i got the exact same problem.i don't have any mods, it was all working fine until update 0.990.40 or something, i was told that requirements didn't change, and i can't obviously afford more than what i have (which i think it's decent enough for a lot of games)
i can lower the settings, but i don't think that's the problem
CPU or GPU seems to overload on certain situations, and it's indipendent from settings (at least it seems so)
the thing is, when i had the old gpu with 2 GB VRAM i was told that was the problem, now that i change GPU (that i was told it would be fine for this game) considering even the costs i still don't have precise answers when this affects some other people from what i read on various post
i doubt it had something to do with low VRAM because i got 8GB ram on my GTX 1070 and the game runs smooth and fine and all planets outside the solar world are loading height and texturemap like it should be.
just at the point when iam in the solar system zoom deep into the objects (stars, planets, asteroids) the loading of the heightmap and textures gets broken completly (stops loading) and this effects the whole universe. the objects even loose completely their surfaces after a while there are just black flat objects
this "game" is really fantastic but this little bug really destroys a lot because sure i want to explore the solar system first
