[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

[Kerenatus]

I forced DX11 on and it helps A LOT!!! 

Now everything works smoothly with scatterer, eve, 5000+(?)parts, ect, even in the forest area!

Though DX11 introduced some other problems such as re-entry visual effects not visible from afar...

[Beetlecat]

3 hours ago, Kerenatus said:

Though DX11 introduced some other problems such as re-entry visual effects not visible from afar...

Ha! I was wondering about that. Darn DX11... That's regardless of Scatterer, right? 

I know Scatterer is a performance hit/sink, but damn if it doesn't make the game look gorgeous and worth flying around in.

--

[off-topic banter:] What GPU / card are you using? I thought mine was pretty good (980/4GB), but just realized it's a few years old. Scatterer (and KSP) require some brute force to run smoothly with a full load of mods/parts/effects, it seems. Maybe I need to tune my rig better.

 

[Kerenatus]

10 hours ago, Beetlecat said:

 

[off-topic banter:] What GPU / card are you using? I thought mine was pretty good (980/4GB), but just realized it's a few years old. Scatterer (and KSP) require some brute force to run smoothly with a full load of mods/parts/effects, it seems. Maybe I need to tune my rig better.

 

OS: Windows 10  (10.0.0) 64bit
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-9750H CPU @ 2.60GHz (12)
RAM: 32624
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 (8031MB)
SM: 50 (Direct3D 11.0 [level 11.1])

[Wackenhut]

Running ksp 1.6.1, rss and rssve. I have installed SSTU part mod, and it all looks well....until...i turn on the lights and / or extend some (not all) solar panels. The moment i hit the lights, i see the graphics flicker twice, my sunflare dissapears and i get 2 error messages in console. It needs to be noted that switching to tracking station and then loading the ship again does seem to reset the problem and my flare is back.  It happens with all the command modules, it also happens when i decouple a command pod from its service bay and when extending some (not all) solar panels.  Granted my main save is 149 mod save, so i tried recreating it in a clean 1.6.1 install with RSS, RSSVE and the usual visuals and it happened there too. I Took screenshots, and added the log file. Link

To make sure it was a conflict SSTU-Scatterer, i made a clean 1.6.1 install and only added scatterer and sstu to it, same result.  Log file : Link

The same thing happens on my 1.7.1 install of JNSQ, dx9 or dx11 is all the same result. Atm i am testing at wich version of scatterer this issue started and for now 0.0336 does not have this issue, but it gives me black skies in rssve and JNSQ.

I posted this in sstu thread too and shadowmage refered me here. Hope you got a solution for this.

Edit : I stand corrected, 0.0336 does have the issue, just not as profound, throws and exception about anti-aliasing not being set right. included this logfile too : Link

 

 

Edited June 18, 2019 by Wackenhut
update

[Cratzz]

What key to bring up menu please! (OP might wanna considering updating post with that information) It's Alt + F11

Edited June 18, 2019 by Cratzz

[Galileo]

@Cratzz

On 4/12/2015 at 4:37 AM, blackrack said:

UI:

UI can be toggled with Alt-F11 or Alt-F10

It’s in the OP.. in some cases you may have to hit shift+Alt+f11

Edited June 18, 2019 by Galileo

[Jognt]

Is anyone else seeing the following exception in their log?

NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
  at scatterer.Core+MainSettingsReadWrite.saveCoreMainSettingsIfChanged () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at scatterer.Core.saveSettings () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at scatterer.Core.OnDestroy () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 

I only see it when I exit the game (makes sense considering it happens on scatterer.core.ondestroy) and it doesn't appear to have a big impact so far.
Re Tsunami bug: Though the tsunami is gone, saving and loading that save in the space center still shows the aftermath of said tsunami for me -> KSC buried under dirt.

These two minor glitches together do make me wonder whether something's up with my install or scatterer itself. I would appreciate it if anyone could chip in.

Edit: I looked through the thread and could not find an answer to the following, so here goes: What is the preferred method for custom configurations of Scatterrer? Do I MM @scatterer_config after it or do I create a separate standalone config and add something to let scatterer know it exists? I'm mainly looking to save my settings in a personal folder so I can drag&drop it in new installs.

