Time to LKO? Real time.

[GarrisonChisholm]

I frequently find myself thinking how nice it would be if I could play at a You-tuber's playback speed, everything smooth, nearly 1second of game time to 1 second of Real time.  If I had a vastly superior laptop, maybe I could get close.  But then, I wonder what the "average" time to orbit is for the average KSP'er?  So I thought I'd see if we can gather some data.

If you're so inclined, build a simple 30-part count rocket and get into LKO, without using science parts to pad the total.  The number of mods people are running with actually isn't relevant to this poll, for the data I am curious about is psychological.  If someone is playing and the time to orbit is unacceptable, they stop playing, so this information will reveal the "environment" that most people play at; what the 'average' user finds acceptable.

A more sophisticated experiment would use identical rockets and mods, but that is not the data I am curious about.

How long does it take you to get to orbit?  That will reveal the compromises you have accepted to play KSP the way you want! 

 

Edited October 14, 2017 by GarrisonChisholm

[Laie]

Playing on a 4-yr old i5, lag from part count usually is a non-issue below 100parts (green clock all the way), and depending on a few other factors, I usually don't feel any lag until I get to about 150-200 parts.

Time to orbit is mostly a question of dV. The most "efficient" ascent basically has me circularize at 30-40km, then raise the AP on the far side out of the atmosphere. Coasting there takes a lot of real time even at 4x warp.

[klgraham1013]

Even my old potato had no problem with a 30 part rocket.  My new potato is far superior and laughs at the old potato.  The old potato now hides in a closet for fear of mockery and passive aggressive judgement. 

Edited October 14, 2017 by klgraham1013

[DAL59]

My ascent profile consists of doing a backflip at 30 km before burning up again...

[Ultimate Steve]

 

[regex]

10 minutes to LKO? Most of my RO rockets make LEO in less time...

[invision]

using rocket from save file 3:48s from launch to orbit

[MoarBoostersRUS]

Made a rocket with only boosters 8 parts total got in to orbit in like 2ish min

[Geonovast]

Most of what I've been doing lately involved stuff like this... I don't mind yellow too much, it's when it runs 2-3 seconds green then flickers yellow like a warped spot on a brake rotor that drives me crazy

596 parts after that little module docked, and it's basically orbiting in a debris field with at least 6 debris pieces within 10 km.  The biggest chunk of this was a 669 part launch (~100 parts less than her sister ships) and it was still probably in LKO in around 10 minutes.  I'll have to launch another one and actually time it.  I have a second monitor set up so I can do other stuff while KSP is playing with itself, so I can't accurately guess the time.

I started playing on a ~5 year old laptop with crappy graphics and a 1.7 ghz i5.  I didn't know what a green clock was on that.  I might as well uninstall KSP from that thing, because I would probably punch it from the process speed and playing stock.

[memes in space]

No lag here. Got a great graphics card, an ok processor, NASA levels of RAM (8 GB) and HDD (1 TB)

[NSEP]

It probably takes less than 3 minutes to get that rocket into space.

[Helmetman]

This would be a cool challenge. 

Try to get something into orbit, but it must take at least 20 minutes and 30 minutes is hard mode.
You may only use rocket engines, cannot land and wings are not allowed within the 20 minutes. However, you may only get into orbit once the 20 minutes are passed.

Perks, badges and extras for creativity and total weight to orbit or something. 

 

[Oiff]

Mostly I try do design things so I can point up and time warp, it only takes a couple of minutes to get up then.

 

However if I launch something huge it takes a lot longer as the kraken will pay a visit if you time warp complicated rockets in atmosphere.

[septemberWaves]

Currently I'm playing a heavily-modded version of KSP, at 3.2x the scale of the stock system. From launch to circularization is about 6 to 10 in-game minutes (mostly depending on how much thrust each stage has), but it can take 3 times that in real-time because of the lag I get with some rockets.

If you were to include design time though, it mostly depends on the payload; I use a very modular system for playing KSP, so sometimes designing a mission is as simple as taking a satellite from one rocket and putting it onto a larger rocket with a transfer stage (and renaming it, and usually upgrading the antenna). Other times, I need to design and test the entire vehicle from scratch. Getting a crewed orbital spacecraft fully-tested and functional from entering the VAB to the first mission (other than test missions) can take me the best part of 3 hours, or more if I don't yet have the launch vehicle ready for it.

[Xavven]

I just built a 37 part rocket with a reaction wheel and 4 steerable fins. I put it in a 200km stable orbit in 4 minutes, 30 seconds averaging about 2.5 g of acceleration the whole time, and time-warped during the coast to apoapsis. I have an ivy-bridge core i5 and a GeForce GTX 950. I have no framerate or simulation lag at all.

[322997am]

4 hours ago, memes in space said:

No lag here. Got a great graphics card, an ok processor, NASA levels of RAM (8 GB) and HDD (1 TB)

NASA levels 8gb? No offense but the average midrange gaming pc has 16

[Rocket In My Pocket]

I have a pretty mediocre computer, and even I can't imagine anything besides a spaceplane taking more than 10 minutes to go to orbit.

Without even turning the game on I'm gonna say my average rocket launch takes 5 mins or less.

[Xavven]

3 hours ago, Helmetman said:

This would be a cool challenge. 

Try to get something into orbit, but it must take at least 20 minutes and 30 minutes is hard mode.
You may only use rocket engines, cannot land and wings are not allowed within the 20 minutes. However, you may only get into orbit once the 20 minutes are passed.

Perks, badges and extras for creativity and total weight to orbit or something. 

 

Might want to add more restrictions to that challenge. You could simply launch with a very high apoapsis (5 million meters for example) but with a periapsis below ground level (technically sub-orbital), wait 20 minutes and circularize at apoapsis.

[klgraham1013]

33 minutes ago, 322997am said:

NASA levels 8gb? No offense but the average midrange gaming pc has 16

...and most games don't actually need the 16.

[322997am]

14 minutes ago, klgraham1013 said:

...and most games don't actually need the 16.

But that doesn’t mean nasa doesn’t have more than 8

[Geonovast]

14 minutes ago, klgraham1013 said:

...and most games don't actually need the 16.

It's not that the games need 16, it's that the computers tend to be doing other things.  OS is gonna grab a few gigs, modern browsers can be memory hogs, for some reason, Spotify usually sits slurping at least a gig.

 

51 minutes ago, 322997am said:

NASA levels 8gb? No offense but the average midrange gaming pc has 16

I think you went the wrong way.  8GB is a bit high for NASA.  8MB might be more like it.

[invision]

8gb? 16gb? noobs i have 32gb

[klgraham1013]

10 minutes ago, Geonovast said:

It's not that the games need 16, it's that the computers tend to be doing other things.  OS is gonna grab a few gigs, modern browsers can be memory hogs, for some reason, Spotify usually sits slurping at least a gig.

Guess I'm just one of those weird people who is only playing a game while playing a game.

Edited October 14, 2017 by klgraham1013

[Ultimate Steve]

13 hours ago, regex said:

10 minutes to LKO? Most of my RO rockets make LEO in less time...

Lucky you, you get more than 4fps in RO...

[regex]

53 minutes ago, Ultimate Steve said:

Lucky you, you get more than 4fps in RO...

I've always had more than 4fps in RO unless I'm launching some 500 part monstrosity, and those are pretty rare because I can easily reduce part count with procedural tanks. You need an i5 or i7 (or whatever the AMD equivalent is, but I'm no AMD peasant) and at least 8GB of RAM.