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The Upcoming Features of Update 0.23!


SQUAD

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<p>Greetings Kerbanauts from all over the world! We are beyond thrilled to share the features we are working on for update 0.23:</p>

<ul><li><span><span><strong>Tweakables:</strong> One of the most anticipated features by veteran KSP players, as it allows players the chance to “tweak†how parts work during construction of their rockets and space planes.</span></span></li>

</ul>

<ul><li><span><span><strong>Science Revisions:</strong> Transmission logic is being redone as well as the way experiments can be reset to improve usability while keeping it challenging.</span></span></li>

</ul><p></p>

<ul><li><span><span><strong>Science Lab Module:</strong> A new ship part that lets Kerbalnauts test and analyze experiment results while still in the field.</span></span></li>

</ul>

<ul><li><span><span><strong>3D Mouse Support:</strong> Squad is working with 3Dconnexion to introduce this feature to KSP.</span></span></li>

</ul><p></p>

<ul><li><span><span><strong>Optimizations:</strong> This update should feature load time and overall performance improvements.</span></span></li>

</ul>

<p><span><span>For more information, jump straight into HarversteR’s blog post here:</span></span></p>

<p><span><span><a href="http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/content/234-0-23-Update-News"><a href="http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/content/234-0-23-Update-News">http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/content/234-0-23-Update-News</a></a></span></span></p>

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Does the announcement about a Unity engine upgrade include things like multi-threading, 64 bit support, or other overall improvements for people with hardware they can't fully utilize?

I am so pumped for the tweakable bits and steerable landing gear.

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<ul><li><span><span><strong>Tweakables:</strong> One of the most anticipated features by veteran KSP players, as it allows players the chance to “tweak†how parts work during construction of their rockets and space planes.</span></span></li></ul>

Interesting. I'm not quite sure how that will work, but I look forward to finding out.

<ul><li><span><span><strong>Science Revisions:</strong> Transmission logic is being redone as well as the way experiments can be reset to improve usability while keeping it challenging.</span></span></li>

</ul><p></p>

<ul><li><span><span><strong>Science Lab Module:</strong> A new ship part that lets Kerbalnauts test and analyze experiment results while still in the field.</span></span></li>

</ul>

Both great news!

<ul><li><span><span><strong>3D Mouse Support:</strong> Squad is working with 3Dconnexion to introduce this feature to KSP.</span></span></li>

</ul><p></p>

Not quite sure what that means.

<ul><li><span><span><strong>Optimizations:</strong> This update should feature load time and overall performance improvements.</span></span></li>

</ul>

Can't go wrong with that!

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I like the progress. The current model quickly descended into land, spam transmissions get 600 science. So a lab + reset limit is good.

As for the lab module I'd think it be cooler with less windows. I kind of expected wall to wall science.

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I don't think 3D mouse support is something that will really help everyone. It's expensive, especially compared to the game's price. But, because it is being added, it probably just got my money just to use this for KSP.

EDIT: Apparently the 3D mouse isn't really even a real mouse, it can't move the cursor.

Edited by GregroxMun
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Will tweakables allow us to choose the type of propellant in the fuel tanks before hand or at least allow us to choose the amount of fuel (full tank/empty tank?). It sucks making a stock space shuttle with the fuselage filled with a few tons of useless jet fuel.

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Does the announcement about a Unity engine upgrade include things like multi-threading, 64 bit support, or other overall improvements for people with hardware they can't fully utilize?

It's possible that 64 bit support will be more viable with this version of Unity. There's at least one bug that was fixed between the version of Unity that KSP has been using since 0.18.4 and the version of Unity that's being evaluated for use that would have, by itself, prevented the devs from being able to create a 64 bit windows client for KSP. I have no clue whether or not all such Unity bugs have been fixed.

On the other hand, while it wasn't mentioned in this article, at least some of the optimizations should reduce the memory usage according to the interview on the dev stream where this was originally discussed. It was before 0.22 came out, but the optimizations didn't make it into 0.22, obviously.

Multi-threading, on the other hand, I can honestly say I don't see any chance for improvement as far as KSP is concerned. While parts of Unity have become thread safe, the part of Unity that is KSP's bottleneck, the PhysX library, has received no work in attempting to make it thread safe. Given that the Unity devs didn't even write that library, I don't see much of a chance that they'll rework the library to make it thread safe. And given that they're currently locked into an obsolete version of the PhysX library (the Unity devs claim that they had to fix bugs to get Unity to be able to use the PhysX libraries and that the PhysX devs refuse to integrate those bug fixes, so Unity's locked into their old version of PhysX), any work that the devs of PhysX put into making it thread safe wouldn't affect Unity.

Sadly, I honestly think we're not going to see the physics workload spread across multiple CPU cores unless and until Squad switches to another physics engine for KSP. It is possible to use a different physics library and still let Unity handle the rest of the work, but that's not a trivial bit of work, and I wouldn't expect to see that until an expansion.

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Will tweakables allow us to choose the type of propellant in the fuel tanks before hand or at least allow us to choose the amount of fuel (full tank/empty tank?). It sucks making a stock space shuttle with the fuselage filled with a few tons of useless jet fuel.

That was one of the original uses mentioned for tweakables. In fact, they've been putting off changing the NERVA to run off of just liquid fuel (no oxidizer, like the real NERVA) until tweakables were in place so that they wouldn't have to have a full set of fuel tanks with and without oxidizer.

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I don't think 3D mouse support is something that will really help everyone. It's expensive, especially compared to the game's price. But, because it is being added, it probably just got my money just to use this for KSP.

EDIT: Apparently the 3D mouse isn't really even a real mouse, it can't move the cursor.

I'm hoping that it ends up being generalized support for 6DOF devices, since TrackIR support would be great.

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I don't think 3D mouse support is something that will really help everyone. It's expensive, especially compared to the game's price. But, because it is being added, it probably just got my money just to use this for KSP.

EDIT: Apparently the 3D mouse isn't really even a real mouse, it can't move the cursor.

I wasn't quite sure what this was. This link helps a lot. Check out the video on the right hand side. I see a lot of use with this in KSP. Craft RCS control is one thing I can think of so far.

http://www.3dconnexion.com/products/what-is-a-3d-mouse.html

Edited by BostLabs
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  • 3 weeks later...

<strong>Science Revisions:</strong> Transmission logic is being redone as well as the way experiments can be reset to improve usability while keeping it challenging.

Here's one for higher in the tech tree. http://www.nasa.gov/press/2013/october/nasa-laser-communication-system-sets-record-with-data-transmissions-to-and-from

622 megabit per second by laser to and from the Moon!

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