Pulstar

The complexity is orders of magnitude smaller compared to the planet terrain rendering itself. I imagine a lazy "correctly looking" implementation of an actual dynamic "blobby image" would need the game to render the planet mesh first to a texture, then draw that texture with a pilxelation+blur+other distortion shader applied. But I can't speculate how much of an issue fitting something like that into the current scene drawing code would be. I'm not that familiar with how to optimize rendering in Unity nor with the relevant KSP2 scene drawing code, all I do know from other engines is that using just one more shader at some point can break your optimizations/require a rewrite. So it really depends if the scene rendering code already was written with something like this in mind or not. If not then the issue is not so much can it be rewritten and optimized to include it, but rather are there resources to spare at any given moment to do such a thing, including cleaning up any new bugs that the changes might cause.

Yes, this also works with Kerbals boarding a different vessel in EVA. It's a very convenient system.

Nice idea regarding the heatshields up top, I'll try it on my design to see if it fixes the stability issues.

From the scarce info we have my impression is that colonies themselves will have a "colonial VAB" (think construction yard from command and conquer) as the first structure/core which will build the rest of the structures using some kind of input (resources are an obvious one, but I imagine we would be able to send pre-fabs from Kerbin? I think something like that might have been implied or mentioned once, but who knows), so no actual attachment like we did in KSP1 with rovers, KAS cranes and docking ports would be required. If we can send pre-fabs I wouldn't be surprised if all it takes is landing within say 10 or 20km to be able to recover the payload, similar to how you can recover craft anywhere on Kerbin, that's something that could also be a difficulty setting. Then it would get added to the local resource pool as a prefab ready to deploy. Anyway for me personally the drag is less of a problem doing targeted landings than the surface's rotation is when I plan maneuver nodes (I would love a predicted target location at impact/lithobraking time indicator). You can correct overshooting in atmosphere with wings, airbrakes, grid fins or parachute deployment to some degree so there's more wiggle room than one could initially think if you don't get the deorbit burn right.

I'm trying it now but I think I'll wait until I unlock the large inflatable heatshield. I have a 3-stage lander design that should work and is probably launchable from Kerbin, but doing it the KSP1 way of overlaping large heatshields results in some instability during Eve re-entry tests causing it to eventually flip over and burn up (maybe if I try to do it in a few passes rather than directly to 30km...). Honestly this is one mission where in the future I think it's probably best to wait until one of the next updates adds some insane tier 4 engine that would work better on eve than what we have now. Eve landers are hard to make and pretty much impossible to get right without cheat menu teleportation use for testing designs. If it doesn't burn up the whole thing falls apart during touchdown, reentry or when the parachutes open then the ladders get messed up and kerbals can't go grab a sample and return or something else goes wrong.

I also think this might be a grain of truth hidden in the joke, it ties too well into what the anomaly asset data mining found. Granted there's no proof of archeology mechanics, but the anomalies could be uncovered with it and fit thematically.

This and in particular bug where the orbit randomly shifts for crafts not in focus is what concerns me the most. I get why we have wonky physics, confused UI states, the KSC or easter eggs suddenly rendering in the middle of the screen or unoptimized rendering/simulation systems or even serialization issues resulting in save/craft file corruption. But a core system like this should have been almost rock solid at this point, which is why I am concerned. Only explanation would be if it is getting reworked at the moment and it introduced new bugs.

I think the dots in the begining are just to specify the row width and time interval, which is why they are preceded and followed by two blank rows. The 21 dots are in my opinion jool semimajor axis length, as Eloo's orbit makes it hard to use as a yardstick. And Jool is marked as bigger in the message for some reason. So 21 times further than Jool I guess. Unless it is 21 Kerbol SOI radii, I would need to check when kerbol SOI escape happens. Hard to say what scale the interstellar distances are.

I had mothership randomly end up on a crashing trajectory while I was busy flying/warping in the mun lander. Happened also after two reloads. It looked like the orbital origin shifted for it randomly after some time, I originally left it in a 30km circular orbit. Checked and deactivated the thruster just in case even.

The music is mindblowingly good. Sound effects and all the little sound design details as well. Ion engines are very good now thanks to thrusting under non-physical timewarp. I'll need to build a NEP crewed mission with them one day. The skybox is pretty All the parts looks great and the painter makes this even better The planets are pretty all the little references like the space oddysey kerbal loading screen, the broomhandle loading screen, the kerbal spoof of Carl Sagan's Cosmos in the intro movie

Built ion engine probe with 30 km/s of delta-v or something like that to check out how the acceleration under timewarp works. Crashed the probe into the Mun as I flew past the good old Mun Arch on the crater rim. Quickloaded. Quickloaded a ton of times because I kept forgetting that "X" does not work for cutting throttle while timewarp is active (I need to log a suggestion regarding this). Send the probe on an interstellar trajectory while trying to get into solar orbit (again forgot "X" doesn't stop timewarp/cut thrust under timewarp) and lost contact, quickloaded again. Derped around overshooting Jool with my overkill delta-v budget. Managed to get an encounter eventually. Struggled to do gravity assists from Tylo/Laythe to correct ridiculous inclination difference because I really miss seeing the flyby path around the encountered body and not just around the parent. Flew by Tylo, Vall. Tried aerocapture around Laythe a bunch of times. Crashed into Laythe's seas a bunch of times. Flew into Jool with the probe, learned it does indeed have a hard surface at least for the moment, some debris survived the impact. Built a interplanetary mothership with 100 tons of hydrogen in those 2 large spherical tanks, the new nuclear gas core engine and a reactor for power. Attempted to build a launch vehicle for the mothership, more boosters and struts helped. Lost control of the rocket a bunch of times because the payload inside the fairing was longer than the launch vehicle itself. Finally got it into orbit after deciding to not do a gravity turn until 40km altitude.