Edited June 24, 2019 by Jognt

[Phoenia]

Despite your claims to have fixed the z-fighting, I see this whenever I look at a planet in orbit

[MaeharaProjekt]

@Phoenia When reporting issues to the makers of mods, please follow these guidelines posted by @NathanKell

 

 

It will help blackrack immensely.

[Phoenia]

Where may I find these guidelines? If you are referring to what you have linked, It did not help.

[Galileo]

1 hour ago, Phoenia said:

Where may I find these guidelines? If you are referring to what you have linked, It did not help.

He posted a link for you in his response 

Edited June 26, 2019 by Galileo

[Starwaster]

3 hours ago, Phoenia said:

Where may I find these guidelines? If you are referring to what you have linked, It did not help.

Then go back and read it again. Don’t just glance at it or skim it. If you’re going to report bugs or request support then certain things are going to be expected of you such as logs. The link provided to you explains this and tells you where to find them. 

[Euchrid]

When will Scatterer be made available for 1.7.x? CKAN still shows it as 1.6 and a manual install doesn't appear to do anything.

 

Disregard, manual install worked after all

 

Edited June 27, 2019 by Euchrid

[Carni35]

Hello everybody !

I have a little question concerning scatterer settings. From space, opacity is too strong for me, particulary for exemple on Mars which barely have no athmosphere anymore.

I know the alt+F10/F11 but it seem don't work for opacity (more for scale)

So, does someone know how we can play on the opacity of Scatterer ?

Thank you for your help !

[kedrednael]

Hi!

I've just downloaded scatterer again despite the fps drop it gives me, because it just makes the game so gorgeous!
But I've also got the bug that phoenia describes.
The bug begins at 60km precisely, and ends at 160km, in that altitude the water also changes color a bit. Above 160km the fps also jumps up :)).

Aargh the fps is so low and bug is not pretty.


But it's so beautiful!

The bug is also slightly visible in this picture (just below the mono propellant tank), but it's way less when not looking down so much (also the fps is higher in that case).

I've turned almost everything from scatterer off because I only want the super nice haze, red sunsets, eclipses, and playable fps.
But I have the feeling scatterer still wants to devote memory and processing power to do things to the ocean :(.
In the map view the fps is much higher, and the bug doesn't occur when going close to kerbin in the map view.

I've tried to force dx11 but I don't know if it worked.

KSP: 1.7.2 Windows 10 64bit

Problem: black flickering patches between 60 and 160km, increasingly worse when looking directly down. Not present when looking parallel to the surface.

Mods installed: Only scatterer 0.0540

Log: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1o4UstQ4W_xFS3QkEZgrQQ1CLrecjRM1G/view?usp=sharing

Thanks for the beautiful mod!

[PsY4]

Hi everybody !

i'm facing an issue with ocean using scatterer : the ocean surface is randomly rotating around the camera vertical axis ! It even happens when game is paused !

This weird behaviour disapears if i delete all other vessels in orbit and other planets, and does not happen on a brand new savegame...

Anyone gets this issue and has a way to fix it ?

[blackrack]

On 5/14/2019 at 11:26 PM, DDE said:

Anyway, @Galileo, take two...

Problem: should these trees be so visible? It seems to me they shine right through scaterrer's atmo haze.

  Reveal hidden contents

Modlist

Logs: https://1drv.ms/t/s!AmlSZuL0ax7C5EVvjLdFS_GtLsg4

Yes, trees are ignored on purpose to preserve performance. I guess I can always add an option for them (at a performance hit)

On 5/15/2019 at 12:25 PM, Flibble said:

I'm not sure if this is Scatterer or EVE, but I have an issue whereby KSC z-fights with the ground below it really badly.

This started occurring when I updated to latest scatterer (0.0540) and EVE (1.4.2.2). I'm still running KSP 1.3.1 - the mods are built from source for KSP 1.3.1 and I re-exported the shaders from Unity 5.4.0p4.

