Game Crashing, Graphics Driver Crash Attempt 2

Space Engineers Support ●

Hello!

Thank you for contacting us. Since this is a bug report, I'm moving your ticket to our support page, where our QA team will take care of you.

Kind Regards

Keen Software House

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1

Nar Yneitred ●

I did some additional investigation based on previous things that sort of worked. The one time I was able to play over an hour without crashing was when I turned all the settings to low. With that as a starting point I decided to try and go one by one disabling/lowering settings. I started with grass since I saw a few posts about this being a major performance hit.

TLDR: Decrease grass density to 0.0. This will give the best chance, in my case, for longer play times (with or without mods).

Some tests that are not included because I didn't conduct them like a test are:

Setting the graphics to the best quality, grass density of 10.0 and maximum draw distance for trees and grass. Didn't go below 120fps until I got near a base with the shield (I think it is a shield or shimmer globe around it). Then it was running at 1 to 120fps, or freezing. Amazingly it also didn't crash. Usually the screen freezing is the major sign it just started to crash.
Setting the graphics to high (not best quality), grass density to 0.0 and grass draw distance to 49m (minimum). Has not crashed and has been the best play experience so far and will be sticking with this setting moving forward. Note: I do not consider this "fixed". Unfortunately I saw what this game looks like with grass and I love it. Playing without grass kind of sucks, but I can live with it for now.

The tests default parameters:

Same start location. Will load save file, save as Test_Grass_[DrawDistance]_[Density]
Fly using the jetpack until the jetpack runs out of fuel. Equipped with 1 hydrogen bottle. Route is similar for each test.
If the flight does not result in a crash, test a second time to confirm.
All settings on High, 1440p resolution. Only adjusting grass draw distance and density for these tests. Unless noted otherwise.

Tests:

Test_Grass_49m_3.0: Crashed, first flight.
Test_Grass_100m_3.0: Crashed, first flight.
Test_Grass_100m_2.0: Crashed, first flight. Faster than the previous two I believe.
Test_Grass_100m_1.0: Crashed, first flight.
Test_Grass_100m_0.0: No crash. It may just take longer for it to crash, but for the simple test flights I did this worked fine.
Test_Grass_100m_10.0: Crashed, second flight. This crashed on the second flight near end of the flight. Seriously thought it was going to make it (would have tried a third flight for extra validation for me).
Test_Grass_100m_3.0_ShadowsDisabled: Crashed, second flight. This crashed a little more than halfway through the second flight. I do not recommend turning off shadows, the game looks extremely odd and too bright.

I did some additional investigation based on previous things that sort of worked. The one time I was able to play over an hour without crashing was when I turned all the settings to low. With that as a starting point I decided to try and go one by one disabling/lowering settings. I started with grass since I saw a few posts about this being a major performance hit.

TLDR: Decrease grass density to 0.0. This will give the best chance, in my case, for longer play times (with or without mods).

Some tests that are not included because I didn't conduct them like a test are:

Setting the graphics to the best quality, grass density of 10.0 and maximum draw distance for trees and grass. Didn't go below 120fps until I got near a base with the shield (I think it is a shield or shimmer globe around it). Then it was running at 1 to 120fps, or freezing. Amazingly it also didn't crash. Usually the screen freezing is the major sign it just started to crash.
Setting the graphics to high (not best quality), grass density to 0.0 and grass draw distance to 49m (minimum). Has not crashed and has been the best play experience so far and will be sticking with this setting moving forward. Note: I do not consider this "fixed". Unfortunately I saw what this game looks like with grass and I love it. Playing without grass kind of sucks, but I can live with it for now.

The tests default parameters:

Same start location. Will load save file, save as Test_Grass_[DrawDistance]_[Density]
Fly using the jetpack until the jetpack runs out of fuel. Equipped with 1 hydrogen bottle. Route is similar for each test.
If the flight does not result in a crash, test a second time to confirm.
All settings on High, 1440p resolution. Only adjusting grass draw distance and density for these tests. Unless noted otherwise.

