[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

[steve_v]

3 hours ago, Starwaster said:

Actually, we have symlinks too.

You do indeed, but up until fairly recently you needed elevated privileges to make them so they got a lot less use than they do on *nix.
 

3 hours ago, Starwaster said:

Vortex decided (totally without my permission) that it was going to symlink my Subnautica mods instead of actually copying the files

Personally, I'd be stoked if an update made that a feature (with a note in the changelog of course). Symlinks are awesome, and they really shouldn't cause problems for a well-written application.
 

3 hours ago, Starwaster said:

Subnautica really did not like that.

Dunno about Windows, but over here symlinks are pretty well transparent to applications as they're resolved at the native syscall level.  If you want to know the real path you use readlink() or realpath().
Subnautica is Unity as well AFAIK, so without digging into the API docs I'd guess either Unity or mono is returning the real path by default, and some code in Subnautica didn't make allowances for that.

Edited February 7, 2020 by steve_v

[blackrack]

Since 1.9 is out:

1.9 breaks scatterer for now. However, there are many cool changes in 1.9. The local space cameras have been unified into a single Camera (on Dx11 at least), which will fix many issues and facilitate many visual effects as well as save some performance. Terrain shadows might not work as well as before though, the precision is going to be highly diminished, unless I find a way to support more than 4 shadow cascades or up their resolution. Depth buffer handling seems to have changed, EVE needs some lines removed about outputting modified depth values. Supporting both dx11 with its unified camera and Opengl with 2 cameras is likely to become a pain. Also some graphical issues in stock I'm not happy about, like some backfaces being visible on the mountains you can see from KSC.

I'll keep you guys posted on an updated version, I have some small updates I've been working on which I might release for 1.8 first.

Edited February 12, 2020 by blackrack

[alberro+]

5 hours ago, blackrack said:

Since 1.9 is out:

1.9 breaks scatterer for now. However, there are many cool changes in 1.9. The local space cameras have been unified into a single Camera (on Dx11 at least), which will fix many issues and facilitate many visual effects as well as save some performance. Terrain shadows might not work as well as before though, the precision is going to be highly diminished, unless I find a way to support more than 4 shadow cascades or up their resolution. Depth buffer handling seems to have changed, EVE needs some lines removed about outputting modified depth values. Supporting both dx11 with its unified camera and Opengl with 2 cameras is likely to become a pain. Also some graphical issues in stock I'm not happy about, like some backfaces being visible on the mountains you can see from KSC.

I'll keep you guys posted on an updated version, I have some small updates I've been working on which I might release for 1.8 first.

Take your time dude. Modding KSP is all about patience.

[R-T-B]

On 2/12/2020 at 1:40 PM, blackrack said:

Since 1.9 is out:

1.9 breaks scatterer for now. However, there are many cool changes in 1.9. The local space cameras have been unified into a single Camera (on Dx11 at least), which will fix many issues and facilitate many visual effects as well as save some performance. Terrain shadows might not work as well as before though, the precision is going to be highly diminished, unless I find a way to support more than 4 shadow cascades or up their resolution. Depth buffer handling seems to have changed, EVE needs some lines removed about outputting modified depth values. Supporting both dx11 with its unified camera and Opengl with 2 cameras is likely to become a pain. Also some graphical issues in stock I'm not happy about, like some backfaces being visible on the mountains you can see from KSC.

I'll keep you guys posted on an updated version, I have some small updates I've been working on which I might release for 1.8 first.

Yep, that dual mode approach is likely to be a pain.

 

Out of curiousity, does it work at present if you force OpenGL?  I can't test because I am still on 1.8.1, hehe.

[blackrack]

5 hours ago, R-T-B said:

Out of curiousity, does it work at present if you force OpenGL?  I can't test because I am still on 1.8.1, hehe.

I haven't tried, if what the devs said about the unified camera being used only in dx11 is true, I expect it should work in OpenGL as I saw no other problems.

Maybe someone here tested already?

[Windh]

1 hour ago, blackrack said:

I haven't tried, if what the devs said about the unified camera being used only in dx11 is true, I expect it should work in OpenGL as I saw no other problems.

Maybe someone here tested already?