I have RSS installed, so this is on a full-scale Earth, I'm using RSSVE 1.4.5.2 configs.

Is this something just broken in old versions of unity, or is there a config tweak that might affect it?

Edit: I have a screenshots, seems it's not KSC, it's just terrain when the camera is below a certain height.

I'm not supporting 1.3.1, if this bug isn't on the latest version of KSP then i'm not going to look into it.

On 5/20/2019 at 8:47 PM, Gameslinx said:

Scatterer 0.54:

Scatterer 0.53:

I'm not sure what's changed, but scatterer 0.54 has completely broken the effects on this planet i've made and I am unable to fix them.

Something that was changed between these two versions has caused this and i can't recreate the preferred effect (bottom picture) in scatterer 0.54.

I would have to look into it, is it still there when you disable EVE cloud integration?

On 6/8/2019 at 6:48 PM, Gameslinx said:

Hey! Scatterer+ terrain scatters such as trees and rocks causes a massive performance hit.

Would it be worth looking into optimization with the scatters?

 - Or, an option to ignore terrain scatters completely, it really is a massive hit at 4k resolution

As you can see here: https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/103963-wip161-scatterer-atmospheric-scattering-v00540-17032019-fixed-tsunami-bug-11/&do=findComment&comment=3598962I have disabled effects on trees to save some performance, maybe I included trees but not the rest of the scatters.

If you can include a screenshot of terrain scatters clearly showing the scatterer effects on them I promise to fix it (move the camera out far enough to show the effect then narrow your fov/zoom in so it's clearly visible on the scatters).

On 6/14/2019 at 12:58 AM, Gameslinx said:

From what I've seen, scatterer does seem to affect the scatter objects from rocks to trees in the surface.

Without the scatter's LOD decreasing with distance from the camera, you could be rendering hundreds of vertices on one single object that you can barely see (thus around 8 vertices would make do since the object only takes up a few pixels)

I'd it's true that scatterer is applying the shading to scatters, it's applying it to every single vertex. Even those way off in the distance are being rendered as if they were directly next to you.

I'm on a GTX 1080 and running at 4k with no anti aliasing, and get lag with Scatterer and scatter objects in dense places. If LOD of objects decreased with distance, or if scatterer didn't shade objects far away / at all, performance would be a lot better. 

Yes, you are right on this, since I moved away from using the depth buffer (it has ugly aliasing around objects), the approach used is basically rendering opaque objects twice. I made sure to disable it on the cutout-style trees, if you make a detailed report as above I can disable it on the rest. Typically I would expect the bulk of the performance hit to be coming not from additional strain on the GPU but mostly from a lot more draw calls.

On 6/11/2019 at 7:21 PM, Kerenatus said:

i use a newly bought RTX2070,i7 9750,32G ram

everything is perfectly smooth until i load scatterer lol

the fps lag is real

On 6/12/2019 at 8:46 PM, Majorjim! said:

Agreed currently scatterer causes far too much lag even on high end systems.

These comments are completely unusable for me, if you're not willing to play around with settings and narrow it down I can't help you.

On 6/13/2019 at 5:22 AM, davidy12 said:

Isn't working in 1.7.1

Same as above.

On 6/18/2019 at 5:03 PM, Wackenhut said:

Running ksp 1.6.1, rss and rssve. I have installed SSTU part mod, and it all looks well....until...i turn on the lights and / or extend some (not all) solar panels. The moment i hit the lights, i see the graphics flicker twice, my sunflare dissapears and i get 2 error messages in console. It needs to be noted that switching to tracking station and then loading the ship again does seem to reset the problem and my flare is back.  It happens with all the command modules, it also happens when i decouple a command pod from its service bay and when extending some (not all) solar panels.  Granted my main save is 149 mod save, so i tried recreating it in a clean 1.6.1 install with RSS, RSSVE and the usual visuals and it happened there too. I Took screenshots, and added the log file. Link

To make sure it was a conflict SSTU-Scatterer, i made a clean 1.6.1 install and only added scatterer and sstu to it, same result.  Log file : Link

The same thing happens on my 1.7.1 install of JNSQ, dx9 or dx11 is all the same result. Atm i am testing at wich version of scatterer this issue started and for now 0.0336 does not have this issue, but it gives me black skies in rssve and JNSQ.

