swjr-swis

A game about a space agency. A game about astronauts and pilots. Or if you think of yourself as spectator, a game about spectating/filming/directing space adventures. A game about environments, jobs and people that as a core inherent feature of their daily jobs are exposed to multiple screens All. The. Time. Mission Control. Cockpits. Video editing rooms. These are the roles you and I play when we fire up KSP. You are directly questioning the usefulness of having multiple screens available, in the context of literally playing at being the people who arguably deal most with multiple screens in what they do on a daily basis, and have been for many a year now. I'm baffled. What's next... arguing that there's no use for actual steering wheels when playing a Formula 1 racing game?

We agree, I'm not talking about how useful they will be in the future either. I'm talking about how useful they've been in the past decade already. Don't open the spoiler or click any of the links if you might react adversely to images of multiple screens being used, now or in the past.

Those statements I very loosely quoted provide their own context in being used as a set demonstrating the historically repeated failure of making that type of deterministic statements. Every one of those was a variant of "Based on my expertise and all data available to us now, clearly it's ridiculous to even consider such-and-such ever being done/used/necessary." Making any absolute statement against something based solely on one's own limited imagination or experience of possible applications at the time has a way of proving wrong sooner or later. In many cases, sooner rather than later, and often, quite hilariously wrong. The really remarkable part in this case is that the particular statement I reacted on was being made right in the middle of a civilization that has so many screens laying around that we're not even aware anymore how we've trivialized them. I think it's a pretty safe bet the person typing those words with utter conviction even had a smartphone in their pocket, a TV in some corner of their room, and perhaps a tablet nearby. But surely, "One screen provides adequate space to do anything."

Well, loading screens and recorded video are just artistic representations; they're not real. Because in the real, Kerbals know the terrible truth. The Kraken only moves when you blink. Everytime you blink, the Kraken moves a little bit closer.

This handful of transistors can do all the calculations we would ever need. There's a worldwide market for maybe oh, about 10 computers or so. 640Kb is more than enough memory to do anything we can ever conceive. We can perform everything needed with just a single button on a mouse. And we all know that VR is a scifi fad only. You'd think by now people would be more careful about making such statements. Maybe the mistake being made here is that this is being regarded as a debate. Maybe it helps to realize that it is not. None of the words we plaster in this thread will decide the matter one way or another. There's no 'camps' to band into, no position to defend. There's no tally taken or points being scored. We're all just voicing our opinions and discussing the merits of a suggestion made.

I politely question whether performance is really that much of an issue in this matter. I base this solely on the fact that I can, and regularly do, run up to three (3) separate, full instances of KSP right beside each other, where I let them use different monitors. In some cases I've done this on a single monitor, on the laptop, alt-tabbing from one to the next and back. With the exception of moments where even a single instance starts displaying frame-drop or stuttering in the display, it runs perfectly fluid (like when loading craft with exceptionally high number of parts, or large number of undocked ports, etc... the known performance killers. These rigs were not gaming beasts even when they were newly bought- I've never liked wasting money on overpriced 'top of the line' stuff, when less can do 90% as good. One is even a laptop (!), and both of them are over 3 years old. Which leads me to conclude that whatever the overhead may be of running just one extra window separate of the main view can hardly have any performance impact at all, if I can run three entire instances side by side. Granted, I run without mods. Still, three instances, compared to a single instance with one extra window showing the map view. What are we really talking about.

It's at least 42% of the answer.

I've been using multiple screens both professionally and at home for what feels as forever. I feel practically claustrophobic when I'm forced on a single screen now. I too would love to see the different 'apps' and views from the current KSP become windows that can be arbitrarily repositioned at my convenience over the combined screenspace of whatever monitors I happen to have connected. Right now, the best KSP allows me to do is run multiple instances of KSP where one is progressing through some mission and the others are designing and testing other craft (or the same, with on-the-fly lessons learned from the primary instance). Or when I am trying to rebuild a craft made in a newer version in 1.3.1, running both versions side by side to quickly compare. Flight simulators have given us this ability for how long now? It's a sorely missing capability from a game that to all effects could be considered the 'next step'. The technical debt counter argument makes me giggle. We're talking KSP here. It's one big heap of technical dept, and this is the one that we're going to stumble on? The one that is practically entirely handled by the OS? Anyway. Yes please, map view as a separate window that can be open in parallel, whether on the same (picture in picture style) or (preferably) on separate monitors.

