Intel Graphics - Graphical Memory Leak

I appreciate you coming forward with this information! It would appear that your mod indeed rectified the planet situation if not for a temporary fix should no long term solution appear. However I additionally took the liberty to test this further and more information could be gleamed;

• All planets with an atmosphere will fail to load textures relative to the intensity of an atmosphere. This could explain why on some planets like aliens and mars how textures barely still had color but were intensely dark.
• Deletion of the offending planet does not rectify the situation. Only after a planets deletion and a prompt game reload does the game turn back to normal.
• Deletion of caches has no effect on this problem.

You can see from some of the photos attached some of which used your planet, and the effect of spawning in planets with atmosphere.

However, textures shouldn't just fail because of this nor should they carry across updates. This hints that when updating, changes to texture files or even game code referencing those files are not correctly updated when it comes to our Intel graphics. After all, the dx9 did fix the problem because I noted that there were changes to the games content files, but loading the dx11 variant with the latest update broke it again as it changed all the textures back. So it would appear that if one of the textures you see are broken, it causes the rest of the game to go black.

If it helps perhaps verify with your friend that he also uses an Intel Graphics card

Have you given my custom planet with out an atmosphere a try to see if that works?

No. I do not have time to try it because of school but it doesn't matter because like I said on discord, I get the same problem with ships and meteors. Not just planets with atmosphere.

So you're saying that even with no planets with an atmosphere, you're still getting this issue? I don't believe we spoke on discord. I posted on steam, reddit, and on here only about this issue. Perhaps you're confusing discord with one of those. At any rate, i'm not trying to be annoying or anything, just trying to help as many ppl as i can so Keen will take a look at this.

it has been on "considered" for 11 months. I would like to to play the game. please fix this i have seen at least two dozen posts on Reddit and multiple on here. there is probably hundreds of people experiencing this problem.

This problem is fixed. The issue is your graphics driver. You need to manually update it from Intels website. If you actually read this thread you would have found the solution. Do not auto update as the auto update doesn't pull it from Intel it pulls it from your computer manufacturers website.

Have you tried my custom planet to see if it still goes black for you? https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1549037799

If you want to do it yourself, you can follow these manual directions

Manual Instructions; Start a new world, select whichever scenario you want that comes with the vanilla planets. Load into the game, and assuming you're getting the black texture bug, just log out and save right away after the world loads in and is created.

After that, you need to go to your appdata/roaming folders. Go into the Space Engineers folder, and locate your saves folder. Once you're in your save folders, locate the world that you just created. Once you locate your save folder, inside should be a file called SANDBOX_0_0_0_ which you need to use a textpad editor like notepad++ or just the default one Windows comes with. Once you open it with a text editor, you can do Ctrl + F to bring up a search function. ONce the search function is up, paste in this value <HasAtmosphere>true</HasAtmosphere> Depending on how many planets the scenario that you selected has, you will need to change all the values to false. After changing the values to fasle, save the file and close it. Once closed, there will be another similar named file called SANDBOX_0_0_0_.sbsB1 that you will need to delete for the changes to be completed. After you delete SANDBOX_0_0_0_.sbsB1 you can load in your world and any planet that was in the world created will not have an atmosphere.

EDIT: Oh nvm, it's you Herd, I remember you from the steam discussions thread. Thanks for showing that video.

curious as to why you have a great PC, with the exception of an actual graphics card, intel Integrated Graphics is not for gaming.

however, i have seen that black hexagon issue before, may be something to do with some effects overloading the GPU? it happened on particles with the 1.186 release

The hexagon as i mentioned in the OP was caused by the enabling of the post processing setting.

I don't have an actual graphics card because my last one died, and I won't have a replacement for quite some time.

A few weeks ago I had disabled post processing (to try all graphics levels to test what may be causing the issue) and had gotten the black hexagon effects with and without post processing enabled. However, I have just tested and I no longer have the black hexagon issue, though there still seems to be some slight graphical issues where there are no longer black hexagons, but all objects are still pitch black.

Not sure if this was already known but it's at least a slight improvement for me.

@Nikolas

I think it should be restated that this is not true and never was. Intel were always trying to make a gaming capable iGPU and just weren't very good at it. Since the HD500 series, Intel's iGPU was competitive enough to stop Nvidia producing low end GPUs and it's location next to the CPU actually makes it perform a lot better than the raw numbers would have you believe. An Intel HD530 is about as good as a GTX560, and runs the majority of this game at solid 60fps.

