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Parallax Parallax completely recreates the surfaces of the planets, from the environment all the way down to the terrain detail. It combines a tessellation and displacement terrain shader as well as a completely new scatter system to vastly improve the planet surfaces. Parallax uses GPU instancing for surface objects in order to render massive amounts of geometry at amazing performance. See Installation Instructions below. Also see the Troubleshooting section below, and direct users here if things are not working! Watch the new trailer here: Features Overview Parallax completely replaces the terrain shader used in the normal game as well as its scatter system for placing thousands of objects over great distances. Here are some of the key features of this mod: High quality terrain tessellation shader, like in No Man's Sky Trees, grass and many other types of foliage Procedural rocks and objects Collisions with surface objects Self shadowing Completely new planetary surface textures Improvements The shader that Squad uses for Kerbal Space Program's terrain is extremely limited. Parallax's original feature was a brand new terrain shader, but the scope has expanded to surface objects as well. Parallax improves upon the stock shader in a number of ways, for example: Normal mapped lighting is accurate and faces the right way on a surface at any angle Tessellation allows surfaces to have much more complexity, allowing for the creation of lifelike planet surfaces No lines/artifacts, unlike the stock shader The scatter system is also a massive improvement over Squad's implementation: Millions of objects can be generated almost instantly using compute shaders Each object is drawn using GPU instancing, meaning there are significantly less draw calls. This improves rendering performance massively Frustum culling for each object Objects are collideable On-demand loading Availability System Requirements: Minimum - Scatters disabled: CPU: Parallax does not have much of a CPU impact, so this isn't really a concern GPU: Must support shader model 3.0, RAM: 4GB (With scatter objects disabled) Minimum - Scatters enabled GPU: Must support shader model 5.0 Renderer: Recommended to use DX11, but OpenGL is supported. Due to limitations, Mac OSX is not supported since Apple dropped support for OpenGL. Linux works running OpenGL. Must support Async GPU Readback (if you do not know what this is, do not worry) RAM: 6GB Recommended: GPU: DirectX 11, Shader Model 5.0 RAM: 8GB You can follow Parallax's development here: https://github.com/Gameslinx/Tessellation/ Installation Instructions for installing Parallax and its scatters: Download Parallax, Parallax_StockTextures and Parallax_ScatterTextures from the GitHub release page. Download and install Kopernicus. Minimum version release 139 or later. Open the Parallax zip and move the Parallax Folder to GameData. Open the Parallax_StockTextures zip and move the Parallax_StockTextures folder to GameData. Open the Parallax_ScatterTextures.zip and move the Parallax_StockTextures folder to GameData, merging it with the existing folder. Yes, they are named the same. This is intentional. Do not miss this step. Launch the game, and set your terrain quality to High. Set your terrain shader quality to High or Ultra. Ultra will enable tessellation. Optional: This patch will disable the bubbles / life on Eve: https://drive.google.com/file/d/16-nTUbRgQescq4ajQtka1cJnaOzPcgPy/view Need a video? Check below Troubleshooting Did installation not go as planned? Expand this spoiler to see common errors when installing and how to resolve them. FAQ Right now, there are a few frequently asked questions. I hope I can answer some of them here: What is the performance impact? You can expect to run Parallax fairly well on a GT 960M or better. Is this for stock? Yes! This also works on planet mods that support it. Why are lots of lights laggy? For some reason, KSP uses Unity's "Forward Rendering" path instead of the "Deferred Rendering" path. This means that for every pixel light in the scene, the tessellation is re-calculated. With lots of lights, this can add up very quickly. Until KSP moves to the Deferred rendering path, there is nothing I can do about this. Do I need a NASA Supercomputer? No Does this work with EVE and Scatterer? Yes. Parallax was developed alongside Scatterer, so I recommend for the best results you use them both together. Can I change the settings? There is a config within the GameData/Parallax folder. This controls the quality of the terrain shader as well as options for the scatter system Will you release documentation for modders? Yes, documentation is in the works and will be updated frequently on the github wiki. Does this work with Rescale / Sigma Dimensions? Yes, but check for configs as some values must be adjusted for things to look correct. Can I use textures from Parallax_StockTextures in my own configs? While the license does allow you to use them, I would much prefer if you don't. The stock textures are to improve the stock game. I don't want to see loads of config packs using those textures because it takes away the uniqueness of the ones I created for the stock planets. Please - Don't be lazy, make your own. Download You can download Parallax for KSP 1.12.x here: Parallax: https://github.com/Gameslinx/Tessellation/releases Please read the install instructions. If you are reporting a bug, if applicable, please let me know the steps to reproduce the error. This is extremely useful. Donations If you would like to donate to show thanks for the mod or to support its development, there is a link to my Patreon below. You unlock some cool perks by donating too! Donations are by no means asked for, but are greatly appreciated. Thank you for downloading the mod or if you're a long time supporter, thank you for sticking with it throughout its development Licensing Parallax is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). This means that you are free to share, copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format under the following conditions: Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. NonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes. NoDerivatives — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material. From: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0