Launch a second instance of KSP to continue on one of the many WIP designs on my list. Seriously, doesn't everyone do that?

My time to game is limited. Anything that adds forced waiting for any goal in a game makes that game that much less likely to be played. I just don't have the time to waste, sorry. I have played with KCT in a distant past when I still did mods, and for specific career saves, as a self-imposed choice, I enjoyed the added simulation aspect. I've also very much enjoyed other simulation games that do the whole economy/resource/time aspect. As much as I enjoyed them, they just don't get played much anymore. Time is precious. So, if they happen to have a spare dev to put on this and add it to the game while leaving it entirely optional, sure, I can even see myself starting the odd game save using it. Not as a core mechanic though, thank you. When I'm done designing or tweaking my ship, I need to launch and test it, now. I got iterations to do. And then it's time to run the mission or challenge. Now now now. Aww shucks it's time to head for work again. What happened to my sleep time? Oh well.

Upvote just for the zero-input gravity turn rocket.

Emphasis mine. Bad, bad camera.

Oh really?

Someone is making assumptions here alright, but it might not be who you think it is. It might indeed be. I never claimed it to be an optimal design - in fact I specifically mentioned it not being optimized. Just a craft lifting a full CRG-100 bay of payload to LKO, which is the biggest Mk3 cargo bay we have in stock, without having to spam engines. Let's recall how this exchange went: I said in current stock, an Mk3 payload could be comfortably lifted with the engines available to us. You seemed to take exception with that particular assessment. So I provided proof for my statement by slapping a simple, low part-count plane together that lifts such a payload on just 3 engines, with about the easiest ascent profile I can imagine. In my opinion, that is pretty 'comfortable'. In any case, I'm always up for learning what a really optimized design looks like for such a payload. I promise I won't call you rude if you post a craft file that blows mine out of the water in terms of optimization (for any definition of 'optimal' of your choice). A big part of what I enjoy out of participating in this forum is learning new design tricks and optimizations. Information exchange is awesome.

I understand losing sight of scales when objects are several orders of magnitude apart IRL, because we simply do not have the means readily available to make easy comparisons. The thing is, KSP is one of those programs that allows us to quickly visualize this. Just for fun and kicks, cheat whatever your biggest craft is into orbit around Gilly. Now start zooming out, and keep going until you make Gilly about as big on screen as your craft. Try to spot your craft. Consider how many of your craft it would take to start even becoming visible, let alone getting near to the size of Gilly. Feel free to keep zooming in and out to get a good idea of the difference in scales. Now think again about the 'challenge' you posted.

First, let me say that this isn't even a question in my mind. All of them, we need all of them, for reasons. So I'm not even going to bother reacting to each one specifically. I do have some comments about this one though: Dude, HUGE opportunity missed by not letting the rocket launch out of the friggin' volcano in the center of that island!! What were you thinking?? As for I'd hate to see what a launch looks like with cluttering. That's a whole lot of fairing material. Back to topic though: 30m parts. Yes. For 1.11 please.

Except Europa. Attempt no landings there.

You're doing something wrong if you need 8-10 engines for an Mk3 cargo spaceplane. 3 jet engines is plenty, and that's without optimizations. Full album: https://imgur.com/a/38iytZO Craft file: https://kerbalx.com/swjr-swis/Mk3-Spaceplane1

