[WIP][1.9.x-1.12.x] Scatterer-atmospheric scattering (0.0838 - 14/08/2022) Scattering improvements, in-game atmo generation and multi-sun support

[Z3R0_0NL1N3]

Is this compatible with PlanetShine, or do they conflict? It seems like they both control lighting, so I was curious.

[NoMrBond]

Is this compatible with PlanetShine, or do they conflict? It seems like they both control lighting, so I was curious.

I haven't noticed any issues between the two thus far

[Proot]

Rbray explained a technique to me that could make scatterer compatible with EVE, let me just finish up a few things first.

I haven't even booted up 1.0 yet, I haven't had any free time so you guys just test it out and report back.

EVE-Scatterer-compatibility

[DasBananenbrot]

EVE-Scatterer-compatibility

You gave me a good laugh there Proot This reminds me why I missed being somewhat active in the forums and being part of this awesome community xD

[CalculusWarrior]

EVE-Scatterer-compatibility

You're fantastic Proot!

[theonegalen]

woo!!

[HafCoJoe]

EVE-Scatterer-compatibility

LOLOLOL Thanks proot! I'm "downloading" now!

[BrutalRIP]

EVE-Scatterer-compatibility

HA HA HA Love it!! Have rep

[skykooler]

You should reproduce the problem again. Then get your output_log.txt file (NOT ksp.log)

put it up for download (zip it up if necessary)

post the link here

Here is the link. I didn't see anything obvious in the log.

Edited April 28, 2015 by skykooler
forgot link

[Climberfx]

Still no t there yet, but already is dam pretty! (On OSX)

Good work so far!

[blackrack]

EVE-Scatterer-compatibility

Goddammit Proot, I almost fell off.

Still no t there yet, but already is dam pretty! (On OSX)

Do you start getting those artifacts before 200km altitude?

[unseeingwhale]

Do you start getting those artifacts before 200km altitude?

I am running KSP 64bit on Linux Mint 17 and was getting something similar on my system. I also get the pink box on start up.

I have a i7-4790k, Nvidia Geforce 780. I'm using the Nvidia proprietary drivers with AA turned on driver side (since it doesn't work game side).

[Climberfx]

Yep Blackrack. from ground, the lines appear in ground already. but is little different from those on the pics, they are from sphere section to section...

But sky goes black after some little altitude.

[Why485]

I've been keeping a very close eye on this. It's excellent work all-round. Atmospheric scattering is something I've thought KSP was missing for a very long time. It gives you a really good sense of scale and just looks super good in general.

My only problem (aside from the obvious bugs) with it is that it looks a little odd at some angles. It looks great when you're at low altitude or on the ground, but from orbit it starts to get weird looking like in Climberfx's pictures with mountains rising above the atmosphere.

I wonder if it comes from the fact that Kerbin is at 1/10th scale and the atmosphere is equally weirdly represented on Kerbin and screwing up with the equations that assume a real life atmosphere. It's like the atmosphere ends a lot lower than it should, which maybe physically in the game it does, but it looks very weird having all those really dark mountain tops.

I guess it sort of can happen in real life, but it still doesn't look as jarring or dark as it does in KSP and the mod.

It also very dark overall, which is something that I think applies to basically all of Kerbal Space Program. I think I remember you saying that you were going to add some kind of configurable brightness modifier though, which should be fine.

[blackrack]

Quick, how do I disable the stock water? They're drawing on top of each other.

- - - Updated - - -

I've been keeping a very close eye on this. It's excellent work all-round. Atmospheric scattering is something I've thought KSP was missing for a very long time. It gives you a really good sense of scale and just looks super good in general.

My only problem (aside from the obvious bugs) with it is that it looks a little odd at some angles. It looks great when you're at low altitude or on the ground, but from orbit it starts to get weird looking like in Climberfx's pictures with mountains rising above the atmosphere.

I wonder if it comes from the fact that Kerbin is at 1/10th scale and the atmosphere is equally weirdly represented on Kerbin and screwing up with the equations that assume a real life atmosphere. It's like the atmosphere ends a lot lower than it should, which maybe physically in the game it does, but it looks very weird having all those really dark mountain tops.

I guess it sort of can happen in real life, but it still doesn't look as jarring or dark as it does in KSP and the mod.

It also very dark overall, which is something that I think applies to basically all of Kerbal Space Program. I think I remember you saying that you were going to add some kind of configurable brightness modifier though, which should be fine.

You have it right, kerbin's scale is what's messing it up, compared to earth, kerbin is so small that it starts to curve before anything in the distance has gotten any blue and you can't see it anymore. So to get a similar effect on smaller distances the effect is turned up and the atmosphere has to be thicker. In the future I'll get around this by using a different config from otbit and fading between the two.

About the mountains sticking out of the atmosphere, that's because I've taken a 1:1 earth atmosphere and scaled it down and applied to kerbin, so what used to be an atmosphere height of 50 kms is now just 5kms, which means mountains are actually higher than the atmosphere. I've made a few other configs with a higher atmosphere and I guess I'll include one of them in the next version, they look the same from the ground and they still look too thick from orbit, but climbing up it feels like the atmosphere is higher and mountains no longer stick out of it. They have a few problems with "banding", where it looks like the colors aren't a smooth transition but form bands, which is why I didn't want to include them.

