Incarnation of Chaos

1.8, 1.9.1 and 1.10 all had decent improvement in memory usage, but the leaks are still there. Also hella bugs that make me question if the memory improvement is literally just because the game is so broken that it's not able to trigger the functions that previously were using it xD

Thank you! Not many realize this, though it can be reduced by different implementations of the same function. But generally those calculations have to keep each previous one held in memory, until the final answer is desired. Then they can be smashed together and the memory released back to the OS. Even one poorly written math function can consume well over 4GB of RAM, and even optimization can only do so much (And in some cases might INCREASE RAM usage) by trading memory for speed. And that's just one function, KSP has numerous ones that all have to trigger in fairly rapid succession. It's actually pretty awesome they managed to make it work for 8GB all things considered.

So send missions ahead of time and take the contracts after the vessel has arrived as a workaround in the meantime. It should still get fixed, but just wanted to point that out.

The "K" in KSP is for "Kerbal" Sorry, that should tell you quite a bit already. And if that isn't enough; just marvel at those emotes as they ride some hilariously shoddily constructed deathtrap to orbit and tell me that isn't totally worth it.

For context; the specific implementation i worked with was ThreadLocal in Java. And it required quite the hassle to get working properly, ended up having to use an Abstract Class to extend Thread and then extend that into a concrete class. Even afterwards i had to cast them back and forth to get the right results. Which all adds overhead, both on the CPU and the programmer. Also, Java is a pain to work with. Though what's weird is despite knowing basically nothing of that background, i was thinking of a similar solution. Though i was thinking of allowing the threads to keep track of where they were within the matrix, then using a sorting solution (Merge Sort is very multithreadable, but QuickSort might be better) to basically allow any arbitrary # of cores to perform the calculations. Then crash join back into the program, spawn more and spool the data to memory where it could eventually be sorted. Yours sounds much cleaner, safer and faster though, cheers!

Which is essentially what I was getting at, but that's apparently the naive approach to the issue. Would each thread being able to have some form of state (i.e the integer or decimal value) be able to help? That introduces an entire new set of issues, but it's something I've actually worked with. Or is that what you mean by "Atomic"

The rigid body approximation they're using must have the previous calculation's value before doing the next step in the series. The short answer therefore is "No; unless they change how vessels work" The long answer is that you technically could multi-thread it, but you would need to use a mutex/semaphore to prevent each thread from doing the calculations out of order. These essentially act as locks, and when released by the programmer allow the next thread to grab the key and relock the current task so no other thread may modify it (In theory, in practice? There be hella bugs). Anyway, this adds additional overhead and doesn't allow any additional calculations over the Single-Threaded solution. So the only thing you've achieved is increasing the battering the CPU must endure, and spread it out over more cores (Which are actually doing background calculations and other things). Which means you've lost performance, not gained any. There are ways to handle multi-thread/multi-core physics, mostly involving particles. But KSP2 is already confirmed to be using this system, they are reducing the load however. There's multiple areas in KSP1 where CPU cycles are wasted needlessly, which clean code will remove. They've also been working on a "Physics LOD" to dynamically take large numbers of parts that aren't having much happen to them physically (Fuel tanks) and welding them into a single part for the purposes of calculations. Reducing the number of parts, exponentially reduces the load on the CPU. So KSP2 will likely support much larger, and much higher part count ships than KSP1. But those are all workarounds, they don't change the fact the limit exists. Just move it further down, so the real question is "Will KSP2's workarounds be capable of meeting the part counts for the majority of players?". You're going to have someone, first day who goes in sandbox and finds that new limit. But they're not the average player, and likely doing it for the sake of "Science". If KSP2 can hold a butter smooth framerate with a fair number of parts? Then I'd say they've done their job.

I wasn't asking if the HDMI was missing, i was asking if you plugged it into the rear of that desktop or the Graphics card. Laptops that use eGPU have something that's based roughly on optimus to allow external GPU's to display on the screen, setups like this don't. So from my perspective; i was attempting to rule out the potential that you might've just plunked the Graphics Card in the Riser but connected the HDMI cable to the rear of the PC. Where it would've been using the Integrated GPU the entire time, and therefore whatever performance improvements you noticed might've been essentially placebo. I figured you had the system at some point, especially if you built it for someone else. And might've remembered details, or even better been able to pull up a benchmark score or two for comparison. But i guess it's long gone by now, so i can't call foul for that. Anyway, my entire point wasn't even really about the CPU bottleneck itself. It was mostly that even if we assumed you had a spare power brick lying around that was the correct specs for powering the riser, and the only cost was the GPU and Riser. You're still about 1/3rd the cost of a entry-level desktop, and while a quick and dirty upgrade like that might work right then? It's not going to be viable long-term, as either the GPU's you can use will become too limited (How many laptop power bricks go beyond 100W? Not many, and those that do are more expensive), the machine itself might not support enough RAM, Storage, etc. So if you're going to buy components anyway, it just makes way more sense to set yourself up for future growth. You could get a riser with a connection for actual PCI power, but then you're looking at even worse numbers financially.

