[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

[Chimer4]

  On 3/23/2016 at 7:32 PM, The Destroyer said:

Yeah it does happen like that, it's like KSP itself is shutting down.

-snip-

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That looks exactly like what is happening to me. Only happens in DX9 (never had it happen to me in DX11 so far) and for me there seems to be nothing obvious that triggers it apart from maybe a scene switch. I've had it occur in the space centre view, and whilst launching vessels but I don't think it has happened mid flight from what I can remember.

Edited March 23, 2016 by Chimer4

[pingopete]

Hey Blackrack sorry for the delay, having tested both; without scatterer overlaying clouds:

And with scatterer overlaying clouds:

..the issue with varying exposure still seems to persist. I think it's since 235, I'm gonna check again now

Edited March 23, 2016 by pingopete

[blackrack]

  On 3/23/2016 at 7:03 PM, The Destroyer said:

I'm having some weird issues with scatterer- I went to take a picture (steam, f12) and it didn't (sometimes does that for a few seconds, it's normal) so I pressed F12 again and slowly KSP began to crumble into blackness? Using SVE

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  On 3/23/2016 at 7:19 PM, Chimer4 said:

I think I might have the same issue as you. Does everything start flickering to black, and eventually the entire screen goes black? I have that issue, but only in dx9. In dx11 everything works perfectly. 

A couple of other things that I have noticed but haven't seen mentioned. Occasionally orbit lines, planets and fairings turn blue. I don't know what exactly causes it, it seems to happen at random. If I see it again I'll try and grab a screenshot and log.

Also the sun flare doesn't seem to show in screen shots.

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I never had this issue with the steam screenshots, so I have no idea what might be going on, anything in the debug log? Also, for the sunflare and the ocean it's "normal" that they don't show up in screenshots atm.

 

  On 3/23/2016 at 7:58 PM, pingopete said:

Hey Blackrack sorry for the delay, having tested both; without scatterer overlaying clouds:

And with scatterer overlaying clouds:

..the issue with varying exposure still seems to persist. I think it's since 232 or 233 maybe 234

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In all honesty I'm having trouble seeing the issue, I thought the issue you had was the "mountain whitening" which you can see in the second screenshot, otherwise it just looks like your sky exposure is set slightly low. I think I'm completely missing what the issue is though so maybe you could make comparisons with an older build of the same spot/altitude, otherwise it could easily get confusing.

[The Destroyer]

  On 3/23/2016 at 8:39 PM, blackrack said:

I never had this issue with the steam screenshots, so I have no idea what might be going on, anything in the debug log? Also, for the sunflare and the ocean it's "normal" that they don't show up in screenshots atm.

 

In all honesty I'm having trouble seeing the issue, I thought the issue you had was the "mountain whitening" which you can see in the second screenshot, otherwise it just looks like your sky exposure is set slightly low. I think I'm completely missing what the issue is though so maybe you could make comparisons with an older build of the same spot/altitude, otherwise it could easily get confusing.

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Well, It doesn't appear to be linked with steam screenshots, just a coincidence. I'm not even sure if the debug log will show- everything, text, textures, buildings begin to unload very quickly until it's merely a black screen. First the textures go, then wireframes, then text becomes green blocks, then black.

[theend3r]

Thank you for this incredible work, it makes the game look incomparably better. I only wish it didn't make my framerate suffer so much (or I had a better computer ).

[Mitchz95]

Is it possible to get the eclipses to work in 1.0.4, without the rest of the mod?

[pizzaoverhead]

  On 3/17/2016 at 1:44 PM, blackrack said:

Today's neat little trick: I disabled the ambient light on scaledSpace objects that was causing dark sides to appear lit. Dark sides are now dark, mun displays as a crescent, eclipses look better, mun isn't visible against the sun etc etc... Here's a quick before/after album:

[...]

It makes the celestial objects a bit darker though so i may have to turn up the scaledSpace light intensity a bit, however last time I checked it was tied to the PQS light intensity so we'll see...

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Sweet! This has always bugged me with bodies in KSP. I did some experimentation with this back in 0.23, using the scaled space camera's OnPreRender and OnPostRender events to change RenderSettings.ambientLight for just that camera to avoid the PQS light intensity issue. The only problem was the difference in lighting fading in when approaching PQS. The stock skybox also places the newly blackened moon on a grey background while out of atmosphere, which doesn't look nice at all, though Distant Object Enhancement fixes this somewhat.

Here are some of the results I saw for various lighting tweaks:

 

[blackrack]

  On 3/24/2016 at 9:16 AM, pizzaoverhead said:

Sweet! This has always bugged me with bodies in KSP. I did some experimentation with this back in 0.23, using the scaled space camera's OnPreRender and OnPostRender events to change RenderSettings.ambientLight for just that camera to avoid the PQS light intensity issue. The only problem was the difference in lighting fading in when approaching PQS. The stock skybox also places the newly blackened moon on a grey background while out of atmosphere, which doesn't look nice at all, though Distant Object Enhancement fixes this somewhat.

