Pixel Shader Compilation Failure

varekraith · October 2014

I've been getting this error every time since DR went to tribble and now on holodeck.

deaftravis05 · October 2014

hmmm, could this be the root of the errors we folks over at http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1250361 are having?

varekraith · October 2014

Well, damn.
I just got in game and it's just unplayable. Lag spike after lag spike. I had the same issues on DR Tribble.

deaftravis05 · October 2014

what if you turn your settings way down? Then increase it until you find a balance?

varekraith · October 2014

deaftravis05 wrote: »

what if you turn your settings way down? Then increase it until you find a balance?

Force verifying fixed the lag.
The compilation error still remains.

Well, this issue seems to be forcing the game to use PS 1 or 2. Not sure which. I wonder if this is causing gfx drivers to crash.

darthhammer · October 2014

I also got this error message when I started up the game.

I'm able to play fine, but something about the lighting seems off. Would make sense since it's a shader error.

calyx82 · October 2014

Every time since. The patch for dr came out on. Tribble ive bad this problem there and now since it went live i have it on holodeck now it also looks as uf yhe drawings arent matching the frames for me uts as if all the buttons are off center and compressed all settings are as low as i can make them anyone hace any idea?:mad:

jslyn · October 2014

I am getting this when I log in, too.

I am using DX9 and an Nvidia GeForce 250 GTS graphics card.

Here is a screen shot:

http://i42.photobucket.com/albums/e336/infernos_caress/ShaderError_zpsaa38d406.jpg

giannicampanella · October 2014

Same "pixel shader compilation failure" error on an Intel card starting today. It had hitherto run the game on low settings just fine.

calyx82 · October 2014

Im running a lenovo 550 running on board intel chipset as well and have everything set to low and everything is still messed up with the shader error i can still play but there is lag and everything is offset

penguin44ca1 · October 2014

Same here. Prior to Dr I had no issues. Now it's crazy judder with the new content. I also have pixel shader error.

maxital · October 2014

varekraith wrote: »

I've been getting this error every time since DR went to tribble and now on holodeck.

If you have the option to run the game with DX11 then try run it like that meanwhile DX9 shader bug gets fixed.

I do understand why you can't/wont if you lose to much FPS, because some people do get higher FPS with DX9 then DX11.

Ive tested it and both DX9 & DX9ex and we get this error, someone messed up in the code, it can happens to every coder ones in a while, i know because i messed up big time ones.. :P

The bug is reported so they know about it.

/Max

crypticcliff · October 2014

Hi. This is a completely benign error message and likely has nothing to do with any other issue you're experiencing.

Specifically, it's trying to compile an MSAA depth resolve shader in DX9 mode. This is a DX11-only feature. DX9 doesn't even support that and we have other ways of resolving the MSAA depth buffer that don't involve using its own shader.

And thanks, varekraith. Flandre's theme is now stuck in my head again thanks to your avatar, you monster.

maxital · October 2014

Thanks for clarifying this Crypticcliff

happy coding! And don't do like me, and mess up xD just kidding

/Max

jslyn · October 2014

That is good to know. Thanks, CrypticCliff.

calyx82 · October 2014

giannicampanella wrote: »

Same "pixel shader compilation failure" error on an Intel card starting today. It had hitherto run the game on low settings just fine.

crypticcliff wrote: »

Hi. This is a completely benign error message and likely has nothing to do with any other issue you're experiencing.

Specifically, it's trying to compile an MSAA depth resolve shader in DX9 mode. This is a DX11-only feature. DX9 doesn't even support that and we have other ways of resolving the MSAA depth buffer that don't involve using its own shader.

And thanks, varekraith. Flandre's theme is now stuck in my head again thanks to your avatar, you monster.

Ok so the shader doesnt have anything to do wuth why everything is offset? Ive tried dx 11 but gets stuck on dr loading screen then goes to not responding in windows? Help?

maxital · October 2014

calyx82 wrote: »

Ok so the shader doesnt have anything to do wuth why everything is offset? Ive tried dx 11 but gets stuck on dr loading screen then goes to not responding in windows? Help?

Start it with "Safe mode" under Option in the client launcher. Else edit the file read below. Sorry i don't have ARC to show where it is if you have that one.

But it should be something same in ARC.

Now start game, make your changes back to DX9, close game and make sure Safe mode is of next run, should have turned off by it self now. Restart client and load up STO and it should be fixed i hope, else..

Edit is easy when you know how, but its not for all people!

Before you edit, backup that file i ask you to edit, copy it and save it. Just in case you mess up and lose all your settings in game. If you don't mind reseting every single stuff in game, and i mean every thing, layout, key bindings. Don't delete the file :P
In case it does not bother you to reset every thing in game, just feel free to delete the file Gameprefs.Pref located in ..\Cryptic Studios\Star Trek Online\Live\Localdata

** Note: there is a second Gameprefs.Pref located back some folders, there is _no_ need to edit/delete that one, only the one in the live folder! **

If you need a good text file editor il would recommend Notepad++ http://notepad-plus-plus.org/ its free and open source.

