Intercept Games

Will the game be optimized for Steam Deck? KSP 2 is currently not optimized for Steam Deck, but we will closely monitor player feedback for how this may be supported in the future.

Will there be  Microtransactions?  Kerbal Space Program 2 will not have purchasable in-game currency or loot boxes. Microtransactions have never been a part of Kerbal and we are not bringing them to KSP2. Our focus will be to deliver solid, meaningful content our fans will love. Are any of the features on the roadmap going to be locked behind additional payment? No, everything included in the Early Access roadmap is included in the purchase.

When will career mode be added to the game? New progression modes will be added over the course Early Access. Science Mode, in which collectible Science can be collected and transmitted to KSC to unlock new technologies at the R&D Center, will be added to the game first. Exploration Mode, in which the ability to create both vehicles and colonies is constrained by the availability of natural resources that occur infrequently across multiple star systems, will arrive later in Early Access. For this mode, the monetary constraints of KSP1 have been replaced by material resource constraints. For both of these progression modes, bespoke missions will also be available through Mission Control.

Will there be mods during Early Access? We expect modders to dig into KSP2 on day one. We recognize that the modding community has played a big role in the longevity of KSP, and we continue to be impressed by the mods that they create. For KSP2, we intend to improve the modding experience even further, and we look forward to hearing feedback from modders over the course of Early Access.

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access? KSP 2 will stay in Early Access until we feel that the game and its full feature set are at our desired level of quality. Check out our roadmap for our planned feature releases and make sure to follow our social channels for further information on timing of updates.

Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?  Yes, KSP 2 is available for $49.99 (SRP) during Early Access, and we expect that the price will be raised at 1.0 release.

Where are the other features? It is critical to us that the core of KSP 2 is made as great as it can be for new and returning players alike, and this goal is best served by allowing the community to experience these systems in their nascent state during Early Access. Colonies, interstellar travel, and multiplayer, along with other to-be-revealed features, are all under active development. We will share more about these features as they become ready to release.

What is the current state of the Early Access version? Initial release of Early Access will include: Remodeled and visually updated Kerbolar System Hundreds of new and improved parts including engines, procedural wings, and more Improved experience for new and returning players Animated Tutorials Improved User Interface Upgraded Map View Fully revamped vehicle assembly & flight interfaces Customize your vehicles with creative paint jobs More for players to discover (we don’t want to spoil everything)! 

When is it coming to MacOS or Linux? These versions are part of our extended roadmap. We’ll share more information at a later date!

When will the console version be released? For the Xbox Series X|S and PS5 versions of the game to complete development, content from the PC version must first be completed. Console versions will come out as soon as possible after the completion of the Early Access period. This also means that the console versions will benefit from many of the improvements applied over the course of Early Access.  Are you still releasing PS4/Xbox One versions of KSP 2? KSP2 is a complex game and we believe that to provide the best possible console experience for our players it requires the latest consoles’ hardware. The current plan is to release only on PS5 and Xbox X|S for the console versions.

How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process? Your feedback will be crucial in helping to make KSP 2 the best it can be, and we want to hear about everything that is important to you. Are the tutorials effective? Are there enough of them? Have the user interface changes made a meaningful impact? Is the localization accurate? Because KSP2 is a very large physics sandbox game, our ability to detect and reproduce bugs is massively improved when the game is in the hands of a community that is known for pushing Kerbal to its absolute limits You can follow the development progress through our various social channels: On Steam, the KSP subreddit, the official KSP forums, Intercept Games Discord, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and Facebook

Frequently Asked Questions: How to Submit Feedback? How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process? When is it coming to console? When is it coming to MacOS or Linux? What is the current state of the Early Access version? What does being in Early Access mean? Where are the other features? Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?  Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access? Will there be mods during Early Access? When will career mode be added to the game? Will there be  Microtransactions?  Will the game be optimized for Steam Deck? Can I play KSP 2 offline? Are you optimizing for performance? Will the KSP2 OST be available?

It's happening!! Kerbal Space Program 2 Early Access is here!

List of Known Issues and Workaround Recommendations Known issues with recommended workarounds: · Graphics settings default to “high quality” on first playthrough. If you are having framerate issues on initial load, access Settings via the ESC menu and select alternate quality settings. · Fuel flow and Delta-V calculations are currently undergoing optimization, but on day 1 of Early Access, high numbers of engines pulling from a common fuel source may impact framerate. If you’re having trouble achieving a desired framerate on your machine, consider using a smaller number of higher-performance engines on your vehicle. This issue is very high priority for us and will be addressed in an upcoming update. · The center of lift indicator does not yet update dynamically when you adjust a wing in the editor - to see the effects of a wing modification, you must first exit the editor to update the center of lift. · In KSP2, the arrow keys now pan the camera, rather than rotating it (right mouse button still rotates the camera). If you get the camera in an undesirable state, press the Home key on your keyboard to reset it to its default position. Known issues being actively worked on: · Some parts from the original KSP aren't available - a few parts won't carry over — for example, the increased flexibility of the new engine plate system has reduced the need for bespoke compound parts like the Twin Boar and Mammoth engines. Also, the old patchwork wing parts have been supplanted by procedural wings. Other parts (for example A.I.R.B.R.A.K.E.s) are still in development and will be added in future updates. And of course Science collection, future propulsion, and colony parts will be added alongside their respective feature updates. · There are still a few issues with our serialization code, and very rarely (especially when building high-complexity vehicles) your vehicle may collapse into an unrecoverable pile of parts on the floor of the VAB. The undo key may also break your in-progress build. For now, it’s a good idea to save frequently. · Trip planner – the trip planner occasionally displays inaccurate delta-v numbers for some destinations. All delta-v numbers in the VAB use vacuum specific impulse numbers, which affects their accuracy. This will be addressed in a future update. Delta-v numbers shown in the staging stack during flight dynamically reflect the current flight state. · Re-entry heating and thermal systems are offline - you'll have a brief window here at the beginning of Early Access during which you can re-enter any atmosphere without a heat shield. We’re still buttoning down our heat transfer, ablation, and occlusion systems. Vapor cone visual effects are also still in-progress. · No collision on trees or rocks - we're optimizing collision for these objects right now, and in the interest of maintaining good framerates we're going to complete that optimization work before letting you crash into these objects. For now, they're holograms. While KSC buildings ARE collideable, they are not yet destructible. · Framerate stutters/lag - we're continuing to work down the list of performance optimizations, from highest to lowest impact. As we push processes out of the main thread and continue to improve the efficiency of our physics, resource flow, VFX, and graphics systems, framerates should improve for all players. · Some UI elements can be challenging to interact with - we're still cleaning up the systems that give priority to different classes of information in the map view, and there are times when you need to click a few extra times to get a hold of the maneuver planner. Similarly, you may have some challenges associating selected parts with their data in the Part Manager. We’re making several changes to the current UI so you can expect this experience to improve over time. This list is not exhaustive – we are tracking and working on a number of additional issues. If you have non-bug feedback during Early Access, please submit that feedback through the form in the launcher. If you’ve run into a bug (or think you have), please go to support.privatedivision.com

