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amoebae
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Resolution limit? (Hotsampling black screen)

30 Apr 2017 13:44

I use SRWE to hotsample Space Engine (latest version of both). With higher resolutions, SE won't render at all, I just get a black screen. Sometimes there's just 100 pixels in it, between will render/won't render.

For example, in this 2:3 shot it rendered fine at 3000x4500, but at 3100x4650 it was an endless black screen.

I'm not new to hotsampling or downsampling - I use it in a lot of games and I know the limits my hardware can handle. I have a 980Ti and a 4790 @ 4GHz, and I should be able to handle quite a lot higher than these resolutions in SE. As it is, the resolutions that do render successfully aren't taxing at all. 

Is there a hidden setting in an ini somewhere that lets the game fully utilise my hardware? Is that what's causing the problem? Or is there an internal limit to resolution hard coded in the game (seems unlikely). Any ideas? I'd love to be able to get the most out of my hardware and push the pixels as far as possible to get the cleanest images.
 
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HarbingerDawn
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Resolution limit? (Hotsampling black screen)

30 Apr 2017 14:32

I have run SE at much higher resolutions. I have previously run it at 6k res. I just tested it at that res again, and it did render for a short time, but then it crashed my video drivers (running a GTX 970 and Ryzen 1700 @ 3.5GHz).
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amoebae
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Resolution limit? (Hotsampling black screen)

30 Apr 2017 21:26

Yeah, I just spoke to someone who when using an HD 7850 2GB was able to go up to 16k res with SRWE, but since they got a 380X they can't go past 6k (nothing else changed about the system).

I've not used SE with anything other than my current set up, so I can't comment on that, but driver updates and different game versions haven't changed this behaviour - I simply can't hotsample to resolutions my card should be able to handle with ease. There's very little being rendered on-screen at any one time - especially when taking pictures of open space and not high-LOD terrain textures - there's no reason why my 980Ti shouldn't be able to handle far in excess of what I'm currently getting.

Is there a tutorial somewhere about what can be changed in the ini files? I find the forum a little difficult to navigate and search in, and I don't know what I'm looking for. Are there settings to tailor the installation for our individual hardware capabilities (like vram etc)?
 
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HarbingerDawn
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Resolution limit? (Hotsampling black screen)

01 May 2017 07:22

Is there a tutorial somewhere about what can be changed in the ini files?
Sorry, there's no tutorial, but pretty much everything in the config files should be commented so you should have an idea. You can set things like VRAM amounts, but SE detects this automatically, so there should be no need to.
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Resolution limit? (Hotsampling black screen)

01 May 2017 08:30

SE don't detect VRAM amount on ATI - they dropped support of this feature in drivers. You can set VideoMemorySize to your VRAM megabytes in config/main-user.cfg. But this is not related to your problem.
Why do you want to rescale SE graphics at all? You always can specify any custom window resolution in the display settings menu, and then take a screenshot.
 
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amoebae
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Resolution limit? (Hotsampling black screen)

01 May 2017 12:34

SE don't detect VRAM amount on ATI - they dropped support of this feature in drivers. You can set VideoMemorySize to your VRAM megabytes in config/main-user.cfg. But this is not related to your problem.
Why do you want to rescale SE graphics at all? You always can specify any custom window resolution in the display settings menu, and then take a screenshot.
Hotsampling is an on-the-fly way of downsampling to huge resolutions without needing to force it via driver downsampling or DSR or whatever other method. It also lets you specify a bespoke aspect ratio - so I can take a shot directly in 2:3 for example, and not crop afterwards. It's commonplace within the screenshot community. Not all games support hotsampling (it requires that the viewport be resizeable), but SE does. 

It means I can explore at my native resolution and aspect ratio (16:9, 2560x1440), change the window to 2:3 or 1:1 or 2.55:1 or whatever to compose a shot, and then momentarily increase the resolution at that aspect ratio, take the shot, then change the window back to its normal size. Obviously, downsampling or hotsampling in this way produces better image quality (downsampling is an excellent method of anti-aliasing, and it also gives models more depth, deepens shadows, makes the image look a lot cleaner, etc), and gives shots that are large enough to be printed at decent sizes if desired.

