Troubleshooting

Everything on this page is a failure the app can actually produce, matched to the message you see on screen. Symptoms are phrased the way you would say them. Under each one is the cause and what to do about it.

Read the error first#

Dayside shows failures in four places, and each one carries the message plus a line suggesting a fix. Check them in this order.

The status strip sits above every screen. It shows engine-offline errors, one-line notices about steps the last render skipped, and a reconnect hint. Each row has a dismiss X, so an error you dismissed is gone until it recurs.

The canvas overlay in the section editor owns the render's own state: ACQUIRING, QUEUED, PREVIEW STALE, a PASS FAILED pill with a retry action, NO ACQUISITION YET, or NO COLOUR RENDER YET.

The Job Dock, bottom-left of the globe workspace, keeps one card per long job including failed ones, so closing a dialog can never read as success. A failed card shows the reason and a Try this: line.

The Acquisitions drawer holds every export. A failed or incomplete acquisition shows FILES MISSING or its status, plus the error line and the output path.

A finished render that carries warnings is not a failure. It means Dayside skipped or simplified a step and told you which one. Those are covered under Renders that finish but look wrong. For what each control is supposed to do, see Rendering the satellite image.

Renders and acquisitions#

Acquire does nothing and a banner mentions the storage budget#

The render never starts. The message reads render state storage budget would be exceeded, with a fix line about freeing storage.

Cause. Dayside keeps a working record of renders and exports on disk (input snapshots, preview frames, thumbnails), held to a 20 GiB budget. When the budget is full it clears out the oldest finished jobs first, so this message usually fixes itself the moment you click Acquire. It only sticks when the records Dayside always keeps fill the budget on their own: every world in your list keeps its latest render and thumbnails. A long list of worlds can reach that limit.

Fix. Delete worlds you no longer need from the picker, using Delete files from disk… on app-managed worlds so the space is actually freed. Finished export folders are never touched by any of this: they live where you chose and are yours.

The progress bar sits at 0% and never moves#

Two messages appear here, both with a Re-render path.

The engine is no longer tracking this acquisition. Re-render to try again. means the engine restarted and lost track of the job. The editor drops back to PREVIEW STALE if it still has a frame, or NO ACQUISITION YET if it does not.

The engine is not acquiring this section. Re-render to try again. means the render started but the editor lost hold of it, usually because you switched section while it was starting. The render still finishes in the background; the editor just stops waiting for it.

Fix. Click Acquire or Re-render again. Neither state needs a restart.

A render says QUEUED and nothing runs#

One render runs at a time, so a second request waits behind the first. The overlay shows QUEUED, POSITION n and the priority.

A world is also locked while a job that changes it runs. A render queued behind a Generate, a Deterrace or a coastline apply waits until that finishes, and renders for other worlds run in the meantime.

Fix. Wait, or click Prioritise to move the job up. Each press moves it up one level (background, normal, high), so a background job takes two presses to reach high.

Acquire is refused with a queue-full message#

global render queue is full or world render queue is full. The queue holds up to 200 unfinished jobs in total and 50 per world. The fix line reads: Wait for queued work to finish or cancel an older request, then retry.

Fix. Cancel queued work from the canvas overlay or the Acquisitions drawer.

A second action is refused while one is running#

Each world runs one job of each kind at a time, and refuses another while one is active, naming the job in the way: render <id> is already active for this world, export <id> is already active for this world, generation <id> is already active for this world, or world mutation '<kind>' is active (a change to the world itself, such as a coastline apply).

Fix. Wait for it, or cancel it. This is not a bug and there is no override.

I cancelled a job. Did I lose the work?#

No. A cancelled job keeps everything it had already completed. A cancelled render keeps the preview steps it showed. A cancelled export keeps the layers it already wrote.

A cancel confirmation only appears when a job is past 90%, because it may well finish before the cancel takes effect.

Renders that finish but look wrong#

A render that cannot do every step still finishes, and says what it skipped in a notice row. If a section looks unlike the satellite style, read that notice.

The image came out as a flat elevation ramp#

Two warnings produce this, and both say rendering hypsometric instead (a plain colour ramp by height).

The first is missing pixel geometry: the section has no recorded ground scale. The satellite style measures everything in kilometres on the ground, so without a scale it cannot run.

The second names a missing component of the app.

Fix. For the geometry case, nothing in the Controls panel will help. Re-import or re-create the section with its map width and planet radius set. For the missing component, the installation is damaged; use your package manager's Verify or Repair action.

The rivers disappeared#

The warning says flow routing failed (working out where water drains) and that the render fell back to a wetness estimate from terrain shape. Rivers are a layer on top of that estimate, so a failure here gives you a picture without rivers rather than an error.

