[Resolved] OpenMW Crashes or Doesn't Start After Clicking "Play"

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3Midgets
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Re: OpenMW Crashes or Doesn't Start After Clicking "Play"

Post by 3Midgets »

psi29a wrote: 04 Apr 2019, 08:37 My next guess would be, is this a hybrid laptop (Optimus?).

That OpenMW is perhaps running by default on Intel and not on the Nvidia? Anyway you can force it to run on Nvidia?
It might be a surprise to hear that I'm not sure what a hybrid laptop is, but I haven't heard the term (I should think that I should have in my 4 years of owning this laptop if it is one). I haven't had any issues running other modern games, although I haven't ran many older games, would older games such as morrowind require a manual instruction to use the GPU instead of the CPU?
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psi29a
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Re: OpenMW Crashes or Doesn't Start After Clicking "Play"

Post by psi29a »

I mean that there might be two GPUs, one integrated into the CPU. The i7 5500u has an integrated Intel® HD Graphics 5500 built in. It is possible that your other games are auto-detected and pushed to use the Nvidia GPU instead of the Intel one. OpenMW is possibly pushed to use the Intel one which would explain why the GPU can't decode the s3tc textures.

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en ... 0-ghz.html

If you have the latest nvidia drivers for your laptop, there should be something there that allows you to run OpenMW via Nvidia GPU instead of Intel GPU.

Maybe this will help?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZm6VtNN0g8

I would add openmw.exe, openmw-launcher.exe and openmw-cs.exe to use nvidia.

(I don't have a windows machine, so I'm just guessing here)
3Midgets
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Re: OpenMW Crashes or Doesn't Start After Clicking "Play"

Post by 3Midgets »

psi29a wrote: 04 Apr 2019, 08:48 I mean that there might be two GPUs, one integrated into the CPU. The i7 5500u has an integrated Intel® HD Graphics 5500 built in. It is possible that your other games are auto-detected and pushed to use the Nvidia GPU instead of the Intel one. OpenMW is possibly pushed to use the Intel one which would explain why the GPU can't decode the s3tc textures.

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en ... 0-ghz.html

If you have the latest nvidia drivers for your laptop, there should be something there that allows you to run OpenMW via Nvidia GPU instead of Intel GPU.

Maybe this will help?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZm6VtNN0g8

I would add openmw.exe, openmw-launcher.exe and openmw-cs.exe to use nvidia.

(I don't have a windows machine, so I'm just guessing here)
I did as the video said but no luck. Seems we're stuck since neither of us has experience with a hybrid Windows system.
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psi29a
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Re: OpenMW Crashes or Doesn't Start After Clicking "Play"

Post by psi29a »

Did you verify that your laptop was hybrid or not? I mean, did you have options or was there only one choice?

Another note to self, would be good to have a list of GPUs and which one OpenMW was currently using.

Did you run the wizard (first install wizard, iniimporter) ?

When you were cleaning up, did you remove the openmw configuration files as well? They are stored under your user documents and not in your openmw install folder/directory.
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AnyOldName3
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Re: OpenMW Crashes or Doesn't Start After Clicking "Play"

Post by AnyOldName3 »

The laptop is definitely hybrid. You don't get non-hybrid laptops with a 960M in them.

This is very similar to an issue I've seen where on a hybrid laptop, the integrated graphics drivers weren't reporting S3TC extensions properly. I didn't ever get around to working out how to solve it, but using the dedicated GPU didn't cause the problem.

I didn't know about the Windows option to switch GPUs per-program, as it didn't use to be there, but I'm guessing that maybe Nvidia's drivers are ignoring it or something, so I'd set it up in the Nvidia Control Panel instead. To open it, there might be an option when you right-click the desktop, but if there isn't, you should be able to type it into the start menu. Once it's open, there should be an option to Manage 3D settings, and within that, an option to do it per-application. Once there, choose OpenMW (which you might have to add manually) and set it to use the high-performance Nvidia GPU.
3Midgets
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Re: OpenMW Crashes or Doesn't Start After Clicking "Play"

Post by 3Midgets »

Using the NVidia Control Panel, I set openmw to use the high performance GPU and now it works fine. Thank you all for your help!

To be clear, the issue is solved; I don't see any way to indicate that on the post title so this will have to suffice.
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raevol
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Re: [Resolved] OpenMW Crashes or Doesn't Start After Clicking "Play"

Post by raevol »

Marked resolved. Thank you for following up with us!
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psi29a
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Re: [Resolved] OpenMW Crashes or Doesn't Start After Clicking "Play"

Post by psi29a »

OK, great. We were on the right track.

Intel drivers on Windows doesn't support S3TC, suck.
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AnyOldName3
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Re: [Resolved] OpenMW Crashes or Doesn't Start After Clicking "Play"

Post by AnyOldName3 »

I'm pretty sure they do normally - I've run software with DDS textures on integrated graphics. I've just seen two Nvidia Optimus laptops where the Intel drivers didn't report it properly.
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