Edited April 28, 2015 by blackrack

[Eskandare]

This! This mod is fantstic! I hope to see it worked on some more. A couple of things, it partially works in 1.0 the atmosphere shader disappears, and other shaders don't seem to work. I love the realistic lighting this gives.

[blackrack]

This! This mod is fantstic! I hope to see it worked on some more. A couple of things, it partially works in 1.0 the atmosphere shader disappears, and other shaders don't seem to work. I love the realistic lighting this gives.

I haven't checked if it works with 1.0 yet, I'm still working on the water shader and it has plenty of problems, so I wanted to first deal with those before adding another set of problems on top.

[rbray89]

Quick, how do I disable the stock water? They're drawing on top of each other.

http://i.imgur.com/Q0GHXnh.jpg

- - - Updated - - -

You have it right, kerbin's scale is what's messing it up, compared to earth, kerbin is so small that it starts to curve before anything in the distance has gotten any blue and you can't see it anymore. So to get a similar effect on smaller distances the effect is turned up and the atmosphere has to be thicker. In the future I'll get around this by using a different config from otbit and fading between the two.

About the mountains sticking out of the atmosphere, that's because I've taken a 1:1 earth atmosphere and scaled it down and applied to kerbin, so what used to be an atmosphere height of 50 kms is now just 5kms, which means mountains are actually higher than the atmosphere. I've made a few other configs with a higher atmosphere and I guess I'll include one of them in the next version, they look the same from the ground and they still look too thick from orbit, but climbing up it feels like the atmosphere is higher and mountains no longer stick out of it. They have a few problems with "banding", where it looks like the colors aren't a smooth transition but form bands, which is why I didn't want to include them.

I've done things like removing the mesh renderer:

if ( oceanMaterial != null && pqs.ChildSpheres.Length > 0)
                {
                    PQS ocean = pqs.ChildSpheres[0];

                    pqsOceanContainer = new GameObject("PQSTangentAssigner");
                    pqsOceanContainer.transform.parent = ocean.transform;

                    keywords = ocean.surfaceMaterial.shaderKeywords;
                    originalOceanShader = ocean.surfaceMaterial.shader;

You might be able to disable it more (get rid of the vertex's entirely, but I'm not entirely sure how you'd go about doing that. I'd just replace the mesh renderer's shader with the one you are using with your ocean geometry and get rid of your geometry. That is what I do.

[blackrack]

I've done things like removing the mesh renderer:

if ( oceanMaterial != null && pqs.ChildSpheres.Length > 0)
                {
                    PQS ocean = pqs.ChildSpheres[0];

                    pqsOceanContainer = new GameObject("PQSTangentAssigner");
                    pqsOceanContainer.transform.parent = ocean.transform;

                    keywords = ocean.surfaceMaterial.shaderKeywords;
                    originalOceanShader = ocean.surfaceMaterial.shader;

You might be able to disable it more (get rid of the vertex's entirely, but I'm not entirely sure how you'd go about doing that. I'd just replace the mesh renderer's shader with the one you are using with your ocean geometry and get rid of your geometry. That is what I do.

I figured I'll get rid of the stock water geometry since there seems to be something wrong with it and it's a huge performance hog, but I'll try both, thanks!

[rbray89]

I figured I'll get rid of the stock water geometry since there seems to be something wrong with it and it's a huge performance hog, but I'll try both, thanks!

Yeah, those vertex's are annoying. I tried (unsuccessfully) to rid myself of the geometry but couldn't. I think in 1.0 there has been some serious optimization though. I'd have to check, but I am almost certain that the ocean has been overhauled to reduce vertex count.

[NoMrBond]

I figured I'll get rid of the stock water geometry since there seems to be something wrong with it and it's a huge performance hog, but I'll try both, thanks!

You could try sending a private message to KasperVLD (community manager), or maybe even a developer directly

You may even get a feature down the line like Ferram got for the aero where a mod has a flag for the game which disables the native system entirely.

[mcirish3]

The forum would not let me give you two bumps so Thank again this is such a great mod. (Also thrilled to hear you are working with rbray89)

[Pac0master]

I haven't checked if it works with 1.0 yet, I'm still working on the water shader and it has plenty of problems, so I wanted to first deal with those before adding another set of problems on top.

I Tried it in 1.0 It works but it has some artefacts. It seems that the atmosphere cut straight to black ( space ) around 30K or a bit higher. The loading is a Pink Square thing.

It seems that there is some sort of Wireframe skybox that form a 3d ball that is visible through everything. I haven't noticed anything else yet.

It's pretty cool though. Nice job!

[cobbman11]

Following closely. Keep up the amazing work, blackrack! Finally, KSP is starting to resemble the KSP of my daydreams.

[Why485]

Some screenshots from tonight. I mostly avoided taking screenshots of areas with high mountains because aside from those it looks fantastic at all altitudes I was playing at tonight. I'm running PlanetShine and a SweetFX config to brighten up the game a bit from its normally strange dark lighting.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

This is one of my favorite mods in development right now. I can't give OP enough praise for how much better this makes the game look.