Without drainage, rivers drawn in Draw mode lose their flow colouring too, and Flow widening, Green banks and the other flow-driven controls do nothing.

Fix. A packaged install includes everything flow routing needs, so this means a damaged installation. Use Verify or Repair.

Globe colour tiles show rivers too, drawn wider than in a section so they read at globe scale. Lakes and the water mask are section-only, so a globe never shows lakes; that is not this failure.

Sliders in Water colour are greyed out#

Flow widening, Density, Width, Green banks and River strength are disabled while the Rivers toggle is off. This is correct: they all act on drainage, and turning Rivers off takes drainage out of the colour. There are no lake dials in the panel; lakes are placed in Draw mode with the Lake tool, drawn by hand or picked from Suggest lakes.

Transition width does nothing on a small map#

Transition width is capped at about 10% of the section's width. The panel shows an amber CAPPED AT <n> KM ON THIS MAP note under the slider when your value is above the cap.

A focus area cut from a coarse world climate map can also blend wider than you asked for. That is deliberate: it melts the blocky steps the crop inherits from the coarse map.

The beach ring vanished on a large section#

On a very large section, and especially on the small preview passes, a beach is narrower than one pixel, so it fades out. This is expected, and a wider Beach width shows sooner.

Relief shading looks blown out#

Relief and Relief shading are not interchangeable. Setting Relief to its minimum does not remove shading. It flattens it into an even brightening of the whole frame, which blows snow, ice, sand and pale sediment out to flat white.

Fix. To remove the shading, set Relief shading to 0%. That skips the shading step entirely and also saves memory on large renders.

Rendering and export are blocked#

Climate palettes unavailable, and everything is blocked#

The panel shows Climate palettes unavailable, a message, and the line Rendering and export are blocked to protect the saved look. with a Reload world button.

Cause. The palettes that ship with Dayside could not be loaded or checked. Rather than render your world with different palettes from the ones you chose, Dayside stops.

Fix. Click Reload world. If it persists, the installed palettes are damaged; use Verify or Repair.

An export refuses the water mask or the albedo layer#

The message says the layer needs the satellite style, that this section fell back to a non-satellite render, and points you at the section's pixel geometry.

Cause. Water mask and Satellite albedo are produced by the satellite render itself. If the section can only render as a plain elevation ramp (see The image came out as a flat elevation ramp), there is nothing to take them from, and Dayside refuses rather than save a guess under that name.

Fix. Fix the section's geometry first, or untick that layer.

River mask, Snow mask or Normal map will not tick#

Those three are not built yet. They show a soon chip in both export dialogs. Water mask already covers rivers, lakes and sea in one greyscale image.

The biome mask rows are unavailable#

Biome mask and Biome class masks both come from the world's climate (biome) layer. A world with no biome layer cannot produce either. Create one from the Biome brush panel, or drop those layers.

Terrain generation#

Enhance world terrain says Runtime not configured, or Ranges and drainage says Not installed#

In the Whole-world passes dialog the Enhance world terrain checkbox is disabled with a Runtime not configured badge, and the Ranges and drainage option reads Not installed.

Cause. The whole-world terrain models are missing from this install.

Fix. Repair or reinstall Dayside to restore them. The Colour globe pass in the same dialog works without them, and section Generate is unaffected. Ranges and drainage describes the models.

Generate is disabled or the dialog says the model is missing#

The Generate terrain dialog carries one message with an action. The wording tells you which part is at fault.

The first seven all have the same fix: repair or reinstall. The fix line reads Repair or reinstall Dayside to restore the packaged model or …the packaged runtime. The last one is a hardware problem, not a damaged install, so repairing will not help; see No supported GPU was found.

Terrain generation is optional. Import, painting, colour and export all work without any of it.

No supported GPU was found#

The setup wizard's capability chip reads Some components need attention and the GPU line says No supported GPU was found. The generate dialog's footer says there is no validated generation backend and that import remains available.

Cause. Terrain generation needs an NVIDIA graphics card (CUDA) with a working driver. Dayside checks for one and refuses to generate without it, rather than quietly running something slower.