Overview Kerbal Space Program 2 encompasses many new features, most of which will continue to improve over the course of Early Access. Here’s what’s new: The Training Center The all-new training center provides players with sequential lessons that teach the basics of spaceflight, starting with core concepts and then moving into simulated flights that give you an opportunity to try out what you’ve learned. There are currently four main lessons, ranging from basic rocketry to interplanetary maneuvering. You can access any tutorial even during normal flight – simply open the ESC menu and select Training Center, and your current flight will be paused and then automatically resumed when the tutorial has ended. New tutorials will be added to the training center as the game grows during Early Access. Your input on the effectiveness of these learning tools is extremely valuable, so please feel free to submit your feedback via the launcher feedback tools. Vehicle Construction and Workspaces When you save your work in the VAB, you don’t just save one craft file anymore. Instead, you save a workspace that may comprise several subassemblies. Since KSP2 allows players to work on multiple assemblies simultaneously, you may want to think of a workspace save as a snapshot of everything that’s being worked on for a given engineering project. There are a few new concepts that come along with this change: You now have a Vehicle Name and a separate Workspace Filename. Your vehicle name is what you’ll see in the Tracking Station when your vehicle is in flight - for example, “Kerpollo 11”. Your Workspace Filename, on the other hand, should change every time you want to create a unique save of your construction progress — so ”Kerpollo 11A,“ ”Kerpollo 11B,“ etc. would make good workspace filenames. You control which subassembly in a workspace will go to the launchpad when you select the Launch button. The Launch Assembly tool, which lives on the VAB toolbar at the bottom of the screen, can be used to designate which subassembly in the workspace is your flight-ready vehicle. The Part Anchor tool at the bottom of the screen controls which part within a subassembly is its root part – eg. the part of the subassembly that will be its main point of manipulation/attachment. To change which part of a subassembly is its Anchor, select this tool and then click on the part of the vehicle you wish to set as the root part. In contrast to the separate Vehicle Assembly Building and Spaceplane Hangar of the original KSP, KSP2 has only a single VAB within which all vehicles are created. To switch between vertical (rockets) and horizonal (planes and rovers) construction modes, toggle the workspace orientation button at the lower left corner of the screen. You’ll find a few other new capabilities in the VAB, as well: By selecting the View Cube at lower left, you can enter and exit Plan View, which gives you an orthogonal perspective of your vehicle from one of six directions. This is handy for lining up edges and making sure that angles are just right. Clicking and dragging the middle mouse button allows you to track the VAB camera along the vehicle’s long axis. To focus the camera on a particular part, middle-click that part. Use the scroll wheel to zoom. To change the color of all or part of your vehicle, select the color picker on the VAB toolbar. This tool allows you to assign both a primary color and an accent color to your vehicle. If you only want to change the color of a single part, select the Part button at the top of the dialog. You can control the visibility of both primary and accent colors via the transparency slider to the right of the color swatch. If you want to see only a primary color on your part, select the accent color and drag the transparency slider all the way down. If you want to see no paint on the part at all, select the primary color and drag the transparency slider all the way down. Shiny! There are three new types of procedural wings: Wings, Stabilizers, and All-Moving Control Surfaces. After placing one of these parts on your vehicle, you can modify its shape and attributes by selecting the wrench icon that appears above the part on mouseover. For Wings and Stabilizers, this editor also allows you to toggle the presence of integrated control surfaces, as well as the shape and placement of those control surfaces. Here’s a handy tip: you can create compound wings with interesting silhouettes by attaching multiple wings end-to-end! Interstage shrouds, which bridge the gap between an upper-stage engine and the decoupler placed beneath it, are now also procedural, allowing them to flare or taper to match the core sizes of the parts they’re connecting. If you want to attach multiple engines to the bottom of a stage, first add an engine plate beneath the stage above. You can attach any number of engines to an engine plate - just select a symmetry mode and place the engines in whatever configuration you like. Engine plates will automatically deploy interstage shrouds, just like any other engine. You can modify the vertical distance of the floating node (the connection point to which something placed beneath the engines will attach) by right-clicking on the engine plate and adjusting the Floating Node slider in the Part Action Manager. There is a Favorites category at the top of the part picker. To add a part to your Favorites tab, select the star button on that part’s entry. Known Issues (currently being addressed) Some parts from the original KSP aren't available - a few parts won't carry over — for example, the increased flexibility of the new engine plate system has reduced the need for bespoke compound parts like the Twin Boar and Mammoth engines. Also, the old patchwork wing parts have been supplanted by procedural wings. Other parts (for example A.I.R.B.R.A.K.E.s) are still in development and will be added in future updates. And of course Science collection, future propulsion, and colony parts will be added alongside their respective feature updates. There are still a few gremlins in our serialization code, and very rarely (especially when building high-complexity vehicles) your vehicle may collapse into an unrecoverable pile of parts on the floor of the VAB. For now, it’s a good idea to save frequently. Trip planner – the trip planner occasionally displays inaccurate delta-v numbers for some destinations. All delta-v numbers in the VAB use vacuum specific impulse numbers, which affects their accuracy. This will be addressed in a future update. Delta-v numbers shown in the staging stack during flight dynamically reflect the current flight state. The center of lift indicator does not yet update dynamically when you adjust a wing in the editor - to see the effects of a wing modification, you must first exit the editor to update the center of lift. Flight and Maneuvering When launching from a launchpad, the first staging input triggers a ten-second countdown that automatically ends with a launch. If you wish to skip the countdown, simply stage again and your vehicle will lift off. When you turn on the Stability Assist System (also called S.A.S.), your vehicle will by default attempt to maintain its current orientation. When you select one of the orientation buttons to the right of your navball, your vehicle will use S.A.S. to orient in the direction you’ve selected. If you want your vehicle to hold its orientation after that, simply select the “hold orientation” button with the padlock icon. You can also toggle S.A.S. off and back on with the T key if you wish to quickly lock in your current orientation. There are a few new camera modes, in addition to the auto, orbit, and horizon modes you might remember from the original KSP. Chase mode now follows the vehicle like it’s on a sled, with the camera oriented to the up-direction of whatever command part is controlling the vessel - it’s a great choice for docking maneuvers. The new capture camera allows you to film your vehicle from any angle, and provides handy movement speed controls, dolly and panning controls, and camera roll controls – all of which live on the numpad. In Map Mode, planetary spheres of influence (SOIs) are now visible - when you pass into or out of an SOI, a ripple effect shows the point of interception. When you create a Maneuver Plan, the projected trajectory depicts the portion of your path that will take place under acceleration - this is shown as a red line. Importantly, the tech that allows us to pre-calculate accelerating trajectories also allows time warp under acceleration, so provided you’re outside an atmosphere you can greatly reduce the amount of time you spend waiting for burns to end. Known Issues (currently being addressed) Re-entry heating and thermal systems are offline - you'll have a brief window here at the beginning of Early Access during which you can re-enter any atmosphere without a heat shield. We’re still buttoning down our heat transfer, ablation, and occlusion systems. Vapor cone visual effects are also still in-progress. No collision on trees or rocks - we're optimizing collision for these objects right now, and in the interest of maintaining good framerates we're going to complete that optimization work before letting you crash into these objects. For now, they're holograms. While KSC buildings ARE collideable, they are not yet destructible. Framerate stutters/lag - we're continuing to work down the list of performance optimizations, from highest to lowest impact. As we push processes out of the main thread and continue to improve the efficiency of our physics, resource flow, VFX, and graphics systems, framerates should improve for all players. Some UI elements can be challenging to interact with - we're still cleaning up the systems that give priority to different classes of information in the map view, and there are times when you need to click a few extra times to get a hold of the maneuver planner. Similarly, you may have some challenges associating selected parts with their data in the Part Manager. We’re making several changes to the current UI so you can expect this experience to improve over time. This is a particular area within which we welcome your feedback. Modding One final note - we take modding very seriously, and we're looking forward to working alongside our counterparts in the community to improve the moddability of KSP2. As stability and performance improve, we will continue to devote resources to opening up more areas of the game to modders during Early Access. Our first modding priority in the coming months will be to provide greater access to part modders. We'll release more information on modding support once Early Access is underway.

Hello Kerbonauts! As we approach the Early Access launch of KSP2, we want to take a little bit of time to tell you about how to give us feedback, and the types of feedback we are looking for throughout the course of Early Access. How can I give feedback on Kerbal Space Program 2 while it’s in Early Access? Kerbal Space Program has many places where you can provide us feedback on your experiences with the game. The Kerbal Community Team will regularly be reading and sharing player feedback heard among the Kerbal community channels with Intercept Games. In the game’s launcher, which can be accessed through the Steam and Epic versions, there will be a permanent feedback button where you can share your feedback on any topic. Periodically there will be topic-specific surveys from the team, which will help us concentrate feedback and ensure no one's feedback is missed. What is considered feedback? What feedback are you looking for? Early Access is about learning and improving, and our intent is to do that hand-in-hand with our community of players. While we build on the foundations of Kerbal Space Program 2, your experiences, both good and bad, will be invaluable in how we make the game even better – and that’s what we want to know from you all throughout Early Access. We absolutely want to hear about what you enjoy, don’t enjoy, could be better, or tweaked. We also want to hear about any bugs you encounter throughout gameplay. Anything more urgent such as crashes, freezes, or other game-breaking issues, please contact Private Division Customer Support. Our support agents will work to assist you while collecting as much information as possible, as fixing these are the highest priority for our development team throughout Early Access. How can I give feedback on Kerbal Space Program 2 in the Game’s Launcher? When you launch the game through Steam or the Epic Games Store, a launcher will first appear. This is where you can start the game or find the latest news, patch notes, and community highlights. On this launcher, there are two ways to give feedback on your game experience to the development team: Send Feedback Button: This button lives permanently in the launcher and can be accessed anytime. If you come across anything in the game you like, dislike, or think could be improved you can give feedback on it through this. Active Survey: If there is a feedback survey currently live, you will see a button on the game page (in the launcher) allowing you to give your feedback. These surveys will be time-limited and topic-specific. For example, one may be activated once a new content update is released, or if we want to deep-dive on certain areas or features of the game. If I didn’t buy the game via Steam or Epic, how do I give feedback? For the surveys accessed through the Steam and Epic launchers, they will be made available through the Kerbal Space Program website on February 24th What language(s) are you collecting feedback in? Currently we are only supporting responses through the Send Feedback Button or Active Surveys in English. We cannot wait to share Kerbal Space Program 2 with our community and look forward to hearing what you all have to say about it! Happy Launching! -Intercept Games

Hello Kerbonauts! Just one week to go until Kerbal Space Program 2’s launch into Early Access! As the gameplay trailer shows, we are hyped up for all the amazing things the community will be able to do. The whole Kerbolar system will be available day 1 and there will be some new secrets to find. So, build a plane, rocket, or rover and get ready to launch Kerbal Space Program 2! So, when is it releasing? We made this nifty map that shows the UTC release timing. Kerbal Space Program 2 will be releasing globally at 6AM Pacific Time. Global Release Times by City: Honolulu – 4AM Seattle/Los Angeles – 6 AM Mexico City – 8AM New York City – 9AM São Paulo – 11AM London – 2PM Berlin – 3PM Helsinki – 4PM Dubai – 6PM Mumbai– 7:30PM Bangkok – 9PM Taipei – 10PM Tokyo – 11PM Sydney – 1AM Auckland– 3AM

Hello Kerbonauts! KSP2's Feature video on Recording Rockets is here! In this video, we will be featuring how Sound Director Howard Mostrom recorded a real rocket launch to use in KSP2!

