Report: 90 Minute Playtest

[0111narwhalz]

I played stock KSP1 and KSP2 for about an hour and a half each to understand where these titles stand with relation to one another. Unfortunately I was in a bit of a rush to get everything done, so I didn't get any screenshots of KSP2.

Let's get the system information and performance out of the way.

Spoiler

GPU: RX 5700 8GB

CPU: R5 3600

RAM: 32GB

OS: Linux (Kubuntu), running the game in all-defaults Proton Experimental

Game build 0.1.0.0.20892

 

Observed Performance:

High settings, 1080p

- Editor: 20 FPS
- Flight, looking at ground: 12 FPS
- Flight, looking at sky: 18 FPS

High settings, 1440p
- Flight, looking at ground: 8 FPS
- Flight, looking at sky: 12 FPS

Settings changes other than resolution made no significant difference. For some reason it ships with no antialiasing, which makes it look really bad.

My playtest consisted of two parts: a small plane and a Mün rocket.

The Plane

My intent for the plane was to try out the aerodynamics and inspect the terrain.

Design of the plane was reasonably straightforward. The procedural wings are on par with KSP1's B9 Procedural Wings, without needing a weird hotkey to access the wing parameters. However, I did have an issue selecting certain wing parts after they had been placed. I speculate that this is related to the collider not being regenerated with the new wing shape. Luckily, I was able to tune a different wing part to suit my needs.

It seems that the thickness of a wing part has a notable effect in its lift characteristics. Without changing the other parameters, I increased the thickness of the foreplanes, and the pitch authority increased markedly.

I flew it to the mountains west of the KSC and was favorably impressed by the terrain quality. Where KSP1 has a jagged Perlin noise ridge with terrain polygons a hundred meters across, KSP2 has a pretty well detailed hillside. They seem a bit further away now, or at any rate don't loom on the horizon like they used to. It's a bit of a shame losing the landmark, but the quality is much better. Terrain scatter was distributed a bit oddly, with trees in weird clumps and massive open spaces between them, but I don't really expect too much from a low priority feature like ground scatter right now. Suffice it to say, I look forward to exploring this terrain by rover in the future.

SAS was a persistent issue in my play. It feels massively overtuned and has a difficult time converging. The twitchiness makes it consume a lot of RCS fuel (during the Mün rocket component of the playtest) and I spent most of my time with the plane flying with it off.

Unfortunately I crashed the plane during the KSP2 test, while trying to land it on the mountains. Rather than flying back east and over the KSC, I reverted to launch for the flight across to the island. Still, the trip was long enough to really appreciate what has been done with physics timewarp. Apart from exacerbating the twitchiness of SAS, there was no apparent loss of sim quality. The wings stayed on with maneuver and the plane stayed on target (with SAS off).

I flew over to the island runway. They really did it dirty, I think. Gone are the ruins. Now there are two small tent-like buildings and a… water tower? I think it would have been more suitable to preserve some of the history of KSP with the structures there. Or maybe one level of memorial objects is enough? Still, it seems a step backwards compared to the KSC's massive leap forwards, in terms of story. There's not even decaying pavement, it's just a dirt strip.

And here I will talk about a bug I encountered, not in KSP2 but in KSP1. The island was flayed open, a torn-up chunk of terrain hovering over the runway. I think it's only fair to acknowledge that KSP1 is not perfect either.

Anyways, I "landed" the plane on the island runway and concluded the test.

The Mün Rocket

My intent for the Mün rocket was to examine the rocket launch experience, rendezvous and docking, landing, rovers in reduced gravity, and the terrain of the Mün's poles. I wasn't able to achieve all of these goals in the time I allotted myself, running out of time by the Mün intercept.

The design of the rocket exposed a few more issues with the editor. First, I wasn't able to build a fairing to my requirements, because it refused to allow me to add segments except under circumstances I didn't understand. Then, while designing a bellylander with a cargo bay, the center of thrust indicator failed to appear. Finally, parts seem to be "sticky" and really do not want to be placed into "scratch space" as single-part assemblies if they have ever touched another part.

