just came here because I got exactly the same issue, when shaders are set on high and you are in front of a keepstar with a lot of players on the grid, the client will crash to desktop within seconds when you are looking at the keepstar with all the ships from a distance… I think the shader model used for the high setting is the problem…
maybe there should be an additional shader setting with ultra, and some features of the high moved over just to ultra do identify the issue… maybe also a option to disable skins and just use standard skins on ships, maybe this would also fix the issue… not sure
I do not have the issue when shaders are set to medium or if I don’t look at the keepstar with all the ships… if I look into another direction the client won’t crash with shader set to high…