You know, i had realized that you had no interest other than contributing pettiness and spite after last night and decided to drop it. That was until you decided to say that, so alright. You wanna throw down? Lets! That's my main rig, as you can see it has not one but *GASP* TWO Graphics Cards inside it! I built it myself, no help. Mind you; computers are pretty much big boy lego at this point so it's not impressive. But still; i know what the rear of a Graphics Card looks like quite well. That machine also has 2 PSU's, and a Relay to ensure they both turn on at the exact same time. One 750W to run the System Motherboard, one 1000W just for the GPU's. Vega 56 are hungry cards <3 Beauty shot, just for the heck of it. This is a old workstation i was trying to get IOMMU pass through working on, that sadly had the motherboard die on me right as i got everything configured just right. As you can see, it has a crappy little GPU that came with it. But the thing with IOMMU passthrough is, that whatever cards you give to the client VM will be unavailable to your host PC (The one running the VM), so it had THREE GPU's running at one point inside it. Also, no. I don't know a bloody thing about your "Politics", but i do know quite a fair bit about computers. I saw someone posting misinformation at first, then later what looked like blatant bait (Seriously, a USB 3 riser card connected to a front USB 2 port on a machine that has a slot available? Do drivers even install lel). And i sought to address it, and nothing more. You still owe me a clean shot of that machine with the side panel removed, and benchmarks of your supposed performance with your riser setup using a GT 1030. That is if you wish to be honest, otherwise i couldn't care less either way.

Yeah, that was my point. If you're not connecting the HDMI cable to the graphics card (GPU == Graphics card, IGPU == Integrated Graphics Card), it would still be using the Integrated graphics and you wouldn't actually see the performance of the setup you just displayed. Also nope, that's a U model mobile CPU. It's limited to 15W at maximum, there's absolutely no way it's approaching a desktop i5-4590 in performance even in heavily threaded workloads lel That's not PCIe at all, it's connected to a USB 2.0 port lel. And pop the side panel, I'm almost positive there's a x16 slot in there. I recognize that side panel catch from mine (The little semi-circular part sticking out the middle of the panel). There was a version that lacked them, but the dimensions look about right for the PCI x16 equipped version. Hyperthreading won't help you for KSP I'm afraid, only multi-threading is for unloaded vessels and some background tasks.

Also...where do you plug in the HDMI cable? In the back of the tower or the GPU connected to the riser. I'm pretty sure those front ports aren't even USB 3.0 now that i think about it, and if you hadn't connected your display to the GPU directly you'd still be on the IGPU....

Again, look at benchmarks. And i didn't look at "Low grade media articles" i looked at multiple sources ranging from specifically mobile oriented to more general ones. Performance was cut across the board by 50% in the best cases, and that's directly due to the bandwith limitations of the M.2 interface. That's directly due to the number of lanes. I'm not even saying the HD 620 "Isn't the bottleneck" either; what i am saying is that pairing a better GPU with a mobile chip is going to have massive diminishing returns because KSP is more CPU-bound. The GPU must be able to communicate with the CPU, so if you have a powerful GPU paired with a low end CPU it's going to be a bad time. Also....that machine has no reason to run a eGPU, i have one running as a PFsense box. It supports half height, low profile cards. You could easily test EVERYTHING i've said by taking your GT1030 and wacking the LP bracket on it and slapping it in there. What are you even doing lel, that's a USB 3.0 riser which is even worse for this. And it still requires external power. So now i have to carry around my laptop, two power bricks and i'm cutting performance even more. Oh this is bad.

Alright so my desktop gets cheaper with your GT 1030? Also GT 1030 won't perform well after it's performance is cut in half, it'll begin to approach IGPU at that point. Which is why you want at least a mid-range GPU, so you have enough performance left over to even make it worth it. Again, you'd know this if you looked at benchmarks. Nope, you need a PSU and a PCI slot (Often as a riser). Either you carry that around with you all the time loose or you have an enclosure. Look up benchmarks? Seriously, be informed before you post technical recommendations. Especially when there's serious money people are considering. Even with better graphics, the CPU limit is going to be approached before GPU. Just like KSP with graphical mods. The dude said he needed to travel? Can't do that with the hotwire special you're describing. It is when the Number of lanes is < 8, again you'd know this if you did any investigation beforehand. PCI x2 cuts your performance dramatically, PCI x4 is still bad but not as bad. There's a reason i know this, and it's because i looked into ALL of these options when i was on a laptop. But had no desktop, and guess what? This is why i ended up building my first desktop instead of eGPU or anything similar, it's hardly upgradable, not portable and you're still paying a premium for half the performance. Even if we go for your solution, and we only use a single cable to go from M.2 to a GPU, the GPU is a GT 1030 and nothing else. We're still talking about around 130-170 USD to get performance close to that IGPU, and now you have a laptop that can't move.... Where if you saved another few hundred dollars, you'd have a desktop that could potentially last you years and still have a portable laptop for whatever you might need it for.

