Developer Insights #18 - Graphics of Early Access KSP2

[RayneCloud]

47 minutes ago, MiffedStarfish said:

But the planets just don't look good outside of the map view? Like what are you even talking about? I can look at Kerbin and see jagged square tiles of terrain where it intersects the ocean at basically any range, nearby hills appear as perfect triangles because the quality vs distance is worse than KSP. That's not an improvement. I don't care if it apparently never looks like it repeats when the ground looks magnitudes worse overall, the scatter assets seem to be UV unwrapped more incorrectly than not, the mountain ranges have shrunk ridiculously and are completely unimpressive and unexciting now?

Like usual the game you talk about and the reality of the game in our hands are completely different things.

That's just like, your opinion man. It's also one I don't agree with, and one I think you are absolutely wrong on if you bother exploring any of the planets and see things that KSP 1 could not generate.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

2 hours ago, Nate Simpson said:

I see a few people here interpreting Mortoc's post as an admission that we just took the terrain system from KSP1, slapped a new coat of paint on it, and called it PQS+. I'd like to clarify a few points here - again, from a non-specialist perspective, but based on what I witnessed as our terrain system evolved. While PQS+ does tessellate terrain in the same way that the original system did (that is to say, increasing the poly count when an observer/object gets close to the surface), it also does many, many things that the older system did not and is fundamentally a new system. Among the new requirements - it needed to support triplanar mapping, it needed to allow our terrain artists to intermix multiple distinct biomes in ways that looked good at all scales, it needed to support many octaves of detail so that artificial-looking patterns did not emerge at either high or low altitudes, it needed to support the addition of topology-defining decals for areas of high detail, and it required painstaking co-development with our environment artists to give them the tools to bring all of those things together in a way that looked natural and beautiful. I am actually quite proud of the progress made by our team on this system. I'm also very excited about ongoing performance improvements, as well as all the amazing new tech that Mortoc is developing.

PQS+ has performance challenges, but it has brought a huge number of new capabilities to KSP2 - namely, unlocking the vision of our creative team so that they could reimagine the Kerbolar System and craft the new star systems that will arrive over the course of Early Access. I think the new planets look stunning, and I think the terrain system almost does itself a disservice by doing so many formerly impossible things so well - for example, highly varied planetary surfaces betraying no tiling or biome transitions at high altitudes, or procedurally mixing different kinds of terrain so seamlessly that you forget how magical it is that nothing ever actually repeats. It provided us with the ability to be ambitious in our vision for KSP2, and I'm very thankful to the many people who worked very hard on the system to get it to where it is today.

That said, Mortoc is super rad and we're all pumped to see what comes next!

and @Dakota - would you mind asking Mortoc to add a bit to his article?  Specifically how the new system he's developing will be able to take the existing assets the environmental artists created and port them to the new build?  That kind of information is fascinating for those of us who don't work in game development but have followed the industry for a while.  FWIW I really enjoyed his article... just eagerly want more (when he's got time!).

[Strawberry]

3 minutes ago, HopelessSoap said:

Oh neat I took that picture! That picture was on low settings as well, no clue how much better itd look if the settings were higher. But yeah I think the terrain in general feels nicer then from what Ive seen from ksp1s modded. There's some steps backs (performance is probably the biggest), but theres definitely many steps forward. Since terrain system is backbone the look of it also depends on where you're at, the flats of mun will look less impressive then the canyons of Eeloo just due to its design, so snapshots can be misleading. The scatter system also from what Ive seen can look really good, I wish areas like the mun had much more small scatter as the game can support it. From what I've seen of it Tylo's scatter looks great for example. Tylo anomaly spoiler below, but ksp2 scatter can look good.

Spoiler

I don't think the game always fully utilizes its systems, but when they do they can look great. I can't for the new terrain system so these systems can truly shine.

 

Mortoc posted some more info on the subreddit post about the dev diary: https://www.reddit.com/user/Mortoc/comments/

Some things that stuck out to me were:

"That said I don't wanna downplay how much work it'll be. We need to not just build it but make sure it's performant across a lot of video cards and then make sure it's a solid system. It also means replacing the previous system gradually rather than all at once because it's too easy to break the game by doing large changes."

This means that we will see CBT not only gradually introduced, but also the optimizations from CBT as well. So we wont have to be waiting months to see the benefits. 

In response to "Yeah hight maps cannot do caves", "Luckily we won't be doing just height maps ;)" and also "I can't promise any specific feature because we're still working on it and it'll be TBD what actually makes it into the game. That said, the new terrain system will be much more flexible than the existing one for both our team and for modders to do weird stuff with it. As a developer I'm pretty weird-stuff motivated, so this is something I'm excited about."