It's not a RTX2080 by any stretch, but my first GPU cost me £50 new (NV FX5200)... so if I was a kid now I'd probably be gaming on HD graphics.

Funny how nobody says the same about AMD's integrated Radeons, and Intel is able to compete with all but the top end of them.

@Devs

This is a game breaking bug and you should be ashamed of yourselves for allowing it to stay for 8 months when your own users have already narrowed down it's exact cause. Fix the particle effects or give us the means to remove them so we can play online without having to put modified game files on other peoples servers. Literally a single console command or particle switch would fix this.

Couldn't agree more with Sydney. Intel Graphics are not "not for games." Intel even boasts about their gaming performance. Space Engineers runs well on intel HD graphics, except when you're on planets. This is an issue with the game, not Intel.

i dont know where you have been all these years, but i know that intel graphics is not for gaming, it never has been, sure they are changing, they now have some great graphics experts, please go and do your research, Intel integrated graphics IS NOT for gaming! Yes it 'can' handle some light games, barely, but it is the worst of the worse.

Surprisingly the more recent Intel CPUs with Intel UHD 620 graphics and up are pretty decent for gaming even at 1080p high settings on pretty demanding games. I'm able to play battlefield 4 on my laptop which has an Intel core i5 8250u at around 60 fps. It's not great for gaming, but it is very capable.

@Nikolas

You "know" that because you like to *not* "know" what you are talking about. If you did you'd at least try to state what it IS for.

Language Check: The use of the word "for" as in "for gaming" doesn't specify how good they are at the task, but Intel GPUs were most certainly built with gaming as a primary intent. That's a well documented fact. Therefore they are "for" gaming. If you wanted an iGPU that's 'not for gaming' take a look at a VIA or go back to the days when it was still on the Northbridge. Even then they were built to a spec to be able to play console games from the PS2 like GTA San Andreas.

GPUs are very mature tech, so waiting 10 years for something fully featured is par for course. We all know some games didn't work pre-HD3000. We also all know some games that are 5 years old that we love... like this one. That's where HD should shine, because the customers don't have the budget to pay $60 bucks for the latest anyway:- they are either kids or are using a work PC like me, and parents buy games that cost $15 and are a little older, just like this one. What I'm saying is Keen killed his main customer base with this issue.

I will also educate you that Intel had no need to make integrated GPUs, as VIA were and still are making iGPUs that are "not for gaming". Both them and Nvidia would be doing that now if not for Intel forcing them out of motherboard manufacturing specifically to make more space to grow their own solution.

Further reading: Look at the Larrabee project and how this stuff got developed instead of spouting nonsense. 11 years since they bought Project Offset. Offset built a game engine that made it into AAA titles like Firefall, but decided that that was not the way as it would create a split in the market between games optimised for iGPU and dGPU. By the time it was ready for prime time HD graphics was so good that there was little point and it had already started cannibalizing GPU sales, which is why current GPUs cost an arm and a leg compared to how much they used to. Intel owns the low end market of gaming. Fact.

tl;dr I'm saying so much because I think you might be creating an excuse for the dev not to fix his game. A patently wrong one I'll add. Your ignorance isn't welcome here. The vast majority of the world and gaming world is actually on HD graphics becasue outside developed countries (and inside them when talking about the primary target: kids) simply don't have dollars for this.

look ive been around long enough to know that intel integrated graphics is NOT for gaming, it is for light graphics applications, that can do some games, thats it! if you bought a system with Intel integrated graphics for gaming, then you are a bloody idiot, go and do your own research for gods sake!

Only reason I'd say all IGPUs have trouble with games is because there are GPU cards to raise that goal post to begin with.

That said, I do wonder which company produces the most gaming capable IGPUs... For two reasons:

-For the advent that the GPU card fails, like what happened to Herd (I can sympathize with two cards failing on my last computer).

-I am considering on replacing my current computer by starting off with a mini barebone unit in the distant future, and it would not surprise my if the thing would be too small for dedicated graphics and that the market would still be dominated by Intel.

@Nikolas March

I urge you to do your research. I have provided over a page of keywords for you to check in the prior comments because I have done mine.

There's also benchmarks and such elsewhere on this page posted by me showing that iGPU is actually faster than the min requirements of the game.