Not KSP, it's CPU-bound big time. And eGPU enclosures are around 300 bucks, the GPU around 200. And only give you 50% performance of the GPU in the best case, you're spending almost as much as you would on a decent desktop for half the performance or worse. KSP2 will be better optimized to support more parts, but will still be CPU bound in the end. Oh and M-PCIe solutions are hardly portable lel; since they require cutting open the back of the laptop or opening it. And most are PCI x 2, not x4, so your performance loss is even worse than the 50% i quoted above. Seriously, just take your money and save it over time.

There's actually quite a lot that KSP lacks, but that's what happens when you build something like it from the ground up with basically no experience. Personally, KSP does what it intended well enough for my tastes. I'd rather them tackle bugs than anything like this, or make wheels work, or make legs work.....see what i mean?

Yep, numerous ones where it's been suspected. But limited, and local. Not massive clouds rolling across untold acres of land for years upon years. It's still horrible stuff mind you, but considering there's still places today that are still toxic because of the usage of various agents in WWI I'd say less is more.

I was mostly saying that money would've been better saved than spent on that machine. If you need something portable, look into Mini-ITX. Or just keep the laptop, there's nothing stopping you from having a self-built desktop and a laptop.

Treaties don't have to mean much to average joe to be effective though, Triage is what you're after. I could whip up several cubic meters of Chlorine Gas right now using very common household chemicals and unleash it upon some poor bystandards, and I'd quickly be arrested, charged with multiple counts of murder and put to death. But we haven't seen the use of Chlorine Gas in warfare nearly approach the scale of WWI since, and that's mostly what I'm after. We don't want to stop everyone, just the ones with the industrial base and capacity to deploy FTL on a apocalyptic scale as one of the previous posters mentioned. Plus, by making it known as a horrific terrible act you inevitably stigmatize it. So those pirates would find themselves quickly targeted by anyone and everyone.

Yep, and consider getting mods for parts > 3.5M also. After a certain point having a stack of 20 parts at 5 or 10M is much, much better than 300+ at 3.5M

Why are you upgrading a laptop? Like seriously the CPU and GPU are what's limiting you the most, and moving to a desktop would allow you to upgrade those for the foreseeable future. The laptop is a dead end, and while the HDD/SSD could move to a new machine, your SO-DIMMs couldn't nor could much else. Just save your money dude.

If i remember correctly, transfer windows occur at a angle between planets. There's tables with these for KSP in numerous places, and you could measure them with a protractor.

Asteroids and Comets are also pretty good Kinetic impactors, and even with electric propulsion and fission power (Basically today's technology if we hadn't abandoned the latter due to various issues) you could easily get them to a planet in a decent amount of time and with much, much more velocity than naturally possible. Again, i actually liked Mass Effect's solution to this. Their lore basically has a treaty that outlawed the use of FTL ships as KE impactors or the use of asteroids, comets or space stations as KE impactors. And before you go "Why would anyone in their right mind do that?!?" We have similar treaties IRL, for chemical, biological and similar weapons. Sure they're not always followed, but they at least make anyone who does breach them either become a rogue state or have to be extremely diligent with it. This allows you to have your FTL propulsion, without making any weird restrictions on the actual technology. The restriction is still arbitrary, but it's part of the lore and world instead of just being "X cannot do Y because i said so". Plus it sets up conflict, and potentially future issues. Does such a restriction still hold against a species that is essentially parasitic? Is it enforceable in reality? Even if you are allowed, how the heck do you deal with knowing that once that rock hits you've essentially destroyed the habitability of that planet for hundreds of years (This does depend largely on mass mind you). Another solution is basically to just take the alternate approach, which is FTL ships are far too expensive and valuable to use as blunt mallets. Or if we're going for less-hard science-fiction, Star Wars (Legends at least) solved the issue with planetary shields. Remember, something going that fast is also going to have anything in front of it become a massive liability. And since the explosion will actually expend the majority of it's energy in a cone away from the shield (Or sphere in space, since we'd need an atmosphere for conical) along with the fact that the amount of energy received by the target decreases massively with the distance. This means you can actually get away with pretty flimsy shielding at a decent distance from your world.

My opinion, probably not stock. Could it be? Probably, but given the current state of KSP2 i'd doubt their biggest issue on the tracker is "Implement wind". Could be a potential DLC addition though, and i don't think most would mind if it was made configurable. And it could be modded in at some point, though that might be slow going considering such a mod doesn't really exist for KSP right now (Only ones are well EOL or All Rights Reserved or Both sadly).

Oof, alright thanks for the reply anyway.

Honestly, desktop with mid-range performance aren't even that much more expensive than what you paid for that laptop more than likely. (300-500 USD is what I'm thinking, a mid-range machine can be had for a little over 600 USD if you use mostly new parts. GPU, CPU probs would need to be gotten used, but that just makes everything cheaper) And unlike it, they'll be able to be refitted as system requirements change over time. So if you're really worried, start saving for a build.