Here are some of the results I saw for various lighting tweaks:

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I'm using the exact same approach as you with the scaled space camera's OnPreRender and OnPostRender, also boosted the sunlight intensity a little on the scaledSpaceCamera to compensate for the lost luminosity from the ambient light. As you said, distant object enhancements fixes the gray background (it has been a must use with scatterer for a while anyway). The only real issue that remains is transition to the PQS on the dark side of the planet will show a difference in luminosity but in my testing it wasn't very bad and definitely worth the tradeoff.

 

  On 3/24/2016 at 5:20 AM, Mitchz95 said:

Is it possible to get the eclipses to work in 1.0.4, without the rest of the mod?

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At the moment they are built into the sky shader so not possible.

 

  On 3/23/2016 at 9:09 PM, The Destroyer said:

Well, It doesn't appear to be linked with steam screenshots, just a coincidence. I'm not even sure if the debug log will show- everything, text, textures, buildings begin to unload very quickly until it's merely a black screen. First the textures go, then wireframes, then text becomes green blocks, then black.

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Weird, sounds almost like it's done on purpose

[pizzaoverhead]

  On 3/24/2016 at 11:24 AM, blackrack said:

The only real issue that remains is transition to the PQS on the dark side of the planet will show a difference in luminosity but in my testing it wasn't very bad and definitely worth the tradeoff.

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Yes, definitely. The long term solution would be that, for vacuum bodies at least, PQS shouldn't have any ambient light outside of that provided by a much advanced version of Planetshine. A landing on the dark side (or even a large crater) would require proper planning in that case, giving extra gameplay.

[Azimech]

Blue smoke! Funny side effect, seems to come on & off when panning between surface & under water. Don't worry, I don't consider it a bug. The boilers run on heavy fuel oil anyway :-)

[julijan1604]

it wont work for me i installed it via CKAN and when i launch the game i dont have have any changes of atmosphere or fog or all that and the same is for EVE but all other mods i have installed via CKAN works just fine

[Paul_Sawyer]

Anyone ever seen Jool from the inside?

[Biales]

Hello,

I encounter a little graphical glitch with scatterer.

Here is a picture. Note the black jagged line on the horizon :

(it flickers -_-)

It only appears at the interface between water and atmosphere. Ground and atmosphere is fine (as shown in the picture).
I'm using KSP 1.0.5 and scatterer 0.0235.

Things I've tried : update graphic drivers, force opengl, force dx11, change graphic settings, mess with scatterer in game values, revert to scatterer 0.0233, disable godrays, disable draw atmo on top of EVE clouds, disable eclipses, ...

I don't know what else to do.

[Edit:] As mentioned further down it is a known bug. I almost got rid of it by forcing opengl rendering and switching to nvidia antialisaing instead of the ingame one.
 

Edited March 27, 2016 by Biales
found a solution

[DaMichel]

Hi Blackrack, i just want to thank you for the memory usage improvements. I tried the current release today. It uses 100 MB in the KSC scene versus previously, where i complained in this thread ;-), it was 500 MB. Great Work!

[blackrack]

  On 3/24/2016 at 12:03 PM, pizzaoverhead said:

Yes, definitely. The long term solution would be that, for vacuum bodies at least, PQS shouldn't have any ambient light outside of that provided by a much advanced version of Planetshine. A landing on the dark side (or even a large crater) would require proper planning in that case, giving extra gameplay.

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Indeed, on atmosphere bodies however it kind of gives a sort of fake global illumination effect so I'm reluctant to take it out, I think RSS disables it or turns it way down and the shadows look a bit too dark and too hard.

 

  On 3/24/2016 at 8:46 PM, Biales said:

Hello,

I encounter a little graphical glitch with scatterer.

Here is a picture. Note the black jagged line on the horizon :

(it flickers -_-)

It only appears at the interface between water and atmosphere. Ground and atmosphere is fine (as shown in the picture).
I'm using KSP 1.0.5 and scatterer 0.0235.

Things I've tried : update graphic drivers, force opengl, force dx11, change graphic settings, mess with scatterer in game values, revert to scatterer 0.0233, disable godrays, disable draw atmo on top of EVE clouds, disable eclipses, ...

I don't know what else to do.
 

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It comes with the ocean shaders and is "normal" at the moment, there's no fix yet.

 

  On 3/25/2016 at 11:16 AM, DaMichel said:

Hi Blackrack, i just want to thank you for the memory usage improvements. I tried the current release today. It uses 100 MB in the KSC scene versus previously, where i complained in this thread ;-), it was 500 MB. Great Work!

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Thanks, it was a pain to find the issue there.