I haven't tried changing the resolution in the display settings menu. How does it work? Are you suggesting it works in the same way as hotsampling, then? That despite having a 1440p 16:9 monitor I could set the resolution to, for example, 4000x4000px and I would end up with a screenshot that kept those proportions? How would I compose in that aspect ratio? Does it add black bars around the image? Does it shrink the image back down (downsampling) to fit on my monitor or does it expand it beyond the screen (hotsampling)? And in what way would it avoid the problems I'm having at the moment rendering at larger resolutions?

(I will pass on the information about ATI and vram detection to the person I was speaking to yesterday - this might help them somewhat.)
 
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HarbingerDawn
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Resolution limit? (Hotsampling black screen)

01 May 2017 21:07

That despite having a 1440p 16:9 monitor I could set the resolution to, for example, 4000x4000px and I would end up with a screenshot that kept those proportions? How would I compose in that aspect ratio? Does it add black bars around the image? Does it shrink the image back down (downsampling) to fit on my monitor or does it expand it beyond the screen (hotsampling)?
Yes.
Set the window to something that will fit your screen (like 1000x1000), then when the shot is composed, change the resolution to 4000x4000.
The image will not be shrunk to fit your display, but if you're just using it to take a pre-composed screenshot that doesn't matter.
I have used this method many times for taking high res screenshots.
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amoebae
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Resolution limit? (Hotsampling black screen)

01 May 2017 22:09


Yes.
Set the window to something that will fit your screen (like 1000x1000), then when the shot is composed, change the resolution to 4000x4000.
The image will not be shrunk to fit your display, but if you're just using it to take a pre-composed screenshot that doesn't matter.
I have used this method many times for taking high res screenshots.
I was just coming on here to say I've tried it for myself and seen it works as you say. I didn't expect that. It's still more fiddly than using SRWE (where you can save profiles and don't need to mess with menus), but it works. Thanks to you both for clearing that up.

I don't know whether it'll solve the black screen thing (since the in-game custom resolution and SRWE hotsampling are essentially doing exactly the same thing - resizing the window, no more no less), but I did notice when I was just trying it in-game I got a black screen at one point but hit Esc and it rendered the image immediately - I do wonder if this is what was causing my black screens when using SRWE? I'll try and replicate it, and of course I'll update if I work it out.
 
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amoebae
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Resolution limit? (Hotsampling black screen)

01 May 2017 22:30

I have noticed, this black screen thing is more likely to happen the longer I play. I can hotsample reasonably well during the first 20 minutes, but after a while it starts screwing up, and once it does I have problems even changing res to other low-res aspect ratios, never mind high resolutions. 

Is there a cache somewhere that's building up over time? And if so, is there a way to purge it without closing the game?
 
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Resolution limit? (Hotsampling black screen)

02 May 2017 06:19

Is there a cache somewhere that's building up over time? And if so, is there a way to purge it without closing the game?
Yes, SE stores as much data in VRAM as it can. It only limited by the value typed in the config or by automatically detected one. You can reduce that value to left some extra 500 MB of free VRAM for allocation of a new renederbuffers, if you planning to frequently resize SE window.
 
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amoebae
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Resolution limit? (Hotsampling black screen)

02 May 2017 10:45


Yes, SE stores as much data in VRAM as it can. It only limited by the value typed in the config or by automatically detected one. You can reduce that value to left some extra 500 MB of free VRAM for allocation of a new renederbuffers, if you planning to frequently resize SE window.
That's useful information, thank you. I'll see if it makes a difference.

For what it's worth, after playing around a little using the in-game hotsampling, I was able to go on to use SRWE for it instead and go to higher resolutions than I'd managed before. May have been a fluke, but a welcome one nonetheless.

Thank you very much for all your help on this.
 
mo_ffm95
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Resolution limit? (Hotsampling black screen)

12 Jul 2017 06:50

^Can somebody please help me?! What do i do when i run the game and everything turns black?but i can still hear themusic in the backround...is that a graphics problem?
 
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Resolution limit? (Hotsampling black screen)

12 Jul 2017 09:36

mo_ffm95, Troubleshooting and bug reports - SpaceEngine 0.9.8.0 is the right place to ask for help, anyway could you please attach, here or there, your se.log file which is located in your SpaceEngine/system/ folder?
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