@Sidney Hoshi, my last comment, was the end of it, like i said, i have been around long enough to experience the best (terrible) intel has to offer in graphics, so i will say again, Intel integrated Graphics IS the worst of the worst, and IS NOT for gaming, i did not say that it can not 'game', merely that it IS NOT for gaming. it is for basic graphical applications, and some light gaming.

Its not about speed, its about how they work. very few games officially support integrated graphics, i have no doubt that it is SE causing this problem with intel integrated graphics, im not denying that, never have.

you can get benchmarks all you want, i KNOW that current intel integrated graphics is not for gaming, it has the worst performance of all the integrated graphics on the consumer market, i have nothing against intel, my 3 main computers and my laptop are intel chips, if AMD's integrated graphics was terrible, i would say it, but they are not, but even AMD's integrated graphics are not officially supported for SE, they just happen to still work at the moment.

Not being as strong as a card =/= not built for gaming. What also =/= not built for gaming is being unsupported by game devs; a CPU manufacturer building their IGPU for gaming will not guarantee that the game developers will adopt that piece of hardware.

If you pay attention, you'll see the market adapted too. It's easy to see on the Nvidia side, where they used to have 7200,7300,7500,7600GT, LE and so on in each range and that made way for less and less as the minimum bar raised. By GTX7XX there was two cards in the low end tier. Now it starts at 50 and has two mid tier cards.

There was an update in the past that was aimed to improve airtightness. I do recall that update being the one which broke the atmospheres for us Intel GPU users. Airtightness is still a bit buggy at times when in space and I open holes in a room to do something behind and then patch them back up, but that's for a different thread.

No, airtightness has absolutely nothing to do with planet atmospheres. Airtightness is about grid air pressurisation.

im sure the update this all started on was 1.186, the visuals update, people's intel intgrated graphics have been failing since that.

The Hexagons will go down to just object silhouettes if you disable AO and postprocessing.

Recorded the intro of The First Jump as it appears on a HD GPU. Original footage is at 900p. Logs and such are irrelevant as I don't believe the game thinks it's rendered anything wrong in the first place to throw an error. Your Hexagons are due to bloom/particle effects around the objects that AO and post add.

The Hexagons will go down to just object silhouettes if you disable AO and postprocessing.

Recorded the intro of The First Jump as it appears on a HD GPU. Original footage is at 900p. Logs and such are irrelevant as I don't believe the game thinks it's rendered anything wrong in the first place to throw an error. Your Hexagons are due to bloom/particle effects around the objects that AO and post add.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aR0DjpRXVoc

how do you modify the files? i would like to at least be able to play meanwhile.

With Intel *designing* the compilers and IDE that everyone else makes their game on, saying that they have a bug is kinda like saying 'my hack is broken and it's their fault'. Keyword there is 'Hack'.

Intel have a team of devs far bigger than SE and any bugs they have in rendering will be squashed in much less than 8 months, if only to protect their business customers like Dell and Lenovo (who would certainly pick this up among their big customer bases). Most laptops still only have iGPUs and still have to do 3D.

The vast majority of games worked fine (if super slow) on Intel iGPU for ages because they wrote the rulebook to fit everyone elses. Devs weren't testing the games on Intel because for the longest time there was no point when it could only do 10fps... Only middleware guys had to (like the makers of Speedtree or Unreal).

Also this bug was not present prior to 1.X.18 or whatever version it was last year, but appears in bug reports from 2016.

It's definitely Keen's problem to fix, not Intel's and I prefer to "pin the tail on the donkey" because not being able to play for 8 months on a game I bought 3 months before is quite rude tbh. This is hardly a new shiny game too.

actually the game has had many graphical updates in its time, you might want to look at that, and for your information, i was one of those helping Jouster with the trying to find another way around this, with reducing the atmosphere on planets, and i still have a Particle Performance Optimisation mod to update again, if i can bring myself to spend 3-4 hours editing values.

its believed that its the particles thats the problem, there is no particle quality/intensity reduction in SE, Low settings of anything you see in the options menu will not change this, so stop spouting nonsense.

im not having any issues with the fix, i just need to find the patience to spend 3-4 hours updating the mod.

what particles control are you on about, there isnt one. any tools in the developer/profiler build do not count, the only option i am aware of is post processing on/off, and thats not really any sort of adjustable control, as it turns a lot more off than just some particles. I have asked keen for some particle control, they said their system does not allow for such a control, which i assume is, they can not be bothered. its just code alterations with a checkbox for low quality particles, to halve or quarter the particles per second values etc, but no, there is no such option and wont be any time soon.

i stand by my earlier statement, Intel Integrated Graphics are not officially supported, and there is a good reason, they are not very good. it is not for hardcore gaming, i have tried intel graphics recently and nearly 2 decades ago, they were crap then, and they are crap now, but this is not the place for this debate, there is definitely a strange problem, with SE, or something as when i was helping Jouster my laptops integrated Intel GFX was not having this problem, and there is also the issue of brief black hexagon flashes on other graphics cards, i cant link the page for that unfortunately.

