Crashing every 10-15 min since last update. OSX

[Wingnutt]

This issue is very consistent, the game runs fine for a while then suddenly begins to drag, if I go into the hanger or space center view all the textures start flashing crazy pink and purple and other colors.

Reinstalled the game, same issue, adjusted graphics settings lower (shouldn't have to) same issue.

One time I did get a message that KSP was using a high amount of memory, if that matters.

System Specs:

OSX YOSEMITE

3.4 GHz Intel Core i7

16GB RAM

2Gb Video Ram

I read something about a memory leak related to the temperature gauges.. and There might be something to that. because if I just tinker around building and never actually fly, the game will never crash, but it will after a flight or too, where in, invariably the temperature gauges are popping up, the game will start to become sluggish and eventually crash.

[Vanamonde]

This is a support issue rather than a development issues, and so the thread has been moved. Please provide as much of the necessary information as you can.

[Wingnutt]

I did a little checking.

I started the game and just hung out in the VAB, had dinner came back, game was fine..

Did one flight to get the temp bars to pop up.

Within 10 min the memory usage had reached 2.6GB and the game started becoming sluggish

I just sat in the VAB and waited.

Mem usage continued to climb, at 2.8GB the textures started flashing stage colors and the game became extremely sluggish.

At 2.95GB the game froze completely and had to be force closed.

[yorshee]

The temperature gauge memory leak was fixed in 1.0.3, what version are you playing?

[Wingnutt]

interesting side note. if I try to edit a post on the mobile version of this site, from my phone. it deletes the post. so my last post is gone, again,

I have version 1.4, and I have been reading more and it seems my issue is an ongoing issue with the OSX version of the game that has been around since .25 and shows no signs of being fixed.

The game just hemorrhages memory. doing a flight seems to kick it off.

Prior to doing a flight I can do anything else and the game behaves normally and there are no issues, it lives at around 1.5GB in memory usage.

As soon as I do a single flight the memory usage starts to increase.

I can do one fight, then go sit back in the VAB and watch the memory usage continually increase until it hits the 3Gb limit and the game crashes.

Might want to start throwing a * on the OSX compatible description, because apparently since Yosemite was released, the bug has only become much worse.

[Jouni]

Might want to start throwing a * on the OSX compatible description, because apparently since Yosemite was released, the bug has only become much worse.

It's not really a bug, but more like a design flaw. You're just not supposed to make 32-bit software for OS X anymore. The 32-bit support is just for legacy applications nobody has bothered to update this decade, and it's probably going to disappear in a couple of years.

[Wingnutt]

Well.. If they fix the massive memory leak.. It would be fine.

The game seems to live happily at 1.5gb of mem usage even at max settings, until it decides to .... all over the ram.

What if it was 64bit ? It would still keep crapping all over the RAM.

[Jouni]

Well.. If they fix the massive memory leak.. It would be fine.

The game seems to live happily at 1.5gb of mem usage even at max settings, until it decides to .... all over the ram.

What if it was 64bit ? It would still keep crapping all over the RAM.

There is a memory leak, but it doesn't seem to be that big. There is some initial leaking when you encounter different assets for the first time, but then the memory usage stabilizes. On some Macs, the stabilization happens before the 32-bit memory limit becomes an issue, while other (newer?) Macs run out of address space before that.

On my old iMac, 0.90 was completely unplayable after upgrading to Yosemite. 1.0 reduced the memory usage enough that I can now play for hours without any issues.

[Wingnutt]

There is a memory leak, but it doesn't seem to be that big.

It doubles its ram usage within 15 minutes.

Its a bug, and its a big problem for a huge number of OSX users. Dont really want to go down the "I paid good money for this" road.. but, would be nice of purchased product functioned.

[Jouni]

It doubles its ram usage within 15 minutes.

Does it?

Start a sandbox game, go to the VAB, load the Kerbal X stock rocket, and put it on the launchpad. The memory usage at this point is a good baseline for a fully loaded game. Then play for 15 minutes, measure the memory usage again, and report the figures.

For me, it was 2.26 GB and 2.42 GB. The problems usually start at around 2.9 GB.

[sal_vager]

It looks like this might be a regression, there was a similar issue with Maverick for a while and Unity hacked together a workaround to deal with it, until they could get Apple to fix Maverick's OpenGL ARB VBO implementation.

As far as I know, that never happened.

With the release of Yosemite we have seen a lot of issues with KSP on OSX here on the Squad forums, weird stuff such as graphical corruption, excessive memory use and of course many players suffering from frequent crashing, this goes far beyond what Windows, Linux or even OSX Maverick users have experienced.