Tests:

Test_Grass_49m_3.0: Crashed, first flight.
Test_Grass_100m_3.0: Crashed, first flight.
Test_Grass_100m_2.0: Crashed, first flight. Faster than the previous two I believe.
Test_Grass_100m_1.0: Crashed, first flight.
Test_Grass_100m_0.0: No crash. It may just take longer for it to crash, but for the simple test flights I did this worked fine.
Test_Grass_100m_10.0: Crashed, second flight. This crashed on the second flight near end of the flight. Seriously thought it was going to make it (would have tried a third flight for extra validation for me).
Test_Grass_100m_3.0_ShadowsDisabled: Crashed, second flight. This crashed a little more than halfway through the second flight. I do not recommend turning off shadows, the game looks extremely odd and too bright.

Files:

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1

Warlow ●

same issue, also 4090.

I've tried SE over several gpu driver versions and same issue presents constantly.

Could last 10 sec, could last an hour. Seems to happen more on planets

Files:

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1

Nar Yneitred ●

Have you tried turning the grass off to see if that improves your performance? SE is playable with grass density set to 0 for me. It isn't the full experience but playable at least.

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Warlow ●

i expect more of keen. If you cant supply technical support on an issue like this, the Australian ACCC will force refunds from your publisher. Hopefully we can get some support before it comes to that

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Warlow ●

PS i recognise Nar isnt Keen, I'm just tired of having this happen and this isnt my first time trying to deal with keen support over this very issue

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Nar Yneitred ●

Don't worry, this is my second post on this topic and I have commented on others that are similar. I understand the frustration since this games has been exactly what I wanted to be playing for a while now. Thank you for commenting, give the post a thumbs up too, that way Keen can clearly see that it isn't a small issue.

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ETHREAL1 ●

Also Same with a 4090. though mine seems to last a lot longer on average than the others here, Wonder if it's because I have paired my 4090 with a X3D CPU? I get anywhere from ~15 minutes to like 8 hours...

Here are my system specs if it helps;

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5800X3D

GPU: Asus Strix 4090

RAM: 2x16GB 3600MTps CAS 16

MB: ASUS ROG CROSSHAIR VIII IMPACT (x570)

Game Install Location: Dedicated Gen4x4 NVME SSD (Sabrent SB-RKT4P-4TB)

Cooling: Full Custom Water (GPU: ~45c, CPU: ~75c, Water: ~47c)

Windows: W11 Pro, V: 24H4, B: 26100.2314

GPU Driver Version: 566.14 (observed before this driver as well)

I only recently started playing SE again with all that's been updated I decided to try going full on vanilla to see if its actually doable now without scripts or mods. 100% vanilla experimental mode off, high visual preset is what I run. I also found that yes jacking up the render distant on either tree or foliage causes major instability and it would not surprise me if it's related.

Also digging through the mini dump files from the crashes a reoccurring theme is the faulting process/module is this "ShapeDX" thing. I have also noticed that I seem to be getting 2 different type of crashes based on the game logs. at the bottom of the logs some will say "IsGPU True" and others "IsTask True". though the dumps both point to again ShapeDX as the fault. Just that when the GPU is blamed the GPU driver gets taken with it and then recovers.

I have a video of it happening but it would seem that video files are not allowed. With that said here are all the log files and a screen shot of the dump report of the most recent crash;

Files:

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Nar Yneitred ●

ETHREAL, the ShapeDX error that you are getting is most likely the same as mine which is a generic catch all. Unfortunately the error log doesn't give more specific errors.

Can you try turning the grass density to 0 to see if crashes. A way to test is to fly around after landing on an earthlike planet. 1 tank should be sufficient, just pick a direction and fly relatively close to the ground. Try with grass density to 3.0 which is default, if this is causing the crash it will happen relatively quickly. Then try with grass density set to 0. Please let me know what happens, this will also help Keen out as well.

