SpaceEngine News

This is a WARNING to users of AMD graphics cards NOT to use the 22.7.1 optional drivers with SpaceEngine! These drivers break numerous things in SE and make it practically unusable. The worst issue is extremely slow loading of terrain textures on stars and planetary bodies. Auto exposure is also broken, as are bloom, glare, diffraction spikes, and any other feature that relies on the same low-res image buffer as those.

The cause for the extremely slow terrain loading (up to 500 ms per tile on a system with a 6700 XT, Ryzen 5600, 32 GB of high-speed RAM, and NVMe SSDs) seems to be that this driver version reports the physical VRAM amount as being the sum of both physical AND virtual VRAM, and when SE runs, data is sent to both physical and virtual VRAM interchangeably, instead of only using physical VRAM until it's full. This means, instead of terrain tiles being stored only in the very fast memory directly connected to the GPU, data is ALSO sent through the PCIe bus to the CPU to be redirected to the virtual VRAM pool, which is dozens of times slower than just using the GPU's dedicated VRAM. The cause of the other issues requires further investigation.

We still need to investigate and try to discuss with AMD why these issues are happening and how to fix them. In the meantime, do NOT use the 22.7.1 optional drivers, and instead use the 22.5.1 recommended (WHQL) drivers, which in our testing was actually the best driver for running SE that AMD has released in a long time, and seemed to fix at least 1 major causes of glitches, freezing, and crashing on AMD GPUs.

We will keep you updated on this issue and will let you know when it's resolved.

We're happy to announce the first look at our next big update, which we are calling "General Relativity", in reference to Einstein's theory of gravity - and their real-time visualisation in SpaceEngine!

We started working on this update much earlier this year. While development is still ongoing, we wanted to take this opportunity to share a bit about what we've been up to, and what you can expect from the next big release.

While the update is going to contain a lot of cool and exciting visual content (And some very cool gameplay content, too!), today we're focusing on one major element: Kerr-Newman black holes.

This type of black hole has charge and angular momentum (they spin!), and as a result they can create some very interesting effects. The technical details are complicated, and implementing them faithfully has been a challenge, but we feel like they're well worth the effort - and we're very excited to finally be able to share what we've been working on with you!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube] Above: an extreme example of a Kerr-Newman black hole, rendered in SpaceEngine.

There's a lot more to come, and we'll have more updates for you on this release throughout the month, so stay tuned! As always, be sure to check out our blog for more details, as well as some additional information about what's coming up!

A patch to a few minor issues in the previous version:

- Fixed loading locations in star clusters and nebulae
- Locations dialog shows object's name and parent if holding mouse over the cell
- Diffraction spikes on accretion disk are generated on the most hot spot instead of its center
- Added shadow to the FPS counter

We are pleased to announce that the latest update has finished public beta testing, and is being released to all users! The biggest item in this update is the scalable user interface, which should make life easier for people with 4k screens.

The controls for interface scaling are located in SpaceEngine's "general" settings menu. By default, SpaceEngine will detect the scaling amount set in your Windows display settings for the current monitor and upscale the UI by that amount, similar to other software designed for high DPI compatibility; this automatic scaling can be disabled by toggling the "use system DPI" checkbox. You can add additional scaling by using the slider.



We've also fixed a few bugs, including the wiki crash bug (at least we hope so!), desaturated star corona and diffraction spikes, a couple of visual issues in VR, and an obscure spacecraft physics bug. This update also adds the exoplanet Proxima d.

As always, a full list of changes can be found below, or on our website!

Changes from the previous public beta (0.990.43.1880):

• Fixed colors of some interface elements in "red" and "green" skins
  
• Fixed Wiki crash (hopefully!)
  
• Added Proxima d
  
• More information about black holes and accretion disks in the object info HUD and Wiki
  
• Fixed incorrect depth buffer scaling for 3D rings in VR
  
• Fixed position of autoexposure metering zone in VR at lower rendering resolutions
  
• Fixed star corona color desaturation in medium and high planet shine modes
  
• Fixed diffraction spikes color desaturation in medium and high planet shine modes
  
• Fixed the Solar system barycenter acting like a gravity source on spacecraft
  

Changes from the previous main branch update (0.990.43.1875):

• Interface upgrades
  - Scalable GUI (!!!) with option for automatic scaling according to display scaling setting in Windows
  - Slider to scale up interface in the range of 100-200%, applied on top of Windows scaling setting if "use system DPI" is enabled
  - GUI textures remade for 4k (200% scaling)
  - Selection cursor (cross shape used for selecting objects) changed to high-contrast white color for better visibility
  - Renamed "Modern" interface skins to "Glossy"
  
• Added exoplanet Proxima d
  
• Added more information about black holes and accretion disks in the object info HUD and Wiki
  
• Calibrated illuminance for auto and manual exposure modes (light sources were previously too dim by a factor of 10)
  
• Fixed Wiki crash (hopefully!)
  
• Fixed star corona color desaturation in medium and high planet shine modes
  
• Fixed diffraction spikes color desaturation in medium and high planet shine modes
  
• Fixed bug with camera position for reflection and warp cubemaps
  
• Fixed materials for some asteroid models
  
• Fixed bug with black hemisphere on some planets and moons
  
• Fixed visibility of details on neutron star and white dwarf surface
  
• Fixed incorrect depth buffer scaling for 3D rings in VR
  
• Fixed position of autoexposure metering zone in VR at lower rendering resolutions
  
• Fixed the Solar system barycenter acting like a gravity source on spacecraft
  

In this update on the public beta branch, we present a feature long requested by users of 4k displays: a scalable graphical user interface! Until now, text and menus were too small to be used comfortably on 4k displays. With this update, however, the scale of the interface is adjustable up to at least two times its original size (read on for details).

The controls for interface scaling are located in SpaceEngine's "general" settings menu. By default, SpaceEngine will detect the scaling amount set in your Windows display settings for the current monitor and upscale the UI by that amount, similar to other software designed for high DPI compatibility; this automatic scaling can be disabled by toggling the "use system DPI" checkbox. You can add additional scaling on top of that by using the slider. SE is able to scale the UI to any value from 100 to 200% in steps of 5% (technically, any value can be used, but non-integral values like 133.3% may be impractical). It is possible that text and UI elements may look blurry at some scales; this may be fixed in a future update.

Note that the mouse cursor will only be scaled to either 100 or 200%: I found that a giant but sharp cursor looks better than a blurry one. For UI scales below 150%, small cursors are used; for 150% and higher, large cursors are used. We also decided to change the cross-shaped cursor used when selecting objects to a high-contrast white color for easier visibility, especially on displays with poor response times for dark colors (like most VA panels).

For more pictures of the scalable interface, including a comparison showing the old experience at 4k vs now with GUI scaling, please visit this update's news post on our website.

[h3]Changelog of this beta (0.990.43.1880)[/h3]
- Interface upgrades
-- Scalable GUI (!!!) with option for automatic scaling according to display scaling setting in Windows
-- Slider to scale up interface in the range of 100-200%, applied on top of Windows scaling setting if "use system DPI" is enabled
-- GUI textures remade for 4k (200% scaling)
-- Selection cursor (cross shape used for selecting objects) changed to high-contrast white color for better visibility
-- Renamed "Modern" interface skins to "Glossy"
- Calibrated illuminance for auto and manual exposure modes (light sources were previously too dim by a factor of 10)
- Fixed bug with camera position for reflection and warp cubemaps
- Fixed materials for some asteroid models
- Fixed bug with black hemisphere on some planets and moons
- Fixed visibility of details on neutron star and white dwarf surface