Unity 5 [Is now available]

[Minarkhaios]

Keep in mind that the status of 64 bit KSP remains the same. No plans until further notice. However, this announcement is wonderful news!

What is, and I'm sorry if it's already said elsewhere, the status on the concept of ksp switching from currently used unity version to a (any) next one. Is it something that could be hinted as credible ? Or is ksp fixed in stone with the version it already have ?

[DoctorCruz]

So after Polygon jumped the gun and got reigned back in earlier, VentureBeat had a chat with David Helgason the CEO of Unity Technologies regarding Unity 5 which is opening for pre-order soon

Sounds promising

TL;DR

64-bit processing

Lighting system from Geomerics [ARM Holdings].

Nvidia PhysX 3.3

Overhauled audio system with a new audio mixer

Physically-based shaders

Real-time lightmap previews using Imagination Technologies’ PowerVR Ray Tracing technology

Unified shader architecture

[Edit] Joystiq article (kinda sparse)

Awesome. I hope they make the conversion to 64 bit technology

[Rowsdower]

Unfortunately I don't have insight on that, Minarkhaios. It sounds promising to me, but I'm not a developer

[boxman]

What is, and I'm sorry if it's already said elsewhere, the status on the concept of ksp switching from currently used unity version to a (any) next one. Is it something that could be hinted as credible ? Or is ksp fixed in stone with the version it already have ?

They already upgraded from unity 3 to 4 in the past.

[Climberfx]

The 64 Bit is for Editor. To who make games, more memory that the editor can handles.

[KasperVld]

Merged two threads on this topic

[DMagic]

Please keep in mind physx can and does run on a CPU, too. "Advanced Physx" is the type only available to nVidia users.

So, it is safe to assume (as KSP does use physx) that a newer physx version will mean, hopefully, that it is more efficient, therefore lowering the CPU headroom required.

Yes, PhysX can be run on the GPU in certain situations, but that doesn't mean it has to. The real benefit is the improvements that have been made to CPU based physics over the old versions.

[Dunbaratu]

PhysX 3.3 supports multiple threads (I'm not sure if that suggests overall thread-safing though)

This seems like a significant step up from the PhysX 2.8.x branch used in the Unity 4.x series

The CPU branch of PhysX 3.3 is significantly faster than the CPU branch of PhysX 2.8.x some acceleration is available via DirectCompute which should be vendor agnostic (If Unity even uses anything except the CPU branch)

This is good news. I'm cynical enough given the past actions of certain software companies to have presumed that nVidia would have every incentive to make the CPU-only implementation of PhysX deliberately worse than it needs to be, as incentive to get more people to buy their cards. I'm glad they're not going that route.

[davieholgate]

I heard engine limitations was the reason we don't have tilted planets, will the new Unity 5 allow this maybe?

[cantab]

Yes, PhysX can be run on the GPU in certain situations, but that doesn't mean it has to. The real benefit is the improvements that have been made to CPU based physics over the old versions.

This, at least, is A Good Thing.

As for GPU acceleration, even if it worked really well on supported platforms, I don't think KSP could take full advantage of it because so many players won't be on said supported platforms. I'll conjecture that KSP attracts players who don't have modern gaming-oriented hardware, much more so than many "big name" PC games.

[Juanfro]

Great news!!

I guess that the ETA is Not Soonâ„¢

[Streetwind]

This is good news. I'm cynical enough given the past actions of certain software companies to have presumed that nVidia would have every incentive to make the CPU-only implementation of PhysX deliberately worse than it needs to be, as incentive to get more people to buy their cards. I'm glad they're not going that route.

Thankfully, they don't have to. No matter how great the CPU algorithm gets, it will never ever come anywhere near the performance of even a lower grade graphics processor. Physics calculations are very much parallel for the most part, which means that the best* thing you can do is throw massive amounts of stupid, low-performing cores at it. CPUs, on the other hand, feature a very small amount of incredibly sophisticated high-end cores. They're built for the complete opposite kind of code.

Now, thanks to their incredible prowess, a single CPU core will walk all over a single GPU core. Or even several dozen of them. But the GPU does not have several dozen cores. Modern GPUs have several thousand cores in the high end, and that is why no CPU will ever be able to PhysX as hard as a GPU. Nvidia doesn't have to sneakily stack the odds in their favor, they are already stacked by the very nature of the algorithms used.

(* GPUs are also not the best at doing physics simulation, as they are already too stupid. But they still easily win vs. CPUs by sheer number of execution units.)

[vexx32]

What is, and I'm sorry if it's already said elsewhere, the status on the concept of ksp switching from currently used unity version to a (any) next one. Is it something that could be hinted as credible ? Or is ksp fixed in stone with the version it already have ?

KSP changes Unity versions as they're released, really. They've been keeping pretty current across the smaller releases. A big Unity upgrade would probably mean some considerable time lag between when Unity 5 is released publicly and when they can get everything working with it properly, but unless it really breaks something important that they can't figure out how to work around, the update will get to us in due course.

