So, what is modern hardware?
8GB of RAM? - At least I can run three clients with this.
Dual or Quad core processor? - Also helpful when I need more than one client. Even with three clients my computer keeps on responding. But for one client it doesn't seem to make any difference...PS doesn't use a lot of threading till now.
GForce GTX 280 - I can't complain about slow graphics....Sure, doom3 runs a lot better here but PS is somehow playable at least. The recompiling of the shaders takes some time, but gets better over the time with the shadercache. Too bad that you have to delete the shadercache every few days because it might avoid one of the many crashes an hour.
Windows, linux, MacOS? - No idea...only tried on linux and windows so far...but it's for both the same. Okay...even worse for linux, the official binaries for linux keep on crashing every few minutes for more than a year now. I know, the leaf-replace bug was a different issue than we face now but for users it's all the same. Since more than a year there wasn't a usable binary linux version. The Mac Version obviously suffers from different problems...but no clue anymore. Not playing enough anymore to know if running works now already right from the start on a mac or not.
So, what is this all about? Stop telling people with recent hardware the game will work. It's not true...The binary (and the self complied client I used until someone told me it's not allowed to connect to laanx with a self compiled client) suffers from exactly those random crashes on more or less modern hardware also. I can play for hours alone in a guildhouse with only one or two others without a crash at all. But as soon as more people are around the game crashes every few minutes. In Kada El's it's already enough if a other player runs past the tavern with some unusual (not really sure, but seems it are the equipped items) item equipped. So playing with many others is not really possible at the moment....or I have to wait until some new monsters are introduced and all the players with the fancy items are busy in the fields for a few days with mining the new monsters. Thinking of running an event under these conditions is stupid...and I was stupid enough to convince the others to try it even two times..with the result one of the event organizers wasn't able to login and stay for 10 seconds as long as there were so many people at the plaza and half of our guards kept on crashing every few minutes.
And that are only the major problems. No need to start to get into minor problems as not being able to see what you type, having to wait 15 minutes before you see any other player or NPC after logging in, having every trade offer making you execute half of the shortcuts you defined or the ghost items on every map at position 0,0,0. I can understand that fixing any of those problems has no priority...it's far too important to improve other things. No need to repair the chat window, with all those new monsters people should just fight them and not type more than two words in the chat window. A "/challenge" disturbs your writing in the chat window and makes you execute all spell shortcuts you have? Of course it does....that's meant this way...stop your stupid RPing and accept that challenge, this is how PS should be played. This is all very understandable of course...even more since the PS team has to fix all the camera issues now too since they already removed the no-collision camera option which was the only workaround from some issues so far. So, well done, keep on making your work harder than it is already.
So back to the topic....yes, a lot people experience those random crashes and no, I wouldn't expect them to be fixed soon. Try again every few months if you are really fond of this game...if not, better go an look for another one. The game for sure doesn't look as good as the hardware requirements make you expect...and for me all other reasons to play it have disappeared over the last years. So if you still want to play try the hints the others gave you but don't be too disappointed if they don't work...for a lot people they don't. And if you ever manage to get a working version of PS better don't use the updater without making a backup. For me the problems got far worse with every version...in fact 0.5.0 was still one of the most stable version for me...while it crashed for all others.
I don't know how many times we already mentioned it: To be able to run on outdated hardware, PlaneShift requires CrystalSpace developers with e.g. experience in writing render paths for different shader versions. You can keep complaining all day long about bad support for old graphic card, that won't summon new developers.
Okay, it's true...nvidia has already a directx 11 card...but I wouldn't go as far as calling a GTX280 old hardware. And maybe I get it wrong, but this thread is not about PS not working on old hardware but keeping on crashing the whole time..and this it does on new hardware also. Fine, PS doesn't work on gfx cards without shader support anymore...But that isn't true for a RADEON 9250 as far as I know. And also not sure if missing render paths can be blamed for crashes in game..only for not being able to start the game at all.
EDIT:btw I can't find the updater in the folder
The updater is "pslaunch"; and we have several threads in this forum where you can find the "shadercache" file - it depends on the OS, under Windows it is in "%APPDATA%\PlaneShift".
PS doesn't have a updater application anymore, it's now done in the pslaunch application. (Should be pslaunch.exe on windows). When you start it, it checks for updates and asks you if you want to apply them. People just still refer to updater because PS used to have an updater application in the past...now it's the same application you use to start the game and change the settings.
Not sure if this might apply to anyone else but I increased the ram in my computer and since then no crashes and no lag. BBefore increasing the ram I could sometimes get crashes when porting to different map areas and would get some minor lag.
That's for sure true, 1GB is not really much for PS. With 512MB RAM crystal blue was already not much fun to play with so I guess for the current version 1GB should be seen as the minumum.