Beauty Mods

[Krez]

I've been playing KSP since V0.19 and this community has been a big part of what keeps me coming back. I recently upgraded from a 2006 vintage potato to a legitimate gaming rig and now I'm trying to stress it out with some of my long term love affairs. If you were going to load all the mods to really make KSP look amazing, what would you use? Should I consider downgrading to a different release to get the maximum mod compatibility? I've got a pretty good list of part and function mods I've used for a long time,  but feel free to include those types as well if you really love them.

[Entropian]

If you are playing on RSS, use RVE64k.  If you're playing with the stock system, get the RVE64k clouds for Kerbin: https://spacedock.info/mod/2471/RVE64k Kerbin Clouds for Spectra

[OutInSpace]

I run Astronomer's Visual Pack with EVE, Scatterer and PlanetShine. Some screenshots:
 

Spoiler

 

All taken on 1.10. AVP does make Kerbin look weird in the title screen but its fine in gameplay.

 

Edited August 7, 2020 by OutInSpace

[DeadJohn]

I think all of these mods except TUFX can be installed via CKAN.

Environment Improvements

• Pick one; either mod works with all the others I've listed
  • Astronomer's Visual Pack: Purely visual changes, doesn't relocate or chnage any planetary characteristics. I'm using it with KSP 1.9.1.
  • JNSQ: Has good visuals but it's much more than just a beauty mod. It's a full planet pack that rescales the system (2.7x scale) and adds several planets. JNSQ is great if you like designing larger rockets - a 2 stage rocket with stock planets often needs a 3rd stage with JNSQ. SSTO spaceplanes are much more challenging.
• Distant Object Enhancement Continued: Shows Duna and Jool from very far away. Also allows tweaking of the skybox contrast and star visibility when you are near a bright planet.
• Environmental Visual Enhancements: Clouds, aurora, and surface dust.
• Scatterer: Atmospheric haze, greatly improved water surfaces, and beautiful sunrise and sunset.

General

• TUFX: Adds postprocessing so you can customize the look of KSP. Contrast, antialiasing, shadow, and other effects.
• Modular Launch Pads: Adds towers and other infrastructure around your rocket on the launchpad.
• Real Plume and Smoke Screen: Engine effects.

Edited August 7, 2020 by DeadJohn

[jimmymcgoochie]

AVP is certainly a good option, but personally I find that Spectra looks better and has less performance impact so you can put the other graphics settings a little higher, plus there’s a 64k cloud pack for Spectra too. AVP works for OPM though which Spectra does not, worth keeping in mind if you use that. Both require EVE and scatterer, and you may also want to try planet shine and distant object enhancement; PS gives you reflected light from planets/moons on your crafts and DOE makes things (planets/moons and also other crafts) visible at a distance.

JNSQ is not a visual mod- it’s a planet pack and a pretty hefty one at that with a nearly 3x upscale and redesign of the stock system plus extras. It has its own special graphics mod- Ad Astra- but that only works up to KSP 1.7.3 to my knowledge and the one time I tried it in 1.8.1 it wasn’t pretty at all!

For parts, you could go down the route of using Restock/+ which overhauls most stock parts’ looks; if you do try Magpie Mods which adds some really nice metallic effects to the parts, it has compatibility with a lot of different mods and requires TU to function; you can also look at graphics stuff like TUFX or post-processing type mods.
In almost all cases, prettier = slower frame rates so keep that in mind, one setting that really kills your FPS is the water reflection quality, turn that down a couple of notches and the game runs considerably faster.

[djbcut]

I recently pict up KSP again after 2013 and I also wanted to beef up te looks of the game.
I don´t have the latest gaming rig (Radeon RX 5500 XT, 32G Ram, i5-6500 3.2GHz)

My "downsized" list for new players/moders so far would be as following

How to install mods? Here

Beauty mods:
- EnvironmentalVisualEnhancements
- StockVisualEnhancements
- Scatterer (maybe check this)

Functuality mods:
- TransferWindowPlanner
- KerbalAlarmClock
- KerbalEngineerRedux

Like so, the game looks awesome and with these 3 functuality mods it helps your gameplay.
I think these six mods are sufficient for the game  (my opinion)
Works for KSP 1.10.1.2939 whit all DLC´s

Greetings, stay safe

Edited August 26, 2020 by djbcut