Eric S Posted June 25, 2014 Share Posted June 25, 2014 Is this going to improve performance on a stock install?The people that have been playing the user-hacked 64 bit version haven't widely noticed a difference, so I wouldn't expect to notice a difference.64-bit is more about being able to load more (or bigger) mods rather than performance. KSP's performance bottleneck is mostly the physics engine, which is single threaded. It's possible that an update to Unity 5 may help this, but Unity 5 hasn't been released yet, just announced, the devs have not committed to switching over to it, and it's possible that the updated version of PhysX in Unity 5 will still be restricted to single threaded operations in the KSP environment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tortoise Posted June 25, 2014 Share Posted June 25, 2014 Yeah I've seen this, and I've heard about this.I'm not sure if it'll improve the stock install. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Majorjim! Posted June 25, 2014 Share Posted June 25, 2014 The people that have been playing the user-hacked 64 bit version haven't widely noticed a difference, so I wouldn't expect to notice a difference.64-bit is more about being able to load more (or bigger) mods rather than performance. KSP's performance bottleneck is mostly the physics engine, which is single threaded. It's possible that an update to Unity 5 may help this, but Unity 5 hasn't been released yet, just announced, the devs have not committed to switching over to it, and it's possible that the updated version of PhysX in Unity 5 will still be restricted to single threaded operations in the KSP environment.Meh. Although, could it improve performance using visual enhancements? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sumghai Posted June 25, 2014 Share Posted June 25, 2014 The people that have been playing the user-hacked 64 bit version haven't widely noticed a difference, so I wouldn't expect to notice a difference.64-bit is more about being able to load more (or bigger) mods rather than performance. KSP's performance bottleneck is mostly the physics engine, which is single threaded. It's possible that an update to Unity 5 may help this, but Unity 5 hasn't been released yet, just announced, the devs have not committed to switching over to it, and it's possible that the updated version of PhysX in Unity 5 will still be restricted to single threaded operations in the KSP environment.Unity dev Jonas Echterhoff stated that PhysX 3.3 for Unity 5 will be fully multi-threaded:The biggest change in PhysX 3.3 is that it is fully multi-threaded and we expect significant performance gains for any physics-heavy projects. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sandworm Posted June 25, 2014 Share Posted June 25, 2014 (edited) So 64 bit for windows ... ok. Progress is great. But are mac/linux going to continue as 32? The current 64bit build for linux is 64 in name only. It cannot access more than 4gb due to long-standing errors (see the linux support thread). Any word on whether the 64-bit linux build is now fixed? Edited June 25, 2014 by Sandworm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nohelmet Posted June 25, 2014 Share Posted June 25, 2014 So 64 bit for windows ... ok. Progress is great. But are mac/linux going to continue as 32?Yes, for now. They said in the thread that they have no firm plans for the other platforms yet, they first want to see how it goes on the Windows side. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RocketPilot573 Posted June 25, 2014 Share Posted June 25, 2014 Is there any other benefit of 64-Bit other than increased RAM? As I don't use many mods at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Duxwing Posted June 25, 2014 Share Posted June 25, 2014 Huzzah! These 64 bits are glorious!-Duxwing Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spartan-S63 Posted June 25, 2014 Share Posted June 25, 2014 Is there any other benefit of 64-Bit other than increased RAM? As I don't use many mods at all.Likely not, although you might notice better stability when loading large parts in because you'll have more CPU registers to use to do calculations. You probably won't notice anything, but I do remember hearing from some of the 64 bit users that their massive ships don't quite weigh down their systems as much. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rabada Posted June 25, 2014 Share Posted June 25, 2014 I am so stoked, I think I need 10 Jebediah's to express my excitement about 0.24!Time to whip out the and put his bad-ass tag to use. It shouldn't take too long to respawn your 10th Jeb. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sandworm Posted June 25, 2014 Share Posted June 25, 2014 (edited) Yes, for now. They said in the thread that they have no firm plans for the other platforms yet, they first want to see how it goes on the Windows side.That just adds to my opinion that Squad doesn't really support linux/mac. They have been issuing 64bit linux builds for as long as I've played the game. I use them. They just happen to be broken. Parts of them remain 32 and die when approaching 4gb limit despite unity exporting a 64bit build. Hopefully, the unity upgrade will do what Squad is not and the 64bit linux build might just work.My big fear: That mods will have to be modified to run under 64bit windows, likely making them unplayable for non-windows users. That would divide the community and create a complex compatibility problem that could overwhelm mod creators. Edited June 25, 2014 by Sandworm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cpast Posted June 25, 2014 Share Posted June 25, 2014 That just adds to my opinion that Squad doesn't really support linux/mac. They have been issuing 64bit linux builds for as long as I've played the game. I use them. They just happen to be broken. Parts of them remain 32 and die when approaching 4gb limit despite unity exporting a 64bit build. Hopefully, the unity upgrade will do what Squad is not and the 64bit linux build might just work.My big fear: That mods will have to be modified to run under 64bit windows, likely making them unplayable for non-windows users. That would divide the community and create a complex compatibility problem that could overwhelm mod creators.64-bit Windows is *also* based on Unity. Squad can't use 64-bit unless Unity does so; the .NET code in which KSP is written is CPU-agnostic.On that note: Plugins are compiled for "Any CPU", because, as mentioned, .NET/Mono are CPU-agnostic. When the code is already running on a VM, it's irrelevant what the hardware is: .NET/Mono themselves need to know, and so it matters for the main executable, but as far as plugin code goes it simply doesn't matter (unless the plugin uses native code, in which case it won't work on multiple OSs automatically anyways). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NoMrBond Posted June 25, 2014 Share Posted June 25, 2014 My big fear: That mods will have to be modified to run under 64bit windows, likely making them unplayable for non-windows users. That would divide the community and create a complex compatibility problem that could overwhelm mod creators.My experience with the x64 hack so far has had a few minor issues(1) Fairing ejection on PF has zero force(2) Attaching a small control surface part onto a tail plane always causes a crash(3) Some scenes flash briefly while transitioning (i.e. the Kerbonaut lounge flashes up onscreen for a second when switching to the space center)None of which I'd put in the 'catastrophic' basket, but since it's a hackjob I can't really say I'm upset or surprised that there are some niggles, it's frankly amazing how well it does workI'm not sure if these would go away with an official KSPx64 and/or plugins compiled against the 0.24 tools (no idea how this works), I guess we'll find out, and I can't see it taking the modders too long to get to grips on it (as long as the mod is still supported anyway) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cydonian Monk Posted June 25, 2014 Share Posted June 25, 2014 Hey, I'm just happy to have a space sim that runs on OS-X, whether Squad spends an excessive amount of time supporting us or not. Allows me to continue to be lazy and not reboot to the perfectly working copy of Windows I also have installed on this laptop. Still, I'd like to not need a second KSP install just to play with things like the KSO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LethalDose Posted June 25, 2014 Share Posted June 25, 2014 (edited) I'm glad we're getting a 64-bit version of the game. I just think it's kind of weird after all the times we got told by the devs/mods it wasn't happening, it'd be to hard, there's no point, it's not stable, etc, etc. I know stable 64-bit performance was a big deal for the Unity 5, but there was no comment about switching to the new engine.I'm also worried that it's going to slow down development even more, since it's one more version they have to bug-hunt. I dunno, with all the back and forth we get on these features/issues (resources, multi-player, 64-bit, etc), I'm starting to wonder what the value is following this game's development. The devs tell us basically nothing, and what the do tell us doesn't seem to be representative of what's actually being worked on at all...Whatever, at least the game is fun. Edited June 25, 2014 by LethalDose Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cpast Posted June 25, 2014 Share Posted June 25, 2014 Maxmaps's post in the original x64 hack thread suggests that they *are* releasing the x64 version with lower quality than they normally like out of their releases; it's experimental, and is something that's always been on a back burner. The x64 hack thread showed them that people will be OK with that; they wouldn't have released what they have (because they want releases to be quite stable) without that thread telling them most people would be willing to take some instability. