Worsening KSP performance.

[Korizan]

So it comes down to processing power and weld points and the physics you choose to run on each part.

I read somewhere that each part has weld points that you can set up different parameters.

The question is can you create certain weld points that will treat 2 parts as one.

And can you be selective about it.

For example 2 fuel tanks form a single part when merged but adding an engine will leave that part as separate.

IF you can do that then you should be able to lower the part count but if you can't do it within the game engine then .....

[SpaceChipmunk]

Sadly no. But Unity 5 fixes a lot of the current engine problems.

Majorjim has suggested it could be the garbage collection process in the current engine causing the issues, but he is going to do some more testing.

[Majorjim!]

Sadly no. But Unity 5 fixes a lot of the current engine problems.

Majorjim has suggested it could be the garbage collection process in the current engine causing the issues, but he is going to do some more testing.

Yeah it really feels exactly like the garbage cleanup issues we saw in versions prior to 0.90. It should be fixed with a UI upgrade, which they are planning so I have hope.

Plus when unity 5 hits We should see large performance increases. So craft of around 7-800 parts will be easily playable.

That will be a glorious day for us replica builders! Detail FTW!

[justidutch]

I don't have any empirical data of any kind, but from the pure gameplay aspect I would say things are definitely slower and laggier (cool, I invented a new word). Also, in the VAB I noticed the framerate decreases dramatically if you have one of those explody and see-through fairings on your ship. When a fairing is in the picture my framerate really drops, but if I'm zoomed in to a part of the ship where the fairing is not in the picture, the framerate is back to normal. It makes sense I guess, but annoying.

[martinborgen]

Correct, and it doesn't matter is you have 1 core or 500 cores, the physics is single threaded and only runs on one. So single core performance is the key.

By all means, but shouldnt I see one core working its behind off when FPS is below 10? As it is, all corrs run at 20-25%.

[joekidd1992]

Inevitably when something explodes on reentry for me (like battery packs), the frame rate gets very very bad.

[Majorjim!]

By all means, but shouldnt I see one core working its behind off when FPS is below 10? As it is, all corrs run at 20-25%.

KSP is a multithreaded game. Its the physics that only run on one core.

[SpaceChipmunk]

Seems to be to do with the physics. I built a 441 part rocket for testing. When it came to launching it was noticeably lagging even on the launchpad, but only whenever something to do with the physics was changed, so accelerating in this case, decelerating while in the air, turning. they all were delayed and then lagging when they were in action. however anything non-physics related such as clouds, the terrain, even spinning the mouse to look in a different direction, were all instant and without lag.

Must be where the single thread is trying to work out the physics for so many parts at once, but there does seem to be a threshold limit around 350 parts.

[Linear]

KSP is a multithreaded game. Its the physics that only run on one core.

Important to remember this!

[anarkhon]

dont know why but structural panels slowing down the game,CPU usage stay about the same but the game just slowing,crawling down.

[Greenspan]

Yes, I have noticed a definte slowdown as well. i7-4770k, 16 GB RAM, GTX760 4GB: 1 Part in the VAB and it lags like hell everytime I look at the floor.

[LABHOUSE]

Hi everybody,

I discovered that KSP V 1.0 and up runs much much worse than V 0.90.

I was testing my new Altair lander which is around 400 parts and the performance was worse than a 700 part craft was for me in V 0.90.. It wad almost unplayable.

Have Squad said anything about this? Or has anybody experienced the same thing?

I have a fast CPU and lowering settings does nothing for the performance.

It is the fairings that cause lag, I can load a fairing free 1,500 part ship with no lag, or a fairing ship with 200 with mega lag.

[xtoro]

It is the fairings that cause lag, I can load a fairing free 1,500 part ship with no lag, or a fairing ship with 200 with mega lag.

While fairing do cause lag, there's still a performance drop from .90 to 1.0 even without fairings...

[boxman]

I have noticed that KSP's performance just kept getting worse from .18 or so on my AMD system. When the spacecenter was redesigned, the overall FPS and performance went from bad to abysmal. I used to build around 900 part ships around that time, and now my system can really only handle around 150 parts, sometimes less. I figure by the time KSP is finished "improving" that I will be unable to build anything significant at all.

That is exactly the case. With each and every version the performance has gone down on average and memory use and leaks up.

This is why me and others were begging squad to not rush towards 1.0 and instead make sure it is optimized and tested as well as possible before releasing it.

If this guy is correct then they are even using 2048x2048 textures for some buttons: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/121818-The-current-state-of-optimization-Are-you-crazy-Squad

As much as I love this game and what squad has pulled off, i think they have some serious management issues that needs to be addressed.

Hopefully all these problems will make them focus on optimizations and unity 5 port with 64bit build instead of just adding more features that will just make all these problems worse.

[katateochi]

It's interesting, there are quite a few different performance issues being mentioned here, some of us suffer from one type of issue others from something else. I wonder what the reason for that is. I don't really get any issues with fairings or from looking at the VAB floor. To start with KSP ran like silk, but as I got more craft in-flight I started getting more freeze-frame glitches in flight and what ever I do 300 parts seems to be my limit. The only issue I have in the editors is if I open a context menu on a light and then try to move the camera, that causes a massive drop in performance until I close the menu.

Of the machine specs that have been mentioned they are all above the recommended spec. I've just done a clean install of windows to see if that would help, it didn't.

This all makes it very hard to pin-point what the issue is to make a bug report for it Do we just have to have faith that the unity upgrade will solve our woes?

Is it something to do with how we've configured KSP or maybe how we've configured our graphics cards?

LABHOUSE I'm interested to know how your game is setup and what spec your machine is. Any chance you could share your settings.cfg file so I could try running my KSP with your settings and see how things go?

If anyone wants to see how my settings works for them it's here settings.cfg

[selfish_meme]

On a contrary note my macbook runs KSP noticeably better now. Yes large ships cripple it but even small ships would choke it previously.

[Forty21112]

I've tried with and without vsync. Can't say I noticed a gain in part-count related performance, but as there doesn't seem to be any page tearing I've left it off -> so I get ~100+fps on small (~50 part) craft, down to <5 fps on (what I'd call medium sized) 300+ part craft.

What sort of part count are you able to use before it gets unplayable?

400 with Vsync seems like my playable limit. It goes 450 without Vsync. Which is odd, now that I know not all players experience this.

[Majorjim!]

It is the fairings that cause lag, I can load a fairing free 1,500 part ship with no lag, or a fairing ship with 200 with mega lag.

I don't get that at all. You mean the new stock 'fairings'? I am experiencing worse performance over 0.90 regardless of parts used.

[Wjolcz]

I actually noticed that 1.0 works way better than 0.90 on my laptop. Previously I got about 15 fps now I get over 30, which is still kinda poor, but better than it used to be.

[delder92663]

I have an i7 w/16gb of ram. Very few mods installed. Stil have crashes.

[OddFunction]

Performance is bad for me on big crafts during atmospheric ascent. Usually dropping boosters + being in orbit returns the game to a very reasonable speed. I would say its something to do with the atmosphere physics. But who knows.

[katateochi]

I don't get that at all. You mean the new stock 'fairings'? I am experiencing worse performance over 0.90 regardless of parts used.

I don't have any faring issues either. I also haven't noticed any particular parts being worse than others, it's just plain old part count. You and I seem to be in the exact same (kinda leaky) boat.

I actually noticed that 1.0 works way better than 0.90 on my laptop. Previously I got about 15 fps now I get over 30, which is still kinda poor, but better than it used to be.

I would expect 1.0 to perform better on a low end machine to begin with. They've optimized quite a few textures which will help. The problem we're finding is that once you have lots of craft in-flight and start making larger craft it starts getting really bad. In short, performance is much improved at the start of a fresh career, much much worse as you get further in.

I have an i7 w/16gb of ram. Very few mods installed. Stil have crashes.

Are your crashes seemingly random or when you do certain things (ie scene changes)? For me KSP hardly crashes (I have just 3 small mods + stock fixes), tbh I don't mind the odd crash half as much as I mind the poor performance with larger craft.

Performance is bad for me on big crafts during atmospheric ascent. Usually dropping boosters + being in orbit returns the game to a very reasonable speed. I would say its something to do with the atmosphere physics. But who knows.

You might try turning down the "Aerodynamic FX quality" in your settings, that is quite a punishing effect. The issue MajorJim and I are having is both in atmo and in orbit so for us it isn't that effect. I'm beginning to suspect it has something to do with the heat modelling.

[Azimech]

I think it would be a good idea if the thermoerrordynamics would be decoupled from the joints physics system. These could easily run on separate cores. I say thermoerrordynamics, because it's got a serious flaw or flaws.

Anyway, since heat doesn't have any influence on joint strength (which is a flaw but we need the CPU cycles) ... it's state switches between connected and disconnect/explode. That's only one command to the main physics system.

Unless Squad has it already running on a separate thread, in that case fuggetaboutit.

[Vaporo]

Well, I've noticed a slight drop in physics performance, but the biggest drop seems to come from graphics for me. For whatever reason, in the newer versions of KSP, looking down (on Kerbin or in the VAB) kills my framerate. I can have the horizon in view, with a good chunk of ground with it, but the framerate drops if I let the ground directly below me get in view, and it gets worse if I turn on antialiasing. I think it has something to do with atmosphere shaders, as I haven't noticed it on other planets. It doesn't explain the VAB half of it, but that's my guess. Also, ground scatter on Pol seems to be really laggy, for some reason. If I zoom out to where the ground scatter is just a bunch of dots on the ground the lag fades away, but I wouldn't think that there would be enough stuff being rendered to bog down my (not not very good, admittedly) graphics card. It was never present before, though, so something must have changed.

[Linear]

Well, I've noticed a slight drop in physics performance, but the biggest drop seems to come from graphics for me. For whatever reason, in the newer versions of KSP, looking down (on Kerbin or in the VAB) kills my framerate. I can have the horizon in view, with a good chunk of ground with it, but the framerate drops if I let the ground directly below me get in view, and it gets worse if I turn on antialiasing. I think it has something to do with atmosphere shaders, as I haven't noticed it on other planets. It doesn't explain the VAB half of it, but that's my guess. Also, ground scatter on Pol seems to be really laggy, for some reason. If I zoom out to where the ground scatter is just a bunch of dots on the ground the lag fades away, but I wouldn't think that there would be enough stuff being rendered to bog down my (not not very good, admittedly) graphics card. It was never present before, though, so something must have changed.

What kind of GPU usage do you get on average, and then when you see your FPS drop? I'm doing some investigating.