[WIP][1.0.5]* RSS Visual Enhancements (RVE)

[jrandom]

Okay, turns out that memory issues (that somehow didn't cause KSP to crash) were the cause of the 20km hole and other badness happening. I just went through my parts mods with a fine-tuned comb, selectively deleting fuel tanks I'd missed the last time around, probe cores, adapters, anything I didn't think I'd ever use or already had a procedural equivalent. Finally got it to load with most of the parts I actually do use intact!

Except for B9 Aerospace. Really wish I could get 64-bit running. I'm quite fond of B9.

Edit: Managed to cram B9 back in by using a texture reduction pack _and_ removing the planet factory textures. If I need to re-add those I'll scale 'em down first. Stupid 4GB memory limitation grumble mumble grumble...

Edited June 23, 2014 by jrandom

[DasBananenbrot]

I was gone for half a week and there is already a dev release good job. Looks very nice.

[pingopete]

Things like the original Blue Marble set (not the original Apollo 17 blue marble though) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BlueMarble-2001-2002.jpg and Blue Marble 2012 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:North_America_from_low_orbiting_satellite_Suomi_NPP.jpg are always composite images, taken from images of the land and sea, then a separate cloud map, then a simple atmosphere shader over it. Those should never be taken as indications of true color as viewed from outside, they work alright for terrain color maps though. The Apollo images remain in comparable colors to contemporary photos taken from the ISS in low orbit, and photos of the Earth from the Moon as shown by the Kaguya picture I posted, so they remain useful as examples of the true color of the planet viewed as a whole.

Something like this? This was on an older release but I think kinda closer to you're images.

Ignore the weird cloud heights, and shadows

Edited June 23, 2014 by pingopete

[ThorBeorn]

I like the look of this but the overall palette is far, far too green for me...

The blue tones overall are strongly dominant, rather than blue-green as you have.

And here I've made a quick recolor to give an example:

Wow! This is EXACTLY how I wanted Earth in RSS! Is it possible?

Edit: Also Pingo, good work on the new citylights textures. They look fantastic from the pictures.

Edited June 23, 2014 by ThorBeorn

[pingopete]

This! This is EXACTLY how I wanted Earth in RSS! Is it possible?

Edit: Also Pingo, good work on the new citylights textures. They look fantastic from the pictures.

Thanks, I re-scaled them to look good in orbit although they're pretty low res ASL :/ Can you guess what city it's from?

[ThorBeorn]

Thanks, I re-scaled them to look good in orbit although they're pretty low res ASL :/ Can you guess what city it's from?

Well probably not Stockholm

Where are they from?

[pingopete]

This is what I've got in game so far. Minus the hyperactive 1970's contrast I don't think it's too far off.

The water colour looks closer to IRL in game, it became more turquoise when uploading to imgur for some reason.

Edited June 23, 2014 by pingopete

[jrandom]

Hey, that's not bad! Again, a little too much cyan, but then again we've got the combined ball-dropping of Apple, Microsoft, and internet image standards that all play fast and loose with color profiles instead of doing it right.

(I go so far as to hardware-calibrate my monitor, so when some piece of software doesn't read/use the right color profile it becomes very apparent.)

[pingopete]

Hey, that's not bad! Again, a little too much cyan, but then again we've got the combined ball-dropping of Apple, Microsoft, and internet image standards that all play fast and loose with color profiles instead of doing it right.

(I go so far as to hardware-calibrate my monitor, so when some piece of software doesn't read/use the right color profile it becomes very apparent.)

Trust me it's much closer in game, but as I'd feared, matching the ScaledSpace colours has made the ground level nearly black, which isn't realistic :/

[jrandom]

Eeep! Well, use your judgement to find the best compromise. I don't care about a perfectly-accurate Earth, I care about an amazing looking planet that I can fly over / orbit around. For a sandbox game of exploration, good visual presentation is vital.

[rbray89]

Trust me it's much closer in game, but as I'd feared, matching the ScaledSpace colours has made the ground level nearly black, which isn't realistic :/

http://i.imgur.com/ARDWxS2.png

Mind you, you can also tweak the colors in the GUI for the terrain section.