I posted this in sstu thread too and shadowmage refered me here. Hope you got a solution for this.

Edit : I stand corrected, 0.0336 does have the issue, just not as profound, throws and exception about anti-aliasing not being set right. included this logfile too : Link

Known issue, the stock code for moving parts and cargo bays messes with the projectors, I haven't found the cause yet.

On 6/26/2019 at 4:49 AM, Phoenia said:

Despite your claims to have fixed the z-fighting, I see this whenever I look at a planet in orbit

Fixed with scatterer ocean, with stock ocean it isn't working very well, try forcing d3d11, it handles z-fighting better.

On 7/8/2019 at 5:50 PM, kedrednael said:

Hi!

I've just downloaded scatterer again despite the fps drop it gives me, because it just makes the game so gorgeous!
But I've also got the bug that phoenia describes.
The bug begins at 60km precisely, and ends at 160km, in that altitude the water also changes color a bit. Above 160km the fps also jumps up :)).

Aargh the fps is so low and bug is not pretty.

Same as above.

1 hour ago, PsY4 said:

Hi everybody !

i'm facing an issue with ocean using scatterer : the ocean surface is randomly rotating around the camera vertical axis ! It even happens when game is paused !

This weird behaviour disapears if i delete all other vessels in orbit and other planets, and does not happen on a brand new savegame...

Anyone gets this issue and has a way to fix it ?

More details? possible video report?

 

Edited July 9, 2019 by blackrack

[Drew Kerman]

5 hours ago, blackrack said:

Yes, trees are ignored on purpose to preserve performance. I guess I can always add an option for them (at a performance hit)

waiiit (may be a bit behind since still on 1.5.1) wasn't there a fix to make them blend properly with distance? Or was this lost when you tossed the depth buffer? I'd use that performance hit for screenshots

[blackrack]

4 hours ago, Drew Kerman said:

Or was this lost when you tossed the depth buffer?

Exactly.

But before that fix trees rendered "behind" the scattering which looked wrong, after that fix they had their own correct scattering.

Now they render "in front" with no scattering.

[Drew Kerman]

10 minutes ago, blackrack said:

But before that fix trees rendered "behind" the scattering which looked wrong, after that fix they had their own correct scattering.

Okay, that's indeed what I remember (I actually edited photos to fix this myself). I mean, really I can always go back to that version if I need to but if it's not too much trouble to have a setting for this off by default I'd love to be able to switch it on. but I'm prob the only one who plays without gfx mods and only turns them on for screenshots

Edited July 10, 2019 by Drew Kerman

[PsY4]

10 hours ago, blackrack said:

More details? possible video report?

Hey ! Sure, here is the video of what happens : 

And some more details : 

- It also happens on the Space Center view
- It also happens on pause menu
- It does not happens on fresh savegame
- If i delete some ships in orbit (even on other moons/planets) it's less visible
- It does not happens anymore if i delete all other ships
- It happens on all video engines (stock, dx11, glcore...)

And finaly the log file : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1m-MeND8KjsFgG4V1LOl_V1xgn6xlomUD/view?usp=sharing

Hope you can see what's wrong, 'cause for me it's the only problem i have with your addon.

Keep the good work !

[Zero_a_]

I have the mod installed yet I cant find the settings window.

[Cheesecake]

@PsY4I have the same issue. But for me it happens only in oceans and with very fast rotation, not at the KSC or otherwise. Using KSP 1.7.1 with dx11.

Log:

KSP.log

 

[Brigadier]

12 hours ago, Zero_a_ said:

I have the mod installed yet I cant find the settings window.

Left or right Alt + F10 or F11 in the KSC or Flight view.

Edited July 13, 2019 by Brigadier

[TheKurgan]

Scatterer is still very awesome and beautiful... HATE to play without it... BUT I do miss those white caps
 

Spoiler

 

Edited July 13, 2019 by TheKurgan