I just tested (forced OpenGL through Steam). Seems to be working better than without. However, when you get a distance from the atmosphere the colors of the land masses still gets bluish.

 

I also have some pretty rough framerates (I have a midend system, runs 1.8 prettty OK). 

 

Now it's kind of rough. And there's a 10 fps difference between full screen and windowed mode (being +10).

 

 

 

Edited February 14, 2020 by Windh

[Windh]

 

 

https://imgur.com/eULznIv

 

Edited February 14, 2020 by Windh

[blackrack]

4 hours ago, Windh said:

However, when you get a distance from the atmosphere the colors of the land masses still gets bluish.

Thanks for testing, do you have a screenshot of this issue? I can't really imagine what the issue is

[Bombaatu]

Might be helpful in tracking down problems for 1.9. When I first loaded everything appeared fine. I went into the tracking station, still good. When I came out of the tracking station, I had the black-sky-no-water issue. Subsequent scene changes did not correct it, and the log showed a NullPointerException coming from Scatterer. I don't have the log available at the moment, though.

[UltraJohn]

Hi.

I'm on 1.8.1 and I don't see any water with ocean shaders enabled.

[LOG 16:08:28.803] [Scatterer] Effects couldn't be loaded for Kerbin because of exception: System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
  at scatterer.OceanFFTgpu.Cleanup () [0x00006] in <b83aac02f0a14d468c952212b6223826>:0 
  at scatterer.OceanWhiteCaps.Cleanup () [0x00000] in <b83aac02f0a14d468c952212b6223826>:0 
  at scatterer.OceanNode.loadFromConfigNode () [0x00137] in <b83aac02f0a14d468c952212b6223826>:0 
  at scatterer.Manager.Awake () [0x00174] in <b83aac02f0a14d468c952212b6223826>:0 
  at scatterer.Core.Update () [0x008e3] in <b83aac02f0a14d468c952212b6223826>:0 
[LOG 16:08:28.803] ocean node Cleanup
[LOG 16:08:28.803] [Scatterer] manager couldn't be removed for Kerbin because of exception: System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
  at scatterer.OceanFFTgpu.Cleanup () [0x00006] in <b83aac02f0a14d468c952212b6223826>:0 
  at scatterer.OceanWhiteCaps.Cleanup () [0x00000] in <b83aac02f0a14d468c952212b6223826>:0 
  at scatterer.Manager.OnDestroy () [0x00032] in <b83aac02f0a14d468c952212b6223826>:0 
  at scatterer.Core.Update () [0x009b5] in <b83aac02f0a14d468c952212b6223826>:0 
[LOG 16:08:28.803] [Scatterer] Kerbin removed from active planets.

[Manwith Noname]

On 2/12/2020 at 9:40 PM, blackrack said:

...Terrain shadows might not work as well as before though...

Doesn't stock do terrain shadows now? I seem to recall an entry in the settings.cfg appearing a while back something along the lines of "celestial bodies cast shadows" which people thought would be eclipse casting but I've got a vague recollection it was in fact much like the terrain shadows implemented in Scatterer.

[Drew Kerman]

1 hour ago, Manwith Noname said:

Doesn't stock do terrain shadows now? I seem to recall an entry in the settings.cfg appearing a while back something along the lines of "celestial bodies cast shadows" which people thought would be eclipse casting but I've got a vague recollection it was in fact much like the terrain shadows implemented in Scatterer.

I haven't played much 1.8.x but I still have no idea what this setting actually does. I remember asking someone to post a pic of it in the 1.8 release thread but don't recall anyone ever doing it

[Manwith Noname]

@Drew Kerman

Here's a grab with it enabled.

Spoiler

If you watch the sun set you can see the shadows "grow" towards you as it lowers behind the mountains. I can grab something with it disabled at the same UT easily enough for comparison in a bit, gotta run right now though. This is 1.9 stock.

 

Edit: Here's a similar view, same UT with the terrain shadows disabled...

