[WIP][1.9.x-1.12.x] Scatterer-atmospheric scattering (0.0838 - 14/08/2022) Scattering improvements, in-game atmo generation and multi-sun support

[JT2227]

13 minutes ago, mreadshaw said:

Not a bug, the fancy ocean disables itself at 70000m. At around 110km the scaled space ocean starts fading in. Blackrack has said that this will change in upcoming versions. If you wan't you can change your .cfg so that the ocean continues to render past 70000m but there can be some visual bugs if you do.

Any way to bring scaled space ocean to load sooner or eliminate the awkward middle phases?

[Jimbodiah]

Would it be possible to have a version without the water effects (ie the old version)? If I am in orbit and look (camera) beyond the horizon with over 50% of the screen, the entire screen glitches out with the ocean texture.

[skykooler]

Blackrack, would it be possible to calculate a lower-res version of the waves on the CPU, and then the high-res version of the GPU (since as you said the latter is practically free)? And then use the low-res version for the physics calculations, and the high-res version for graphics. That could potentially keep me able to use this as you make it look more and more beautiful (laptop here, upgrading the CPU is out of the question :P)

[Mr Betelgeuse]

Great mod. I'm currently having trouble scaling this up to work with the 64k mod that scales Kerbin and all other respected bodies 6.4 times. 

My issue is that scatterer works, but the atmosphere is only at Kerbin's original size. So obviously I scaled up the number in the Alt+F10/F11 menu 6.4 times, but that didn't work. I'm not sure how to get this working, anyone?

[blackrack]

1 hour ago, Jimbodiah said:

Would it be possible to have a version without the water effects (ie the old version)? If I am in orbit and look (camera) beyond the horizon with over 50% of the screen, the entire screen glitches out with the ocean texture.

I probably post this every page, go into planetsList.cfg file and set hasOcean=false for every planet Next version I'll just add a menu that can enable/disable features directly in the main menu or the KSC view.

 

26 minutes ago, skykooler said:

Blackrack, would it be possible to calculate a lower-res version of the waves on the CPU, and then the high-res version of the GPU (since as you said the latter is practically free)? And then use the low-res version for the physics calculations, and the high-res version for graphics. That could potentially keep me able to use this as you make it look more and more beautiful (laptop here, upgrading the CPU is out of the question :P)

I already thought about doing this, the issue is, if you vary the size of the fourier grid, the waves generated are going to be completely different and won't match. As long as the grid size is the same, CPU and GPU will generate the same waves at any point in time, but change the grid size and the results are completely different and won't match up.

Btw I gave it a performance test on my test unity project, I have a quadcore i5-2400 @3.1Ghz, I rebooted my machine with only two cores enabled and ran the wave simulation on the CPU, fourierGridSize of 128 chugged very badly but a grid size of 64 ran at 70 fps, so at least I know a grid size of 64 should work reasonably for lots of people. Well it's gonna be different in game, since KSP will be hogging one core but it should still be manageable.

Also, this is new, but when running wave generation on the CPU game fps and wave fps will now be decoupled, that means if your CPU can't keep up, the waves might be running at 20 fps while the game runs at 30 fps, which might look weird but might be better than having your gameplay slowdown too. They won't "lag behind" as you move the camera or anything of the sort, they will just seem to animate at a different rate.

 

24 minutes ago, Mr Betelgeuse said:

Great mod. I'm currently having trouble scaling this up to work with the 64k mod that scales Kerbin and all other respected bodies 6.4 times. 

My issue is that scatterer works, but the atmosphere is only at Kerbin's original size. So obviously I scaled up the number in the Alt+F10/F11 menu 6.4 times, but that didn't work. I'm not sure how to get this working, anyone?

I need more information here, is the scaling not working at all? Is this in normal view or map view? Maybe some screenshots would help.

Edited December 11, 2015 by blackrack

[Red Iron Crown]

This is not a bug per se, as I don't think it's broken just that it's a case that might not have been considered: Underwater engine exhaust effects show through the new ocean as if there was no water at all. Sample pics:

Spoiler

Install has latest SVE and Scatterer, no engine FX mods.

It's a bit of an edge case and not really worth a lot of work, just reporting in case it's "I didn't think of that, should be an easy fix".

[selfish_meme]

3 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

This is not a bug per se, as I don't think it's broken just that it's a case that might not have been considered: Underwater engine exhaust effects show through the new ocean as if there was no water at all. Sample pics:

  Hide contents

Install has latest SVE and Scatterer, no engine FX mods.