3 years, announcement was in 2019, and the release date then mentioned was 2020. Article from 2019 with the original date: https://www.eurogamer.net/kerbal-space-program-2-in-development

I'm excited to explore, go further than any kerbal has gone before, find and settle new places on the known and yet to be discovered worlds and do so with sometimes extremely over-engineered spacecraft, planes and rovers. I'm excited to witness the different suns rise above horizons yet undreamed and unseen by kerbalkind. I'm excited to push the envelope and to dare to dream of the stars themselves being within my reach.

I think the hex code input was mentioned as something that will be added in the future by one of the attendees. I agree that saving a custom pallete would be nice, I would totally do that.

One of the video mentioned that there's a transparency slider which seems to define how reflective/metallic the paintjob look, maybe setting it to maximum opacity would help. Depends how the lighting system/materials/shaders are set up currently.

I have a GTX 1660 and I'm hoping I'll get at least an old school v0.18 slideshow heavy launch experience out of it with tolerable fps in orbit once lifter stages are dropped at high-ish part counts (I also honestly forgot just how good/bad the PC I had back then was). My card is not that much worse than a RTX 2060, and if the target for minimum was 60 fps then an expected 40 fps on my card seems decent, if the target is 30 then 20 is still playable at least for me. Single digit fps during launch I already lived through once, it will make me feel like when I was younger I guess. On one hand I do want to complain we should have gotten the fps target for minimum and benchmark scenario information explained (is this during launch, what part count?) in addition to the resolution, but on the other I guess it's just a week away anyway to release so rather than pester Intercept with a billion clarifications on performance it seems better to just wait for buyers to post impressions on performance. I would wait a week before grabbing the pitchforks first, doubt the private division testers have every possible configuration of potato to determine the exact minimum specs That and I anyway planned to upgrade this year, and plan B was to go ahead with it a few months earlier if KSP 2 doesn't run at all on my desktop due to some hard requirement.

Definitely on the 24th, although knowing life it will unlock in the late afternoon CET time and will be downloading for a bit. Then again kids will probably fall asleep just before the download finishes.

Depends what the current bottlenecks or milestones missing are. The pre-alpha I anyway treated as either a proof of concept or something from an earlier build, test scenes and the like. I would assume that internally they are in alpha already, just not sharing anything from the current builds. Of course I would also sleep better at night if I saw a "alpha build" watermark slapped on some new footage eventually.

I would go with either Firefly or Moth or Firemoth or Moth Flame for this one. Moth I think represent quite well the kind of attraction certain kerbals *looks at jeb* should have towards big nucular engines. Maybe Bug Zapper as a name in that case?

It could also be an educational version of KSP2.

Is it me or is the video quality a bit blurry even when picking 1080p on youtube? Nevertheless the effects are great and what I expect after watching so many real launches in the past few years since KSP got me heavily into rocketry, which actually bring me to my next question. Will the plume expand as rockets move up in the atmosphere? Lastly the music is great as always in these video, this track reminds me a bit of McCreary's work on Moore's Battlestar Galactica with both the drums and those woodwinds(not sure if those are those?) at ~20 seconds. It's so good it finally made me want to bother to login and post after about 4 years! The music in these show and tell videos is truly great.

I expected a DLC announcement sooner or later, and the "working on something secret" bits have hinted as much. Seems nice, although I am not sure if this is exactly the kind of expansion I was hoping for. I hoped for more end-game content and some stock versions of parts I use mods for (electric propellers, nuclear reactors, fuel lines, more electric thrusters, more command pods and structural parts). The mission builder or historical missions do not appeal to me that much, then again I will see what the community does with it. More parts are always welcome. I do agree with the people that wrote that some stuff from the base-game and some features need fleshing out. Planet surfaces most notably. Then again, after so many years the game was in development, it is understandable that SQUAD needs cash for further development as the number of sales on the base game is probably past its peak.

I was actually wondering about this when I saw the topic title. Is the method of formation the only criteria or do means by which it begun orbiting the parent body also count. I guess the international astronomical organizations are going to have another debate about that if a rock gets tugged into a (fairly) stable earth orbit by a spacecraft.

There has been no mention of weather as far as I know. It would be really cool to have though, not just due to the eye candy factor making some planets (and a moon) feel more alive and dangerous, think of all the launches that had to be delayed in real life due to bad weather! Also flight and parachute landings as you mentioned.

Doesn't a flyby just mean get into its SoI? That's pretty easy to do. It is the suborbital flight on the sun contracts that are insane, but even then mostly due to the Delta-v requirements. Now if they had land on the sun, that would be a death wish.