[Naten]

Shouldn't be any need, really. It's using PhysX 3.3, which should offload physics calculations largely to the graphics card where possible. It'll speed things up immensely... but... it won't do a thing for AMD users like myself, who don't have a PhysX-capable graphics card. It's a shame.

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?

This is just some crap puked up by Nvidia that you need one of their cards to run!?

I'm so mad right now I'm going to just *raises knife in hand*... just... *sharpens knife* just kill *butters bread* this butter

No, srsly guise, this is bad D:

[LawnDartLeo]

Shouldn't be any need, really. It's using PhysX 3.3, which should offload physics calculations largely to the graphics card where possible. It'll speed things up immensely... but... it won't do a thing for AMD users like myself, who don't have a PhysX-capable graphics card. It's a shame.

So you are saying that because you wont benefit rom such update, no one shoudl?

.... just like Nvidia users are benefiting from MANTLE.

[LordOfTheOrbits]

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?

This is just some crap puked up by Nvidia that you need one of their cards to run!?

I'm so mad right now I'm going to just *raises knife in hand*... just... *sharpens knife* just kill *butters bread* this butter

No, srsly guise, this is bad D:

PhysX doesn't need an Nvidia graphics card to run. Unity even uses PhysX in current versions and you didn't need to buy a Nvidia graphics card to run ksp. The only thing that changed now is that a more recent version of PhysX gets used in Unity 5 and this newer version supports GPU acceleration from Nvidia graphic cards. But other than that, the newer version of PhysX is also more efficient on CPUs and if I recall correctly it even supports multithreading, which is great news for ksp, no matter what CPU and graphics card you use.

[LethalDose]

Kinda feels like another reason to expect a delay in KSP development/release.

[KvickFlygarn87]

Kinda feels like another reason to expect a delay in KSP development/release.

Um. It's not released yet, it's been announced. It won't drop for months!

[6.forty]

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?

This is just some crap puked up by Nvidia that you need one of their cards to run!?

I'm so mad right now I'm going to just *raises knife in hand*... just... *sharpens knife* just kill *butters bread* this butter

No, srsly guise, this is bad D:

No, Ageia puked it up. Nvidia ported PhysX to CUDA, eliminating the need for the dedicated PhysX card. OpenCL wasn't a thing then, so they used what they had.

With the optimizations in PhysX 3+ CPU vs. GPU performance likely won't be noticeable unless you build like Whackjob.

Edited March 18, 2014 by 6.forty

[NoMrBond]

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?

This is just some crap puked up by Nvidia that you need one of their cards to run!?

I'm so mad right now I'm going to just *raises knife in hand*... just... *sharpens knife* just kill *butters bread* this butter

No, srsly guise, this is bad D:

Hopefully it will get 'less' bad as time goes on because PhysX features (e.g. HairWorks) are no longer coming up exclusively tied to CUDA (i.e. nVidia only hardware), they might want it to work 'best' on their own hardware, but the CPU implementation of PhysX (notably the latest 3.3 branch) is apparently very snappy, and ignoring other GPGPU tracks exclusively for CUDA might run them into trouble in the long term.

This could be because there is no nVidia hardware in either the WiiU, PS4 or XBOne, which all use AMD/ATI GCN hardware, so making a hard dependency on CUDA automatically excludes consoles for advanced physics effects. What game engine would pigeonhole itself that kind of "only good for PC's with nVidia hardware" market?

It seems unlikely they would cede that entire console (and related) market to Havok, OpenCL, DirectCompute, ODE or BULLET etc given the attraction of common development platforms (like Unity or Unreal). They could, it's their software, their choice, perhaps a suicidal one over the long term though to not support the hardware in this entire generation of consoles.

[Edit] Announcement of 5 officially up on the Unity site

Edited March 18, 2014 by NoMrBond

[LethalDose]

Um. It's not released yet, it's been announced. It won't drop for months!

Right, and KSP won't drop for months either. Given the already protracted development of KSP, if Unity 5 drops before KSP gets released, which is very possible, and may be probable, SQUAD may decide they need to go back and rework the game from Unity 4.x to Unity 5.0 for the performance boost.

With how frequent complaints on the forums are about the the lack of 64-bit support, I wouldn't be surprised if SQUAD delayed release for that reason alone.

SQUAD's gonna do what SQUAD's gonna do. After 3 years of development and they're only now stating that they're trying to get the game scope complete (versus content complete) in the coming year, they're clearly in no hurry.

[NoMrBond]

Unity 5 Feature Preview

[TimMartland]

64 bit would make KSP so much better for me.

[coolitic]

Unity 5 has 64 bit and multi core. Thats all I need to know.

[marach]

PhysX doesn't need an Nvidia graphics card to run. Unity even uses PhysX in current versions and you didn't need to buy a Nvidia graphics card to run ksp. The only thing that changed now is that a more recent version of PhysX gets used in Unity 5 and this newer version supports GPU acceleration from Nvidia graphic cards. But other than that, the newer version of PhysX is also more efficient on CPUs and if I recall correctly it even supports multithreading, which is great news for ksp, no matter what CPU and graphics card you use.

Or you know they could have moved over to a Bullet based system which you know accelerates on all GPU's...