NoMrBond

I'm mostly hoping the 1.25m RW and the fairing bases loose their muffin-tops (oh, and the shrouds of the heatsheilds too actually) since they stick out weirdly from their size profiles

By the Kraken I hope that the aero-effect and re-entry shaders are part of the new shaders collection for v1.9 Which parts still need revamping? Reaction wheels? fairing bases? mainsail/t30/t45? Girders/octags and structural things?

I hope it uses Havok acceleration via Unity's DOTS framework Havok stateful simulation presentation from Copenhagen is just over 40 minutes if you'd like to see why Otherwise the TL;DR is performance at least 2x plus it's stateful (w/caching) instead of stateless

Even if you had to, say, right-click on the green 'node-balls' when they're overlapping (to whatever tolerance) and select 'Join' or something

Going by current trends I'd say expect 1.9 sometime in March 2020 (say around the 10th) Not sure if there's anything show-stopping which requires a 1.8.2 release though? (can't see any high/severe issues for 1.8.1 in the bugtracker) Incremental GC was part of 1.8 so that's already in-game

I think some advanced toggles for difficulty (given their own statements regarding the ease of system modification via LUA) would be nice Give the sliders a disclaimer for what they're going to do to (system/balance wise), but it would up to players (and would enable players) to choose how they want to play the game which I can't see as a bad thing Maybe even offer some value presets (like 3.2x, unless I'm remembering incorrectly that seemed popular)

Pics or it didn't happen /s But seriously, hanging out for more KSP2 news/media

Oh heck yes, full SI please!

I hope the craft 'tree' structure can be changed to allow on-craft loops/connections Given those said-same loops can be created with docking ports outside the VAB/SPH after the launching this would be a nice

Or Universal Storage

If we drop the problems which come from Unity's accessibility (i.e. learner and/or beginner devs using the most accessible framework) then the only thing that's really left is the physics bottleneck, which wouldn't really be solved by another engine since the performance hindrances remain (calculations on related groups of bodies remain in a single thread) Assuming Star Theory stays current with Unity versions, and moves up to Unity 2019.3 (or better) before any code-freeze leading up to release, we could (should) see an update to PhysX 4.x which should further help (beyond the massive refactoring) in addressing the physics bottleneck

Unfortunately the stock engine/plumes/exhaust produce no light, so you either need to include spotlights in your build or add the feature via modding (hopefully it'll be part of the stock feature set in KSP2?) If you're on computer (PC/Mac/Linux), LGG has (no idea where he finds the time to service all these mods) taken on Tajampi's Engine Lighting mod which adds the feature

For linux you need to use -force-glcore from memory [Edit] I would guess it's using OpenGL by default now anyway though?

PhysX uses either CUDA on their GPU's, or regular maths on the CPU. DX12 Direct Physics uses OpenCL for GPGPU acceleration (being descended from Havok, which Microsoft acquired in 2015) Unity has traditionally used the CPU branch of PhysX, Unity 2019.2 specifically uses PhysX3.4.2 However there is preview availability of Havok support in Unity 2019.1 via the DOTS framework If the Havok physics pipeline progresses to official support in a timely manner so that Star Theory can take advantage of it, maybe we will see GPGPU acceleration

Thanks, any chance of a post-1.8 release (when the crunch is off) blog/post thing talking about the whole Unity upgrade and all the improvements which have been added? Always cool to get some under the hood commentary about what goes into the updates