KSP 1.1 Public Release graphic glitches on Mac

[Raptor831]

I'm running OS X 10.11.4, so I don't think it's OS version specifically. My bet is it's an OpenGL shader thing.

For me, if you rotate the view in the SPH the sparkling gets better/worse depending on the angle. It's some lighting thing or shader issue, I swear. Unity 5 had new shaders, IIRC, so it's entirely possible they missed one.

[Plusck]

I'm not affected by the bug (ancient Mac Pro, Radeon HD 5770 card), but I'd just like to point out that the question of massive CPU usage in the VAB/SPH happens irrespective of the graphics glitch. This has improved slightly with 1.1.2 (down from 350% CPU to about 310%...) but still causes significant heating.

In the meantime, switching off "Show Space Centre Crew" in the main menu "General" settings should help with overheating (it cuts my CPU usage by a third, down to about 230% ... actually flying in space uses 130%).

It bugs me enough that just sitting in the VAB is enough to set my fans off. I'm glad I'm not on a laptop ; )

Edited May 1, 2016 by Plusck

[2001kraft]

Same as Raptor831 for me. 10.11.4 on an early 2015 MBP.

[sal_vager]

Guys, try reducing your render quality, also the -force-glcore commend line argument may work for you.

[Raptor831]

@sal_vager Set the rendering to "Fastest" and it didn't work. I *think* I set the -force-glcore flag for the .app, but I'm not 100% sure of how to do that anyway. (If you have a link to instructions, I can re-test and make sure)

In any case, here's a imgur gallery of what I see:

The "sparkles" change as the camera moves, and if I set the light pixel cascades (I've forgotten the actual label at the moment) to 0 the sparkles stop, but the lines are just simply black.

Player.log here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/zdu0q2kborns0ya/Player.log?dl=0

[sal_vager]

6 hours ago, Raptor831 said:

Player.log here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/zdu0q2kborns0ya/Player.log?dl=0

This might explain your specific case.

Quote

OpenGL:
    Version:  OpenGL 2.1 [2.1 ATI-10.0.40]
    Renderer: ATI Radeon HD 4850 OpenGL Engine
    Vendor:   ATI Technologies Inc.
    VRAM:     512 MB

The HD4850 isn't even supported by AMD anymore, the last driver for any platform was released in 2013, but it should provide up to OpenGL 3.3

You could try -force-glcore33 to force that specific version, it's a Unity3D command line argument so it can be used from a console with "KSP.app -force-glcore33" or added to a shortcut to the KSP.app

That's assuming the driver supports it, searching for ATI-10.0.40 doesn't reveal much, it's possibly the ATI Radeon display driver 8.723 which was released around the same time that support for this card ended.

[Raptor831]

8 hours ago, sal_vager said:

This might explain your specific case.

Well, I would update the driver except for the fact that Apple doesn't do it that way. Their card drivers come in from their OS updates, and they've specifically said they're not updating any old cards to OpenGL 3.x. Sometimes Apple kills me...

Never had problems with it before in KSP, though. But Unity 5 might have finally crossed that line. It's odd that nothing else is goofing up though; I'd imagine that if it was an OpenGL 2.x issue there would be more wrong than lines on the ground...

Edited May 3, 2016 by Raptor831
clarity and additional thought

[sal_vager]

Yeah, I didn't suggest updating the driver, I've already looked into doing this for previous OSX issues and it's not feasible, only updating the OS will update the driver, but there's no guarantee it will be enough, while I have not checked El Capitan, Yosemite's drivers were 6 months out of date.

Unity5's shaders are a little different, but it's not like OSX graphical issues are new to Unity5, some people had issues with the vertex shaders using the wrong corners, producing weird polygonal effect terrain in 1.0.5, and some had rainbow textures in the VAB/SPH, no cause was ever found.

For what it's worth, the textures are working on Windows d3d9, but can be a bit messed up if forcing d3d11 or OpenGL, similarly on Linux open source drivers we're resorting to command line switches just to get text to show at all, and we're still faced with graphical issues such as green triangles covering the navball.

On the proprietary AMD Linux drivers KSP doesn't even start without forcing single threaded rendering, and KSP will crash on Linux during startup if it can't find Pulseaudio.

With all that, some iffy SPH floor graphics and a glitchy flag really isn't that bad.

[Glaran K'erman]

1 hour ago, sal_vager said:

With all that, some iffy SPH floor graphics and a glitchy flag really isn't that bad.

Haha, this is the 'graphic glitches on Mac' thread is it not? Expect to find griping over graphics here... 

Graphics glitches of any sort can pull a lot of people out of the experience, me included. Though it's not "game breaking", it is certainly worthy of addressing 

[Raptor831]

2 hours ago, sal_vager said:

Yeah, I didn't suggest updating the driver, I've already looked into doing this for previous OSX issues and it's not feasible, only updating the OS will update the driver, but there's no guarantee it will be enough, while I have not checked El Capitan, Yosemite's drivers were 6 months out of date.

Unity5's shaders are a little different, but it's not like OSX graphical issues are new to Unity5, some people had issues with the vertex shaders using the wrong corners, producing weird polygonal effect terrain in 1.0.5, and some had rainbow textures in the VAB/SPH, no cause was ever found.