Engines: How to Avoid Shipping a Rocket Scientist By Chris Adderley We’ve mentioned approachability as a core pillar of our KSP2 design, and I’m here today to talk about one of the less-obvious ways we are focusing on helping players reach the stars. An area we’ve noticed players struggling with in testing is making sense of the dizzying array of engines you’re presented with in the VAB. KSP1 had 35 engines for you to choose from (more if the Making History DLC is installed), spread across Liquid Fuel/Oxidizer, Liquid Fuel, Monopropellant, Xenon and Solid fuel types. This leads to a good deal of player confusion when starting out – what engine should I use? What engine is best for what I want to do? Why isn’t this rocket lifting off the pad even though I put 20 Terriers on it? There’s a lot of trial-and-error gameplay before you learn the hard-won lessons about specific impulse, thrust to weight ratio, and fuel density that can rocket you to success in KSP. Hah. It unfortunately gets a bit worse. When you're looking for an engine, all of your important details are buried deep. You're searching for specific impulse, thrust, mass, heat production, and how the engine performs in multiple situations (sea level, orbit, other planets). It's a lot of work when you're learning! When we look at our plans for KSP2, we’re only making this problem worse. We’re adding more engines, more fuel types and more engine sizes. Ouch. Clearly, we need to find good ways to teach new and returning players how to select an engine and teach players at the very least which engines are better at which missions they want to accomplish. I’m going to go into some detail on how we’re going to work towards addressing this, focusing in on the most common type of engines in KSP – the venerable liquid fuel engine category, which boasts such illustrious names as the Mainsail, Rhino and… Ant. Liquid Fuel -> Methane Before we get into this, a bit of terminology. Let’s start with talking about… methane and methane accessories. KSP1 gave us an abstracted resource to run our most common workhorse engines: the well-regarded Liquid Fuel . For KSP2, we’ve decided to take this resource and… name it. It’s methane. For their space program, Kerbals have passed over the brutish kerosene, toxic hypergolics and seductive lure of liquid hydrogen to settle on this nice middle ground fuel. It’s a good choice – a number of commercial companies are currently moving engines using methane and oxygen propellants to operational readiness. When we talk about engines you might recall from KSP1 that sported the Liquid Fuel/Oxidizer moniker, we’re always talking about methalox engines. Yes, this nomenclature change applies to jet engines as well for simplicity, so jet engines are now methane engines. Engine Archetypes So, looking in detail at the methalox engines we have inherited from KSP1, we can see that we’ve got an interesting challenge on our hands. More than half of those 35 engines are methalox, and they’re practically the first engines a player gets introduced to. If we’ve done our job right, they’ll continue to be useful engines in some niche even after you have access to objectively more power engines, so they’ll stick around for a while. So, how to sort and help players determine how best to use them? I’ll present the concept of Engine Archetypes. Rocketry fans will be familiar with three high-level types of liquid fuel engines. Firstly we have the high-thrust, high power engine which we can call the booster engine. These engines are great for getting a ship out of the atmosphere and pushing really heavy payloads, but don’t [SG16] have the efficiency to make them great deep space engines. Examples of this could be the Saturn V’s F-1 engines, or the Falcon 9’s Merlin engines. Secondly, we have the sustainer type engine. This is typically a more efficient engine that burns for a longer duration, but doesn’t really have the oomph needed to throw heavy payloads into orbit without a little help. This type of engine is often paired with extra boosters of some type to get a kick up into orbit. Good examples of this include the Space Shuttle’s RS-25 engines and the Ariane series of rockets’ Vulcain engines. Thirdly we have pure vacuum, orbit-only engines, best for operating in the cold depths of space and really, really efficient, but it will be lucky to push an overstuffed Kerbal though even thin atmospheres. A shining example here is the Aerojet RL-10 engine, which has existed for so long (early versions flew in the early 1960s, and the current version is used on the SLS rocket’s Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage) that it is basically the kitchen appliance of rocketry. We can map these engine archetypes to KSP engines fairly well – see the following table. Archetype KSP Examples Booster Reliant, Mainsail, Mammoth Sustainer Swivel, Skipper, Rhino Vacuum Ant, Terrier, Poodle This provides a good starting point for laying out KSP2’s methalox engine lineup. Vacuum Engines – an aside We’re always looking for opportunities to improve teaching about real rocketry concepts. One of the places KSP1 hasn’t quite lined up with the literature is the nature of the vacuum engines it uses. In reality, the shape and size of the nozzle attached to a rocket engine makes a big difference in terms of its performance at different atmospheric pressures. A good way of looking at this is to compare something called expansion ratio – which is a measure of the difference between the area of the engine’ s throat and its area of the nozzle exit. In vacuum, the ideal expansion ratio is extremely large – a good vacuum engine has a very narrow throat compared to its exit. To make a given engine work better in vacuum, we use a really big nozzle (though there’s obviously a lot more to it that just making your booster engine’s nozzle bigger). Simplified rocket engines with small and high nozzle expansion ratios Of course, reality sets in here because you can’t just add moar expansion ratio (a multi-kilometer wide nozzle might be a bit heavy) .Rocket scientists have tested novel concepts like the inflatable nozzle (look this one up), the hinged nozzle, and other creative ways of compressing nozzles so they become really big in orbit but can be launched with a smaller footprint. A working example of that is the RL-10B-2 engine that uses an extending lower nozzle cone that deploys once the rocket’s upper stage separates. You’ll see something like that in KSP2 with our NERV-US engine. Unfortunately, KSP1’s vacuum engines are actually smaller than their atmospheric counterparts, which causes no end of consternation among the more technically minded of KSP players. This is a bit of dichotomy, because we all love using the Terrier and Poodle as lander engines due to their small footprint and suitability for landing legs. For KSP2, we will we be looking at moving towards a model that keeps these heritage KSP1 engines around as a subclass of engines that we’ll define as the Orbital class. These will maintain some level of excellence in space, get a bump to their atmospheric stats and leave the door wide open to the long, efficient Deep Space class of engine that lines up more with idealized vacuum engines – a new set we’ll be introducing through Early Access. KSP2 Methalox Engine Archetypes So, given all the above we have defined four engine archetypes: Booster, Sustainer, Orbital, and Deep Space. With these archetypes in mind, we can design for them and use them to teach players. Players who know how to use Thrust and ISP to find the engines they want still have that information. More novice players can build to that point by first learning archetypes. How do we teach archetypes? Well, here’s what we’re working on: Terminology: We have aligned ingame terminology, like subtitles and descriptions, to specifically work on teaching player that any given engine belongs to specific archetypes. At Early Access you’ll for example see the Mainsail comes with a tagline of ‘Methalox Booster Engine’ that helps players situate it in the hierarchy of engines. Archetype subtitle for the Terrier Visuals: We have created specific design languages for each engine type, so picking up an engine and looking at it will be a good way to think about how it performs. Building these languages into our engine models is going to be an ongoing process through Early Access. Balance and Tuning: We have mapped broad bands of engine characteristics to types, and then aligned many engines to better tell their stories. There are always strange engines, but they get to be strange because standard engines exist (like the Dart, that weird little aerospike guy). Visual Language Having good visual language for concepts is one of my passions. We want KSP’s rocket engines to be similar to, but not be real life engines. Reality is full of cool engines, and some of our engines hew very close to existing or conceptual designs. It's tempting to do that all the time, but the closer we lean to reality, the more the engines must skew to reality in all regards. I call this the "Why can't I build a space shuttle with three Vectors" problem. In addition, we’re unlikely to have anything close to the great variety of fuels and tanks that reality has, so being very high fidelity with designs for engines creates disconnects for a detail-oriented realism players (this terrain is great for modders). Instead, when we’re looking at our archetype language for KSP, we will try to be a bit more general and inspired by real engines, rather than creating exact copies. I’ve put together some sketches of these four archetypes to guide our artistic design going forward. The goal is for each of them to have a distinct visual look that is preserved through all size classes, and is versatile enough that, for example, a Mainsail doesn’t just look like a smaller Mammoth. We can pick and choose from a number of reality-alike design elements to create cool, Kerbal-native engines. Booster engine features and possible design variations Sustainer engine features and possible design variations Orbital engine features and possible design variations Deep Space engine features and possible design variations The first place you’ll see this visual language in Early Access is the 3.75m engine lineup featuring the Labradoodle, Mammoth-II, and Rhino. Applied design! From left to right, the Labradoodle, Mammoth-II and Rhino engines sporting, respectively, Orbital, Booster and Sustainer visual queues, courtesy of artists Jonathan Cooper and Pablo Ollervides. Balance and Tuning As we get to the end of this article, I wanted to touch on balance and tuning. Our guiding principles in tuning engines can be summed up with 3 points: Don't deviate from KSP1 for the sake of it. A methalox rocket in KSP2 should perform similarly to a similar looking Liquid Fuel/Oxidizer rocket from KSP1 Engines of an archetype have similar characteristics. Engines within a fuel type exist in a similar band of power, so newer or larger engines should not make older engines obsolete. These rules still give us a lot of room for play while letting us increase approachability. Some engines, like the Vector, needed a hard look under these guidelines. We’re basically trying to follow this chart, which I find a useful way of looking at the overall capabilities of engines. If an engine is a Methalox Sustainer, it should fall in the blue region, as an example – and we are really trying to keep things out of the Useless and Way Too Useful regions . The Way Too Useful region is a story for later in Early Access with more exotic engines , which have their own, unique challenges for building and flying. Taken together, this means that outside of some specific areas, you won’t see massive statistical changes to most engines in KSP2 from KSP1, despite the naming change from Liquid Fuel and Oxidizer to Methalox. Places to watch out for are: KSP2’s 3.75m engines have had some overhauls to account for the addition of an Orbital engine in this size class (say hello to the Labradoodle, as named by Scott Manley!) KSP2’s Orbital engines have better atmospheric performance than their KSP1 counterparts. The relationship between the Mammoth (now Mammoth-II) and the Vector has been adjusted for KSP2, as they no longer need to match visually. Putting it all Together I can sum everything up using a table. Tables are almost my favorite things, narrowly being edged out by graphs. Other Fuels “But Chris!”, you say, “I thought KSP2 was about MORE than just Methalox?”. That’s absolutely true, and we’ll be looking to follow the same general rules when creating archetypes through other fuel types as we reveal things through Early Access.