It sounds like the current plan is to not just change the graphics side of things, but also change how terrain works, while as they said this is early on and plans change, this additional functionality excites me a lot. Judging by Mortoc's reddit comments the guy seems qualified and this seems to be in the right hands here, so I am very excited for it.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

3 minutes ago, RayneCloud said:

That's just like, your opinion man. It's also one I don't agree with, and one I think you are absolutely wrong on if you bother exploring any of the planets and see things that KSP 1 could not generate.

Actually - that may be a performance issue / memory issue.  I saw that for the first time today while flying near the coast due west of KSC - in the direction you'd go if you were flying to the pyramids (thank you warp!).  I'd had the game on for a very long time and was getting about 12 FPS.  Thought I saw an interesting object in the distance - very square; the straight lines distinct against the normal Kerbin background.

Then - I caught on.  It was (like my plane) glitching.  The plane, FWIW had parts that worked floating about and disconnected from the craft, so something larger was going on.  Thus, I'm guessing that for some people, on weaker systems especially, grossly cubic terrain might be what they're seeing.

[stackocakes]

2 hours ago, Nate Simpson said:

I see a few people here interpreting Mortoc's post as an admission that we just took the terrain system from KSP1, slapped a new coat of paint on it, and called it PQS+. I'd like to clarify a few points here - again, from a non-specialist perspective, but based on what I witnessed as our terrain system evolved. While PQS+ does tessellate terrain in the same way that the original system did (that is to say, increasing the poly count when an observer/object gets close to the surface), it also does many, many things that the older system did not and is fundamentally a new system. Among the new requirements - it needed to support triplanar mapping, it needed to allow our terrain artists to intermix multiple distinct biomes in ways that looked good at all scales, it needed to support many octaves of detail so that artificial-looking patterns did not emerge at either high or low altitudes, it needed to support the addition of topology-defining decals for areas of high detail, and it required painstaking co-development with our environment artists to give them the tools to bring all of those things together in a way that looked natural and beautiful. I am actually quite proud of the progress made by our team on this system. I'm also very excited about ongoing performance improvements, as well as all the amazing new tech that Mortoc is developing.

PQS+ has performance challenges, but it has brought a huge number of new capabilities to KSP2 - namely, unlocking the vision of our creative team so that they could reimagine the Kerbolar System and craft the new star systems that will arrive over the course of Early Access. I think the new planets look stunning, and I think the terrain system almost does itself a disservice by doing so many formerly impossible things so well - for example, highly varied planetary surfaces betraying no tiling or biome transitions at high altitudes, or procedurally mixing different kinds of terrain so seamlessly that you forget how magical it is that nothing ever actually repeats. It provided us with the ability to be ambitious in our vision for KSP2, and I'm very thankful to the many people who worked very hard on the system to get it to where it is today.

That said, Mortoc is super rad and we're all pumped to see what comes next!

Nate, This post is unreadable in the new Dark Theme options for the forums with the color applied.

[RocketRockington]

26 minutes ago, RayneCloud said:

That's just like, your opinion man. It's also one I don't agree with, and one I think you are absolutely wrong on if you bother exploring any of the planets and see things that KSP 1 could not generate.

Could not generate or did not?  I haven't seen a single screenshot of KSP2 that has had anything that a KSP1 mod hasn't done.  Of course, I haven't viewed every screenshot, so what thing are you referring to? 

[B15hop]

Sounds like you know your stuff. I look forward to seeing what rabbits you can pull out of the hat. Cheers and welcome to the party. Good luck lol.

Edited March 11, 2023 by B15hop

[Vanamonde]

You can be unhappy with the state of the game without accusing others of dishonesty. Some comments removed. 

[IronGremlin]

19 minutes ago, RocketRockington said:

I didn't say it was.  I'm just saying modders added triplanar mapping to KSP. Nothing about the old PQS precluded it - which is what Nate told us 

Claiming that it was 'impossible' to support a feature under the old system when modders, who don't even have full access to the code, added, is a falsehood.  Especially because his explanation makes no sense to someone who knows the jargon he's speaking about.

 

No, what Nate said was that PQS+ added a lot of capabilities that PQS did not support, and that the effort as a whole was large and required extensive changes.

Triplanar mapping was included along with a laundry list of other new requirements out of the terrain rendering system as a whole.

 

The conversation does suffer somewhat from "PQS" simultaneously being the name given to the terrain rendering system of KSP, and also being a more general technique for rendering terrain, but given that you're not using "PQS" that way either, I don't think you can authentically accuse Nate of misusing the term.

 

 

[zapata21]

Yay visual update!! 

I look forward to it! 

[Periple]

5 hours ago, RocketRockington said:

Guess which one of these screenshots is modded KSP1, and which is KSP2?  Maybe KSP2 has more quads in scene, or is running more lines of shader code, but subjectively - I know which game's appearance I prefer.  