Okay... for some reason, editing it was not working... so heres my "edit 2." Found the log file, and some personal information that understandably, want to keep private. Appears to me I'm going to have to share the log file via Email to tech support (or some around there). If there is an Email that I can send it to that's a programmer in SE, I'll be glad to see if they're able to help us users with less than minimum hardware... or something that'll possibly be of some help, is direction on what to look for in the log files so we could fix it ourselves... it would relieve the stress of creators and programmers from facing mobs of people trying to get their game fixed... then again, that could complicate things if a log file should be sent and its "edited" by via user, thus the programmer might have to "reedit" the entire thing before they can fix it (unless the user is clever enough to send the original for more professional work).

Technically, your GPU was not in production when this game came out so you're not 'less than minimum'. That should be noted. A 620 is literally the same as the min spec card: the 8800GT, which is ancient. Both the 530 and 630 are better.

https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GeForce-8800-GT-vs-Intel-HD-620-Mobile-Kaby-Lake/m7722vsm153579

Made an account just to upvote this, i've had space engineers for a while and have played it just fine on my current laptop, a lenovo yoga 730. It has intel graphics, 620 if i'm correct. I came back to the game after a few months of not playing it and when I try to load an atmospheric planet I got those black hexagons. I am able to play the game just fine otherwise, but it is really annoying and needs to be fixed.

Got Some Juicy Info on this, So if you only have silhouettes of stuff, I discovered that at night a miniscule amount of colour comes back to things on as far as I have tested the earth like planet. I would presume the same goes for other planets and if you start on the earth planet preset and do not go outside for some reason colour stays.

Update:

I'm using a Intel Intergrated Graphics 630 UHD and I was having alot of trouble updating the drivers, after 3 hours of errors I did something and It actually updated then I went on space engineers and loaded up the earth planet reset went outside and jumped (after jumping things normally go black and nothing happened it was normal played for a hour later still works!

Update:

So after further testing, keeping the atmosphere at 75000 not only lets me able to play with the atmosphere and all that comes with it, I can keep every other planets atmosphere turned on, the only ones I have to adjust are the ones with a greater than 75000 atmosphere. The only draw back to this is it's technically a lot easier to leave planets in theory, still haven't tested that, but you're looking at 15km instead of 45km to leave the atmosphere.

Let me know if you have any questions. Technically you can build a server with these parameters and play with your friends.

I'm using a Intel Intergrated Graphics 630 UHD and I was having alot of trouble updating the drivers, after 3 hours of errors I did something and It actually updated then I went on space engineers and loaded up the earth planet reset went outside and jumped (after jumping things normally go black and nothing happened it was normal played for a hour later still works!

How did you update the drivers for the Intel Integrated Graphics?

Can confirm, worked for me!

I'm having trouble updating my Intel Core i5 8250U's UHD 620 graphics driver. It keeps saying that it's up to date. Can anyone help me?

Hmm. Are you updating using the guide or just how you would normally? Have you tried playing the game after it said your drivers were up to date?

I know this issue. This is caused by having a store bought laptop and installing your graphics drivers from the website of the brand rather than the Intel site. Intel has a switch in their installers that will disallow the driver from being updated from another source (e.g if you got it from the Lenovo site you can't put a newer one on it until Lenovo specifically releases it on thier site).

Solution is Pressing Win+X then clicking Device Manager, scrolling down to your GPU under Display Devices submenu, right click then select uninstall driver. Restart before you run the installer from the Intel site, and make sure you have Intel IME drivers installed before this because it can cause problems if you dont.

he gave in and decided to get an actual graphics card... this issue still happens with intel integrated graphics, and as far as i know, there hasnt yet been a fix, though i havent seen this problem mentioned as much recently, like one per month (keen discord).

i actually have the same issue on my laptop when i switch to the intel integrated graphics, i can check to see if it still happens on the latest version of SE and latest drivers... i have a save point at just before the issue occurs, give me a few days, i will test and record the video output if the issue still occurs.