Hi everyone,
I’m a long-time TouchDesigner user and currently have a real-time interactive installation running in a public exhibition. Unfortunately, TouchDesigner is crashing around 2–3 times per day, so this is quite time-sensitive for us.
Current setup
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TouchDesigner 2025.33230
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NVIDIA RTX 5090
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Windows PC
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Real-time interactive installation running continuously during exhibition hours
The project was previously running on 2025.32460 and was already experiencing crashes. Since there was a known performance issue in that build related to shaders being unnecessarily recompiled, I upgraded the installation machine to 2025.33230.
Unfortunately, the crashes continued.
As a second troubleshooting step, I completely disabled the shader component that I initially suspected might be causing the issue. However, TouchDesigner is still crashing even with that shader disabled.
The latest crash shows the following message:
Vulkan Device Error
The Vulkan Device has returned a fatal error code.
Ensure you have the latest graphics drivers installed for your GPU from www.nvidia.com.Otherwise, if you are using GLSL TOP/MATs, check your code and try to simplify complex shaders.
If executing an extremely expensive GLSL shader, try tuning up the TdrDelay in the Windows registry to give the GPU more time to complete the shader execution.
See:
https://docs.derivative.ca/Debugging_crashes_triggered_by_GLSL_errors
for more information.
If your drivers are up to date, please report this issue to support@derivative.ca.
Exiting.
So far I have:
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Upgraded from 2025.32460 → 2025.33230
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Disabled the suspected shader component
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Confirmed that the Vulkan Device Error still occurs
The installation can run normally for some time before suddenly shutting down, so the issue is difficult to reproduce on demand.
Because the machine is using an RTX 5090 and the artwork is not normally operating near the expected performance limit of this GPU, I’m wondering whether this could instead be related to an NVIDIA driver / Vulkan issue, Windows TDR, GPU memory behavior over long runtimes, or a specific TouchDesigner operator causing a device reset.
Since the installation is currently open to the public, I would really appreciate any advice on the next diagnostic step. I can provide the .dmp crash files, CrashAutoSave .toe, TouchDesigner logs, NVIDIA driver information, or the project file if helpful.
Thank you very much for any guidance. I’ve been using TouchDesigner for many years and really appreciate the support from the Derivative team and community.