Can you show us the exact description of the mission? It's been a while since I've accepted that kind of contract. I suspect that you can fulfill this contract simply by taking a normal trajectory into orbit, and during your regular gravity turn towards Ap, you stage the fairing when passing 53km altitude. Then circularize at Ap to also get the orbit requirement. If it really expects you to be orbital at the same time as being between 53-54km, then you'll have to make sure you have accelerated to orbital speed when you reach that altitude. KSP considers you orbital when Pe is anything over 25km, if I recall correctly - this is when the camera switches from atmospheric to orbital mode. In that case, take a shallow gravity turn, shallower than you would normally take to get to LKO, aiming to circularize when you get to 53-54km. Then either stage the fairing right then if you have time, or simply boost Ap on the opposite side to give yourself more time. The remaining drag at that altitude will slowly drop Ap and a good portion of your orbit back into your target band even if you overshoot. At 53km the atmosphere gets very thin already and you shouldn't have to worry about overheating, but this way you can take your time to stage the fairing at the right moment. That would not give you a stable orbit due to drag, obviously, but I do think for the KSP mission system this is considered orbital and would fulfill the requirements.

They always drop on their head. Kinda like the sandwich on the spread side. And cats on their feet. There's gotta be some correlation I'm missing...

If you're genuinely interested in the subject, you can search the forum. It has been discussed extensively. Starting multiple threads about this just seems like poking the bear.

Minor is a very vague qualifier, subjective to every person's own assigned value to privacy, and only valid if you choose to judge this as its own little thing. Funny analogy you used. Of course we won't worry about a 0.1% price change for one single product. Who would ever be silly enough to complain about that. How about when they don't do it just to your mortgage (KSP), but also your account fees (GTA), overdraft fees (etc), transaction fees (etc), insurance (etc*)? How about if it's not just your bank (TT), but your utilities(EA) too, and your grocery store (Ubi), and your computer store (Steam)? And if they're all doing it already, why would it be objectionable to everyone else doing it too? (*: I don't know all the games they own, there's a lot though). Now, since we've already established it would be silly to object to 0.1% price hikes, surely tomorrow you won't object to us adding an additional 0.1% price hike (which btw, our EULA tells you is completely within our rights to do so). No, that's not 0.2% <laughs>... it's two minor unobjectionable completely unrelated 0.1% hikes. See how you misinterpreted that? So silly. Money is not a good comparison though, cause we all make so much of it that cents on a dollar are truly insignificant, and with inflation being a systematic requirement of economy, 0.1% is actually scary low. Privacy is about data. Information. And in case you didn't notice, data is big money these days. Even the insignificant kind. Because it is aggregated. So let's compare to pixels instead, a form of data. A single pixel is nothing, right? What harmful information could ever be gleaned from one pixel. Surely we can all agree on that. Worrying about one tiny pixel, pff. So how about ten people gathering 'single pixels'? That has to be ten times nothing, so still nothing, if I recall my math correctly. How about 10000 of them? How about 1920 by 1080 people, gathering one single pixel each? How about that many, 25 times a second? We're still not worried, yes? The math still has to be valid regardless of the scale or frequency. I'm sure each person can individually -and quite demonstrably true- argue that their 'minor' piece of data cannot possibly show anything even remotely objectionable. So clearly anyone objecting to the minor, routine practice of pixel gathering by this one specific person has to be overreacting. As for 'routine': it's only routine because we have tacitly permitted it to become so. As consumers, we'd rather have our product or convenience than stick to our principles, to the point of ridiculing those who would advocate for privacy. It's of course all anonymized and aggregated (!) and several other words we throw around to make it all sound less invasive, but meanwhile it has spread to almost every facet of our lives, one 'minor routine' step at a time, to the point that the main 'defense' used against people lobbying for more privacy is that it's 'already everywhere anyway'. Yes indeed it is, and I wonder how it came to be that way. No irony in pointing out the fallacy of explaining the 'slippery slope' of allowing even 'minor' monitoring of course. What could we ever be worried about. Silly people and their hypothetical overreaching scenarios. Anyway, I responded to the OP, I really really don't wish to get into this whole discussion again (he said, after a wall of text).