Now do Kerbin from low orbit!

[RocketRockington]

38 minutes ago, Periple said:

Now do Kerbin from low orbit!

Happy to.  But maybe you should pick a different KSP2 image than I got when I searched up KSP kerbin?  Or you can keep the one I picked, your choice, it does show off a key KSP2 feature.  Top one is KSP2 naturally for those that might not be able to guess.

[Whippler]

9 hours ago, Intercept Games said:

Another area that will see a major shift in visual quality and performance is bringing the game up to Unity’s modern renderer, HDRP (read more about HDRP here if you’re curious, it rocks). The main benefits we get from HDRP are a more optimized render engine, which means faster framerates, and a more flexible shader model, which means more effective dev team efforts. It’ll also make it easier for visual mods to be built. As a sidenote, despite how much we love you modders, this change will definitely break most visual mods (sorry modders, sometimes we must hurt the ones we love). 

These in-progress changes will allow us to build more scientifically grounded yet fantastical worlds for the Kerbals to explore for years to come.  

Any insight to why  you have chosen HDRP over URP? Showed the post to my game dev friend and he said that its just going to be even more resource heavy platform, and why aren't they going with URP it would be lighter (another new graphics platform in unity)? Since its already so hard to run at this point on the old platform.

[Periple]

22 minutes ago, RocketRockington said:

Happy to.  But maybe you should pick a different KSP2 image than I got when I searched up KSP kerbin?  Or you can keep the one I picked, your choice, it does show off a key KSP2 feature.  Top one is KSP2 naturally for those that might not be able to guess.

Which topography do you prefer, KSP1's or KSP2's?

[RocketRockington]

2 hours ago, IronGremlin said:

No, what Nate said was that PQS+ added a lot of capabilities that PQS did not support, and that the effort as a whole was large and required extensive changes.

Triplanar mapping was included along with a laundry list of other new requirements out of the terrain rendering system as a whole.

So he's saying we shouldn't take Mortoc statements out of context that PQS + is just a copy of PQS.  And then he's supporting his arguments by listing this that have nothing to do with PQS?

So... how does that make the situation better, in your mind?  That he's not being disingenuous, he's just making a terrible argument.  "I didn't copy my history homework from Alice.  Look, my math homework is clearly not a copy, I got an answer right that Alice didn't"  Ok, if that's what you think is happening, sure.   Instead of misrepresentation, its just an attempt at confusion and misdirection.   I could buy that.  Still is deceitful though.

And generally, he's listing things that he's CLAIMING that KSP's terrain system couldn't do then, and I'm saying "No, KSP could do that".  So that's also, at the very least, wrong, if not deceitful.

I'll go you a step further.  I only picked the triplanar mapping because it was easy to show that that was false, just point to Parallax .

But his other jargon is wrong too.
"it needed to allow our terrain artists to intermix multiple distinct biomes in ways that looked good at all scales"
KSP2's biome mixing doesn't do anything that KSP1's does, visually.  Argueably its worse.   

" it needed to support many octaves of detail so that artificial-looking patterns did not emerge at either high or low altitudes"
Depending on if he's talking about textures (which have nothing to do with PQS)  - KSP can support 'octaves of detail' just fine.  Mostly that comes down to the texture sampling techniques used, and mods can change the shaders and how textures are sampled.  Literally nothing KSP2 does besides deferred rendering - which doesn't impact planet texture sampling - can't be done in KSP

If he's speaking about geometry generation - which would make more sense since he's speaking about PQS+, then the general PQS algorithm lets you decide how much subdivision you want to do - at the cost of performance.  And since clearly PQS+'s performance is not giving good results, there's not much arguement to say it outdoes PQS.

"it needed to support the addition of topology-defining decals for areas of high detail"  This is something the stock game already does.  That's how KSP flattens the terrain for things like KSC.   And Kerbal Konstructs extends it to do other things 

 "and it required painstaking co-development with our environment artists to give them the tools to bring all of those things together in a way that looked natural and beautiful"  This is one I can't say much about.  Likely stock KSP and modder tools for KSP terrain painting are not as good as what KSP2 has.  But it's unlikely those tools COULDN'T have been written - 'impossible' as he said - just that they weren't.
 
Overall though - his claims that KSP2's PQS+ system does backflips that KSP1's PQS system could not - really fall flat to me.
 

5 minutes ago, Periple said:

Which topography do you prefer, KSP1's or KSP2's?

tbh I'm kinda mixed on that.  I liked KSP1's mountain heights, as just a challenge and for gameplay variety, something to fly around.. But KSP2's are more realistic for Kerbin's size, and KSP1's sharp, tall mountains are one of the places it looks the worst visually, probably a reason they got flattened some.   So visually I'll definitely give that to KSP2.

