G'th

Behold, what I did instead of sleep, something I should hope will be extremely apparent in the jump in quality from my first draft: This was quite the process. After getting the 64k data I had to go through the task of extrapolating for the missing data, which was tedious as all get out, but was well worth it in the end. Thankfully, once that was done and in-game, it was pretty easy to mock up the initial cloud set (which I promise is actually really awesome when it isn't washed out like it is in real life): The general idea for Venus, as you're unlikely to plunge anything down to its surface, is going to be to aim for something akin to this: Already done is the simple idea of there being a sort of "sandwich" region in the atmosphere where you could have a thick cloud deck below and a more earth-like cloudy sky above. I'm not 100% certain if that is true to life, but even if it ultimately isn't, I'm going to permit True Sight some artistic liberty because this is just too good to pass up. As such, I'm also going to introduce dynamics to that lower cloud deck. Now that cyclonic storms are in fact a possibility, one could arguably recreate this exact picture. (even more so once we get the new Volumetrics). For Vibrance, it will be a pretty simple take, and Venus will be going blueish, mimicking the Ultraviolet false color imagery of Venus. For the surface, though, I'm thinking of going in a different direction and introducing a sort of "hybrid", between my more accurate to life colors and the bog standard Cheetoh landscape. What that means? If you're familiar with gemstones, think Gold and Blue Sandstone Now, I'm still learning about Venus, so additional features for the planet are pretty scant atm. I do know I want to recreate the S-shaped polar vortices, and I plan on introducing the theorized aurora formation to the planet as well (which is similar to Mars in that they supposedly could appear anywhere, but are much more dispersed and "loosely" structured than even Martian auroras are). As I learn about Venus, I'll look into providing more little things. Down the line I do want to go ahead and do lava flows on the surface; that along with pretty much everything else to do with the surfaces of these worlds will come in time.

Daddy government came through and granted me a 64k map of Venus' surface. Very happy things are happening in the Gth house tonight

Indeed

I am tempted actually; now that I'm learning about Kopernicus I'm starting to get ideas for my own fully original planet pack so it may well be worth it to practice Especially because I have something very very special and also never-been-done-by-anyone-ever planned for this mod, so at some point I'll need to pick up the relevant skills

While its still a rough draft, Venus is likely going to be the most accurate representation of it ever put to a video game. The above coloring is what Venus' surface should actually look like without its oppressive atmosphere, at least in theory. We obviously don't know what its entire surface is like in terms of visual variety (as obviously despite the planet being similar in composition to Earth that means precisely diddly and squat for our purposes), so instead I extrapolated the above based on color corrected photographs from the Venera landers, which presented a gradient of colors not too dissimilar from the Moon. The gross yellowy orange nonsense we typically see in Venus recreations is not true to life; after all, we don't exactly throw in Earth's atmosphere (and thus the global bluish haze) into its surface texture do we? So why do we do that for Venus? Lazy! The normal here is overly exaggerated (i'm still finetuning and cleaning up the height map itself), but should give a rough idea of the terrain, which is derived from actual topography data which has had its missing bits either filled in with adjacent features, where practical, or simply had the already existing features extended into them. While not 100% accurate, its also unlikely based on the radar maps that the actual terrain in these missing sections are in actuality all that different from what one will see here.

Also today I have greatly refined my normal making process, so we're gonna see some pretty big leaps in the next release, which is also going to come with brand spanking new heightmaps (that are actually accurate).

Guess what I found out how to do? Special thanks to @Poodmundand @rbray89for figuring this out 8 years ago lmao. It also works with dynamics, so it'll dissipate and reappear at random.

As I slam my head into Kopernicus I decided to take a break and use what I learned to experiment with some jacked normals.

Its kind of up in the air atm. I want to be able to provide the mod at fully stock scale for those who want it (and even without OPM for those who want just better visuals for the stock system), but I also appreciate not having to rely on Sigma Dimensions as well. Most likely the mod will, as a base, be the stock system at stock scale, and then one can download and install patches to add my eventual take on OPM, and then another to scale the entire system stock+OPM, most likely to something resembling KSRSS.

I'm not able to find any errors in that log. Try loading the game without any of the parts mods to start with. It looks like you're running out of memory going by that log, and if anything it should make the issue more apparent without all of the extra junk in there.

I learned an awful, awful lot of about Kopernicus today. Special thanks to @OhioBob for his totally badass help. This is an initial look at the new Mun, which is now my first successful attempt at a completely bespoke world in KSP.

Over todays frustrations this mod is now graduating to full on planet pack. I still plan on integrating OPM (because my philosophy of why redo what someone else has already done is still important, and ultimately also because I couldn't think of any names ), but fully replacing the stock system is looking to be a necessity. So yipee, config work for me

Not that I ever made; I was always more amused comparing it to real life :p

Other than EVE and Scatterer it will need Kopernicus and OPM. (Though i suppose itll be easy enough to make OPM an option) Parralax is a far future thing. One day.