Goto where the game installed it ..\Cryptic Studios\Star Trek Online\Live\Localdata\Gameprefs.Pref and open it with Notepad(Windows own will do) or notepad++ (Make sure its a Text-editor notepad, and _not_ Wordpad, it can mess up the file else!)

if you are unsure where the file is located check for the 'Star Trek Online' icon on desktop and right click it and press Open file location, or if you have ARC installed do the same and then STO folder should be in there somewhere

Now open the file Gameprefs.Pref and search for:

PrefEntry GfxSettings.DeviceType Direct3D11

Or just:

PrefEntry GfxSettings.DeviceType

And chance that to line to:

PrefEntry GfxSettings.DeviceType Direct3D9

Copy paste over that line, and don't mess up.

Save and pew pew ones again.

/Max

mrspidey2 · October 2014

crypticcliff wrote: »

Hi. This is a completely benign error message and likely has nothing to do with any other issue you're experiencing.

Specifically, it's trying to compile an MSAA depth resolve shader in DX9 mode. This is a DX11-only feature. DX9 doesn't even support that and we have other ways of resolving the MSAA depth buffer that don't involve using its own shader.

Then why is the lighting on everything all screwed up? I'm using DX9.
SFX also seem to have a low color depth now. Looks like 32 bit colors.

deathus0 · October 2014

maxital wrote: »

Start it with "Safe mode" under Option in the client launcher. Else edit the file read below. Sorry i don't have ARC to show where it is if you have that one.

But it should be something same in ARC.

Now start game, make your changes back to DX9, close game and make sure Safe mode is of next run, should have turned off by it self now. Restart client and load up STO and it should be fixed i hope, else..

Edit is easy when you know how, but its not for all people!

Before you edit, backup that file i ask you to edit, copy it and save it. Just in case you mess up and lose all your settings in game. If you don't mind reseting every single stuff in game, and i mean every thing, layout, key bindings. Don't delete the file :P
In case it does not bother you to reset every thing in game, just feel free to delete the file Gameprefs.Pref located in ..\Cryptic Studios\Star Trek Online\Live\Localdata

** Note: there is a second Gameprefs.Pref located back some folders, there is _no_ need to edit/delete that one, only the one in the live folder! **

If you need a good text file editor il would recommend Notepad++ http://notepad-plus-plus.org/ its free and open source.

Goto where the game installed it ..\Cryptic Studios\Star Trek Online\Live\Localdata\Gameprefs.Pref and open it with Notepad(Windows own will do) or notepad++ (Make sure its a Text-editor notepad, and _not_ Wordpad, it can mess up the file else!)

if you are unsure where the file is located check for the 'Star Trek Online' icon on desktop and right click it and press Open file location, or if you have ARC installed do the same and then STO folder should be in there somewhere

Now open the file Gameprefs.Pref and search for:

Or just:

And chance that to line to:

Copy paste over that line, and don't mess up.

Save and pew pew ones again.

/Max

This fixed my problem.

maxital · October 2014

mrspidey2 wrote: »

SFX also seem to have a low color depth now. Looks like 32 bit colors.

You must have thought 16-bit(High color, 65536 colors) vs True color (24-bit 16,777,216 color variations), 32-bit Deep color consists of a billion or more colors.

mrspidey2 wrote: »

Then why is the lighting on everything all screwed up?

Could you do something just to check?

First backup Gameprefs.Pref you can follow part of the the guide i told above me(just ignore DX11 to DX9 if you don't ofc need to fix that) and please make sure to backup the files before you go ahead i can't tell how imported this is for a lot of people including my self, easier way to debug something is to have something to compare it with, a tool that i use to compare two text files and clearly shows what the difference is http://winmerge.org

Now if you do have allot of key bindings, layout moved in game that you don't want to reset, there is a way to save this, the easy way is just goto Option in game and [Hud] look for the button [Save UI] that will save UI layouts, keybinds and chat settings to a ui_settings.txt file that you also can take a backup and move away to for safe keeping, found in ..\Cryptic Studios\Star Trek Online\Live\ folder. Do this before you delete the old files.

I just want you to reset all setting to default settings. In this case you could also delete the other Gameprefs.Pref in the folder ..\Cryptic Studios\localdata\

Also delete the cache files in folder ..\Cryptic Studios\Star Trek Online\Live\cache
*** Do _not_ remove the files in 'piggs' folder *** or you will need to download 7-12GB!

rdrShaderCache***.hogg about 13MB
shaderCache***.hogg about 147MB
texWords.hogg about 3MB

This files will be remade when you start the game.

Also related to shaderCache.hogg slowing down your Launcher's patching

Now go back into game, Option->Hud-> Load UI and go around Graphic/Sound/Anything and change to your liking. And if anything brakes just redo and setup every thing back by your self without loading UI.

I think there is a setting that is left over or change weirdly that makes the game look different then before. And yes there is a lot of things that can be changed in that Gameprefs.Pref file.

Also do a Force Verify it will take 5-10 min depending how fast your PC is. You find that option in game launcher.

And please come back and tell if it fixed it for you.

/Max

brazen1ace · October 2014

I have this same problem. In fact, it looks like a number of people do. I am running on a laptop, here are my stats for you. Please note that while this is not a gaming laptop it has run STO fine. The only time I have had trouble with STO is when the Dev's TRIBBLE something up. Also I play WOT and STWOR on here as well.

Toshiba
Satellite L655
Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit
4GB ram
Intel HD (intergrated)

I tired force verify, and that fixed nothing. I will try your suggestion of deleting the settings files. But my guess is that this is a TRIBBLE up on the Dev's part. Like what happened with that update a while back that caused everyone with an Intel HD card to have driver crashes. The shader issue is not so worrying to me since the game plays despite it showing those errors. Even with the UI messed up I can still play. I would like them to fix it, but it does not stop me from playing.

giannicampanella · October 2014

If the pixel shader compilation failure message is a red herring, that doesn't change the fact that the lighting is messed up on two of my IntelHD graphics laptops post-DR (like bright white light shining down on every character), the performance dropped significantly everywhere, and the interface is no longer aligned, in that the mouse must be a few millimeters above a button to click it, and all the graphics settings mysteriously reset between uses. It simply will not save the fullscreen setting, nor DX9, even if I edit the gameprefs file manually. If I do, it starts windowed as if in safe mode. I have uninstalled, purged, and reinstalled to no avail. It is certainly some kind of significant graphics change, and while this doesn't affect gaming comps, there are some who previously played casually on basic work comps. Thus, I don't expect a fix because these never were actually supported. DR just has higher requirements, I guess. Still, worth discussing for workarounds I suppose -- for those who can't upgrade atm.

maxital · October 2014

Yes giannicampanella, this seems to be related to older graphic cards and Intel HD (possible driver issue that newer driver can handle the API calls correctly) its good that the devs improve but also sad that it brakes so easy, now we can't blame the devs on this, its the driver manufacture that makes the driver and also ending support on some graphic cards(laptops also) way to fast.

For me i get better performance and it feels smother in game play, but i do have FPS drops(from 60fps down to 12, oh yeah render bug) in some of the panels, like Skill panel, but the look of it all is not out of it way, everything looks Ok. This is reported to them so i hope they check that out.

In the end il guess they fix this as they always do, we just have to wait, people playing with laptops are more then ever now days.

I talked about driver update with brazen1ace on this thread.

I just hope for you guys it get it fixed soon with some kind of hotfix.

/Max

uryenserellont · October 2014

I'm getting this too on startup. I have a GTX 570. Not exactly state-of-the-art but it's more than enough for everything STO can throw at it.

Switching to dx 11 seems to have removed the message. I see no ingame difference. Not sure if that's good or bad since I wasn't even aware I was using dx 9.

rsoblivion · October 2014

Not related to old gfx cards at all.

The Pixel shader is miscompiled for some reason. Changing Direct X mode and restarting the game removes the error, but the massive bloom issues seem to remain (main menu is terrible for it).

Would love someone from Cryptic to explain this further.

alacrityf · October 2014

I have this issue as well, starting with the release of the update. I have an EVGA GeForce GTX 560, a little old but still good. Runs the game with max settings just fine. Has anyone official actually confirmed this is an issue?

alacrityf · October 2014

I guess not.

jarfaru · October 2014

jslyn wrote: »

I am getting this when I log in, too.

I am using DX9 and an Nvidia GeForce 250 GTS graphics card.

Here is a screen shot:

http://i42.photobucket.com/albums/e336/infernos_caress/ShaderError_zpsaa38d406.jpg

Yup this is what i'm suddenly getting to. Same screen shot. Also just before the DR splash screen pops up i see a blue screen for a second.

bialzybub · October 2014

jarfaru wrote: »

Yup this is what i'm suddenly getting to. Same screen shot. Also just before the DR splash screen pops up i see a blue screen for a second.

Same here, I also deleted shaderCache.hogg with no help at all.

hawks3052 · October 2014

I'm also getting the error on my GTX660

bialzybub · October 2014

Well I went nuclear, wiped out my hard drive to make sure there would be no corrupt files or any problems with my system. Same system I got when I got the game. Reloaded everything and guess what! Delta (Crashing) Rising continues.

Pixel Shader Compilation Failure

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