[0.17.66] Crash during zoomed out panning

[Radioactive Pretzels]

Loving v17, but I crash Factorio daily. It's slightly unpredictable, but mostly happens during heavy combat when I'm zoomed out view and I'm rapidly strafing while firing rockets. It can happen even in quiescent views too. again, it tends to be when zoomed out. It has happened while in Radar map view. I have a 1080p screen so it's not a 4K issue.

Symptom is usally a fully frozen machine that requires a reboot. (!). The hardware itself is unlikely to be the cause, other games and severe CPU loads don't freeze it.

Running Linux 16.04, latest v17 experimental Factorio. The problem has been there for at least the past month's releases since I started v17.
NVidia 1080 GPU. Updating NVidia driver from 410.x to latest 430.40 did not fix it.
90% of the time the crash freezes the machine, so it's obviously low level graphics problem (likely NVidia's fault but Factorio is tickling it). This time it just crashed Factorio so I finally have a log.

Using lots of mods unfortunately, happily replicating Nilaus's Ore scenario.

To replicate, zoom all the way out and walk rapidly, especially around the edge of the base with tons of ore and biters.
The scenario has ore EVERYWHERE so that may be part of the cause. I also have a ton of power legs so I move quickly, and that may contribute.

[Radioactive Pretzels]

Another hint, I'm running in windowed mode (taking up most of the screen, but still windowed.)

---------------


Also some output on the command line leads to the graphics being cause..

(nautilus:9457): GLib-GIO-CRITICAL **: g_dbus_interface_skeleton_unexport: assertion 'interface_->priv->connections != NULL' failed

(nautilus:9457): GLib-GIO-CRITICAL **: g_dbus_interface_skeleton_unexport: assertion 'interface_->priv->connections != NULL' failed

(nautilus:9457): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_icon_theme_get_for_screen: assertion 'GDK_IS_SCREEN (screen)' failed

(nautilus:9457): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: invalid (NULL) pointer instance

(nautilus:9457): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_signal_connect_object: assertion 'G_TYPE_CHECK_INSTANCE (instance)' failed

[tehfreek]

Those messages are from the file manager, not Factorio.

[Radioactive Pretzels]

Just crashed again, same cause of zoomed out view, though I was passive in the middle of my factory with no orefield nearby. The "zoomed out a lot" tends to
be consistent. Wild guess, more zoomout means more entities/tiles on screen at once, but that's just ignorant guessing.

[Loewchen]

Post the log of the latest crash please.

[Twinsen]

Post a log for each crash. Your first crash seems to be quite random(item production statistics), so I suspect you system is not very stable during high load. Try doing some simultaneous graphics+cpu stress tests on your PC.

[Radioactive Pretzels]

I'd post the crash log if there was one. Nearly all crashes are full system freezes and reboots and nothing in the factorio log at all.

You mention that it may be a system stability problem. I will experiment with that. I have tested the hardware with overnight Prime95 testing, but maybe factorio is sensitive to some other CPU behavior. I'll report if retweaking the CPU to conservative sub-default clocks changes anything.

[Twinsen]

Try Prime95 AVX + furmark at the same time

[Radioactive Pretzels]

Wow, this is interesting. It is indeed a system stability problem, and not factorio at all.

I had not even considered it because, indeed, I had previously validated my machine with overnight Prime95 which passed with no errors.
And I just reran it overnight.. no problem. I then ran furmark (seperately) for an hour, no problem.

BUT

My system was tweaked with intel_undervolt, which is great and reduces wattage and heat a lot. Like overclocking, you need to validate its stability with Prime95.
Last year I found the prime95 "limit" of lowering 220 mV and then used 140 mV as the conservative value.. for over a year.

Guess what? Factorio crashes the system with that setting. It takes about 1 minute of trying (with the zoomed out pans).
I changed the limit to 100 mV... and no crashing even for 10 minutes straight.

So, surprisingly, playing Factorio is a better system stability tester than Prime95 + Furmark are! I recommend everyone plays it daily at work, since you can legitimately tell your boss and coworkers you're running a "system stability test."


Thanks, guys!