Spoiler

 

Edited February 14, 2020 by Manwith Noname

[R-T-B]

7 hours ago, blackrack said:

Thanks for testing, do you have a screenshot of this issue? I can't really imagine what the issue is

I grabbed a quick one for you by sideloading 1.9 on a separate install.  Mind you, all my mods are still in there (this is my 1.9 install where I keep track of how broken everything is, lol), but the blue terrain is still pretty apparent, even in the main menu:

[Windh]

1 hour ago, R-T-B said:

I grabbed a quick one for you by sideloading 1.9 on a separate install.  Mind you, all my mods are still in there (this is my 1.9 install where I keep track of how broken everything is, lol), but the blue terrain is still pretty apparent, even in the main menu:

 

Yep, there it is. Ice-world vibe. 
 

I also had all my other mods installed as well (not too many visual ones though).

Edited February 14, 2020 by Windh

[alberro+]

6 hours ago, R-T-B said:

I grabbed a quick one for you by sideloading 1.9 on a separate install.  Mind you, all my mods are still in there (this is my 1.9 install where I keep track of how broken everything is, lol), but the blue terrain is still pretty apparent, even in the main menu:

It might be broken, but i'm getting some sick ice world vibes.

[Trevisan]

Same here, ocean shaders turn water invisible.

[Six6igma]

I haven't played in quite a while. Does this Kerbin look right? I don't think it's supposed to look like that, as though it were glazed over, as though its contrast was turned way up. If this isn't how this should look, can someone suggest what the problem might be?

 

And also, the distant mountains and the sky look milky. Is this how it is supposed to look?

 

Just look at that Kerbin and the weird southern area. This can't be right. What could be wrong? How would I begin to fix this?

 

I had AVP v3.6 and this Kerbin looked the same then as it does now that I have AVP v4.0. I'm using Scatterer v0.0541 with default config. I'm using EVE v1.8.0-2 with no config.

Edited February 16, 2020 by Six6igma

[alberro+]

In resume, what are some issues found in Scatterer used in 1.9? I know that EVE has few issues, except some issues with cloud layering.

[blackrack]

Everyone: Asking about 1.9

Me:

 

17 hours ago, Six6igma said:

I haven't played in quite a while. Does this Kerbin look right? I don't think it's supposed to look like that, as though it were glazed over, as though its contrast was turned way up. If this isn't how this should look, can someone suggest what the problem might be?

And also, the distant mountains and the sky look milky. Is this how it is supposed to look?

Just look at that Kerbin and the weird southern area. This can't be right. What could be wrong? How would I begin to fix this?

I had AVP v3.6 and this Kerbin looked the same then as it does now that I have AVP v4.0. I'm using Scatterer v0.0541 with default config. I'm using EVE v1.8.0-2 with no config.

Looks like you are using AVP so start in the AVP thread

[airtrafficcontroller]

7 minutes ago, blackrack said:

Me:

Everyone: 

[Delay]

21 minutes ago, blackrack said:

 

 

What are the performance hits with those on?

[blackrack]

11 minutes ago, Delay said:

What are the performance hits with those on?

As far as I can tell, absolutely none on a gtx 1060. It uses the depth buffer to inject the caustics into the shadowmask (essentially a texture where the shadows are as they should look on your screen, all shaders then read the corresponding pixel on the shadowmask to check if they are in shadow or not, I just add the caustics there). The caustics are basically two layers of the same texture mixed with some different scales and speeds.

So no rendering meshes, no re-rendering objects, basically a few texture fetches so it's fast.

[Arco123]

31 minutes ago, blackrack said:

As far as I can tell, absolutely none on a gtx 1060. It uses the depth buffer to inject the caustics into the shadowmask (essentially a texture where the shadows are as they should look on your screen, all shaders then read the corresponding pixel on the shadowmask to check if they are in shadow or not, I just add the caustics there). The caustics are basically two layers of the same texture mixed with some different scales and speeds.

So no rendering meshes, no re-rendering objects, basically a few texture fetches so it's fast.

Fps? I cant get above 20-30 with AVP and scatterer at lowest settings. I5-7400, 16gb of ram and a GTX 1060 3gb.

[blackrack]

3 minutes ago, Arco123 said:

Fps? I cant get above 20-30 with AVP and scatterer at lowest settings. I5-7400, 16gb of ram and a GTX 1060 3gb.

20-30 fps? What are you doing?

Look at the video above, it should tell you everything you need to know about fps.