Speculation for why the latest screenshots of the KSP 2 look worse

[Ryaja]

I've been looking at the latest screenshots of KSP 2 and the look... Worse somehow, now this could be bad marketing but I think they are planning to later overhaul the graphics engine and the first couple early access versions will have a watered down engine and the better one coming with interstellar travel or something.

[GoldForest]

The screenshots have been confirmed to be months old. We don't have any update to date screenshots that we are aware of, so we'll have to just wait and see how KSP 2 is at EA. 

I don't know about you, but I think each screenshot looks better than the last. 

[Snafu225]

Quote

 

How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?

--The 1.0 version of KSP 2 will include significantly more features than the Early Access version, such as what you see on the roadmap plus other items added along the way. This includes:

---More parts and the opportunity for more creative builds

---More star systems and hidden anomalies

---Improved quality of life and onboarding to open up the vast beauty of space to even more players

---Continued performance improvements and visual updates

As you already thought what we see and get a EA won't be the final look. They'll keep improving it.

[Guest]

3 hours ago, GoldForest said:

The screenshots have been confirmed to be months old.

This has a double meaning, because in all the interviews they said that they had different builds of the game to test or work on different parts of it.

They probably have consolidated builds right now, but if the screenshots are months old it's definitely possible that they come from incomplete or partial builds.

It's also possible that some graphic effects or subsystems aren't hitting their performance target and need some work or an optimization pass and are temporarily disabled, that would also explain why we saw better graphics in other footage.

[Mantarochen]

Hey, 

I was wondering if I'm the only one that thinks that the gameplay footage so far looks really, really strange. 

We are less then a month from release and I have to admit... The footage we've been given access to thus far looks bad. I mean really bad. Not in terms of actual textures, but the post processing / Post FX is just killing me.

I might be blind, but there is either 0 AA, or the image is scaled to 720P. Look at the hangar. There are gigantic steps everywhere, the edges look horrible.

 

Whats up with the clouds? This looks like a bad ksp1 mod. 

And these are the good ones. I didn't include screenshots of the videos to save your eyesight. These are the ones that really make you go blind. 

 

Don't get me wrong. I know this game will start into EA. Which is debateable after the launch being postponed 3 years, but okay. 

But what makes me kinda go mhhh is the state of the preview material . And the ones that were shared are at like 21 FPS with brutally bad visuals, again in regards to postfx / post processing.

 

 

Look at this video:

at 0:30 4 small boosters seperate from the main craft. And the game literally freezes from that.  Same as 1:37. And this is footage from the DEVs. Either the machine that is used to record previews is a glorified toaster, or we have a problem.

 

My point isn't the textures looking bad.

My point is, that everything is either chunky, oversharpened to the max or completly washed out looking like TAA smoothness dialed to 100%. 

I don't really care about the best 4K ultra sharp realistic graphics. I like KSP1s art style and simplistic graphics aswell. So well infact, I sunk ~ 4200 hours into it over the years. 

But what I've seen so far in regards of postfx, performance and processing is literally making my eyes hurt. 

 

What's going on? 

 

 

Edited February 1, 2023 by Mantarochen

[MechBFP]

No one knows the answer. It could be one or more of the following:

Taken from outdated builds

Taken from current dev builds with no mind paid to the current settings

Performance issues required scaling things back

The devs are running 8K displays and as a result don’t see jaggies at all on their end so they forgot they existed.

Purposefully sandbagging us

Graphical features are still being worked on and don’t exist in the builds those came from. 
 

etc. 

[Superfluous J]

Judge the game based on how it looks (and plays) on release. You still have time to not buy it then.

Edited February 1, 2023 by Superfluous J

[TROPtastic]

4 minutes ago, MechBFP said:

Taken from outdated builds

Taken from current dev builds with no mind paid to the current settings

These are the most likely explanations in my opinion, since it's easy to have a conversation along the lines of "Hey, I need some gameplay footage."  "OK, I'll quickly record something from the build I'm working on and send it." However, I wish the pre-release marketing (the things that are captioned #KSP2 and Beta Gameplay, the footage distributed to media) only had representative graphics so that we didn't have to wonder for another month about what we can expect.