Setting the grass density to 0 has worked for me and for Erik on another post, "Space Engineers saying GPU is overheating". If this also fixes your issue then I think it would pinpoint the issue faster for Keen.

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ETHREAL1 ●

Yes it would seem as though setting grass density to 0 fixes the crash, But as you said it does make it quite bland... and it's not like the card is stressed basically at all.

Also of interest when I tested with grass density set to 3 just now and it crashed the dump pointed to Vrage as the faulting process.

Going to test some other Grass density setting, and perhaps some Tree ones as well to see if I can find a a cutoff point.

(Did have fun flying down a mountain at 105mps in one of my old home made respawn rovers, I call it the trusty cow as it's can surprisingly survive nearly anything)

Files:

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Nar Yneitred ●

Glad that the temporary fix worked. Hopefully it gets resolved soon so we can see the game in its true glory.

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ETHREAL1 ●

I'm Still testing but it would seem as though Grass density set to 1 and the distance set to 1008 looks stable (actually kind of think its more natural looking as well)

Could just be getting lucky though, still testing.

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Nar Yneitred ●

I noticed that some settings took longer to trigger the crash than others. I did at least two runs per test just to make sure it wasn't just luck.

I also enjoyed flying around for the test too. Dodging trees was hard before, now it is slightly easier.... Most of the time.

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ETHREAL1 ●

Yep just crashed, trying 0.5 at 1000 now.

Also attaching a debugger to see if it catches anything more informative

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ETHREAL1 ●

0.5 at 1000 is also a no, however the debugger and some research may have uncovered the cause. Right as the game crashed there is a DX message that says the DXD11 device will be removed. Looking int the exact error it can be caused by 1 of 3 things. 1. HW failure, (not this, everything else works fine) 2. Driver/Windows bug/corruption on a system wide scale (not this, it would be seen in other games as well) 3. "Complex DirectCompute shaders: Shaders that are too complex to run within the timeout period can lead to device removal."

That would also fit with the fact that the higher level of grass makes the crash happen more often. My bet is on 3.

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Keen SWH QA Agent 2 ●

Hello engineers,

We’ve received updates from players mentioning that updating their BIOS and Intel Management Engine (ME) resolved the issue on their end. We kindly request you to try the following steps to see if this resolves the issue for you as well.

Precautions Before Updating:

Backup Important Data
Ensure Stable Power Supply
Reset Custom BIOS Settings
Take note of any custom BIOS settings, as they may reset to defaults after the update.
Check Compatibility
Verify that the BIOS and Intel ME update files match your specific hardware model.
Avoid Interruptions
Do not restart, power off, or disconnect the system during the update process.

Steps to Update BIOS and Intel ME:

Visit the Manufacturer's Website:
Download the latest BIOS and Intel ME firmware specific to your motherboard or laptop model.
Read the Instructions:
Each manufacturer provides detailed steps for updating the BIOS and Intel ME. Follow them carefully.
Use Official Tools:
Use only the tools and utilities provided by your manufacturer for updates.

If the issue still occurs, please send us the latest log files.

Kind Regards,

Keen Software House: QA Department

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1

ETHREAL1 ●

Hello!

My System does not have any Intel parts and does not use the Intel ME stuff. The UFFI is updated already. The only UEFI settings that have been changed from default is enabling DOCP/XMP, enabling FTPM, and enabling VM stuff.

I can still generate a crash and log if you would like but I suspect it would be basically the same as all the others before it.

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Nar Yneitred ●

One of the things I did before was update BIOS, but I can check into updating if there is a newer version available. As for Intel ME, I will look into it and get back to you.

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Nar Yneitred ●

Both BIOS and Intel ME were up to date according to their official websites/installers. I am pretty sure the previous log files were with these updates, but I attached a fresh crash report I got just now.

Files:

URL

Game Crashing, Graphics Driver Crash Attempt 2

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