[Biales]

  On 3/25/2016 at 11:27 AM, blackrack said:

It comes with the ocean shaders and is "normal" at the moment, there's no fix yet.

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Thanks, I can focus on something else now

[Manwith Noname]

So, I watched some KSPTV today to get a preview of 1.1 and noticed heat effects on re entry were displaying behind the craft. I see this isn't listed in the known issues so did you or anyone ever work out exactly what caused it? Is it just something odd with DX11 perhaps?

[NathanKell]

@Manwith Noname It happened in the last few exp builds. I'm trying to figure out why, haven't unbroke it yet. No idea why you asked that here though

[GrugInAus]

  On 3/27/2016 at 8:04 AM, NathanKell said:

@Manwith Noname It happened in the last few exp builds. I'm trying to figure out why, haven't unbroke it yet. No idea why you asked that here though

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Well it is listed as a "known issue" of Scatterer... but they wouldn't have been using Scatterer in the 1.1 preview so you are right. That said, if something in Scatterer seems to trigger it, there might be a similar change to stock which could aid in resolving it.

*shrug*

[blackrack]

  On 3/27/2016 at 8:04 AM, NathanKell said:

@Manwith Noname It happened in the last few exp builds. I'm trying to figure out why, haven't unbroke it yet. No idea why you asked that here though

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  On 3/27/2016 at 8:20 AM, GrugInAus said:

Well it is listed as a "known issue" of Scatterer... but they wouldn't have been using Scatterer in the 1.1 preview so you are right. That said, if something in Scatterer seems to trigger it, there might be a similar change to stock which could aid in resolving it.

*shrug*

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In the previous version of scatterer it happened when I changed the near clipping plane from 300 to 600 on the far camera and the far clipping plane from 300 to 600 on the near camera, it fixed itself as soon as I put these back to default, it's probably not the only thing that could cause this though. @NathanKell have the clipping planes changed in 1.1?

[GrugInAus]

@blackrack are you going to get the 1.1 pre-release so you can work on getting Scatterer ready for 1.1? (Assuming you have KSP on steam). And if so, are we going to get one last version to play with before you get busy getting ready for 1.1?

[blackrack]

  On 3/27/2016 at 2:40 PM, GrugInAus said:

@blackrack are you going to get the 1.1 pre-release so you can work on getting Scatterer ready for 1.1? (Assuming you have KSP on steam). And if so, are we going to get one last version to play with before you get busy getting ready for 1.1?

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You will know as soon as the 1.1 pre-release goes online

[GrugInAus]

  On 3/27/2016 at 2:43 PM, blackrack said:

You will know as soon as the 1.1 pre-release goes online

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lol, ok... I won't download 0.0235 and whatever the most recent dll was just yet. :-P

[hanhan658]

  On 4/12/2015 at 8:37 AM, blackrack said:

 

RSS compatibility:

I don't provide configs for RSS, I believe pingopete is working on providing these (RVE mod) if you wish to play with RSS and reuse the configurations I have created for stock, at least for Earth and Mars put the following in the "config/planetsList.cfg" file:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

scattererCelestialBodies
{
    Item
    {
        celestialBodyName = Earth
        transformName = Earth
        loadDistance =50000000
        unloadDistance = 100000000
        hasOcean = true
        eclipseCasters
        {
            Item = Moon
        }
    }
    Item
    {
        celestialBodyName = Mars
        transformName = Mars
        loadDistance = 50000000
        unloadDistance = 100000000
        hasOcean = false
        eclipseCasters
        {
            Item = Phobos
            Item = Deimos
        }
    }
}

You also need to rename the "Duna" folder to "Mars" and "Kerbin" to "Earth".

It used to be that RSS only changes the name of the CelestialBody to Earth and leaves the scaledversion transform/gameobject named Kerbin. However with the most up to date version of RSS both celestialBodyName and transformName for the Earth are the same. When running older versions you'd need:

        celestialBodyName = Earth
        transformName = Kerbin

If you get issues with null references or the sunflare not working, try the one above.

The sun flare is tailored for the stock system but resizing it for RSS is easy, Just replace these lines flaresSettings andspikesSettings in the sunflare.cfg file with this

//sunFlare.png
flareSettings = 0.45,1,0.085

//sunSpikes.png
spikesSettings = 0.6,1,0.1

 

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Will the scattering shaders be green on Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus Neptune and because Venus is yelow will it be a Purple atmosphere?

[Manwith Noname]

  On 3/27/2016 at 8:04 AM, NathanKell said:

@Manwith Noname It happened in the last few exp builds. I'm trying to figure out why, haven't unbroke it yet. No idea why you asked that here though

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As you may have already gathered, it was previously an issue attributed to scatterer but the streamers are playing a mod free 1.1. If it had been fixed or understood what was happening it may be helpful for squashing the problem in the new release.