For what it's worth, the textures are working on Windows d3d9, but can be a bit messed up if forcing d3d11 or OpenGL, similarly on Linux open source drivers we're resorting to command line switches just to get text to show at all, and we're still faced with graphical issues such as green triangles covering the navball.

On the proprietary AMD Linux drivers KSP doesn't even start without forcing single threaded rendering, and KSP will crash on Linux during startup if it can't find Pulseaudio.

With all that, some iffy SPH floor graphics and a glitchy flag really isn't that bad.

You're right, you didn't suggest that about the driver. Apologies, I read that too quickly.  And thanks for the additional insight. Coding is hard, and I don't envy the people writing these drivers. I'm a web developer by day and that can be crazy enough!

And yes, you're right, some sparkly lines in the SPH aren't game breaking. (And especially with my outdated hardware! Really have got to upgrade some day...) Still, if it can be fixed I'd love to see that.

Did some research on my own about that ATI driver, and it seems to be a sketchy thing at best. Theres a Chrome bug report (https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=543324) with similar results. So, is everyone else experiencing the "sparkles" have a Mac with an AMD card?

[War Eagle 1]

On May 3, 2016 at 4:20 AM, sal_vager said:

This might explain your specific case.

The HD4850 isn't even supported by AMD anymore, the last driver for any platform was released in 2013, but it should provide up to OpenGL 3.3

You could try -force-glcore33 to force that specific version, it's a Unity3D command line argument so it can be used from a console with "KSP.app -force-glcore33" or added to a shortcut to the KSP.app

That's assuming the driver supports it, searching for ATI-10.0.40 doesn't reveal much, it's possibly the ATI Radeon display driver 8.723 which was released around the same time that support for this card ended.

 

On May 3, 2016 at 3:03 PM, sal_vager said:

Yeah, I didn't suggest updating the driver, I've already looked into doing this for previous OSX issues and it's not feasible, only updating the OS will update the driver, but there's no guarantee it will be enough, while I have not checked El Capitan, Yosemite's drivers were 6 months out of date.

Unity5's shaders are a little different, but it's not like OSX graphical issues are new to Unity5, some people had issues with the vertex shaders using the wrong corners, producing weird polygonal effect terrain in 1.0.5, and some had rainbow textures in the VAB/SPH, no cause was ever found.

For what it's worth, the textures are working on Windows d3d9, but can be a bit messed up if forcing d3d11 or OpenGL, similarly on Linux open source drivers we're resorting to command line switches just to get text to show at all, and we're still faced with graphical issues such as green triangles covering the navball.

On the proprietary AMD Linux drivers KSP doesn't even start without forcing single threaded rendering, and KSP will crash on Linux during startup if it can't find Pulseaudio.

With all that, some iffy SPH floor graphics and a glitchy flag really isn't that bad.

Can someone explain this in a way a non PC literate person like me can understand

[sal_vager]

3 hours ago, War Eagle 1 said:

 

Can someone explain this in a way a non PC literate person like me can understand

Well it's like this...

Not all graphics cards and drivers support the stuff the Unity3D engine puts out, it works on many, not all.

You'd think OpenGL would be fine for any platform considering it's open and free to implement, but there's several versions (it's been updated over the years, so old drivers can lack support for newer effects) and some vendors (Apple) make vendor specific changes, there are gripe threads from Unity developers over how OpenGL on Macs doesn't quite work as expected and they are waiting for Apple to fix it.

Maybe Vulkan will solve all this, but it will depend on whether the vendor of your graphics card provides a driver for it, for old cards that are no longer supported you're very likely out of luck.

[LameLefty]

For what it's worth, my now-ancient Early '11 MacBook Pro (pre-Retina display) does not display these kinds of glitches. Aside from that one pre-release build with the floor line "patchiness"in the SPH - which was fixed in the next build a day or two later - I haven't had any graphical problem to speak of, even with my feeble Radeon HD 6490M and its whopping 256MB of VRAM. 

[2001kraft]

I am going to update to 10.11.5 today and see if the glitches are still present. I'll get back to you in a couple dozen minutes.

EDIT: Yeah, the picture explains it better than I will.

Edited May 27, 2016 by 2001kraft

[War Eagle 1]

2 hours ago, 2001kraft said:

I am going to update to 10.11.5 today and see if the glitches are still present. I'll get back to you in a couple dozen minutes.

EDIT: Yeah, the picture explains it better than I will.

so if i just update to 10.11.5 el capitan it should….help?

 

[2001kraft]

No; I was hoping that patch 10.11.5 would fix whatever issue causes the Unity 5 shaders to glitch. It didn't, so no, it won't help. I recommend updating anyway because it fixes some security issues and I sure hope you're not against that.

[Raptor831]

At this point I'm just using Hangar Extender and removing the SPH model entirely. Get's rid of the "sparkles" and increases FPS at the same time.

[2001kraft]

Glitches still present in 1.1.3.

[War Eagle 1]

Hey guys if you want a work around….get hanger extender. It takes away the hanger backdrop