As you can see, the term 'spyware' is a bit loaded and there are varying opinions on this subject. I would say that the statement 'KSP is spyware' is wrong on a pragmatic level. It's a game, but some of the code it runs does call home and send data about your usage and your computer, with the option to do more. The Redshell component was indeed removed. So if that one specifically triggered your question, you can be happy about that. End of discussion. Unity telemetry was not removed, however. In fact, in KSP versions after 1.4 its monitoring capabilities were considerably extended, and stopping it from working by manual actions was made much more difficult. Whereas in the older versions it was easy enough to simply delete the telemetry DLLs to stop it from running, in later versions this would completely prevent the game from even starting. You are offered the option to 'opt out', but this is implemented in a way that still requires the Unity telemetry code to load and call home every time anyway ("To check if you chose to opt out! How else could we possibly know if we're allowed to look or not?"). Both Unity and KSP's current IP owner have stated to only use telemetry in good faith. Both their EULA reserve extensive rights to do considerably more. The latest EULA you're 'bound' to if you play KSP explicitly reserves the right to change their rules as they please, and your rights are limited to stopping playing the game if you disagree. You can use hosts files, DNS, or firewall workarounds to block the telemetry ports and IP numbers, but nothing says they can't add to or change them in future updates (and they already have at least once). There's a few forum posts around that offer a list of ports and IPs to block. So, 'spyware'? No. Good faith? Make up your own mind about it. If you want to be principled about these things, you may have to live with some inconveniences, including potentially not using stuff at all. for now, that's the status quo. Which is only a 'fallacy' as long as it's not already happened before.

Whether or not the built-in functionality was being used is irrelevant, it was about the potential, and the way it was added silently and only even acknowledged after people raised a stink about it. Redshell could do a lot more than what they 'sold' it for, plus the forced EULA reserved the rights to extend things well beyond that. You get a call to bring in your glasses for a free upgrade/adjustment. You find out when you get them back that it now includes telemetry electronics that monitor/register everything you look at, what you do, and all your bodily parameters while you're wearing them. You're told when asking that they will really only monitor a few things, for anonymous purposes that will improve your experience in using the glasses (how?). The EULA you had to sign to even get the glasses back says they have the freedom to monitor everything, share it with anyone they like, into infinity, and you basically can't do anything about it. Oh and btw, we can change this EULA however we want in the future. But we're good guys, so we're cool. You would still shrug and go ahead with it? I mean, they did promise not to do anything nefarious, and right now, it doesn't seem to be sending anything objectionable. Silly tinfoil hat types and their conspiracy theories... right?

If running KSP well is important enough to you to drop the Macbook requirement, I would recommend looking for a non-Apple product. What you save on the brand can be spent on better specifications. Watch also for the trap called 'gaming laptop'. Just naming it that way tends to add several $100 to the price of a laptop, for what often amounts to just some visual enhancements instead of actual performance (special case with 'beefy' appearance, glowing logos, etc). If you're ok with a more run of the mill duller look, you can often find the same specs in a regular laptop for considerably less money, or better specs for a similar price than a 'gaming' version. Specs-wise, at least make sure there's a discrete graphics card in the laptop. KSP is not the type of game that taxes graphics much, but letting a dedicated chip handle the graphics still gives the main CPU some extra margin to deal with the intensive calculations that KSP does use, and some of the physics code can even be offloaded to it. Look for the mention of either NVIDIA or AMD graphics chip - with their current performance levels, almost any of them will do for KSP. As for the main CPU, Intel pretty much wins at the moment performance-wise, while AMD is cheaper. An i7 of almost any current type will offer a good base, but your budget is somewhat limited, so you may need to consider a compromise. A higher end i5 with good clock speed should still perform well with high part loads in KSP. 16GB of ram is a good target, I would not go below that if you can. An SSD can speed up the initial load of KSP considerably, which should only really bother you if you run your game heavily modded. Once within a game session its influence is negligible. So consider the trade off, since SSDs tend to add a good bit to the price. That said, for all other use of the laptop, the SSD will of course also speed up load times. I know this is very generic advice and doesn't really give you a specific recommendation, but if you're willing to let go of specific brand or model requirements and focus on the components, you can get very nice performance out of a 'regular' laptop. With a limited budget, some compromising is probably going to be required, so you'll have to consider what aspects are more important to you.