Oh well, at least it's only a month and we'll be able to decide for ourselves. 

[darthgently]

All software should include "potato" tests.  Low res monitors, minimal RAM, and the most forgotten element, sketchy internet connections for online reliant software.  A program shouldn't crash or corrupt data because a connection times out, for example.  But maybe 1 in 10 phone apps deal with lossy networks gracefully.  Most just get confused

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

2 hours ago, Mantarochen said:

Hey, 

I was wondering if I'm the only one that thinks that the gameplay footage so far looks really, really strange. 

We are less then a month from release and I have to admit... The footage we've been given access to thus far looks bad. I mean really bad. Not in terms of actual textures, but the post processing / Post FX is just killing me.

I might be blind, but there is either 0 AA, or the image is scaled to 720P. Look at the hangar. There are gigantic steps everywhere, the edges look horrible.

 

Whats up with the clouds? This looks like a bad ksp1 mod. 

And these are the good ones. I didn't include screenshots of the videos to save your eyesight. These are the ones that really make you go blind. 

 

Don't get me wrong. I know this game will start into EA. Which is debateable after the launch being postponed 3 years, but okay. 

But what makes me kinda go mhhh is the state of the preview material . And the ones that were shared are at like 21 FPS with brutally bad visuals, again in regards to postfx / post processing.

 

 

Look at this video:

at 0:30 4 small boosters seperate from the main craft. And the game literally freezes from that.  Same as 1:37. And this is footage from the DEVs. Either the machine that is used to record previews is a glorified toaster, or we have a problem.

 

My point isn't the textures looking bad.

My point is, that everything is either chunky, oversharpened to the max or completly washed out looking like TAA smoothness dialed to 100%. 

I don't really care about the best 4K ultra sharp realistic graphics. I like KSP1s art style and simplistic graphics aswell. So well infact, I sunk ~ 4200 hours into it over the years. 

But what I've seen so far in regards of postfx, performance and processing is literally making my eyes hurt. 

 

What's going on? 

 

 

I watch that video with it's brightly emblazoned "Pre Alpha Capture" watermark... and it makes me want to play more.

All this 'graphix are suxors' stuff lately has me scratching my head.  It's KSP... too.

I don't expect RDR2

[Kerbart]

2 hours ago, Mantarochen said:

Hey, 

I was wondering if I'm the only one that thinks that the gameplay footage so far looks really, really strange. 

We are less then a month from release and I have to admit... The footage we've been given access to thus far looks bad. I mean really bad.

I grew up with a TRS-80. I think your definition of "bad" needs calibrating.

2 hours ago, Mantarochen said:

I might be blind, but there is either 0 AA, or the image is scaled to 720P. Look at the hangar. There are gigantic steps everywhere, the edges look horrible.

The only "steps" I see are at the hangar door which is made of giant panels that slide on top of each other. Search for "NASA VAB" and you'll the same kind of stepping. That's not lack of AA or bad post-processing, that's just how the building is constructed.

 

2 hours ago, Mantarochen said:

What's going on?

A couple of things:

• The video you're using as a showcase says with big fat letters PRE-ALPHA CAPTURE, so there's that
• Stay away from Instagram, if the post processing on the imaging here makes your eyes hurt, wait until you see the IG filters
• Video captured on a dev machine looking bad? Maybe they had other things to do, and the request was just "send me 10 seconds of video capture what you're working on." It's not a car commercial for the superbowl.
• When I see an over-the-top critical response, I almost think "here' somebody who just wants to show off how good their post processing skills are and how this isn't up to their standards." Almost. I'm not saying that's the case here but it surely passes the duck test.

