How would Cities be implemented?

[Whirligig Girl]

I know that cities are going to be implemented at some point, into KSP, but how? (Let's ignore the unpleasant little man in the front row saying loudly that kerbals live underground)

Kerbin is very big. Not nearly as big as Earth, or even the moon, but still very big. You can't just make every city manually. You also need some way of connecting cities, such as roads, trains, and probably airports. You also need to have Kerbals walking around the cities and cars moving, being busy and whatnot, or else Kerbin's a planet-wide ghost town.

Perhaps procedural generation of cities is in order. There would be a few building props and things, and they would be procedurally generated when you get near them. (and they'd be the same cities in each game you play, so save files are compatible with other players)

Rural areas would also need simulation, and I suppose procedural generation could be used there as well. Cities would be their own biome, too.

There would probably be a few pre-built cities, like the one near KSC, to be similar the city of Cape Canaveral.

[dryer_lint]

I'd like to see several cities, maybe 10 scattered around Kerbin, but not too many. And it would probably be a pain to simulate Kerbals walking around and stuff... imagine a rocket crashing straight into the street, while the simulated Kerbals just walk though it

[Whirligig Girl]

The Kerbals would obviously have to have some simple Ai.I, to give them surprised/curious expressions and to avoid the rocket. I'm also thinking that the Kerbals' models would simplify and get less-defines the further from the camera they are, to the point of them being simple sprites when view from the skies. Cars would be similar. If viewed from high enough, cities would be just a texture overlay like in EnvironmentalVisualEnhancements.

[dryer_lint]

At first I thought cities could just be empty, but then I realized how scary that would get at night. Ahhhhh.

[Blind Dead McJones]

Hopefully cities would add a few things like alternate runways and maybe even alternate launchpads. Granted extra launchpads might not be all that useful considering it doesn't matter that much where you start (especially because the one we have is at the equator already). Extra runways would be great though, because coming in from orbit to land on the only runway in the entire world is actually quite difficult.

Maybe they could put in a way to unlock them too. Like they belong to the companies that give you contracts, and if they like you then they let you use their runways. And if they don't like you then they kick you out.

One more thing: as much as I wanna see cities, I also wonder what other Kerbal society do they have? Wouldn't it be great to land on someone's farm and then the farmer thinks you're an alien or something? Wouldn't add much to the game, but it would be really funny and totally in character for Kerbals.

[MKI]

Cities I fell should be added in some way or form in the game. But adding them may be one of the most challenging additions. There would need to be a new system to make objects on the ground in an efficient manor.

For instance, past 6k objects become 2d which are only pictures on the ground, and only resolute within 6k meters.

Along with that, there would need to be extremely efficient load processes to load city structures. So there isn't crazy lag all the time.

There could be multiple ways around this, such as creating only a few cities. (Very probable) making cities more like trees, and have them as randomized, ghosts that cannt be interacted with. There's many others but being on my phone I won't go into detail.

[Whirligig Girl]

Actually, trees and rocks are planned to be made solid eventually. There'd be no lag from collision meshes for these

[comham]

Procedural generation of cityscapes is pretty easy. It doesn't have to be Subversion levels of detail, just grid-layouts with various combinations of square buildings and some minor architectural details. And regional airports.