Related messages and what each one points to:

• No NVIDIA adapter was detected; import remains available. The machine has no NVIDIA graphics card.
• PyTorch loaded but CUDA is unavailable. There is an NVIDIA card but it could not be used. Usually the driver is too old, or another program is using all of the card.
• The backend runtime is installed but could not be loaded. The terrain generator is installed but would not start. Repair the installation.
• The backend runtime check timed out. Try again. The check took too long. Usually temporary; try again.
• This GPU has no verified terrain backend in this release. A graphics card was found, but this version of Dayside does not support it for generation.
• DirectML generation is Windows-only. / ONNX Runtime does not expose DirectML on this machine. / DirectML execution is not implemented in this build. These are diagnostic notes about a non-NVIDIA route that Dayside does not offer. Generation still needs an NVIDIA card.
• CPU generation is diagnostic only. Generation does not run on the processor.

Fix. Update the NVIDIA driver, then click Check again in the setup wizard, or reopen the generate dialog. Nothing in the app can stand in for a supported graphics card.

Checking this PC takes minutes#

Cause. When the terrain generator is installed, the check verifies all of its files, several gigabytes of them, every time it runs.

Fix. Wait it out. It finishes rather than failing, and the wizard's chip settles once it does.

Generate fails with the terrain state folder missing#

The message reads the terrain state folder is missing and asks you to restart and retry.

Cause. The terrain generator's working folder, terrain-runtime inside Dayside's data folder (see Where your files live), was deleted. It counts as a cache, so Remove my data clears it.

Fix. Restart the app. Dayside recreates the folder at startup with the protected permissions the generator needs. Creating it by hand does not work, because a folder made that way has the wrong permissions and is refused.

The terrain runtime could not start with the verified binding#

The generate job fails with exactly that sentence.

Cause. The terrain generator did not start. The commonest reason is the missing state folder above.

Fix. Restart the app and retry. If it recurs, server.log (see Where the logs live) has a line starting [loresat] that names the actual cause. Include it, or a support bundle, when you report the problem.

The diffusion server did not start within 180s#

The terrain generator (the "diffusion server", also called the sidecar in some messages) did not start within three minutes of a generation being queued, so the job fails and tells you to check the sidecar server.log.

Fix. Retry. If it fails again, create a support bundle (see Where the logs live) and include it in your report.

Generation sits at 85% for a long time#

Not a failure. While the terrain model runs it cannot report how far through it is, so the bar estimates: it climbs quickly at first, slows as it approaches 85%, then jumps when the pass finishes and the result is saved.

A large section that is generated in chunks behaves differently: its bar moves one step for each finished chunk.

Terrain came back at the wrong feature scale#

The model you pick sets the physical size of the features it makes. The 30 m model is built for playable-scale sections. The 90 m model is built for continental scale. Base-lite works at a fixed continental scale of its own.

Pick the wrong one and you get plausible-looking terrain at the wrong scale, with no error anywhere.

Fix. Match the model to the section's size. The dialog prints a guidance line when your section is outside the range a model suits, for example a very large section with the 30 m model. Enhancing terrain covers the choice in full.

The sea level crept up after a second Generate#

It should not. Every Generate starts again from your authored land heightmap and bathymetry, never from the previous result, so a second run is another pass over your own terrain and the sea level does not drift.

What does move it is changing Sea level in the Controls panel after a generate. The panel says so: changing it then reclassifies model-authored land and ocean. Set it before you generate.

Fix. Use Revert to authored heightmap in the generate dialog, which is available whenever there is a saved copy from before the first generate.

Worlds, loading and the engine#

A world sits on Loading project and never opens#

Almost always this is waiting for you. Clicking a world card raises the loading dialog, which loads the layers and the preview and then waits for you to click Open <name>. The caption changes to Layers restored and preview warmed when it is ready. The dialog stays up for at least two seconds, so even a fast open shows the sequence.

A world imported without telling Dayside whether it is a flat map or a whole planet asks you instead, with Open editor or Open world.

If loading genuinely failed the dialog says Could not warm this project and offers Try again.

Couldn't open this world#

The picker raises a dialog with the error, sometimes a fix line, and Dismiss / Retry.

Cause. The world's settings could not be loaded, so the editor has nothing to open with. Away from the picker the same failure appears in the status strip as Could not open <name>: <message>.

Can't reach the Dayside engine#

With no worlds on screen you get a full-screen panel: the chip ENGINE OFFLINE, the heading Can't reach the Dayside engine, the line The local backend isn't responding., a Retry connection button and a LAST ATTEMPT detail line. With worlds already on screen the same failure appears as a dismissible status-strip row.

The engine is the part of Dayside that does the work behind the window. The picker retries by itself every 5 seconds while it is offline, so an engine that comes back is picked up without you doing anything. Your worlds are on disk and are not at risk.

Reconnecting to the engine#

A quiet strip row, shown only when a world is open and the live connection to the engine has dropped for more than a moment. The engine is still working; only the live updates have paused. Jobs carry on, and progress catches up when the connection returns. Job Dock cards show reconnecting… meanwhile.

Every world is gone from the picker#

Check the search box first: an empty result reads NO WORLDS MATCH "<query>", which is a different state from the empty first-run panel (NO WORLDS YET).

Removing a world from the list never deletes files. For an app-managed world the folder stays on disk until you take the second, separately worded Delete files permanently step. For a project you opened in place, removal only takes it out of the list and the folder is untouched.

The globe#

Globe out of date#

The status chip on the globe canvas reads Globe out of date in amber, with a banner summarising what changed, for example 3 regions changed · 1 tile edited.

This is a fact, not a fault. Region and tile work does not fold itself back into the sphere. Re-compose globe folds everything you edited into a fresh globe without losing anything.

Colour globe refuses to run because tiles have edits#

The job fails with a count and the sentence that re-colouring the globe would discard those edits, and the fix line offers two routes.

Cause. Colouring the globe from scratch replaces every globe-colour tile. If you have edited any tile since the globe was last composed, that work would be lost.

Fix. Either run Re-compose globe, which folds the edits into a new globe, or tick Rebuild all tiles, discarding N per-tile edits in the Whole-world passes dialog to rebuild everything from scratch on purpose.

Export globe's resolution buttons are all disabled#

Every numeric resolution is disabled until the globe has saved tiles, with a note telling you to run Re-compose globe first.

Cause. The globe you see on screen is only as detailed as the globe preview. A high-resolution export, up to 32K, is built from the full-detail tiles that Re-compose globe saves. Without them only Native · as displayed can be exported.

Colour globe or Re-compose fails saying there are no tiles#

colour the globe before re-composing (no globe-colour tiles found) or the equivalent for updating. Both passes work from the globe's colour tiles, and a world that has never been coloured has none.

Fix. Click Colour globe in the globe workspace and run the colour pass first.

Export globe's button reads Export anyway#

The globe export dialog shows The globe is out of date. and its button reads Export anyway instead of Export globe.

Cause. Regions or tiles changed since the globe was last composed. Export anyway exports the globe as it was last composed: new regions are left out, deleted regions are removed, and edited regions and tiles stay as they were last composed. The note under the warning lists exactly which.

Fix. Click Re-compose first to fold the changes in before exporting, or export anyway if the last composition is what you want. When the terrain or a source map changed under the coloured globe, the dialog says The terrain changed under the coloured globe. and refuses the export; run Colour globe again first.

An 8192 px globe preview fails or takes very long#

Cause. An 8192 px wide Globe preview takes several times longer to update than 4096 and needs about 13 GB of free memory.

Fix. Close other memory-hungry applications, or pick 4096 or 2048 under Globe preview in the Whole-world passes dialog. The preview width does not change what an export contains.

Changing the climate month changes nothing#

The Climate month select lists Annual and Month 1 to Month 12, but every month renders the same as Annual.

Cause. The world has no monthly climate data. Months come from the twelve monthly temperature and precipitation maps of a World Climate Lab import; a world without them uses its annual appearance for every month.

Fix. Import the world from a World Climate Lab climate-data folder (see Setting up a world) to get monthly climate. Seasons and sea ice covers what the months change.

A region will not draw#

A region has to fit on one undistorted local map. Dayside refuses a selection it cannot flatten that way, with a specific message:

A region that overlaps an existing one is refused only when you set Overlap policy to Reject overlap. The dialog then offers an inline Allow overlap button so you do not have to redraw.

The globe view turned into a flat map#

The globe switches to a flat selection map when its pane is under 280 px in either direction. Widen the window or collapse the side panel.

If the graphics card resets the 3D view, the globe rebuilds once it can. You may see the view reset. Nothing is lost.

A tile shows the wrong size#

The size on a region card is the area you selected. The saved tile is larger, because it includes a blending margin around the edge so neighbouring tiles join smoothly. The two can differ by around 20% on a focus area and around 45% on a globe-colour tile.

Imports and sea level#

My imported map came out all land, or all sea#

The waterline is set at import time and cannot be changed afterwards without a re-import.

Cause. The Waterline slider on the Sea & terrain step decides which brightness counts as sea level. It starts at a value Dayside proposes from the heightmap's brightness. The step tells you what you are choosing: About N% is below the proposed waterline. A heightmap that does not use black for the seabed will get a poor proposal.

Fix. Read the waterline off a reference instead of guessing. The same step has Use my land mask's sea level, when you added a Land / water mask on the Maps step, and Use my climate map's ocean, when you supplied a climate map with ocean in it. The reference must be the same pixel size as the heightmap. If you already built the world, re-import. Setting up a world walks the whole step.

