Unreal Engine Crashing

Unreal Engine Crashing

Unreal may crash for a wide variety of reasons but we will try to cover a few of the most common we’ve encountered.

Crashing at Startup

If your scene is crashing at startup, it could be due to the following reasons:

Unreal Editor is crashing at 75% with the ARFX Pro Plugin.

Unreal just closes itself automatically during the start without getting to the scene or editor.

This is likely due to a login issue. Make sure that you have the latest version of the plugin for your version of Unreal then try again. If it still does this, you will have to clear out your login cache. To do this perform the following:

• Press Windows + R to open the Run menu

• Type in %appdata%\ARwall to open a folder within your machine

• Delete the file named ARwall.Identity.Client.msalcache.bin

• Try to open your scene once more.

Hopefully, your scene shall open. If it does not, verify that it is the ARFX Pro Plugin that is causing the crash by deleting the ARwall folder within the Plugin folder of your project. If it still crashes, then it may be the project itself that has an issue.

Unreal Editor takes forever to load or doesn’t seem to go past 95% With ARFX Pro Plugin.

This was an issue with older versions of the ARFX Pro Plugin when trying to open massive projects. You will need to update your plugin to the latest version and may even have to go as far as to upgrade the version of the project to Unreal 5.3 or above.  

Another possibility is that your computer is not actually stuck but is actually performing shader compilations instead. This step is necessary in Unreal Engine as it is converting your assets into something that your graphics card can quickly reference and use in real-time later on. However, this process requires hard drive space. If your C drive no longer has any space, this process can stall indefinitely.

If you have this issue then cleaning up your C drive must be done before trying again. At best, you need 90-200GB of space to not run into any issues with Unreal and Windows.

Crashes in Editor or in Play.

There are many different ways Unreal can crash while in the editor, but here are some of the most common we’ve encountered.

”GPU Crashed or D3D Device Removed”.

This happens because Unreal was trying to render a frame and the GPU refused to do so, forcing Unreal to stop completely. This usually happens because your graphics card has run out of video memory (VRAM) and cannot continue until said memory is flushed (which Unreal does by stopping itself and closing down entirely). Running out of VRAM can easily be done without intending to do so by trying to render a scene at or beyond 4K which requires at least 12GB or more to perform depending on how demanding the scene is.

First, close any and all programs that may take up VRAM such as web browsers, video players, and other scenes or unreal projects. You do not have to close up everything in the background, just those that may seem like they could be graphically taxing in any way.

A possible fix is to try updating your graphics driver to their latest. Memory management may be the culprit and if you have not updated your drivers at all, then you’ll likely run into this issue more often than not.

Another possible fix is to lower the resolution of the scene is rendering at. You can either do this by using Unreal’s Scalability options (for those in the Editor) or the Render Resolution Scale in ARFX’s Options Menu (especially for those using a Scenepack). You can also try lowering your resolution in Windows itself, stepping down from 4K to 1440p or even 1080p if needed.

Finally, you could just upgrade the graphics card itself. This is especially true if you are trying to render something beyond 4K.

Any crash log that DOES NOT mention of “ARwall.  

There are way too many ways that this can happen for us to cover here, but what you can do is copy the very first few lines of the log into google and see what results you’ll get. The community within Unreal’s official forums (and even Reddit) is massive, very helpful, and they have practically an answer for every problem that you are likely to run into.

If you can consistently recreate the crash, one thing you may want to try doing is to delete the ARwall plugin and repeat your actions to see if it is our plugin that is the cause. If it is, try the steps in the section below.

Any crash log that DOES mention “ARwall”.

• Try repeating your actions and see if it happens again. In some cases, the issue was a one-off problem due to simply going too fast. This is especially something that can happen when waiting for the scene to start PlayInEditor mode in the Editor.

• If in the Editor, make sure your ARFX Camera is setup correctly . A crash can occur if you have more than one tracking Component is on the same camera. This can also happen if multiple ARFX Cameras are on the same map scene. Delete the extras and try again.

• If the crash is happening consistently, then try deleting the ARwall plugin and try again. If it no longer crashes then the culprit is our plugin at which case you can try the next step. If it does crash, then the issue is not related to our plugin and is instead something else in the scene itself. Copy the first few lines of the crash log and perform a Google search to see what it may be.

• Contact ARwall for help. You can do so via email with ARwallSupport. Please let us know what you are doing, the steps you took, and provide a log of the crash itself. We will try to address the issue as quickly as possible personally either via follow-up emails or phone calls.