Today I made the executive decision to completely replace the Mun with a moon of my own making; the stock Mun is just...nasty, and would be far too much of a pain. Even repainting it isn't going to save that swiss cheese looking... anyway, today's efforts were spent slamming my head into Kopernicus to get the replacement working. And we finally have a success (I used JNSQ's Mun as the baseline to have something to load in as I worked at the config, so now its just a matter of replacing the assets with my own), which means we can move on to actually creating it. Incidentally, this will be the first planet that I have actually created entirely from scratch so this will be an interesting experience.

Eventually yes. All in good time.

Road Map: All initial terrain sets generated and in-game. After my impending break, the EVE stage will commence and the following is a list of planned things to do, which may include terrain redos for selected worlds. Sun - Settle on a texture, figure out how Coronas work, look at other possible additions. Make bespoke sunflare for the mod. Moho - Brighten Terrain, add subtle ablation effect. Eve - Adjust normals to be less wonky. Polar Vortices, global aurorae. Kerbin - May undergo full redo (i keep learning new techniques help), Wants new auroras and improved cloudsets using new techniques. Finalize Scatterer settings. Mun - Add Dust Minmus - Definitely wants a full redo, but also wants dust and dynamic vapor plume for cryovolcano Duna - Add contrasts to Red plains. Add cloud and dust sets, aurora spikes, etc. Mic/Ike - Mic Normals need adjustments, and I also haven't looked at Ike in 20394814 years, so decide if I still like it. Dres - Adjust color saturation and add additional contrasts. Bop/Gilly - Decide if want to stick with unintended "twin" look. Jool - Wants full cloud set; will include bespoke flow maps, additional storms, and complex polar regions. Pol - Retexture lava flows, bring better consistency between on-surface and on-orbit looks. Dynamic ash plumes. Vall - Needs another redo - a little less of everything to smooth it out. Dynamic water vapor plumes Tylo - Wants a redo - I can do the mountain ranges much cleaner. Lypso - Terrain needs to be darkened, need additional contrasts. May actually just get fully retextured. Happy with the colors, not so much with how plastic-y it ended up looking. Laythe - Full cloudset needed. Perma foggy oceans, polar vortices. Aurorae. Sarnus - Wants full cloud set, as per Jool. also need to look into intended Ring experiment; we may be able to achieve much better ring quality (like, absurdly better) than is on offer by any mod, but need to test the theory. Hale/Ovok - These moonlets are perfect. No adjustments needed. Eeloo - Wants slightly less jacked normals, otherwise good to go. Slate - Brightened desert areas, larger polar regions. Skid mark region needs some contrasts added to blend it better. South pole may need to be completely replaced if intended fix doesn't work out. Tekto - Darkened cloud set needed. Cloud textures to be remade in same style. Urlum - Cloud set per Jool and Sarnus. If Sarnus Ring experiment works, additional ring will be created for Urlum. Tal/Polta/Priax/Wal - These moons are good to go. Knut - Need to adjust for spikes. Too many of them. Neidon - Cloudset per other gas giants. May also receive a new ring. Thatmo - Wants dust set. Nissee - Should be set. Plock/Karen - Plock wants an atmo added, additional dust effects. Both worlds may receive normal adjustments. Next stages after the EVE stage: Biome, Parallax and Launch Site integration - I sourced a rather huge amount of different objects to use for scatters and have a pretty good grasp on how to make use of the new shaders, and integrating them will work best with launch site integration for Kerbin as I'll need to adjust things anyway. As I'll need Biomes this will be the time to do those as well. Other Mod Integration and Beta Testing - At this stage I'll be opening a Discord and inviting interested users to help me both test the mod and shake down bugs (mostly in terms of finding wonky terrain bugs as well as placing easter eggs. This will be the time when I start generating compatible configs for the pack for all your standard mods.

Yeah cause you don't have any texture errors so without being able to see the issue I'm not gonna be able to tell whats broken.

Do you have screenshots?

It appears you did not install the textures correctly, as your game is not able to locate them. When you download one of the texture packs you need to open either TrueSight or Vibrance to extract the gamedata into your KSP folder. If you just drop them in without doing this it won't work properly.

Well I'm pretty emotionally attached to the name, but, it'll be pretty easy to tell which is which.

As in, will no longer be required for this mod in new versions.

So I have made a decision regarding this mod, and it is quite simple: JNSQ and Astronomer's have been deprecated. Why? Reasons, and quite a lot of them, but primarily to do with my creative freedom. What does that mean for all of you? Obviously, JNSQ fans lose out. Sorry, not really sorry lol. However, the artistic spirit of this mod, that inspired my recently released mod SOL, is not going anywhere, and is now further emboldened as this mods replacement will be free from the shackles of realism that SOL must abide by. As for the future of Ad Astra and what it will look like, stay tuned. Today I am going to challenge myself to see just how fast I can build a mod from the ground up, so keep an eye on Add On developments for the new dev thread once I'm ready to showcase the ongoing work. EDIT: Right; as far as the mod as it exists now, it will be available for legacy reasons and for anyone who feels compelled to try and maintain it (IE, fix its myriad problems). I'm always happy to lend a hand to such efforts, but I won't be doing any of the work