This thread discusses the Maverick issue on Yosemite, unfortunately they also say it is still present in Unity5.

This is just a guess as I have not found anything from Unity themselves on this, but the Maverick workaround may not work on Yosemite, and I doubt Apple have fixed something that may only affect one customer if it's not affecting normal use, even a customer as big as Unity.

I don't know if this regression has been reported to the Unity issue tracker yet as it will only show me "bugs we have successfully reproduced", maybe you have to be a registered Pro user as I don't even see a button to submit new issues.

[Wingnutt]

KSP is the one and only game I have had any sort of issues with Yosemite. So as for it somehow being apples fault.. come on.

Just tried to play again.

started the game, let everything load, launched activity monitor.

Game sitting at 1.55- 1.75GB of memory usage depending on where I was.

launched a rocket, aborted the flight 10 minutes in.

Returned to the VAB, graphics going ape.... and game running like absolute garbage.

Checked activity monitor, Memory at 2.95GB

It takes less than 15 minutes for the game to totally screw up.

I have to restart the game after every single flight.

After every.single.flight

Im in the same boat as the people in the other thread about this, the one that is so far 17 pages long... all people with OSX, all having the EXACT same problem. There is also an ongoing discussion on Reddit about the same.

EDIT: I just noticed there is a poll up now addressing this issue. so disregard. I are content.

Edited August 12, 2015 by Wingnutt

[Jouni]

Game sitting at 1.55- 1.75GB of memory usage depending on where I was.

Is your memory usage really that low? I've never seen such low figures, unless I lower the graphics details to an absurdly low level.

What is your exact memory usage in the Kerbal X test I described?

[Wingnutt]

I run it at max settings except AA is only at 2x because there is no discernible difference above that.

Sorry, I read the post about the test when I was at work.

I just tried that and my mem usage is sitting at 2.37

I launched the rocket a few times and aborted back to launch

This gets interesting.

The issue does NOT begin to occur until I return to the VAB..

I can launch the rocket over and over and over and the mem usage never goes berserk. It stays between 2.35 and 2.55

Then after launching a half dozen times or so, I fianlly went back the the VAB..

instantly the mem usage jumped to 2.7gb

Went to the launch pad again.

It dropped to 2.6

Went back to the VAB

2.8Gb

It really seems the VAB has something to do with it.

Edited August 13, 2015 by Wingnutt

[MaxPeck]

Yeah, the OS X version is half-baked. Try this, it's worked for most of us, it seems.... http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/125288

Hopefully Squad will get their act together with the U5 update and actually give us a playable game. For my own part, crashes are fairly infrequent after using the steps described in that post, but when they do happen, that's usually my cue to take an intermission.

[Jouni]

I just tried that and my mem usage is sitting at 2.37

That makes more sense. It seems that your baseline memory usage is a bit higher and your problem threshold a bit lower, which is why the memory leaks crash the game for you but not for me.

It really seems the VAB has something to do with it.

I think memory leaks have been identified in three situations, which may all be related:

1. Just playing the game. Memory usage seems to increase slowly, when you rocket is sitting on the launchpad. This is pretty minor, and I'm not sure whether it really is a memory leak.
   
2. Scene changes, such as repeatedly launching a rocket and reverting back to the VAB. This is the fastest way to leak memory.
   
3. Asset caching. KSP loads all assets on startup, but it seems to cache a second copy of the assets you have actually encountered during the game. If you keep launching and reverting the same rocket, the memory usage doesn't really increase after the first two attempts. If you use different parts in the rocket, the memory usage just keeps increasing. Similar things happen, if you fly for long distances close to the surface.
   

Right now, the only way to avoid crashes is reducing the baseline memory usage. Relatively small differences in the baseline can mark the difference between frequent crashes and a stable game. This is why I believe that a 64-bit version would solve the problems. Until then, Master Tao's workarounds are your best hope. (And forget even trying to use part mods.)

[tater]

My graphics settings are one tick down, and I'm running modded with hgr, kpbs, spacey, usils, and kis (all have parts, I'm also running a few other mods). I rarely crash (Yosemite, mid-2010 i7 iMac).

On second thought, it's a new career, and my first probe won't reach Duna for 2 years (6.4 x distances). In my last, stock kerbol system career, I started having frequent crashes, but I had vehicles around Eve, Dres, Duna, and Jool in addition to kerbin...