Hello Kerbonauts! My name is Virginia, but you all know me as Ghostii-Space on the forums, and I am one of the Community Managers for Kerbal Space Program. I am responsible for many of the social posts to our accounts, and for reading and responding to many of your comments. Now, you may be asking yourself, why are they doing a Dev Diary for the Community team? I am glad you asked! The community team is the main liaison between the community and the devs. This means that throughout Early Access, we will be instrumental in relaying your feedback to the development team. We also help the development team communicate with the community, such as facilitating Dev Diaries, Show and Tells, and sneak peeks into KSP2. During KSP2’s Early Access we want to make sure to highlight all the awesome experiences you have! So, what does a day in the life of a community manager look like? Well, I wake up 30 minutes before work starts and brew a cup of coffee while I review my emails and warm up my scrolling thumb by deleting the hundred promotional emails I get daily. My workday starts with reading comments and questions from our social media accounts and responding to my work emails. After that I usually scroll through twitter or reddit for news and memes. Then, I attend some meetings and create content for our social media accounts. Finally, I finish off with more work emails and responding to more comments/questions. Occasionally I flounder around our office to film TikToks with local celebrity Jeb Kerman. Glamorous, I know. So how did I get here? Well, I took a super roundabout route and started with a degree in Anthropology and Museum Studies. There I was, all bright eyed and ready to spend the rest of my life in a dusty museum storage room. But I happened to be unemployed and came across a role open for an Assistant Community Manager for Kerbal Space Program. Figuring I was not going to be able to make a living as a professional Final Fantasy XIV player (which I was obsessed with at the time), I applied for the role fully expecting to get ghosted because I barely had any experience in social media other than personal use. But fortunately, I play a lot of simulation titles such as Oxygen Not Included, Satisfactory, and Astroneer. I also have a lot of outside skills thanks to my years in customer service and my degree in Anthropology that relate to being a community manager! Anthropology is a huge part of what I do daily, as I am constantly gathering information for our community and from the internet as a whole! So, what does this have to do with Kerbal Space Program 2? Well, I have to say, this is one of the best communities I have ever seen, and I am passionate about supporting this community as it continues to grow with Kerbal Space Program 2. Working with all of you during Early Access is going to be a wonderful journey that I am glad we get to launch together. We appreciate all of you and want to make KSP2 the best game it can be!! So happy launching and don’t forget your parachutes!

Hello Kerbonauts! We here at mission control are happy to launch patch 1.12.4 on Wednesday November 2nd, 2022 which addresses the long awaited tutorial bug fixes! We have also squashed an Alarm Clock bug that ignored custom day/year lengths. As we are dedicating our time and effort to launching KSP2, future patches for KSP will be less prioritized but please continue to let us know about any bugs you encounter. Happy launching and remember your parachutes! Patch Notes Change Log: =================================== v1.12.4 ============================================================ +++ Bugfixes * Fix Alarm Clock input fields ignoring configured custom day/year lengths. * Fix Basic Flight tutorial. * Fix Go For Orbit tutorial. * Fix Intermediate Construction tutorial. * Fix Advanced Construction tutorial. * Fix Sub Orbital tutorial. * Fix Craft Browser not showing the Hopper in Intermediate Construction tutorial. New Launcher for KSP on Steam. Will serve as a resource for news and updates about KSP & KSP 2 Early Access. In addition, you will be able to give feedback through the launcher once KSP 2 has been released into Early Access.