Edited March 11, 2023 by RocketRockington

[Periple]

5 minutes ago, RocketRockington said:

tbh I'm kinda mixed on that.

Oh OK. I think KSP2 is miles and miles ahead in this respect. The planets look like planets where KSP1's planets looked like fuzzy blobs. 

[fs86]

11 minutes ago, Whippler said:

Any insight to why  you have chosen HDRP over URP? Showed the post to my game dev friend and he said that its just going to be even more resource heavy platform, and why aren't they going with URP it would be lighter (another new graphics platform in unity)? Since its already so hard to run at this point on the old platform.

I'm not a game dev but found this post. May be interesting for you. https://forum.unity.com/threads/hdrp-vs-urp-what-is-the-tradeoff.1251384/

[RocketRockington]

3 minutes ago, Periple said:

Oh OK. I think KSP2 is miles and miles ahead in this respect. The planets look like planets where KSP1's planets looked like fuzzy blobs. 

Fuzzy blobs are actually more realistically planet-like, when you're looking at one from space.  Stock KSP's render is way too clean.    So I dunno what you're talking about here.   This is stock Kerbin.  How is that a 'fuzzy blob'?  And what does that have to do with the mountains?   

 

 

Edited March 11, 2023 by RocketRockington

[Whippler]

4 minutes ago, fs86 said:

I'm not a game dev but found this post. May be interesting for you. https://forum.unity.com/threads/hdrp-vs-urp-what-is-the-tradeoff.1251384/

Yeah, looks like hdrp will be able to provide better graphics, lets hope they can pull it off with decent performance tough.

[Periple]

6 minutes ago, RocketRockington said:

Fuzzy blobs are actually more realistically planet-like, when you're looking at one from space.  Stock KSP's render is way too clean.    So I dunno what you're talking about here.   This is stock Kerbin.  How is that a 'fuzzy blob'?  And what does that have to do with the mountains?   

Here's a couple of pictures of Earth from low orbit:

I think Kerbin from low orbit in KSP1 looks like a fuzzy blob in comparison, even with ALL THE MODS, whereas in KSP2 it evokes something more like this.

Edited March 11, 2023 by Periple

[RocketRockington]

32 minutes ago, Periple said:

I think Kerbin from low orbit in KSP1 looks like a fuzzy blob in comparison, even with ALL THE MODS, whereas in KSP2 it evokes something more like this.

Then put up some screenshots of KSP2.  And I'll see if I can match them with modded KSP1 screenshots that show that KSP1's engine could do just as well, no need to use this magic PQS+ system that does things that were 'impossoble' before.

Screenshots of Earth aren't meaningful in this discussion.

[Periple]

44 minutes ago, RocketRockington said:

Then put up some screenshots of KSP2.  And I'll see if I can match them with modded KSP1 screenshots that show that KSP1's engine could do just as well, no need to use this magic PQS+ system that does things that were 'impossoble' before.

Okay!

Edit: Another one! 

Edited March 11, 2023 by Periple

[Dantheollie]

6 hours ago, Nate Simpson said:

I'm very thankful to the many people who worked very hard on the system to get it to where it is today.

This is the type of statement that gives me confidence the game is in good hands.

Although I can't comment on what external pressures led to KSP2's current release, and I can't imagine the constant stress of enduring the vitriol of a large part of the community, while remaining stoic to continue the long road of work ahead... 

I deeply admire your perseverance, and I tremendously admire the grueling work of everyone involved.

People make games, not machines. I think everyone, regardless of what side of the aisle they are on, can agree with that.

Cheers! I know KSP2 will become the game you envisioned, and which the community has dreamt of these past 4 years 

[Vl3d]

In conclusion, I think we should be grateful and excited. Grateful that PQS+ is fine for now if the performance and textures can be improved. Excited that KSP2 will get a big update and will look absolutely stunning in the future. Just look at videos of what modern HDRP Unity can do.. it's mind blowing. Onward!

[RocketRockington]

@Periple So there's no geometry on stock KSP1 Kerbin that looks like the nice water-sculpted mountain valleys of KSP2 and I'll grant the artists on KSP2 did a much better job generating realistic terrain.

But of course - I only have to show what KSP's engine can do, not the one artist that KSP1 had do Kerbin and which couldn't be changed after without borking everyone's landed craft.

So here's RSS's mountains.  The lighting feels a little overexposed, I do think KSP2's deferred renderer can do a better job with lighting (at the cost of nuking the framerate), but you can easily get the atmospheric fuzziness down with a quick change to scatterer's settings.  Oh, and also?  That little133 from the show FPS mod up in the corner?  That's my frame rate on my i7 12700H / 3070m laptop.   

Edited March 11, 2023 by RocketRockington