The sea is flat and the coastline reads as a cut edge#

Cause. The Deep-ocean floor choice on the import step. If your heightmap has no real sea-floor depths and you told the app it does, everything below the waterline is flat, which the terrain model reads as flat land rather than a coastline.

Fix. Use No depth in my maps with Synthetic sea floor on, which builds a continental shelf, a slope and a deep ocean floor. Or attach a real bathymetry image with land in pure white under Separate depth map.

Rivers and climate came out wrong after attaching a rainfall map#

Cause. The Rainfall at white (mm/year) number is the only record of what your map's brightness means in millimetres. Get it wrong and nothing visibly breaks: terrain generation reads your rainfall at the wrong scale and makes a plausible world with the wrong climate.

The confirm panel warns you about two specific problems:

uniform means the map is a single flat value with no variation at all, so it will not make rivers or terrain any more climate-aware than having no map. Check you exported the rainfall channel rather than a blank layer.

saturated means a share of the map sits at pure white and was probably clipped, so the real peak is higher than the number you entered.

Fix. Set the number to your source's actual maximum, or re-export without clipping. The panel re-checks as you change it and shows the driest, mean and wettest values it finds.

A world with no climate map renders as rainforest#

Cause. With no Köppen climate layer Dayside guesses climate from temperature and altitude alone, and that guess cannot place deserts or mediterranean climates. Anything warm enough for the tropics reads as tropical rainforest, which is very wet, so snow lines sit low and basins fill.

Fix. Author a climate layer. Add a Köppen-coloured map on the Climate / biomes row at setup, or paint one with the Biome brush.

The climate map was rejected#

Climate maps must be lossless 8-bit PNG and the same pixel size as the heightmap. Rainfall maps and bathymetry maps have the same size requirement. The upload error names the size mismatch directly.

A round-tripped Gaea heightmap came back at the wrong height#

Cause. The Gaea Height you exported with field. The import uses the heights the file carries, so the number has to match what you set in Gaea. On a section wider than Gaea's map size limit the export sheet pre-scaled the Height to keep the terrain's proportions, and the dialog shows that factor.

Fix. Use the _heightmap.json file written beside the exported heightmap. Add sidecar… reads its numbers instead of the ones you typed. Or tick Match the previous peak to keep the shape you sculpted while restoring the height the section had. Revert restores the heightmap from before the import.

Painting#

Apply coastline refuses because paint is not applied#

Your painted changes aren't applied yet. on the Landmass or Coast panel.

Cause. Both tools preview from the applied terrain, so running one would discard unapplied strokes.

Fix. Click Apply changes first.

The coastline preview will not update#

The canvas badge tells you the preview failed and to adjust the settings. The panel shows the reason, or The preview could not be computed. if there is none.

Fix. Change the settings and let it re-preview. Nothing has been written to the heightmap, and Cancel discards the pending changes.

Edits at a working resolution have not reached the master#

The edit-proxy banner reads Editing at 4K · native 8,192×8,192 · N edits not yet baked.

The bake is never automatic. Your full-resolution master stays untouched until you click Bake to native, which replays your edits onto it. Discard throws the working-resolution edits away and restores the master.

Where the logs live#

Nothing here is uploaded anywhere. All of it stays on your machine, and you attach it yourself if you file a bug.

The support bundle is the thing to send. Open About & credits, expand Diagnostics, and click Preview what a bundle contains first: it lists exactly what goes in and what never does. It holds version details, component status, your graphics card and driver, and the recent part of the app's logs with personal details removed. It never includes your worlds, the terrain model, account tokens, folder paths or system settings, and it stays under 256 KiB. Tick the consent box and click Create bundle and save to this PC.

Raw logs, if you want the full version:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Loresat\v1\logs\shell.log     the app window
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Loresat\v1\logs\server.log    the engine

server.log is where the engine explains failures, including the [loresat] lines about a terrain generator that would not start.

Job records. Each render and export keeps a record on disk while it is held, under:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\Loresat\v1\render-queue\

The terrain generator's log is kept separately from the app's. A generation failure that says to check the sidecar server.log means that one; the support bundle is the easiest way to send it. A whole-world terrain pass writes tool.log into its own job folder, and its failure message names it.

App-managed worlds live in Dayside's data folder in synthetic_worlds, imported_worlds and uploaded_worlds. A project you opened in place stays wherever you put it and is never written to outside its own folder.

Exports default to <world folder>\loresat_exports\<time>_<section>_<destination> and are never deleted by Dayside. Every finished acquisition in the drawer shows its full path with a Copy path button.