Kerbonauts, we’re excited to announce that Kerbal Space Program 2 will be releasing in Early Access on February 24th, 2023, for an Early Access price of $49.99. The game will be available on PC only during Early Access, on the KSP website, Steam and Epic Games Store. Check out the in-depth Feature Video on the announcement here https://youtu.be/XAL3XaP-LyE. Kerbal Space Program 2 has been fully redesigned from the ground up to meet the demands of modern and next-generation space exploration, all while maintaining the monumental foundations of the first game. Construct powerful spacecraft and navigate expansive celestial bodies as you explore cosmic mysteries. Releasing in Early Access, KSP 2 will allow players to see features as they are released and provide feedback to shape this exciting game through development. New features will periodically be added through Early Access that will captivate veteran and returning players, as well as usher in a whole new wave of Kerbonauts to the ingenious and comedic world that has entertained millions. Key Features: Major upgrades during Early Access: Get a front-row seat as major new systems come online, including the addition of new star systems, interstellar travel technologies, colonies, multiplayer, and more. Become part of the development process by contributing feedback throughout the Early Access period and be the first to play exciting updates as they are released. Improved onboarding: Kerbal Space Program 2 will create a whole new generation of spaceflight experts who will find themselves accidentally learning the fundamentals of rocket science. New animated tutorials, improved UI, and fully revamped assembly and flight interfaces allow both experienced and novice players to quickly put their creativity to the test without sacrificing any of the challenge from the original game. Customizable parts and new space-flight technology: In Kerbal Space Program 2, the astoundingly inventive creations that KSP is known for will be taken to a whole new level. Players will be delighted and challenged by a new generation of engines, parts, fuel, procedural parts systems, and much more. The overhauled vehicle assembly interface includes part sorting and a blueprint view for making precise adjustments. And of course, new part coloring allows you to customize your creations like never before. Rich new environments to explore: Unprecedented detail, variety, and realism make each celestial body a rewarding destination. Clouds, atmospheric scattering, and an all-new terrain system combine to take your breath away, from ground level all the way to orbit! New tools to optimize your exploration of the universe: Along with other massive new UI/UX improvements, you can now use time warp while accelerating and plan complex maneuvers with ease using the new non-impulsive maneuver planner. New sphere of influence and atmosphere indicators take the guesswork out of interplanetary maneuvering! Key Features to come during Early Access: Next Generation Technology: As the game updates progress, players will gain access to a whole new set of next generation tools and technology including new engines, parts, fuel, and much more. This new tech will not just create novel puzzles for players to solve, but will also enable new feats of space exploration within and beyond the original Kerbolar System. Colonies: Brand new to Kerbal Space Program 2 are colonies. Colonies not only pose their own physics challenges, but also require resource gathering to build structures, space stations, habitations, and unique fuel types. Eventually, these colonies become advanced enough for vehicle construction, propelling deep space exploration and beyond. Interstellar Travel: Next-gen tech, colonies, and systematic resource gathering all lead to a whole new level of exploration: interstellar travel. In Kerbal Space Program 2, interstellar technologies pave the way to a host of new star systems and celestial bodies, each comprising novel challenges and harboring secret treasures. Among them: Charr, a heat-blasted world of iron; Ovin, a ringed super-Earth with relentless gravity; Rask and Rusk, a binary pair locked in a dance of death; and many more to reward exploration. Multiplayer: It’s KSP2…but with more chaos, competition, or cooperation -- depending on your friends. Players should expect some hilarious and exciting moments as KSP2 will allow you to tackle challenges against or with other players. Modding: We expect modders to dig into KSP2 on day one. We recognize that the modding community has played a big role in the longevity of KSP, and we continue to be impressed by the mods that are released. The team aims to ensure that over the course of Early Access, the sequel is even more mod-friendly and release updates aimed to support the modding community. Additionally, the team will be collecting feedback and analyzing how to continue to improve modding support with the community. *Based on Private Division’s suggested retail price. Actual retail price may differ. See local platform store for pricing and terms FAQs Why Early Access? More than anything else, we cannot wait for players to build, fly, crash, and fly again! The core pillar of KSP2 is building and flying cool rockets. While we have additional features planned like colonies, interstellar travel, and multiplayer, we first want to hear back from players about the core fundamental experience. We believe that going through early access for KSP2 will ultimately allow us to build a better game through a supportive dialogue with our community. What is the current state of the Early Access version? Initial release of Early Access will include: Remodeled and visually updated Kerbolar system with celestial secrets to uncover Hundreds of new and improved parts including engines, procedural wings, and more Customize your vehicles with creative paint jobs Improved experience for new and returning players Animated Tutorials Improved User Interface Upgraded Map View Fully revamped assembly & flight interfaces More for players to discover (we don’t want to spoil everything) Why aren’t the features we’ve been hearing about included in the day 1 launch version of Early Access? Colonies, interstellar travel, and multiplayer, along with other to-be-revealed features, are all under active development. We will release these features once each meets both our standards as well as those of the community. It is also critical to us that the core of KSP 2 is first made as great as it can be for new and returning players alike, with help from your feedback in Early Access. How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process? Your feedback will be crucial in helping to make KSP 2 the best it can be, and we want to hear about everything that is important to you. Are the tutorials effective and are there enough of them? Have the user interface changes made a meaningful impact? Is the localization accurate? Most importantly, we want players to play for thousands of hours. What will keep you playing? During Early Access there will be a form on the KSP website to submit detailed feedback. It can also be accessed from the game’s launcher and the Steam page. You can follow the development progress through our various social channels: the KSP subreddit, the official KSP forums, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and Facebook. Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access? Yes, KSP 2 will sell for $49.99 (SRP) during Early Access, and we expect that the price will be raised at 1.0 release Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access? KSP 2 will stay in Early Access until we feel that the game and its full feature set are at our desired level of quality. Check out our roadmap above for our planned feature releases and make sure to follow our social channels for further information on timing of updates. When will the console version be released? KSP2 is a complex game and we believe that to provide the best possible console experience for our players it requires the latest consoles hardware. So we will only currently be releasing on PS5 and Xbox X|S for the console versions. For the Xbox Series X|S and PS5 versions of the game to complete development, content from the PC version must first be completed. Console versions will come out as soon as possible after the completion of the Early Access period. This also means that the console versions will benefit from many of the improvements applied over the course of Early Access. Will there be mods during early access? We expect modders to dig into KSP2 on day one. We recognize that the modding community has played a big role in the longevity of KSP, and we continue to be impressed by the mods that are released. The intent with KSP 2 is to improve the modding experience even further, and we look forward to hearing feedback from modders over the course of early access. Will Mac or Linux versions come out in Early Access? These versions are part of our extended roadmap. We’ll share more information at a later date. Will the game be optimized for Steam Deck? KSP 2 will not have official Steam Deck optimization, but we will closely monitor player feedback for how this may be supported in the future. Can I play KSP 2 offline? Yes How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version? The 1.0 version of KSP 2 will include significantly more features than the Early Access version, such as what you see on the roadmap plus other items added along the way. This includes: · More parts and the opportunity for more creative builds · More star systems and hidden anomalies · Improved quality of life and onboarding to open up the vast beauty of space to even more players · Continued performance improvements and visual updates We can’t wait for you to join us on this journey into the stars!

