Gaps in the runway, graphics issues, wheel glitches, etc.

[Fireheart318]

Go grab some cheese puffs and a drink, this might be a long one...

 

So, I've been enjoying the 1.2 update quite a lot, but have come across a few things that make the game much less enjoyable. Let's start off with the one that will cause the most destruction

 

Runway gap: Near the beginning of the runway, there's a gap (actually more of a tiny cliff) in the terrain, somewhat like that one on Minmus a while back, except this one is somewhere you'd go for an actual reason, not just to fall through the floor or goof around. I've tested it with a small rover and can confirm that the gap is, in fact a physical error, not just graphical.

 

Bouncy wheels: In some tests, wheels are extremely bouncy and make driving hard. A prototype for a submarine I built has a heavy payload spread out over a bunch of wheels, but when it spawns in, it bounces from side to side until the wheels shatter and have to be repaired by an engineer and begin the cycle all over again. This isn't just with heavy payloads, I haven't observed the phenomenon in a light craft directly, but there are some GIFs on the KSP subreddit of it happening.

 

Strange lines: This is the weirdest glitch I've discovered in the day or so that 1.2 has been out: On most things in the game, faint lines can be observed, similar to those on the science lab, but more frequent. It occurs on parts, particle effects, the main menu, and even planets sometimes! They run across the screen vertically no matter what position the craft or camera is in. If it matters, I'm on Mac and KSP is the only thing this issue has occurred in, with and without mods.

 

Slow framerate and response editor response times: Even though I have relatively few mods installed, the game seems to be moving slowly - at most 23 frames a second, probably closer to 19 or 20 (the slowest framerate the human eye can perceive as motion is 24). Though it may not seem like a big deal, it is. It lowers the enjoyment factor of the game drastically and I don't even want to see what happens if I try to record it. When switching between tools or opening menus in the VAB/SPH, the UIs take a while to appear and often require a second, third, and sometimes even fourth click to open. I'm not entirely sure, as I haven't done it much, but I haven't seen this happen outside of a building building.

 

Static-ey screenshots: What the hell is going on? My screenshots are just rainbow static - COMPLETELY unrecognizable as anything. I wanted a new wallpaper for my desktop (this postcard-style wallpaper is getting old), but I can't get any screenshots that actually look like anything. I might be wrong, but they're not even the right shape! This also makes it impossible to get thumbnails for videos, and might also affect recording, although I haven't tested it yet.

 

Annoying fairings: While not so much a bug as an annoying feature, the new fairing system tends to get in the way a lot more than it should. This is probably just my current building style, but it's worth mentioning. Is there a way to turn off the extra nodes?

[Majorjim!]

To turn off the nodes for fairings enable extra tweakables and then it is a right click menu option. 

[JAFO]

9 hours ago, Fireheart318 said:

Slow framerate and response editor response times: Even though I have relatively few mods installed, the game seems to be moving slowly - at most 23 frames a second, probably closer to 19 or 20 (the slowest framerate the human eye can perceive as motion is 24). Though it may not seem like a big deal, it is. It lowers the enjoyment factor of the game drastically and I don't even want to see what happens if I try to record it. When switching between tools or opening menus in the VAB/SPH, the UIs take a while to appear and often require a second, third, and sometimes even fourth click to open. I'm not entirely sure, as I haven't done it much, but I haven't seen this happen outside of a building building.

i believe a number of Mac users have been able to fix this by turning off the animated kerbals in the VAB/SPH.

[Fireheart318]

8 minutes ago, JAFO said:

i believe a number of Mac users have been able to fix this by turning off the animated kerbals in the VAB/SPH.

That's a thing? How?

[JAFO]

11 minutes ago, Fireheart318 said:

That's a thing? How?

On the main settings screen.. the one accessible from the opening title screen. You'll see this:

Edited October 15, 2016 by JAFO

[Fireheart318]

2 hours ago, JAFO said:

On the main settings screen.. the one accessible from the opening title screen. You'll see this:

 

Thanks!

[panzer1b]

While im by no means 100% happy with 1.2 as you seem, i will say it is BETTER then the older versions by a long shot.  Wheels are actually somewhat functional now (which hasnt been the case for 1.1, well yeah they worked by you either had to deal with stupid blocking or potentially phantom forces ripping you apart).  Bugged in a few cases (i have experienced the wheel wobble bug a few times already but luckily it seems to be limited to overloaded wheels at least on my end, only happens constantly when i try to use the smaller wheels on a super heavy craft), but again, better then 1.1 and its pretty much unuseable wheels/landing legs which drifted uphill, randomly exploded, and had a slew of other issues.  Also, the performance decrease seems to be fairly subjective.  My game is running as well or even better (bar the mem leak that causes issues if you have the game turned on for too long and do too many scene changes).  As for the runway gaps, well its a known bug that has been reported on the tracker, hopefully the devs end up fixing it in a patch or something.  Luckily i never got into planes and the few SSTOs i have seem to have no issues with the few bumps...

[Alshain]

Most of these were reported during pre-release but never got fixed.  The runway gaps, the lines, and the bouncy wheels (apparently the former devs believed the wheels should act like a spastic jack russel terrier because they argued it was normal), all of those were brought up and not fixed.

[Fireheart318]

1 hour ago, panzer1b said:

While I'm by no means 100% happy with 1.2 as you seem, I will say it is BETTER than the older versions by a long shot.  Wheels are actually somewhat functional now (which hasn't been the case for 1.1, well yeah they worked by you either had to deal with stupid blocking or potentially phantom forces ripping you apart).  Bugged in a few cases I have experienced the wheel wobble bug a few times already but luckily it seems to be limited to overloaded wheels at least on my end, only happens constantly when I try to use the smaller wheels on a super heavy craft), but again, better than 1.1 and it's pretty much unusable wheels/landing legs which drifted uphill, randomly exploded, and had a slew of other issues.  Also, the performance decrease seems to be fairly subjective.  My game is running as well or even better (bar the mem leak that causes issues if you have the game turned on for too long and do too many scene changes).  As for the runway gaps, well it's a known bug that has been reported on the tracker, hopefully, the devs end up fixing it in a patch or something.  Luckily I never got into planes and the few SSTOs I seem to have no issues with the few bumps...