It's a bit of an edge case and not really worth a lot of work, just reporting in case it's "I didn't think of that, should be an easy fix".

It's probably the ocean alpha, it is set to .95 as default so you can see your craft disappearing under the waves, it also makes the ocean floor visible on the horizon, you can set it to 1.0 which will probably fix it, but may make you ship or boat not look as good in the water

[blackrack]

49 minutes ago, selfish_meme said:

It's probably the ocean alpha, it is set to .95 as default so you can see your craft disappearing under the waves, it also makes the ocean floor visible on the horizon, you can set it to 1.0 which will probably fix it, but may make you ship or boat not look as good in the water

It looks too bright to be the alpha, it's definitely drawing on top of the ocean.

 

54 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

This is not a bug per se, as I don't think it's broken just that it's a case that might not have been considered: Underwater engine exhaust effects show through the new ocean as if there was no water at all. Sample pics:

  Hide contents

Install has latest SVE and Scatterer, no engine FX mods.

It's a bit of an edge case and not really worth a lot of work, just reporting in case it's "I didn't think of that, should be an easy fix".

Hmm that's really weird, I'll check it out. Btw I'm gonna need those ocean settings.

[Red Iron Crown]

Ocean settings (I only changed AMP and wind speed, not sure if SVE touches ocean settings yet): https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/61004449/ksp/1.0.5/screenshot249.png

Edit to add: I'm on Windows 7, 32-bit KSP and DX9 in this install.

[rbray89]

28 minutes ago, blackrack said:

It looks too bright to be the alpha, it's definitely drawing on top of the ocean.

 

Hmm that's really weird, I'll check it out. Btw I'm gonna need those ocean settings.

This is probably because z-write is off, and the queue of the effects is much later. You could fix this in one of two ways, increase the queue, or enable z-write.

Edited December 11, 2015 by rbray89

[Delfinus]

I'm getting crashes every second launch of a craft, which is getting annoying,  any ideas on how to fix this?

Screenshot of Gamedata folder: (I've since Uninstalled RemoteTech)

It's getting really frustrating as I really like scatterer but this is making KSP nearly unplayable.

Edited December 11, 2015 by DolphinDude3

[Paul_Sawyer]

23 hours ago, sashan said:

X75V. I have 1600x800 screen, not fullHD, which one do you have? It impacts perfomance quite a lot.

Mine is 1366x768 and the game is in 1280x720 in window mod. I also use CPU-control to spread the game on several threads - helps to gain some extra fps.
By the way, with only scatterer installed, oceans enabled and fourierGridSize set to 64 I get pretty solid 20-30 fps. It is adding other mods, especially EVE, when framerate starts to drop (and I think it's been discussed here already). Anyway, I guess I should stop complaining and just leave the oceans disabled. But it is still great work, blackrack, thank you again for this mod!

Edited December 11, 2015 by Paul_Sawyer

[Hyomoto]

8 hours ago, DolphinDude3 said:

I'm getting crashes every second launch of a craft, which is getting annoying,  any ideas on how to fix this?

Screenshot of Gamedata folder: (I've since Uninstalled RemoteTech)

It's getting really frustrating as I really like scatterer but this is making KSP nearly unplayable.

As an 'in-development' mod, no one comes away unscathed.  The best you can hope for right now is to have a tenuous relationship with it.  I don't use the ocean effects because of the various visual bugs, and I don't have many mods, and with scatterer it crashes on me pretty often; far more than the base game.  So, we are basically signing a waiver when we install it.  That said it looks like you might be able to free up memory to help with it.  I notice you have USI, which without seeing the inside of the folder I can't know for sure, but his mods are generally pretty heavy in the memory department, and you also have stock visual enhancements which gives this disclaimer: "This mod uses a lot of RAM... I mean a lot. I honestly wouldn't use it unless you play on Linux or can wait until KSP updates to 1.1 for a stable Windows 64-bit version."

So depending on any cuts you've already made you might be walking in a memory minefield.  I'd recommend you clean out your mods, only install scatterer, and see what type of mileage you get.  If it still crashes every other launch then you are doomed, but if it lets up you could probably drop SVE to make a significant difference.

[V8jester]

 

8 hours ago, DolphinDude3 said:

I'm getting crashes every second launch of a craft, which is getting annoying,  any ideas on how to fix this?

Screenshot of Gamedata folder: (I've since Uninstalled RemoteTech)

It's getting really frustrating as I really like scatterer but this is making KSP nearly unplayable.