Hello, my name is Jim Peck, a.k.a Just Jim here on the forum, and today I am excited to talk to you a little bit about writing for KSP2! First I should mention how this all happened. A lot of newer members probably don’t know the story, but it really all started here on the forum. I first discovered KSP (and this forum) about 8 years ago and was instantly hooked. Something I really liked was all the fan-fiction stories being written. I have been fascinated with space and science fiction all my life. I have also been writing all my life. I still have piles of notebooks lying around filled with all sorts of fun stuff I may revisit someday. So I decided to start my own fan-fiction story “The Saga of Emiko Station”. And it was really popular. A couple years later I was still writing Emiko when I heard about a QA position that was available for KSP, and I applied, and to my delight I was hired! I spent the next 3 years working on KSP and learning a lot about how the game really works. And having way too much fun. As far as KSP2, I was honored to be one of the very first in Squad to be given access to the game, and it gave me a lot of insight for what was to come later on. Last year I moved over full time to help on KSP2, and a few months ago I was super excited to become a full-time KSP2 writer! So enough about me, let’s talk about the game. To be clear, when I say I’m a writer, I do not mean writing/designing the game on a large scale. Those are design decisions that fall mostly on Nate Simpson, Shana Markham, and the rest of the senior staff. My job is writing out all the text that is used in the game, and it is a little more involved than you might think. One of the most important aspects of my job is maintaining the spirit and flavor of the original KSP as closely as humanly (Kerbally?) possible. I can safely say everyone on the team feels the same. KSP is incredibly unique and continues to be so. Not just for the game physics, but also because of the Kerbals. Kerbals are a vital element in adding some fun and humor to what is otherwise a very challenging subject. But the game is not about the Kerbals directly, it is about building and flying rockets. It's up to me to help bring life to our little green friends with the writing; help the players know who they are, how they think, what is driving them to the stars. OK, so one of my largest and most involved tasks is writing up the text for all the parts. There are somewhere around 600 parts currently planned for KSP2. I do not have the exact number off-hand, but somewhere around there. And this is a very big chunk of what I’ve been working on these past few months. For each part in the game there are 4 items I need to focus on: Title Part titles can be a model or designator number or a name, and often both, which can get a little confusing, especially to newer players. KSP parts will keep their existing titles, such as the FL-T400 fuel tank or LV-909 "Terrier." To make things a little more understandable, we added subtitles. Subtitle Subtitles are more descriptive than our colorful titles, and they help players identify a part without having to dig around the tooltip. This is especially handy in cases where we got a little crazy with the titles: Title: Advanced Photonic Generation System Subtitle: Lightbulb Manufacturer All of the existing KSP manufacturers will be in KSP2, along with some new ones! We are giving them a little more of a voice and influence, some of which is reflected in how they name or describe the parts they make. All of this is to add some variety and humor while also maintaining a sort of consistency between parts and manufacturers. For instance, despite being fierce competitors, Kerbodyne & Rockomax have very similar writing and naming styles (but would never admit it). C7 Aerospace considers themselves a little “better” than the rest of the manufacturers and would never, ever admit to a mistake, whereas Jebediah’s Junkyard would pride themselves in inventing a new engine by accidently exploding a bar-b-q grill. Description Part descriptions are where things get really fun, but also a little more challenging. In KSP, part descriptions were funny, but sometimes not very descriptive. There is a real opportunity for them to tell you about the use case or the science behind a part, so we are making these more descriptive while also including the Kerbal style of humor whenever possible. The biggest challenge is I have to do all of this with 300 or less characters, including spacing and punctuation. This is to ensure they fit into the pop-up window properly, but means I have to choose each and every word very carefully to make these as beneficial and funny as possible for the players. For new KSP2 parts the process is very similar. I will give a new part a title and subtitle that matches up with other parts of that type, and assign it to the most appropriate manufacturer, including several new KSP2 manufacturers. One of my favorite new manufacturers is: Shakeproof Atomic Fusion Engines (SAFE) Shakeproof Atomic Fusion Engines are the designers and builders of some of the newer tech engines, such as the Orion-style fission engines shown in our previous videos, and guarantee all their products to be completely safe. I mean, it’s right there in their name, so they must be safe… right, right??? While I’m on the subject of the newer technologies, one of the really fun things I get to do is researching the new techs. Everything we’re doing is grounded in real science, even if some of it is theoretical, and all of us on the team spend a great amount of time making sure everything is as accurate as possible for you, the player. Now once I’m done writing these, they are all checked over (and often tweaked) and approved by our senior design manager: Shana Markham. And let’s not forget our legal team. They also have to approve everything I write, and are another reason why finding the exact wording is so important. Once everything has been approved it must be implemented into the game. There are tags in the game everywhere, each with its own text string attached. Usually the person(s) working on the feature will do the set-up, I just provide the text. It is a huge process, and I am grateful for all the work that my teammates put into it. Another very important part of the writing process is we are localizing KSP2 into several different languages. This means we have to be extra careful about the writing process in general, as well as finishing far enough ahead for our localization teams to have enough time to translate everything. Sometimes there might be an issue with a particular translation, such as how a joke is perceived in a certain language, and we need to work out the proper wording. I helped the KSP localization teams quite a bit and I had a lot of fun. It can be a really unique and interesting challenge playing the game in the different languages, and I got quite good at it after a while. OK, so this does not just apply to parts. It is an example of everything that must be written for the game: experiments, the tech tree, celestial body descriptions, etc, etc... Every written bit of text in the game goes through the same process. Literally thousands of text strings that must be translated into all our different languages, and then implemented into the game in order to inform, teach, and make our players laugh and have fun. And that’s it, that’s what I do. Best job ever!!! One more thing. I would like to point out that we all work on this together. There have been a few times where I was stuck on a word or phrase and posted it on our slack channel and the next thing I knew I had 5 or 6 terrible jokes or puns from the rest of the team to choose from… And what would KSP be without the occasional horrible joke or pun? Seriously, we are a very tight-knit team, and we have a lot of fun, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I’m going to end this with one last note. To those of you that want to be writers, or whatever your dream may be… Please don’t ever give up on it. If you like to write, then write, and write a lot. Not for money or attention or hits on the internet. Do it because you want to. The rest will come later. Trust me, I’m living proof. -Cheers Jim

Hi, I’m Jamie Leighton (JPLRepo). Yes, I am, or was, one of the Lead Engineers for KSP1. As you probably all know (since it was announced last year), we have stopped development on KSP1 and the KSP1 team have now transitioned over to KSP2. I am now a Senior Engineer on the KSP2 team, and my job is to technically design, build and implement the systems and technical functionality we need to make KSP2 a fantastic game. Of course, having worked on KSP1 for many years, I can apply all my KSP knowledge, familiarity, and learnings from spending years on KSP1 to solving some of the bigger problems we had with KSP1. With that in mind, today we are going to talk about just one of the many things I’ve been working on, the KSP2 Resource System. There aren’t any glitzy visuals, pictures, or videos we can show you for this system, but it is a fundamental underlying system that is critical to the function of rocket ships and planes. Sorry if this gets a bit too technical for some, but without further ado, let’s go! The KSP2 Resource System In KSP2 The resource system consists of two main components: The Resource Core Subsystem The Resource core provides the building blocks for the resource system for defining, storing and accessing resources. It contains definitions and data for all resources in the game. Resources are stored in containers and there can be multiple containers on a part. Containers on a vessel can be grouped into collections based on various parameters – such as the resource type, a particular priority, in order of hierarchy and so on. This is all managed “under the hood” by the Resource Core Subsystem. The Resource Flow Subsystem The Resource Flow subsystem provides the management, graphing query and request brokers to manage all resource flows in a vessel and is dependent on the Resource Core subsystem. Fuel and resource flows between parts are handled via resource requests. For any part on a vessel and a given fuel flow mode and type there is a corresponding sequenced group of containers (created and managed by the Resource Core Subsystem mentioned above). The Resource Flow Subsystem is split into two halves: Flow Requests – which consists of the Resource Flow Request Broker is responsible for marshalling resource requests and interfacing between requestors (usually Part Modules) and the vessel’s Resource Flow Manager. Flow Management – which consists of the Resource Flow Manager, Resource Flow Priority Query Solver and Resource Flow Graph, is responsible for creating and caching the resource container groups and processing Flow Requests. KSP2 Resource requests are rate-based, which is to say that they are “set and forget”. A requestor can setup a flow request and specify the units of a resource it wants at a fixed rate per second. The resource system will automatically continue to process resource requests at the rate specified and provide a request response to the requestor. It will continue to do this, even if the resource runs out, until the requestor turns off the request. The requestor can adjust any of the resource request parameters at any time (such as the amount requested per second) and the resource system will automatically begin processing the request with the updated details. Like KSP1, KSP2 resource requests can also be on a once-per-update tick of the game. n KSP1, one of the most common issues was that resources could only be accessed, consumed, and generated if the parts of a vessel were loaded into memory/within physics range. What we referred to as “loaded” or “off-rails”. In KSP2 these issues are no longer a problem/restriction due to the KSP2 Resource System being Architected and built from the ground up. All of the components of the Resource System live and execute in the Simulation side of the KSP2 Architecture which means they are independent of physical objects and parts. Hopefully this gives a little insight into just a small part of what we have been up to when it comes to building KSP2. Until next time, Thank you! View the full article

