8.0 GPU device lost when looking in particular direction

[ATPXenogen]

Version: 8.0 HF4, English
Mods: None
Game start: Queen's Herald

Description:
I am doing a lockbox mission in Hatikvah's Choice III. When I used LRS and turned my ship to look in the direction of the superhighway entrance to Hatikvah's Choice I, my GPU (RTX 3090) disconnects and the game freezes. This is consistently reproducible in my setup, by loading into the save and turning the ship (quicksave made after a LRS). But if I let the NPC pilot the ship, the game does not freeze when the ship is turned into that direction. When I leave the sector, fly around for a bit and return to the location, everything seems fine until I use a LRS, after which looking at that direction again crashes the game.

This also happened in other sectors, for example looking in certain directions in Matrix #9 after LRS also caused device lost.

Usually the game just freeze indefinitely afterwards, requiring a task manager kill. On one occasion the crash popup appeared and game Exit Code 1061. That crash generated two dmp files included in the link.

In the event viewer this shows up as nvlddmkm 14:
GPU recovery action changed from 0x0 (None) to 0x1 (GPU Reset Required)

Link to diagnostics and game save: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing

Thanks in advance.

[Alan Phipps]

Have you verified your game installation? There might be a corrupt asset trying to be displayed in that direction that the graphics cannot interpret once it is revealed. There is also the possibility of a corruption in the save chain, but hopefully not as that could not be recovered in vanilla except via a game hotfix.

From your DxDiag, your AMD 780M graphics driver is outdated as will be its Vulkan version. Even though you won't use it for X4, the two graphics devices need similar Vulkan versions to talk to each other in general. Try updating the AMD 780M driver and hence its Vulkan.

Your Windows Error Reports are all LiveKernelEvents or Blue Screen critical issues which indicate a system or device driver problem rather than anything with game code.

[ATPXenogen]

I think I have found some clue. First the crash is nvidia driver issue, as no crash happens with my iGPU. The crash only occurs when a very dense gas cloud comes into view, either by LRS at it directly or by lrs then turning into it. Changing all graphics and display settings to Low/None does not help. Is there some kind of fix to lower the density of gas drawn, or just disable it altogether?

[CBJ]

Try turning off Volumetric Fog in the in-game graphics settings.

[ATPXenogen]

Try turning off Volumetric Fog in the in-game graphics settings.

It is already turned off. I meant the white fog which shows gas deposits in LRS mode, they are still there.

[ATPXenogen]

Well, I messed around with the settings, and somehow turning on Nvidia DLSS fixed it. The game also runs much smoother so that is another plus. There is still severe screen tearing when looking at that gas cloud though.

The culprit must be related the resolution (1440p). With some form of upscaling, either 'Balanced' DLSS or one of the other upscaling options the game runs fine, but without upscaling at 1440p (DLAA for example), looking at the gas cloud crashes the gpu.

Edit: No it was not fixed. As soon as I flew towards the same direction the crash would still happen.

Screenshot after the freeze

[Alan Phipps]

Just for completeness, have you tried the things I suggested further up? It sounds as though the problem is the Nvidia driver when looking at those scanned clouds. That might be a graphics driver settings/cooperative working issue, or corrupted cloud asset generation from game/save corruption. More likely the former of the two causes.

[ATPXenogen]

Just for completeness, have you tried the things I suggested further up? It sounds as though the problem is the Nvidia driver when looking at those scanned clouds. That might be a graphics driver settings/cooperative working issue, or corrupted cloud asset generation from game/save corruption. More likely the former of the two causes.

Yes, I have verified game files, updated the AMD driver and cleared shader caches, still crashes. I am pretty sure its the nvidia + lrs gas cloud combo now, having encountered the same situation in several other sectors so far. The 'remove fog' mod does not consider this as fog to remove. On a side note, in both cases there was a jump gate/superhighway directly behind the gas cloud.