I see you're running win 10. In the shortcut target field add " -dx9" to the end of the shortcut target so "....\ksp.exe -dx9" Don't forget the space. Win 10 will try to run ksp in dx12 for some stupid reason. I run win 10 pro myself. This forces direct x 9 not the most memory friendly option but if you run the x64 hack that will solve a lot of the issues.

 

Also this may be the main reason a lot of people are complaining of artifacts and horrible fps.

13 minutes ago, Hyomoto said:

As an 'in-development' mod, no one comes away unscathed.  The best you can hope for right now is to have a tenuous relationship with it.  I don't use the ocean effects because of the various visual bugs, and I don't have many mods, and with scatterer it crashes on me pretty often; far more than the base game.  So, we are basically signing a waiver when we install it.  That said it looks like you might be able to free up memory to help with it.  I notice you have USI, which without seeing the inside of the folder I can't know for sure, but his mods are generally pretty heavy in the memory department, and you also have stock visual enhancements which gives this disclaimer: "This mod uses a lot of RAM... I mean a lot. I honestly wouldn't use it unless you play on Linux or can wait until KSP updates to 1.1 for a stable Windows 64-bit version."

So depending on any cuts you've already made you might be walking in a memory minefield.  I'd recommend you clean out your mods, only install scatterer, and see what type of mileage you get.  If it still crashes every other launch then you are doomed, but if it lets up you could probably drop SVE to make a significant difference.

Well a good piece of advice I can give both of you guys is the x64 Windows work around. I play for hours with no issues unless I'm bouncing in and out of the VAB with a 250+ part ship, that's a normal known issue with even a stock game. I run over 60 mods with Scatterer smooth as silk and really no mod issues to speak of. Remember though most mod devs really wont help you if you run an x64 install. 

64bit Hack

64Bit Unfixer

Edited December 11, 2015 by V8jester

[Nhawks17]

7 minutes ago, V8jester said:

I see you're running win 10. In the shortcut target field add " -dx9" to the end of the shortcut target so "....\ksp.exe -dx9" Don't forget the space. Win 10 will try to run ksp in dx12 for some stupid reason. I run win 10 pro myself. This forces direct x 9 not the most memory friendly option but if you run the x64 hack that will solve a lot of the issues.

I thought it was determined a bit back that there is no way for KSP to be forced to run in DX12 as Unity 4 doesn't even know what DX12 is. I play on Windows 10 and have never had it try to run as DX12 when there are no graphic API flags in my shortcut.

[V8jester]

6 minutes ago, Nhawks17 said:

I thought it was determined a bit back that there is no way for KSP to be forced to run in DX12 as Unity 4 doesn't even know what DX12 is. I play on Windows 10 and have never had it try to run as DX12 when there are no graphic API flags in my shortcut.

I could be wrong about DX12 but 11 and 9 work just fine. Try and throw the "-dx9" flag in your shortcut target field and see what I mean. It made a huge difference for me when I installed just a vanilla game. It ran horribly slow as well Scatterer went nuts until I changed that one thing.

 

Edited December 11, 2015 by V8jester

[blackrack]

12 hours ago, rbray89 said:

This is probably because z-write is off, and the queue of the effects is much later. You could fix this in one of two ways, increase the queue, or enable z-write.

Not sure if z-write would work with this though, as the mesh only exists at screen depth and is later displaced in the shader, I'll give it  try though.

 

11 hours ago, DolphinDude3 said:

I'm getting crashes every second launch of a craft, which is getting annoying,  any ideas on how to fix this?

Screenshot of Gamedata folder: (I've since Uninstalled RemoteTech)

It's getting really frustrating as I really like scatterer but this is making KSP nearly unplayable.

Most likely a memory issue, I would recommend forcing directx11 and using the community 64bit workaround for now, both work pretty well for me with a lot of mods.

 

12 hours ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Ocean settings (I only changed AMP and wind speed, not sure if SVE touches ocean settings yet): https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/61004449/ksp/1.0.5/screenshot249.png

Edit to add: I'm on Windows 7, 32-bit KSP and DX9 in this install.

Do you not get waves clipping through themselves with AMP at 12?

 

Edited December 11, 2015 by blackrack

[Red Iron Crown]

28 minutes ago, blackrack said:

Do you not get waves clipping through themselves with AMP at 12?

No, looks great.  

