Brofessional

i7 6700k is 8+ years old now, getting quite dated. As long as KSP2 is using Unity/PhysX there isn't going to be any breakthrough in part-count performance though. They can reduce the number of physics calculations going on by "welding" parts, but the tradeoff there is simulation accuracy. The tricky part is doing that in a way that "just works" behind the scenes and doesn't conflict with what the player is trying to accomplish at any given moment.

That's something I noticed about the existing missions, the game goes straight from landing in any mare on the Mun to landing within a specific 1km circle. It's easy for us veterans but that's a pretty big jump in difficulty for beginners. At that stage most new players probably haven't even really performed radial or normal burns, and suddenly asking them to do it with high precision is a bit of a stretch. Of course they do have to learn those maneuvers at some point, and they are not forced to go straight into the next main mission, but I think it would help to have some missions in between that ease them into using normal/radial burns. Like a mission to land anywhere on the Mun's north pole or something. Hopefully the addition of colonies and resources will fill the gaps when they are added.

I think the problem is mostly with the user interface and how the experiments are just instant with no clear pop-up about what you've just done. It does get listed in the reports menu but that thing is messy and difficult to read.

That will likely be addressed as more roadmap features are added. Once there is a resource cost for recruiting new Kerbals there will be an incentive to keep them alive.

I definitely want a fleshed out commnet with occlusion and such at some point, but it's also not a terribly high priority. Better in-game tools and visuals is a must though. For example there needs to be some form of stock stationkeeping to prevent satellites drifting when you time warp.

Welcome improvements. I hope the clouds themselves get upgraded in the future, they look like they are rendering at a lower resolution or something and it kinda ruins the whole image.

Other people have already said it better and in more detail, but I'm definitely not a fan of the pixelated style for font and icons/etc. It's harsh on the eyes, often difficult to read, and many of the icons are monochrome and samey looking which makes them hard to distinguish at a glance.

I would guess that some things got tweaked to make it run smoother inside the game. The fluttering effect is actually a bit overdone in that older video though, if you look at real videos of Falcon 9 fairings re-entering, the plasma stream coming off of the outer edges of the vehicle is very smooth and persistent. What's missing is the turbulence in the low pressure area behind the spacecraft, the extended tail of plasma, and maybe some sparks from ablative material burning away. All that extra detail just to look pretty can get computationally expensive to render though, especially when it has to work on any insane object the player might throw at the atmosphere.

I'm hoping the pace of content updates increases as the game's foundation becomes more stable, but even being optimistic I expect it will be at least 6 months between milestones. I think it's worth noting that we've already seen some of the work done on other milestones, and not every employee is focused solely on the next milestone. Artists can be working on a totally different feature than programmers at any given time, for example.

Prior to early access it might have said multiplayer because that is a planned feature and the game was unreleased. Now that it's released into early access the tags need to reflect what is currently in the game.

Changing the planet/moon scale doesn't really affect the difficulty because the mini scale versions have the same gravity. They are scaled down in the first place primarily because it's easier for the engine to deal with and less work for the artists.

I think a lot of old regulars were ready to say goodbye to KSP1 and experience new things with KSP2, especially after development officially ended. Now they're stuck not wanting to go back to KSP1 that they played a million times, but can't really play KSP2 yet either.

He says it right here, rhymes with gerbil

I haven't spent a ton of time with it yet, but performance seems to be much better regarding the engine exhaust and fuel flow calculation. Initial liftoff is still the worst performing portion of the game as expected, and for me it went from 5-10fps to 20-25fps; still low but that's a significant improvement. Takes the game from borderline unplayable to reasonably enjoyable. i7-6700k, 5600XT, 16GB DDR4 -- 1080p max settings

The KSP1 style PAW is much better, but the new parts manager window should stay as a secondary option opened from the toolbar.

You might be able to fiddle with the Settings.json file in C:\Users\[YourName]\AppData\LocalLow\Intercept Games\ Kerbal Space Program 2\Global Otherwise I would just use regular old windowed mode.

Almost no games use MSAA anymore because it's incompatible with deferred rendering. I assume KSP2 is using FXAA, TAA, or some other variety of post-process anti-aliasing like most games these days. There are clearly some problems with the way it's working right now though. Seems like it's only being applied to certain objects.

The Proton M crash from 2013 is probably one of the best documented examples of a Kerbal style failure in real life. It flips completely upside down before the interstage begins to visibly buckle.

Well I wouldn't upgrade JUST for KSP2 at this stage, but going from a 1660Super to a 6800XT is going to be a big enough upgrade for all games that it's worth the expense. We should be seeing new low and mid range GPUs from both brands soon though, so waiting doesn't hurt either.

That really depends on the smoothness of the surface and the type of paint used. We've also seen from the preview event videos that there is a paint opacity slider alongside the color chooser that lets you go all the way down to shiny bare metal, so it might just be a matter of fiddling with the sliders to get the desired look.

You would need FTL for it to be remotely practical, at which point everything else becomes irrelevant. You'd basically just be going through a hidden loading screen to get there and the only difference would be a different skybox texture.

The relatively low CPU specs next to the high GPU specs makes me wonder if they aren't doing some of the physics calculation on the GPU this time around. If that's not the case then the physics performance on the CPU must considerably better. If it is purely visual effects putting so much demand on the GPU then you will be able to run the game on lesser hardware just by turning things off. We know min reqs are for 1080p low, but there is a big difference between low and off for computationally expensive effects.

Interesting that the engine shows CH4 rather than generic "liquid fuel."

I'm less concerned about the graphics and more concerned about the framerate. Hopefully it's just old builds or the way they're recording, but it's not super encouraging to see all the promo videos running at like 20fps with low part-count ships.

I agree but ideally it should be an optional setting, which hopefully is the case already. Worst case scenario mods will take care of it as in KSP1.