this bug worse; I used to be able to fix it in the current session just by toggling textures, now it won't go away at ALL unless I fully reload the world and keep shaders set to medium or low.

This could be a quirk in AMD Drivers as well but considering not a single other game I own has texture problems, I think it's vrage/SE specific.

Shoutout to Keen for straight up deleting all the previous "duplicate" threads (including my own) on this bug that included a huge amount of documentation on steps-to-reproduce, just because it was marked "solved" with a garbage hacky workaround (changing render settings then reloading the game)! Wonderful and amazing support to fix obvious bugs as always!

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Jake S. ●

Adding my info here since I was directed to this thread. Mine was a duplicate.

I am also experiencing this issue with shadows on voxels not rendering correctly. I can get them to render correctly by switching from high graphics to low graphics presets. I did run through all of the graphics settings one by one trying to figure out what setting it was that was causing the issue. If I manually do this I am not able to make the shadows appear correctly, even if turning them of entirely.

I have seen this happen with modded and vanilla planets as well as asteroids. So far I have done the following in an attempt to fix the issues.

Uninstalled and wiped GPU drivers then reinstalled

Verified game files

Cleared the games shader cache

Uninstalled and reinstalled Space Engineers

None of this has worked.

I do not think this is a hardware issue as I have been playing previously without issues.

System Specs:

Intel 12700k

AMD 7900 XT 20GB

32GB DDR4 Memory

I am attaching pictures of the concern using Titan for an example. The first file is when using the low preset and the second is when using the high preset.

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Jake S. ●

Update:

I have tried multiple versions of previously working drivers from AMD and all of them exhibit the same problems. Except driver 23.11.1.

Hopefully this information will prove useful.

AMD drivers tested 23.7.2 - 23.11.1 as well as the AMD Fluid Motion Frames Preview Driver have the shadow issue.

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Metazare ●

I'm a little confused by your post. Can you clarify if 23.11.1 works for you or not? I'm on that now and the problem still exists.

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Tino Claassen ●

I don't understand where the problem is. Above is already how you can solve the problem, at least temporarily. You don't have to uninstall and reinstall everything. Reinstalling almost the entire system because of a graphic error is nonsense anyway.

Temporary solution is to set shader quality to medium. complete. Or haven't read the other posts here?

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Jake S. ●

Metazare. I apologize for the confusion. I meant to say that driver 23.5.2 is the one that works, not 23.11.1. Sorry for the late reply.

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Jake S. ●

Tino, my original post was a copy of my concern thread that started. I was directed here since it was a duplicate post and I added my information. I was not able to find this thread for some reason when searching for a solution prior to opening my own bug report. The steps I listed were a reference showing what I attempted to do as a fix without any change so others dont have to repeat my steps for no reason.

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asdrosius ●

Same bug for me :/

Rx 7900 xtx / amd r9 7900x3d / 64gb ram and shadows bugged :/

hope a fix :(

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asdrosius ●

Finaly 23.3.1 preview drivers fixed the issue for me :)

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Tino Claassen ●

The driver is damn old. Why should you install it? This is from March 2023.

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asdrosius ●

AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition Preview Driver for AMD Fluid Motion Frames Release Notes | AMD

With the 23.30.01 the shadows work fine.

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Jake S. ●

Preview Driver 23.30.01.03 Does not fix the issue for 7900XT on my machine. I had to use Driver 23.5.2 to resolve the issue.

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Tino Claassen ●

And now my question anyway. Why are you using an old driver to solve the problem when you just have to temporarily lower the shader quality in the game a bit... it doesn't really make the quality of the image worse for me. everything else is high for me.

The effort and possible other problems that an outdated graphics driver brings with it, e.g. in other games etc., I can't understand it. Especially if the temporary solution is just a click in the settings.

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Jake S. ●

I was testing drivers to see if there was a correlation between the game update and driver updates but from what I've found the most recent driver that works was from months before the bug appeared. This leads me to believe that there is an issue with the game update that needs to be addressed, however by finding a driver that does work, perhaps keen can figure out what changed and why its not working.

I'm not reporting the old driver to be used as a fix but rather as information to aid in solving the bug.

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Metazare ●

It would seem that this may have been fixed in one of the recent patches they was put out this week. I'm not seeing the issue anymore. Can anyone else confirm?

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Tino Claassen ●

what kind of patches? Drivers or Space Engineers? There was no patch for Space Engineers this week. The last SE patch was at the end of October.

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Metazare ●

Disregard...

I had two updates for SE (not workshop content) that happened on separate occasions earlier in the week. I didn't think anything of it at the time. I booted up the game and loaded a save last night with the issue and it had disappeared. But I just tried loading up that same save again today and the issue is back.

Sorry all, false alarm.

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Tino Claassen ●

Despite this, there were no updates for Space Engineers. Look for yourself.

https://steamdb.info/app/244850/depots/

Public is what you get on Steam if you don't have a beta branch set. All with a lock are closed to the public. So no update could have come.

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Niles Walter ●

Something in the AMD Adrenalin 23.12.1 drivers seems to have changed this bug. I am no longer encountering the texture bugs in multiple worlds and servers I have joined with shader quality set to high.

Nothing in the changelogs for 23.12.1 list any changes related to lighting/shaders or Space Engineers specifically so I don't know if this is a temporary improvement, an improvement caused by reinstalling drivers, or just luck of the draw with how my PC felt today.

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QA KeenSWH 2 ●

Hello engineers,

We are pleased to inform that this issue has been fixed after the AMD Drivers update. Kindly update your AMD Drivers to version 23.12.1 or above.

Should you encounter any further issues after updating, kindly create a new thread and include relevant details.

Kind regards,

Keen Software House: QA Department

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