[pingopete]

Mind you, you can also tweak the colors in the GUI for the terrain section.

I know but that dark bit is the scaled space colour map coming in.. I'll figure something out.

Rbray I was also wandering if there'd be someway you could implement haze back into the shaders, like on the stock terrain, that increases further into the horizon and with *lowering* alt?(I.e. looking through more horizontally) Afaik Albedo is overall and doesn't increase/decrease with distance. I think it would add a great deal of visual realism back to your new terrain system. Atm the colours are continuously solid/rich right up to the horizon.

[rbray89]

I know but that dark bit is the scaled space colour map coming in.. I'll figure something out.

Rbray I was also wandering if there'd be someway you could implement haze back into the shaders, like on the stock terrain, that increases further into the horizon and with *lowering* alt?(I.e. looking through more horizontally) Afaik Albedo is overall and doesn't increase/decrease with distance. I think it would add a great deal of visual realism back to your new terrain system. Atm the colours are continuously solid/rich right up to the horizon.

This will be handled with a depth based fog/atmosphere shader

[pingopete]

This will be handled with a depth based fog/atmosphere shader

Awesome, might this be in 9.3 or later down the line? Can't wait for those terrain shadows too!

[Woopert]

This looks fantastic! I'll be using this tomorrow. To clarify: is the RSSconfig for if you play without the Planet Factory config of RSS?

[pingopete]

Yes, either use planet factory config and planet factory or just use the stock RSS config link'd below. Be aware this isn't for gaming use but simply for testing, there are still allot of visual bugs, please read the OP about game breaking glitches etc.

[ddavis425]

I installed the mod and everything went back to being regular size and regular orbits. Kerbin was completely blue until you got close, then it would show the default terrain instead of the RSS terrain. I'm going to try reinstalling in case I did something wrong.

[pingopete]

I installed the mod and everything went back to being regular size and regular orbits. Kerbin was completely blue until you got close, then it would show the default terrain instead of the RSS terrain. I'm going to try reinstalling in case I did something wrong.

If you look back at page 7/8 jrandom had a similar, problem, I think it turned out to be a memory related issue. I'm not very happy with the current release, I'm gonna get some temporary alternates ones up tomorrow hopefully that'll be somewhat more stable, but with some options for people to choose from.

[jrandom]

Yep, the memory requirements are killin' me, Smalls!

Maybe... maybe have the texture packs separate and provide maybe two or three different versions that have differently-scaled textures for us poor 32-bit users? (Although the 8k earth texture should stay. I'd be happy with that as the one huge texture.)

[pingopete]

Yep, the memory requirements are killin' me, Smalls!

Maybe... maybe have the texture packs separate and provide maybe two or three different versions that have differently-scaled textures for us poor 32-bit users? (Although the 8k earth texture should stay. I'd be happy with that as the one huge texture.)

Yeah I was thinking 1 x 8k main clouds, maybe a 4/2k cirrus and 1 atmo, although the atmosphere texture is only 15 kb

Edited June 25, 2014 by pingopete

[jrandom]

I'm actually chugging along pretty well under the 3.5GB line except right at the end of loading (when the screen blanks out) where there's this huge memory spike. Not sure where it's coming from, but it jumps all the way up to 3.4GB or so before dropping back down. That's been causing my crashes and errors if I have juuust enough stuff so that the spike passes 3.5GB.

[pingopete]

I'm actually chugging along pretty well under the 3.5GB line except right at the end of loading (when the screen blanks out) where there's this huge memory spike. Not sure where it's coming from, but it jumps all the way up to 3.4GB or so before dropping back down. That's been causing my crashes and errors if I have juuust enough stuff so that the spike passes 3.5GB.

I think it may be RSS, because when RSS fails to load there isn't a long wait at the end of loading.

[jrandom]

If the next version of KSP wasn't introducing the official 64-bit version, I'd recommend maybe having RSS offload that processing (if possible) to a forked process that runs in a separate memory space and return the results via interprocess communication, but since 64-bit is on the way... I can wait.

[pingopete]

I was un aware of this? Has it been confirmed?!

[Ralathon]

I was un aware of this? Has it been confirmed?!

Yes, it has