As for editor ergonomics: I don't particularly like the way mirror symmetry is on the same "cycle" as the other symmetry modes. I'd much prefer to be able to toggle it. Additionally, I'm not sure how to grab the entire assembly from an arbitrary part. In KSP1, this is done by shift-clicking a part. The reroot tool ("anchor") is sticky and I have to select the transform tool to get rid of it.

Regardless, I was able to build a rover, a lander, a transfer stage, and a lifter. The lifter served very well (once I put some fins on the back), though the per-stage dV tracker did not function and I had to use the global dV tracker.

Orbit was straightforward enough. I fought the SAS most of the way up, but with RCS and thrust vectoring it went fine. Rendezvous as well: a textbook high-energy intercept. Turns out you can pin intercept data, but it closes as soon as you open the maneuver node.

Docking was a bit more exciting than it needed to be, what with the SAS misbehavior, but I encountered no new issues.

During the transmünar injection burn, my transfer stage ran dry and I discovered while burning with my lander that burning under warp did not work. Fuel went down but my velocity did not increase. I'm not sure if this was also to blame for my transfer stage running dry, or if I simply failed to calculate the requirements correctly.

Finally, I set up a low Mün periapsis, and a maneuver to capture into orbit. I pressed the autowarp button and… immediately crashed into the Mün at high timewarp. Perhaps the SOI transition knocked something off? Either way the auto timewarp needs to be more conservative. I suspect it would have overshot my node even if the collision had not occurred.

 

Conclusion

That was 98 minutes of playtime, so I concluded the test. In KSP1, I completed all objectives, including landing on the Mün and driving/jetpacking to its south pole, in 107 minutes. I probably could have managed more in KSP2, but I'd like to keep some margin open for refund if I choose to use it.

I encountered nothing truly gamebreaking, no crashes, and no major krakens. My rocket design was conservative, but even so there was no excessive floppiness. Performance was… well, it was bad, but from what I hear there are Big Issues, and those are always easier to deal with than a myriad of small issues. I found that my personal limit to performance is somewhere around 10–12 FPS. If I get that, I can consider it playable. Below that, it is not playable. So I'll be stuck with upscaled 1080p until performance improves. Again, not breaking, but not good either.

I mentioned that I might want to refund the game. I want to keep this option open. Based on my test, I do not think that Intercept cannot make KSP2 into something great. However, I am not yet ready to invest my trust in this team and this project. If Intercept proves themselves to me, then I will put forward my trust and fully commit to KSP2. They can do this in one simple way: Release a patch, within my refund period (i.e. on or before March 14), which addresses at least one glaring performance issue and provides a genuine attempt at transparency into the development process. I understand that not every indie or "indie" developer is on the same level as Wube, but I do not think it is out of line to expect this much from Intercept.

Edited March 3, 2023 by 0111narwhalz
Fixing word wrap (how did that even happen)

[Moons]

Not sure what you did wrong - but your text is unreadable since it has a horizontal scrolling bar?

Edited March 3, 2023 by Moons

[0111narwhalz]

I have no idea. I just pasted it in from a plaintext editor, and it looks fine on my mobile browser. I'll investigate it when I get to my desktop.

Edited March 3, 2023 by 0111narwhalz

[Moons]

I cant recreate what you did - are you sure its just plain text? I can remove my postings later on but since you put a lot of work into your text i thought i would just tell you ^^

 

Ok i foudn the issue - everything below your hidden comments seems to have some different format - when i copy it i get the same results - when i copy it in editor and back here its normal.

Edited March 3, 2023 by Moons

[0111narwhalz]

Huh. Alright, I'll start there. Thanks for the experiments.

(And there's no need to delete your comments.)

[0111narwhalz]

That should do it.

[0111narwhalz]

An update: I tried it on a Windows computer with almost identical specs and got the following performance in flight at 1440p high:
Looking up at the sky: 60 FPS
Looking down at the ground: 30 FPS
Looking at the horizon: 15 FPS

This is much more tolerable and softens my view of the performance issues. It is merely a Linux Gaming Moment.™ All the same, I look forward to reaching parity with the game on Windows, either through improvements in performance with Proton or through a native Linux build.

[Arugela]

That is good news in a way. Looking forward to proton updates.