[The Destroyer]

Using EVE/Texture replacer for skybox and kerbal heads and this and... I'm pretty certain this isn't supposed to happen yes? 

[blackrack]

17 minutes ago, The Destroyer said:

Using EVE/Texture replacer for skybox and kerbal heads and this and... I'm pretty certain this isn't supposed to happen yes? 

Look in the known issues section in the OP, first line.

[The Destroyer]

1 minute ago, blackrack said:

Look in the known issues section in the OP, first line.

Whoops, didn't see that, thanks

[Hyomoto]

I'm probably being cynical but when people say their game runs great with no issues to speak of I don't really believe them.  My startup is about 1.8 GB and as long as I don't run it in a full screen borderless window it usually takes a few hours to crash.  I could try the -dx9 tag and see if that helps but, though KSP has never been more stable, it crashes eventually on all of my computers regardless of OS, hardware, mod configuration or otherwise.  Stock is the most stable but given enough time it'll give out so it's well known that certain mods, such as Scatterer, exacerbate that and can have a detrimental effect but it's hardly an exception.  I've had people tell me their computers run flawlessly and watch errors pop up when Windows load, or people play games at slideshow framerates suggesting it runs perfectly fine on their system.  Perhaps it's a Pavlovian response but my skepticism runs deep and it seems to be a case of tolerance and familiarity as well.

Still, with a 6700HQ and GTX 970M I'm not experiencing any new visual artifacts and the game runs at a healthy 60 fps on as maxed out of settings as KSP can muster.  I was able to get it to slow a bit with oceans turned on (among other more obvious problems) but that's about the only appreciable yardstick I could use to test whether or not the tag 'fixed' anything.  As far as it goes I'm content to wait for 1.1 and enjoy the heck out of 1.0.5 in the interim.  I might try this out before I consider dropping Scatterer but as I suggested before, using 21c with the oceans disabled works great, doesn't ham my performance and looks balls out beautiful with EVE and sidesteps many of the current build's problems minus it makes my game more prone to crashing.

So if it comes to that and it works, I'll both come back and click some rep for you and spread the word myself but it's definitely low priority.  So low I actually wrote a post about how low it was rather than testing it out.  My priorities are all messed up man.

Edited December 12, 2015 by Hyomoto

[amarius1]

Does this mod mess with PQS paramiter or it just replaces shaders? Haven't had time to look trough your files...

[sashan]

On 11.12.2015 06:21:04, blackrack said:

Hmm that's really weird, I'll check it out. Btw I'm gonna need those ocean settings.

I had the same problem with older version as well, the problem is that particles are always drawn on top of ocean.

 

[blackrack]

7 hours ago, Hyomoto said:

I'm probably being cynical but when people say their game runs great with no issues to speak of I don't really believe them.  My startup is about 1.8 GB and as long as I don't run it in a full screen borderless window it usually takes a few hours to crash.  I could try the -dx9 tag and see if that helps but, though KSP has never been more stable, it crashes eventually on all of my computers regardless of OS, hardware, mod configuration or otherwise.  Stock is the most stable but given enough time it'll give out so it's well known that certain mods, such as Scatterer, exacerbate that and can have a detrimental effect but it's hardly an exception.  I've had people tell me their computers run flawlessly and watch errors pop up when Windows load, or people play games at slideshow framerates suggesting it runs perfectly fine on their system.  Perhaps it's a Pavlovian response but my skepticism runs deep and it seems to be a case of tolerance and familiarity as well.

Still, with a 6700HQ and GTX 970M I'm not experiencing any new visual artifacts and the game runs at a healthy 60 fps on as maxed out of settings as KSP can muster.  I was able to get it to slow a bit with oceans turned on (among other more obvious problems) but that's about the only appreciable yardstick I could use to test whether or not the tag 'fixed' anything.  As far as it goes I'm content to wait for 1.1 and enjoy the heck out of 1.0.5 in the interim.  I might try this out before I consider dropping Scatterer but as I suggested before, using 21c with the oceans disabled works great, doesn't ham my performance and looks balls out beautiful with EVE and sidesteps many of the current build's problems minus it makes my game more prone to crashing.

So if it comes to that and it works, I'll both come back and click some rep for you and spread the word myself but it's definitely low priority.  So low I actually wrote a post about how low it was rather than testing it out.  My priorities are all messed up man.

You're giving this way more thought than it needs...

 

3 hours ago, amarius1 said:

Does this mod mess with PQS paramiter or it just replaces shaders? Haven't had time to look trough your files...

It's just shaders.