Edited August 13, 2015 by tater

[Wingnutt]

Yeah, the OS X version is half-baked. Try this, it's worked for most of us, it seems.... http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/125288

Hopefully Squad will get their act together with the U5 update and actually give us a playable game. For my own part, crashes are fairly infrequent after using the steps described in that post, but when they do happen, that's usually my cue to take an intermission.

I gave this a shot and downloaded active texture management.

My memory usage WENT UP!!

Now doing the same test as before, loading the Kerbal X in sandbox and sitting on the launch pad, my memory usage has gone from 2.37-2.40 to 2.70GB

As Im typing this im just sitting in the VAB and the mem usage is slowly creeping up, it reached 2.9GB within about 5 minutes of going back into the VAB.

Went back to the launchpad and it dropped to 2.81

Returned to the VAB, its now at 2.94 and the game is in LSD mode and FPS has dropped to almost nothing.

Game is still unplayable.

[bos]

I just use a similar procedure as the x64 hack from Windows. So far it's been much more stable for me. The windows x64 community workaround thread has dire warnings of bugs and instability but for me it's been painless. And really almost anything is better than suffering KSP's load time several times an hour. This is with FAR + SXT + Ven's + KSPI + a few other smaller mods like science alert, so it's okay for (lightly?) modded installs too.

Note, x64 did NOT work with a big RSS + RO + FASA modded install. That one either locked up or had significant graphical corruption of 2d elements like the navball and staging list, when going from VAB->launchpad. On the other hand, 32-bit mac KSP couldn't even boot that mod set without crashing, so I have exiled it back to the Windows bootcamp partition .

BTW, this does not actually fix the memory leak -- I still see memory leaking on scene changes (f9 quickload, launching new rocket, going back to space center) in the Activity Monitor. The difference is that the process will happily keep running at up to 50GB used. At this point my MacOS starts complaining about running of space on the system partition due to the ever-growing swap file. Still, it takes a loooong time to reach that point, so I am happy enough. And there are no obvious swap thrashing performance issues, so the OS seems to do a good job of keeping the actual stuff in memory rather than the leaked

Edited August 18, 2015 by bos

[Rokanov]

TLDR: Set texture quality to 1/4 or 1/8, install texture replacer.

I've had these issues on OSX and have tried a whole bunch of solutions, with moderate success, so thought I'd share what seems to have helped. The game usually runs with 1.9-2g ram usage according to activity monitor (though haven't monitored recently as it's been fairly stable).

I'm currently running around 80 plugins with acceptable stability (crashes are hours apart). Most are small or partless but I do have EVE, Ven's Stock Revamp, Station Parts Expansion and 5 USI plugins and a couple of replacement textures. It is possible! I play a SETI based modpack currently, though I did try RealismOverhaul and it worked with little issue. Didn't install many extra part packs however.

System Specs:

2.8 GHz Intel Core i5

4 GB 1333MHz DDR3 Ram

ATI Radeon HD 5750 1 GB graphics card

OSX 10.9.5

Fixes:

1. By far the best is reducing texture quality to 1/4 or 1/8. At 1/8 I could run the game for hours with no crashes, and only the occasional crash at 1/4

2. Texture Replacer. I've tried Active Texture Management, but it doesn't compress DDS textures (which most now are) and I found it difficult to produce results. Texture Replacer has some similar features, mainly unloading textures from ram and compression. I don't know how much of an impact Texture Replacer is actually having, but it seems to be having a positive effect.

3. Graphics options as low as possible:

- Terrain Detail - Low/Default. Use settings from Astronomer's Performance Improvement to reduce ocean quality while keeping Kerbin terrain at default (or Kerbals take frequent leaps through the terrain)

- SM3 Shaders and Terain Scatters - Off. More for FPS, but turning off terrain scatters definitely reduced crashes when flying long distances over Kerbin's surface

- Render quality at good. Simple is okay, but any lower and you lose shadows which are pretty essential for landing

- Texture quality - 1/4. With Ven's Revamp, parts still look nice at 1/4 quality.

- Aerodynamic quality - Low. FPS improvement

- Screen Resolution. I did reduce it for a while, running in windowed mode (with a black desktop) which certainly helped, but I put up with more frequent crashes to gain that extra screen space.

- AA and V-Sync off. FPS.

- Anything not mentioned at default setting

4. Run pruners and remove unnecessary parts and internal spaces.

Kind of tired, may not have included everything I have done and may not make much sense, but I hope there's something helpful here!

Edited August 18, 2015 by Rokanov
Updated system specs