 

1

Luckily? What leak?

Edited October 15, 2016 by Fireheart318

[panzer1b]

4 hours ago, Fireheart318 said:

Luckily? What leak?

I cant say for absoluet certain, but it appears there is some sort of mem leak as playing the game for excessive periods of time (like 6+ hours) seems to make the performance slow to a crawl.  Ofc for all normal circumstances this is irrelevant and doesnt affect my gameplay (very very rarely do i have KSP open that long), but it is pretty clear that performance degrades eventually if you dont reboot KSP every few hours.

Then again, its a very minor thing that takes either excessive scene changing and or just playing the game for very long time...

[AlphaMensae]

On 10/14/2016 at 11:13 PM, Fireheart318 said:

Bouncy wheels: In some tests, wheels are extremely bouncy and make driving hard. A prototype for a submarine I built has a heavy payload spread out over a bunch of wheels, but when it spawns in, it bounces from side to side until the wheels shatter and have to be repaired by an engineer and begin the cycle all over again. This isn't just with heavy payloads, I haven't observed the phenomenon in a light craft directly, but there are some GIFs on the KSP subreddit of it happening.

There is a long-standing bug, reported here by @bewing and confirmed by @Squelch in the chat of the last Squadcast (asked by me, I'm AlphaMensae on Twitch), in the spring equations of PhysX, that causes the landing gear to be extra bouncy. I think there's more to it than that, but that's the root cause, and Nvidia has yet to fix it.  Nothing Squad can do about it, as it's not a KSP problem...unless you want hacky workarounds of the sort like blocked wheels to come back.

[bewing]

On 10/14/2016 at 9:13 PM, Fireheart318 said:

So, I've been enjoying the 1.2 update quite a lot, but have come across a few things that make the game much less enjoyable

As @Alshain says, most of these things are already in the tracker -- for fixing by the devs as they have time, and ideas for fixing them.

Yes, there is unfortunately a mem leak in 1.2.0 and there is already a verified fix for it -- but when the next release will come is an open question. The bigger the part count of your vessels, the worse the leak. Sorry, but you're gonna have to save and maybe close the game every few hours to manage your mem, if you use large partcount vessels.

@Laguna has his facts straight about the bouncy wheels and PhysX. The devs have done what they can to alleviate it (VPP, autostruts, rigid joints, suspension dampers, many wheel tweaks, etc, etc) but the underlying problem is unfixable without completely dumping Unity and PhysX, and doing a 6+ month rewrite of the code to use something else (with no guarantees of big improvements at the end of the tunnel). Many of the complications are caused by the necessary Squad code that tries to minimize the effects of the PhysX bug. There is also a known Unity bug that causes additional problems with craft with more than 20 wheels. When Nvidia finally fixes the PhysX bug, then all the wheel code can be simplified back down to something that works nicely -- or alternately when Squad gets sick of waiting and scraps Unity and PhysX to go with something else. The devs are under the impression that Nvidia will eventually fix it.

The runway gaps are obviously caused by the current polygon system, and they are everywhere -- not just the runway. Yes, they need a fix, but it's going to probably be a tricky programming task. The bumps seem to be a random height. Examine the runway before each takeoff. If the bumps go up in the wrong direction, then take off going the other way. It doesn't have to cause any damage, if you take the tiniest of precautions. It will be fixed when there is dev time available to fix it.

Staticy screenshots? Can't duplicate -- my screenshots work fine. I don't see any bug report about that one. File a full formal reproducible bug report with log files, pix, and a savegame.

Can't duplicate any "strange lines" & I didn't notice a bug report about that one either. Can't hurt to file a bug report about that, too.

 

The devs nailed hundreds of bugs this time around. There were hundreds more still left in the queue when they called it "good enough for now" and released. It's never enough, but it'll have to do until the next release -- when even more of everyone's favorite pet bugs will get resolved.

Edited October 16, 2016 by bewing

[klgraham1013]

Just ran into a gap in the geometry of the geography and flipped my rover.  In other news, there appears to be an aquifer down there.

[RoboRay]

Yeah, I'm trying to rove around Laythe and keep flipping the thing over on the seams in the ground.  I'm having to brake and quicksave every couple of minutes.

[klesh]

I've also noticed the gaps in the planetary surfaces too.  This is with terrain detail on max.  

[AbacusWizard]

13 hours ago, bewing said:

Yes, there is unfortunately a mem leak in 1.2.0 and there is already a verified fix for it -- but when the next release will come is an open question. The bigger the part count of your vessels, the worse the leak. Sorry, but you're gonna have to save and maybe close the game every few hours to manage your mem, if you use large partcount vessels.

Augh, really? I had been hoping that 1.2 would fix those issue specifically so I could use large vessels without problems.

I guess I'll just have to continue using 1.0.5 for a while longer.

[Frank_G]

I encounter all of the OPs bugs as well. Honestly, the 1.2.0 mac version is a glitch fest. Guess i will resign until the next big update is released.

[bewing]

On 10/16/2016 at 1:55 PM, AbacusWizard said:

Augh, really? I had been hoping that 1.2 would fix those issue specifically so I could use large vessels without problems.

I guess I'll just have to continue using 1.0.5 for a while longer.

The mem leak is basically fixed now, so go ahead and try out your large vessels.