I'm sure the the game is in a release-ready state but that doesn't mean that the entire team isn't working their bottoms off for the finishing touches to get the best possible product out of the door. Sneak peek videos and stills are just that; sneak peeks. I don't think everyone 99% of their audience is going to look critically at the quality of the images, there will be much more emphasis on what's being offered in the picture.

Edited February 1, 2023 by Kerbart

[Domonian]

3 hours ago, Mantarochen said:

What's going on? 

While not confirmed that this is the case for every clip or screenshot, one of the Community Managers over on the Discord said that, in response to comments about low FPS/bad visuals, the Unity editor has poor FPS (or whatever it's "preview screen" is), and different builds may have different settings enabled. We've seen the sneak peeks improve in quality over the last couple of weeks, which is nice. We also know that the gameplay shown to content creators back in 2019 at PAX East (West maybe idk) was smooth, and didn't appear to have jagged lines. Apparently it can take days to get the game from the Unity editor to a "game package," which would be what we'll be playing, so often times devs just use the preview window. This is only from what I've seen myself, and cannot confirm that they are using said preview window. It would explain a lot of things if they were though.

As for stuff like the clouds... I have no idea. 

[Mantarochen]

Well, nice to hear some differentiating opinions. And yeah, no one really knows besides the devs. We'll see in 23 days. 

I'm waiting so long for this game already, the preview just got me a bit spooked. And yes, ofc you can't compare this to games from XX years, okay. Compared to them, even a unity tech demo looks good. 

 

I just feel like the postfx / processing looks off. And that's something that often translates across various graphics settings. That had me worried. You can have the best 12K textures, if your postfx is shiet, the image is blurred, over sharpened or lacks proper AA it's all for nothing. 

I love that style on ksp1, where you have ultra sharp AA and 0 blur whatsoever. Might look a bit worse but feels so much better gameplay wise.

Edited February 1, 2023 by Mantarochen

[Gargamel]

Overlapping threads have been merged. 

[Alexoff]

I wonder on which computer the video with FPS drawdowns was filmed? If it's 4090, then I'll probably refrain from buying the game.

[Kerbart]

37 minutes ago, Alexoff said:

I wonder on which computer the video with FPS drawdowns was filmed? If it's 4090, then I'll probably refrain from buying the game.

I agree. Making an informed decision based on postfixed screenshots made on a beta version three months ago is much better than based on twitch and youtube videos once the game comes out. Why rely on that for making a decision to buy the game?

[Guest]

14 hours ago, Alexoff said:

I wonder on which computer the video with FPS drawdowns was filmed? If it's 4090, then I'll probably refrain from buying the game.

If you genuinely want to ask questions like those and not just make noise on the forum, you'd better just  wait for this 25 days to pass and ask how the performance is here or on the Discord.

[Alexoff]

On 2/2/2023 at 11:41 PM, Kerbart said:

I agree. Making an informed decision based on postfixed screenshots made on a beta version three months ago is much better than based on twitch and youtube videos once the game comes out. Why rely on that for making a decision to buy the game?

Well, if on twitch or YouTube they stream KSP2 with such a frame rate at 4090, then I will understand that I was right. And if at 970 then I'm wrong and I'll change my mind. But so far there is only this video.

[Bej Kerman]

On 2/1/2023 at 12:47 AM, Mantarochen said:

I might be blind, but there is either 0 AA, or the image is scaled to 720P. Look at the hangar. There are gigantic steps everywhere, the edges look horrible.

 

It is recorded from the Unity editor.

[p331083]

On 1/31/2023 at 9:09 PM, Domonian said:

While not confirmed that this is the case for every clip or screenshot, one of the Community Managers over on the Discord said that, in response to comments about low FPS/bad visuals, the Unity editor has poor FPS (or whatever it's "preview screen" is), and different builds may have different settings enabled. We've seen the sneak peeks improve in quality over the last couple of weeks, which is nice. We also know that the gameplay shown to content creators back in 2019 at PAX East (West maybe idk) was smooth, and didn't appear to have jagged lines. Apparently it can take days to get the game from the Unity editor to a "game package," which would be what we'll be playing, so often times devs just use the preview window. This is only from what I've seen myself, and cannot confirm that they are using said preview window. It would explain a lot of things if they were though.