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dunbaratu Posted June 25, 2014 Share Posted June 25, 2014 64-bit Windows is *also* based on Unity. Squad can't use 64-bit unless Unity does so; the .NET code in which KSP is written is CPU-agnostic.On that note: Plugins are compiled for "Any CPU", because, as mentioned, .NET/Mono are CPU-agnostic. When the code is already running on a VM, it's irrelevant what the hardware is: .NET/Mono themselves need to know, and so it matters for the main executable, but as far as plugin code goes it simply doesn't matter (unless the plugin uses native code, in which case it won't work on multiple OSs automatically anyways).You are conflating the concept of CPU compatibility and OS compatibility. They are not the same thing. Macs run on Intel now. Most Linux runs on Intel. The fact that .NET is CPU agnostic is utterly irrelevant to the problem of OS compatibliy when the other OS's in question also run on Intel. Where the probems tend to arise is in LIBRARY compatibility. Mono is OS agnostic, but some things in .NET are not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dodgey Posted June 25, 2014 Share Posted June 25, 2014 I don't remember ever seeing Squad say that 64 bit wasn't happening, all word that I have seen said that it was too buggy for a release. Obviously not any more, well, less buggy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cpast Posted June 25, 2014 Share Posted June 25, 2014 You are conflating the concept of CPU compatibility and OS compatibility. They are not the same thing. Macs run on Intel now. Most Linux runs on Intel. The fact that .NET is CPU agnostic is utterly irrelevant to the problem of OS compatibliy when the other OS's in question also run on Intel. Where the probems tend to arise is in LIBRARY compatibility. Mono is OS agnostic, but some things in .NET are not.KSP uses Mono, not .NET, and library compatibility is no different between 32-bit and 64-bit for Windows. If a plugin relied on a Windows library, it would *already* be incompatible with Mac and Linux. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Killerdude8 Posted June 25, 2014 Share Posted June 25, 2014 Well, Mods won't be limited anymore, So those random crashes when you have 1 too many mods installed will be entirely gone. (Granted you have the Installed RAM to support it.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vonar Posted June 25, 2014 Share Posted June 25, 2014 Honestly I don't think that ram is going to be a problem when you've got 16 gb worth of useable ram on a gaming rig. For kerbal purposes I don't use many mods, the only ones I've got installed at the moment are Kerbal alarm clock, Kethane, and Mechjeb. With 0.24 it will be interesting to see what kind of performance changes that access to that kind of ram provides. Especially with big part projects like my KSS which had a save that ended up imploding in slow motion at one point presumably because of a unfortunate collision or the kraken. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eric S Posted June 25, 2014 Share Posted June 25, 2014 Unity dev Jonas Echterhoff stated that PhysX 3.3 for Unity 5 will be fully multi-threaded:I certainly hope so, and I wouldn't be surprised if that is the case, but I also wouldn't be surprised if KSP manages to find a loophole causing its physics calculations to necessarily be done sequentially. Without having played with PhysX, I'm not sure if a single soft-body physics "cluster" of subparts can be computed in parallel, or they're just expecting any physics-heavy game to consist of multiple clusters. In other words, I'm not getting my hopes up on it until I see it in action :-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sumghai Posted June 25, 2014 Share Posted June 25, 2014 I certainly hope so, and I wouldn't be surprised if that is the case, but I also wouldn't be surprised if KSP manages to find a loophole causing its physics calculations to necessarily be done sequentially. Without having played with PhysX, I'm not sure if a single soft-body physics "cluster" of subparts can be computed in parallel, or they're just expecting any physics-heavy game to consist of multiple clusters. In other words, I'm not getting my hopes up on it until I see it in action :-)Indeed - when Unity 5 becomes available, it will be up to SQUAD to assess whether it would make financial/technical sense to migrate their workflow over to Unity 5, and whether KSP physics system *can* be actually multithreaded.All that aside, I'm quite excited at the prospect of 64-bit builds of KSP being available for 0.24. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
b0s Posted June 25, 2014 Share Posted June 25, 2014 Trying the KSP 64bit hack I have noticed better FPS ~15%, MUCH faster loading times and strangely a smaller ram footprint. That with a fairly modern PC. So I'm buying more ram and getting excited.If they aslo implement Unity 5 multi-threaded physics it'll be crazy... 2000 part ships/stations should be possible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
magnemoe Posted June 25, 2014 Share Posted June 25, 2014 The people that have been playing the user-hacked 64 bit version haven't widely noticed a difference, so I wouldn't expect to notice a difference.64-bit is more about being able to load more (or bigger) mods rather than performance. KSP's performance bottleneck is mostly the physics engine, which is single threaded. It's possible that an update to Unity 5 may help this, but Unity 5 hasn't been released yet, just announced, the devs have not committed to switching over to it, and it's possible that the updated version of PhysX in Unity 5 will still be restricted to single threaded operations in the KSP environment.This is a pretty big issue for many, lots of mods and huge projects. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts