Modding the visuals

[MadDridder]

Hello there!

I saw on Youtube videos of KSP with great graphics, stuff like lens flare, better looking atmospheres with clouds and high res textures for planets. It looks gorgeous but when I tried to manually install a few of these, like EVE and Astronomer's Visal Pack, the game crashes when it loads the main menu. And I paid attention to the instructions I tried to do it through CKAN as well, only to get the same results. I thought CKAN was able to tell if the mods you selected to install were incompatible with the version of the game, or they had conflicts with each other. Am I mistaken?

So, did any of you here successfully mod the visuals in 1.0.2, and how? I hope someone can answer, because I love the game and having better graphics is always nice Thanks!

[sarbian]

First : did you have other mods than those installed ? The game usually crash when too much memory is used and mods that adds part are the main source of memory use.

Second : did you try to launch the game in OpenGL mode ? It lowers the memory usage of KSP by a lot (depending on how much memory your GPU has)

[soulsource]

What you're describing sounds like you're running out of memory. If this is the case, it can have numerous reasons, the most likely (if your computer has more than 4 GB of RAM) is that you're hitting the limits of the 32bit address range.

The easiest thing to do is to use the 64bit version of KSP, which is at the moment only available for Linux, but running KSP on Linux has its own issues, see the Linux thread.

Sadly, for now on Windows the only option is to use less memory...

As sarbian said, you might experience less memory usage in OpenGL mode, and if that doesn't work, you might be successful by forcing DirectX 11. If that's not enough, consider using lower resolution textures, and converting the textures from mods to .dds (I wouldn't do this by hand, as it's tedious, might break mods, and is error prone, as you'll also have to exchange colour channels in normal maps from RGBA to GGGR). The automatic solution for both is to use Active Texture Management.

[monstah]

If that's not enough, consider using lower resolution textures, and converting the textures from mods to .dds (I wouldn't do this by hand, as it's tedious, might break mods, and is error prone, as you'll also have to exchange colour channels in normal maps from RGBA to GGGR).

https://github.com/Telanor/DDS4KSP

There's this, too!

[Alshain]

Keep in mind AVP and EVE haven't been updated in a while and cause crashes on 1.0. As soulsource mentioned, the immediate crash on load is typically memory however my experience is that EVE and AVP simply destabilize the game even when they do get up and running. I was having constant crashes during gameplay till I removed them. It is unfortunate but until the authors update them, you may not be able to get this working to your liking.

https://github.com/Telanor/DDS4KSP

There's this, too!

You can't convert EVE textures to DDS. They won't work.

[monstah]

Yeah, but the post I replied to was talking about the pain of converting images from mods in general to .dds by hand, not EVE specifically...

[Alshain]

Ah, sorry. I misunderstood then.

[MadDridder]

Thank you sarbian and soulsource for the advice. I got Active Texture Management, forced OpenGL, and it worked! I even managed to install bits of the Renaissance Pack. It seems there are two layers of clouds on Jool, and Jeb's hair is blue, so I think there are a few bugs, but as you said these mods are not really compatible so I'm a happy camper anyway.

Thanks for the help