As for stuff like the clouds... I have no idea. 

If the game was so close to release they shouldnt have a problem producing content that reflects what will be released. 2-3 yeas ago they showed a "pre alpha" product that had significantly more graphical fidelity than what weve been seen the past month or two in the run up to release.

That should make you start asking some questions, not making excuses but from my browsing on here a huge amount of people are doing everything they can to explain the very clear warnings signs weve seen about KSP2.

[MechBFP]

57 minutes ago, p331083 said:

If the game was so close to release they shouldnt have a problem producing content that reflects what will be released. 2-3 yeas ago they showed a "pre alpha" product that had significantly more graphical fidelity than what weve been seen the past month or two in the run up to release.

That should make you start asking some questions, not making excuses but from my browsing on here a huge amount of people are doing everything they can to explain the very clear warnings signs weve seen about KSP2.

The proof is in the pudding on release day so we will see. If they end up being right you certainly won’t be anywhere to be found though so that is why no one really cares. 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

2 hours ago, p331083 said:

That should make you start asking some questions

The questions I keep asking myself are 'why are these people worried about the least important part of the game' and 'why do they keep posting over and over again about something so trivial'?

Riddle me that, riddler

[p331083]

3 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Riddle me that, riddler

Because its the most obvious thing to see thats been cut without having to play the game?

Its not specifically about the graphics. Its about showing X feature, saying X feature is going to be in the game then here we are about to release and all the sudden X feature isnt anywhere to be seen. If they are cutting graphical fidelity what else are they cutting? Its a game delayed by nearly 2 years and delayed 3 times, thats a very worrisome sign.

  

5 hours ago, MechBFP said:

If they end up being right you certainly won’t be anywhere to be found though so that is why no one really cares. 

Not caring that these companies happily lie to you is why games continue to be released like this.

Edited February 5, 2023 by p331083

[Vl3d]

5 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

'why are these people worried about the least important part of the game'

Because graphics are very important, they incentivise players to explore and immerse themselves in the game.

Also we've only seen graphics related screenshots and we have not really been shown new / improved game mechanics.

[GoldForest]

12 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

Because graphics are very important, they incentivise players to explore and immerse themselves in the game.

Also we've only seen graphics related screenshots and we have not really been shown new / improved game mechanics.

People will explore with movie style graphics or voxel style pixels. Most people don't care about graphics, they care about gameplay. 

Look at the Earth Defense Force franchise. This B-movie style game is loved by all, or at least most, who play it. It doesn't have the best graphics in the world. Actually, it still looks like a late PS2 early PS3 game, but people love it because it's fun. It has the simplest concept in the world. Shoot the bad guys. There are no fancy missions, no top-of-the-line graphics and only until recently did it get an actual story behind it.  It's all just shoot the bugs and aliens. That's it. Every mission is kind of the same too, safe for a few boss battles sprinkled in. But still, it is loved.

As for new/improved game mechanics, do you really want to be spoiled before launch, so you have nothing to explore for yourself? We are 19 days away. 19! I don't know about you, but I'm fine with them not showing anything major. I want to see for myself all the new mechanics and planetary features.

(end of reply)

Also, I'd just like to point out something that everyone seems to keep forgetting... ahem... 

!!!KSP 2 IS EARLY ACCESS!!!

Seriously, everyone complaining about "The clouds don't look right" or "The graphics suck." or "Feature X, Y or Z doesn't look right!" is kind of getting a little annoying. It's early access guys. Things will improve. 

The game is not complete. It is not ready for prime time. 

Their MAIN focus right now is to get KSP 2 into a playable state so that they can test the under the hood coding and mechanics. A lot of stuff is not important to them right now. Play the game, send in bug reports, send in feedback, make suggestions. That's how you improve the game. Do that in 19 days.

Edited February 5, 2023 by GoldForest