PCGamer: NMS vs KSP

[CobraA1]

12 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

FWIW, terrain scatters are a form of procedural generation.

Yup. A good start. Although I'd like a bit more than a few rocks scattered everywhere.

[Tex_NL]

13 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

...

Filling celestial bodies in KSP with the same level of surface detail as in NMS would be much more demanding, because KSPs small moons (with the exception of Gilly) are an order of magntidue bigger (when considering surface area)

...

Not really. It won't take much more power than NMS currently uses. Keep in mind you only ever need to generate and render a relatively small area.

[KerikBalm]

Not when you can be whizzing over the terrain at 2km/sec just a few meters above the mountain tops as in KSP on airless bodies, or roughly 1km/sec if there's significant atmosphere.

Then its not going to work.

From what I've seen NMS already has "pop in" problems..That would be absolutely terrible at the velocities encountered in KSP.

Also theres a reason that NMS has that funky atmosphere to space transition... it doesn't seem to show much detail from space (it also seems to help give the illusion that the plant is bigger than it really is)... it seems to prevent a lot of generation of detail on the surface. Again in KSP this would not work, because that arbitrary transition doesn't exist.

*disclaimer: I haven't played NMS, I'm basing these statements based on what I've seen from youtube videos.

[CobraA1]

KSP and NMS are very different in their design, so it's very different to compare memory usage.

I should note that the mods that make KSP realistic put a huge strain on memory, even on my 16 GB machine. I can't have it open with some other types of software, otherwise it crashes. There's not a whole lot of room left for new content, which is actually kinda sad. I think that's one of the reasons why they are pretty slow at releasing new bodies to visit.

[KerikBalm]

Of course KSP and NMS are very different in design... I'm just saying people shouldn't criticize KSPs terrain detail because its less detailed than NMS detail.

1) NMS planets are not even remotely close to being "planet sized planets". KSP planets (1/10th scale as they are) are orders of magnitude bigger

2) NMS doesnt have you going very fast over the terrain and already has "pop-in" problems. KSP needs to play smoothly (enough) to handle things like going 4km/s during a close flyby of tylo for a gravity assist capture at jool*. A Moho flyby trajectory going low over the surface will be about 6 km/sec, assuming you do an efficient transfer... Moho needs some precision, your intercept could easily end up having a few extra relative km/sec if you plot it wrong (bye bye any hope of capturing).

3) NMS has a funky atmosphere transition that "shields" the surface details from being rendered in orbit. Something so arbitrary and abrupt doesn't belong in KSP, particularly since most worlds have no atmosphere, and there is no division between being just above the surface, or being in space.

We could have more varied terrain scatters, and the heightmaps could be made a bit more interesting perhaps utilizing procedural generation... but the type of detail seen in NMS does not work in a game that has truly seamless surface to space transitions, and true "planet sized planets" - yes KSP planets are small... but at least Kerbin is bigger than known dwarf planets in our system (Ceres 473km radius, Kerbin 600km radius, Eve 700 km radius), and Jool is bigger than some "full" planets in our system (Mercury, Mars, nearly identical to Venus) - although being a gas giant, its relatively featureless except for flat textures, and clouds if you have EVE installed

Pop in of solid collidable object 150m in front of you when you're going 6km/sec is *not* going to work!

 

* or more like 8km/sec if you want to capture in a tetrograde orbit.. although I'm not certain on these numbers, I know low jool orbit is 8km/sec, low tylo orbit is ~2km/sec, anything coming from the edge of tylo's SOI is going to be ~3km/sec or greater at low PE)