Hi, I’m Eric DeFelice, a graphics engineer on the KSP2 team. My job is to create technical solutions to the graphics features we have on KSP2. One of the most obvious of these systems is how we generate, position, and render the planets in the game. We need a system to render the planets while in orbit and interstellar travel, as well as up close, on the planet surface. We want transition between these distances to appear as you would expect, as you get closer to the planet surface, you just see more detail. How do we solve all the problems associated with a graphics feature such as this? Can we just use traditional approaches for level of detail? Lets dive a bit deeper into how we solve this problem in KSP2. I’ll try to give as much detail as I can without having this take an hour to read… Basic mesh rendering & LOD systems Lets start by looking at how most meshes are rendered in KSP2 (and most games for that matter). Generally, the mesh data is sent from system memory over to the GPU, where shaders read it, place it at the correct pixels on screen and output the correct color given some material properties. We could try and use this approach for our planets, but there are a couple big issues we would have when trying to achieve the level of detail we would like. The biggest issues we would have revolve around the memory usage that it would take to store all that vertex data for planets that are as large and detailed as we have in the game. We could mitigate these problems with level of detail approaches, and perhaps trying to break up the planet into chunks, so we could only load in the chucks that are relevant. GPU tessellation is also a possibility, but that wouldn’t really give us much control over the terrain height. One other big issue has to deal with the size of our planets and precision issues when trying to position the planet in camera projection space. I’ll talk more about this shortly. 002_precision_issues.mp4 Pre-Alpha, Not Final Given these problems, we don’t use this basic approach when rendering planets up close. We do however use this basic approach when rendering planets from further away. This allows artists to have full control over the look of the planet from this distance, and is a good starting point to add more detail to as you approach the planet surface. Planet Positioning Another core gameplay feature we have to keep in mind when rendering the planets is that their position may be moved around relative to our floating origin (for more info, see the previous dev blog by Michael Dodd). For our planet rendering purposes, this means that our planet center will usually be further from the origin than its radius. If we defined the planet vertex data in model space, then during rendering, when we transformed its position to camera projection space, we could possibly be dealing with some large transformation values. If we then are viewing the terrain while it is close to the camera, creating very small distances in camera space, we may have some visual artifacts (as seen above). How do we deal with this possible problem? Well, one simple solution is to generate the vertex data so it is relative to the floating origin already. That way we don’t have to deal with the model to world transformation, keeping the position values in a reasonable range. So now that we have our key concerns listed, we can finally look at how we solved these problems in KSP2. PQS System Overview for KSP2 In KSP2 we use a very similar PQS (procedural quad sphere system) that was used in KSP1 (here is much more detail in the basics of that system). We have made some updates to the system, namely that we now generate all of the planet mesh data in compute shaders. This planet vertex data never gets sent back to the CPU, and we just send a procedural draw call to the GPU to render the mesh with the compute buffer data. We do determine quad sub-divisions in a similar way as KSP1, but we generate the output mesh positions relative to our floating origin, instead of relative to planet center. When calculating each vertex position, we also calculate the height, slope and cavity for the mesh so that we can perform procedural texturing in the planet shader. One caveat we needed to account for in our procedural parameter calculation is that we need to make sure we have stable values for any given position on a planet. This is needed because we don’t want the texturing to visually change at a given position, which could occur if the slope changes at that position because of mesh tessellation. For tessellation, we have to balance the level of detail we want at various distances with the performance concerns of generating more vertex data. The goal is to bump the level of detail for the terrain at a distance that isn’t really noticeable, so we don’t have a ton of visual detail popping in. We are constantly improving in this area (for reference, here is some previous footage of our planet tessellation tech). 004_gurdamma_flyover (2).mp4 Pre-Alpha, Not Final 005_minmus_flyover_wireframe.mp4 Pre-Alpha, Not Final One other feature we have to help improve performance is basic frustum culling. Since we don’t have a bunch of mesh data on the CPU we can’t rely on traditional approaches for culling, so we have to do this on our own. Since we already have a bunch of quad data, we might as well just use their positions for this purpose. On the CPU we can determine which quads are within the camera frustum, and only generate visual mesh data for those. This prevents us from doing a bunch of work on the GPU that we know will be thrown away later, since that part of the mesh isn’t even visible. 006_gurdamma_occlusion_culling.mp4 Pre-Alpha, Not Final PQS Collider System Overview Terrain colliders need to be created by this system as well, since they rely on the mesh data for the planet. There are a few differences in the requirements for collision however. We no longer want to tessellate collision mesh data based on distance from the camera, but rather on distance from possible colliders that could hit that terrain. Because of this, we need to keep track of separate collision quad data. We also can’t perform the same frustum culling that we do for the visual mesh, as a vessel could be out of view when it collides with the terrain. Can we still do some sort of culling though? You guessed it, we can. We just cull any terrain colliders that we deem too far away to possibly have a collision in that frame. This does the same job as frustum culling does for the visual mesh, prevents us from doing a bunch of work on the GPU that we know is useless. 008_gurdamma_collider_tool.mp4 Pre-Alpha, Not Final 007_gurdamma_collider_visualization.mp4 Pre-Alpha, Not Final Everything coming together Hopefully I gave you some more insight into how we generate and render our planets in KSP2. The key goals of the system are to provide a high level of detail of the planet at all distances while maintaining a solid frame rate. There are many unique problems in KSP2 compared to most other games I’ve worked on, so we definitely had to get creative with our solutions. One final tidbit I’ll leave you with, is our system for how we transition to our PQS generated mesh from the low LOD mesh. Borrowing a technique from basic LOD systems, we actually just perform a cross-fade dither between the two meshes. And lastly, all the systems coming together! 009_minmus_crossfade_dither-1.mp4 Pre-Alpha, Not Final 010_gurdamma_vessel_collision.mp4 Pre-Alpha, Not Final View the full article Jon-Dev-Blog-Exhaust-Throttle-and-Pressure-Transitions.mp4 1060038740_004_gurdamma_flyover(2).mp4 005_minmus_flyover_wireframe.mp4