R-T-B

Sorry, I knew someone reported it but it got lost in the chain of bug reports somewhere. Thanks. Anyways, it looks like sadly this may be a stock bug. It even happens with the stock plumes without scatterer, albeit it is much less noticeable because the clouds suck. Seems like even Squad is having issues with this update, unless maybe, just mabye, it's an EVE bug.

The latest set of updates are really just minor bugfixes, so don't expect visual miracles over what we had before, but yeah, it's nice to be killing them bugs one by one. Is anyone else at present seeing a bug where rocket plumes (even stock ones) are showing traces of the atmopsheric background? I believe this is an old bug that has somehow either resurfaced or never quite got fixed. It is most apparent with solid rocket boosters at night. Here, this is with realplume, but it happens with Stock plumes too: I'm curious if it's a AMD driver bug (possible) or if it's a scatterer bug. EDIT: This seems to be a stock bug? I got it with nearly no mods loaded at all, and it's certainly not a scatterer bug. nvm, then.

Unofficial Release 1.2 just dropped: This is a minor bugfix update to the 1.0 unofficial 1.9 release series of Scatterer. To install simply extract to your KSP install. What was changed / added since Unofficial Release 1.1? 1.) Fixed RSS Mode, which was broken by a regression caused by a over-optimistic optimization. Now it works again, and we still have pretty much the same level of optimization for those who don't use it. If you aren't experiencing any of the above bugs, this is a fairly minor release and I'd not worry about it. Usual places: Github: https://github.com/R-T-B/Scatterer/releases My Server: http://glacialsoftware.net/ScattererBuilds/ Thank you all and enjoy! -RTB

Hello all, This is just a notice of a bug I discovered, not in Scatterer per se, but in other mods and how they interact with it. Mods like "SmokeScreen" and "EngineLightRelit" presently seem to draw in the same layer (read more on layers here https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/API:Layers) as Scatterer's layer 9 atmopshere and 15 scaled space drawing range. This was fine once upon a time with dual cameras, aparently, but now results in strange effects as the two drawing ranges collide (ever seen cloud outlines in your smoke plume for example? It's not exactly realistic). In EngineLightRelits case, the engines light up the atmospheres of planets literally up in the hundreds of km range away due to a drawing layer conflict. I'm working on pull requests for the affected mods but for right now this just serves as a heads up that those aren't working perfectly with the new scatterer. EDIT: Maybe we don't even need pull requests on the affected mods, maybe I work around this. We'll see. Oh, and also there are also mixed reports that an optimization in 1.1 may have broken RSS mode (for real solar system users). Could anyone using that advise? The setting does require a game reboot to take effect, keep in mind.

You'll need something that adds them, something like Environmental Visual Extensions, Spectra, Astronomers Visual Pack, go and look through the forums for visual mods and pick one you like the look of. This mod is more a of a dependency that makes those work than the actual incredible visual mod itself (I mean, you can use it on it's own, but I don't think many do). If you want really nice clouds, Astronomers Visual Pack is one I can recomend, and yes it depends on this.

Yep, I need to design me a proper test submarine, don't I? Oh, and btw: 1.9 "Unofficial Release" 1.1 This is a minor update to the 1.0 release of Scatterer. To install simply extract to your KSP install. What was changed / added since Unofficial Release 1.0? 1.) Some minor performance optimizations. It is unclear whether these will make a visible difference in FPS, but they needed to be done for code cleanup reasons, anyways. 2.) An edge-case bug where covering the front of the Cupola viewing module would result in it still being transparent (a nearclip issue, essentially) has been fixed. (btw, that's some insanely thorough bugtesting, my dudes. Who does that?) If you aren't experiencing any of the above bugs or performance issues, this is a fairly minor release and you can most likely skip it. Thank you all and enjoy! -RTB Links: Github: https://github.com/R-T-B/Scatterer/releases My Server: http://glacialsoftware.net/ScattererBuilds/

Water caustics has to do with underwater imagery I think, like wave shadows on the bottom. I have to confess though I have it enabled now I haven't tested it personally. I just took the lack of bugreports to be a good thing, I guess? And yeah, I love it when I come up with a clever way to make the same craft with half the parts. The joy from that is unreal, even if it shouldn't be a gameplay mechanic, technically, lol. I have identified one small bug with the current release. The nearclip clips into the "Cupola" cockpit/viewing station modules mounting surface. This is a edge-case and a rare one (it would be odd to use the Cupola just to cover the windows), but I'll fix it soon enough anyways.

Well, you and me both, sadly. Why do you think I'm not a tech journalist anymore... lol. Story for another day. My point is I follow this stuff. And I am in complete agreement re os-locked APIs, and gameplay over graphics.

I really appreciate all the comments and praise, but keep in mind where the praise really belongs: This is only going to get far better once @blackrack takes a proper look at the shadowing shader code (which may as well be greek to me). I hope for wondrous things from his work, but we shall see what is technically feasible, as always. Best of luck man!

I have doubts KSP will have DX12 renderer really (unless they said otherwise). Graphics is not it's bottleneck, and DX11 is just is capable apearance wise as bog-standard DX12. BTW DX12 Ultimate is a MIcrosoft standard, not NVIDIA. It's most signifigant addition is a non-vendor-lockedrealtime raytracing API requiring some sort of hardware acceleration, something KSP2 could use, but most likely won't IMO. The amount of gamers with RTRT cards is like 5% at most. PS: I was a tech journalist for a large portion of my career, so I might know a bit about this.

lol, I get that (it's all a balancing act, isn't it?) No idea then, just looked like a similar bug so thought I'd ask.

If you are having performance issues you might look at something like Spectras EVE-based atmopsheres. They are a lot lighter than Scatterers. Oh, and: It's here! We are at version 1.0 of my update to scatterer, the "unofficial release" No more betas, no more release candidates! What does this mean? It means that though the mod in it's stock configuration is functional and stable, blackrack still had features planned that did not make it into this release. Those will come in his final release. Hence "unofficial." What was changed / added since RC10? If you are not using Real Solar System / RSS, this release is identical for you to RC10, which was essentially stable. You don't even really need to download this, honestly (though I do believe I tuned the nearclip plane a tiny bit, but it's nothing huge). If you are a RSS user, there is a new config option called "RSS Mode" that disables scatterer-based shadowing (which I advise no one use right now anyways) for extreme horizon distance support. Give it a shot on some truly massive bodies and see how far it will go, please! It is off by default, you can find it in the scatterer menu at the KSC. Thank you all and enjoy! Download links: Github: https://github.com/R-T-B/Scatterer/releases My Server: http://glacialsoftware.net/ScattererBuilds/ -RTB

I believe the shader code (which I have not messed with) does not allow that, but you can certainly try. It won't hurt anything, just may cap at 64 and not improve anything either.

It unified the near and far camera, which is technically a good thing. See, they used to be seperate, which while slow and ugly (it pretty much tried to draw the screen in two passes, one for "near" and one for "far" things), allowed for additional "distance" before shadowing would glitch. Now we have effectively half the shadowing precision to play with, but everything else works fine and we have a good performance boost as well. Was it worth it? I'd say so but that's down to personal opinion. Anyways, Basically, KSP shadows now exist, and deal with this pretty nicely other than not being visible from orbit. I'd advise using them and avoiding scatterer shadows for now. PS: A new release is incoming with a special "RSS mode" option fior real solar system users. That option disables scatterer shadows but grants support for extremely huge horizons (Think Jupiter). It might just be the "unofficial release" I was talking about. Everything is working well enough I might feel like promoting it.

Yes, that should work. I think AVP also needs EVE (Environmental Visual Enhancements) + TextureReplacer though. Both work more or less fine in 1.9. For your convienience, I will mark in bold the optional dependencies I have verified to work with AVP, in crossout the ones that don't, plaintext the ones I have no idea. Keep in mind none of these are needed for a good visual experience, they are just icing on the cake. I particularly enjoy Chatterer, even if it really is just a bunch of Apollo style tapes played backwards, lol. (Hey, the Astronaut Complex speaks backwards Spanish apparently, so...) Chatterer (immersive audio enhancements) Visual DistantObjectEnhancement (distant planets and ships will be visible from afar) PlanetShine (planet shine effect on your ships) Sunflares of Maar (a sunflare pack) KopernicusExpansion EVAFootprints (footprints on the surface of bodies) RealPlume (realistic engine plume spread) TexturesUnlimited (reflection and texture effects for parts) EngineLighting (lighting effects for engines and decouplers)

I test it with AVP, so yes. It's been literally designed/updated with it in mind. For other mods: I will likely start making modders aware of my releases as soon as we get out of the Release Candidate stage, so they can test and verify their mods work correctly with the upcoming scatterer final as well as these interim "unofficial" builds. And we are just about there. You know, if we drop scatterer shadows, this could potentially be fixed entirely. Even that last horizon shot. But I think the proper way to handle that would be for users to have a "RSS" or "extreme horizon distance" option which would enable a different mode, rather than forcing it on everyone. Thoughts?

I believe the cloud bug is a scatterer farclip bug that has been around a long time. Said bug has been getting worse with 1.9 too. It should "fix" itself at around 160,000m kerbin altitude. Are you using scatterer too by chance? My newer unofficial builds fix it, and even add 1.9 support, but at some cost (scatterer-based shadows are pretty messed up and disabled by default).

Ok everyone, RC10 is out with the following changes: 1.) The scatter-config fix that is needed for Kerbin (and only Kerbin) was errenously being applied by code to all worlds, over-saturating several (Laythe could get real bad). The config fix has been moved to Kerbins atmo config file so it only applies to Kerbin. Please make sure you replace your entire Scatterer folder with this release. Please specify your OS when posting bug reports, as always. I feel this may be the last release candidate, and may even be promoted to release if there are no major bug reports. It will be an "unofficial release" meaning it "works good" but it is lacking blackracks final features and polish. Still, good progress everyone! This will allow modders to get started pretty dang soon! Download at the usual spots: Github: https://github.com/R-T-B/Scatterer/releases/ My Server (you want RC10)r: http://glacialsoftware.net/ScattererBuilds/

It is intelligent. No performance loss. I noticed this too. It's my config fix in action in code, we still don't know entirely why it is needed and that's as close as I can get it atm. My personal explanation is it has something to do with the lighting effecting the sphere more. Could anyone else report if they are getting this? That is certainly not right and I'm curious what's causing it. Can I get a KSP log file from you, kindly? EDIT: nvm, I fixed it, heh. See below. I think I now understand why Laythe is looking weird then... it doesn't have a new "ultra" shader! It's only the "Ultra" shader worlds that are working then, and everything else is borked? That sounds reasonable, and would be easy to fix. Is that correct? Can someone test? I'm presently working but will have time to make a build in a little less than an hour.

Release just dropped. The sctterer-based shadows are pretty much bugged beyond repair as one end (be it near, or far) will always glitch out until @blackrack has a look at the shader, which he is doing now. We hope to have them properly fixed in final release. For now, they are off by default and I recommend using Kerbal's built in ones instead. If you turn them on, it will opt for the best case scenario, which is to have them only glitch at exteremely far away zooms and altitudes (still not ideal, but hey, we're working on it). The near-far issue should be completely fixed as it was only caused by a missing zero and rather easy to address. Thank you everyone for helping with testing and having patience.

Ok everyone a new release candidate fixing the new near/far transitional bug is about to drop (easy bug fix, it's literally due to a missing zero). I just had work and it took up a lot of my time today. Expect it soon, I will edit this post when out. Unfortunately, it appears the "excellent performance boost" I noted last night was due to that insanely close clipping plane, so we will lose that. Oh well, still will perform as good as before. EDIT: Latest builds are out! Here is the change log: RC9 is out with the following changes: 1.) Added a missing zero to fix near-far transitional issues. Reduced the impact on the nearclip plane too. 2.) Scatterer-shadows have been disabled by default because they are still buggy at extreme ranges, though they work upclose pretty well, (KSP will take over, don't worry). Please specify your OS when posting bug reports, as always. Download Locations for RC9: Github: https://github.com/R-T-B/Scatterer/releases My Server: http://glacialsoftware.net/ScattererBuilds

Yeah I'm missing a zero actually. I'm going to blame lack of sleep, lol. New release incoming. I'm also going to toy with restoring the nearclip to 1f at most, since it's been messed with a bit too much.

I just released RC8. Usual sources (github or my server). Changelog follows. RC8 is out with the following changes: 1.) Scatterer-shadows have been reenabled due to a new novel fix that renders them nearly completely bug free and far more performant than before! This fix involves adjusting the near clipping plane (basically you clip through walls slightly sooner, if you understand what that mean)... if this bothers you, you can always manually overrride it in your KSC settings, but it should be worth it to lose a tiny bit of foreground viewing space for fully functional shadows again. Please specify your OS when posting bug reports, as always. This is likely my last RC as I think that's the last bug. Prove me wrong! If you don't, I'll promote this to release on my feed soon!

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/UnluckyBestKrill-mobile.mp4 Not gonna lie, first thing I'd do is make a spacesuit for those guys and become a Mun Shepard.

In stock KSP, the only mention of them ever eating anything was them trying to taste the surface of Minmus while taking a surface sample. So they are dirt eaters. Case closed.