Squadcast Summary 2015/07/31

[Red Iron Crown]

A few games I own upgraded to U5 immediately when it came out. Like, within a day or two. They must not be using PhysX, I presume. I was wondering why KSP guys were talking about it being so complicated.

There's a bunch of physics stuff built by Squad on top of and beside PhysX, stuff that may be broken by changes to the physics engine. Very few games have as complex a physics model as KSP's, not surprising that it's tougher to port.

Also: Happy Birthday!

[klesh]

Also: Happy Birthday!

Haha, thank you!

[Warbird]

Is he the pointy-haired boss of squad? I'd think it is because of him that we don't get any orbital information or any useful info.

A dev that doesn't know how to play their own game is scary.

Wrong on two counts there:

1. He doesn't have the mohawk anymore, so no pointy hair.

2. The PHB was scientifically proven to add nothing. Max is Schrodinger's producer. He exists in a duality of doing something and nothing and only collapses into one or the other when people start complaining. So he sorta adds something.

[HafCoJoe]

U5 allows for physics multi-threading. On processor, not GPU.

Physics can be offloaded to other cores.

I saw that the very first comment quoted this too! I can't tell you how happy hearing this makes me... I have a CPU with 8 cores... and now I can finally get to use them all!

[Red Iron Crown]

I saw that the very first comment quoted this too! I can't tell you how happy hearing this makes me... I have a CPU with 8 cores... and now I can finally get to use them all!

If you're talking about an AMD it's effectively four cores, AMD's CPUs have half as many floating point units as integer units, and it is FP that matters for KSP.

[amorymeltzer]

No 64 bit for Mac. That's Unity.

Can someone shed a little more light on this? From some searching it seems Unity does allow for 64bit on Mac but for KSP it's a POS, even worse than windows. And that won't change with 5 or 5.1 or 5.2? Is that right?

[BudgetHedgehog]

Cheers for doing this, 5th, as always. Although I now have Friday evenings off, I have to get up at 6am on Saturdays instead for a long shift and watching it real time that late at night means OWK would be a very sleepy chap at work

Some good stuff in there, interesting that the 1.1 and U5 update may be split. I can't decide if that's good news or two bad newses, time will tell.

[Superfluous J]

Can someone shed a little more light on this? From some searching it seems Unity does allow for 64bit on Mac but for KSP it's a POS, even worse than windows. And that won't change with 5 or 5.1 or 5.2? Is that right?

That confused me as well. Considering Mac is a (very modified and long distant) fork of Linux, I figured if anything it would be EASIER to get 64 bit running on Mac. But, my experience with Macs started and ended almost 2 decades ago when a girlfriend I had in college had one. For reasons that should be obvious, I didn't actually use that computer much...

[m4v]

I saw that the very first comment quoted this too! I can't tell you how happy hearing this makes me... I have a CPU with 8 cores... and now I can finally get to use them all!

Maybe if you have 8 separate vessels within physics range, but a single vessel will still use a single thread because calculating the movement of objects that are interconnected is not parallelizable. Multi-threaded physics isn't the silver bullet people have deluded themselves to believe.

[r4pt0r]

Maybe if you have 8 separate vessels within physics range, but a single vessel will still use a single thread because calculating the movement of objects that are interconnected is not parallelizable. Multi-threaded physics isn't the silver bullet people have deluded themselves to believe.

U5 will be good for KSP, no doubt, but I agree about the delusion.

U5 is no panacea. KSP will still have its limitations.

[supay]

That confused me as well. Considering Mac is a (very modified and long distant) fork of Linux, I figured if anything it would be EASIER to get 64 bit running on Mac. But, my experience with Macs started and ended almost 2 decades ago when a girlfriend I had in college had one. For reasons that should be obvious, I didn't actually use that computer much...

I don't use Macs but I believe OS X is a fork from Unix rather than Linux and has more in common with BSD. There's still a lot in common with Linux though and I have no idea what the issue is with 64bit on OS X. I use 64bit on Linux and it is excellent.

[m4v]

OS X uses a derivative of the Mach kernel, while "Linux" uses the Linux kernel, which is an independent development. They aren't alike.

Edited August 2, 2015 by m4v

[SmallFatFetus]

No 64 bit for Mac. That's Unity.

What.

WHAT.

My only computer is a mac. I have been waiting eagerly for this update so that I can play with a reasonable framerate and no crashes.

This is what will ruin KSP for me.

[Francois424]

As usual, thanks 5th

[mythbusters844]

My only computer is a mac. I have been waiting eagerly for this update so that I can play with a reasonable framerate and no crashes.

64bit doesn't actually increase performance by a whole lot and (for KSP) decreases the general stability of the game. The frequent crashes on OSX are actually either Unity issues or Squad issues (totally unlikely).

[NFUN]

What.

WHAT.

My only computer is a mac. I have been waiting eagerly for this update so that I can play with a reasonable framerate and no crashes.

This is what will ruin KSP for me.

If you care enough, try dual-booting it with Linux. It's a PITA to do and might not even work with your computer, but it will make KSP more stable.

[Jouni]

64bit doesn't actually increase performance by a whole lot and (for KSP) decreases the general stability of the game. The frequent crashes on OSX are actually either Unity issues or Squad issues (totally unlikely).

The main reason behind the OS X problems is the difference in design philosophies behind Windows and Mac. In Windows, backward compatibility is vital, and Microsoft engineers practice black magic to maintain it. Apple on the other hand tries to keep its products streamlined by frequently removing support for technologies it considers obsolete.

The obsolete technology in question is 32-bit software. In Windows, it may still be a good idea to make a game 32-bit, because it works everywhere. In OS X, it was already a bad idea in 2010, and now it's something that's going to break badly very soon. Yosemite no longer supports 32-bit software as well as earlier versions of OS X, and Apple is probably going to drop the support completely in a couple of years.

The primary advantage of 64-bit software is not the ability to use more than 4 GB of memory, but the ability to use more than 4 GB of virtual address space. Many things become easier, if you can assume that address space is not a scarce resource. OS X has taken that route. As a result, trying to run 32-bit software that uses nontrivial amounts of memory may lead into all kinds of trouble.

KSP is very stable on my old Macs, as long as I play mostly stock. If I want to play RSS or use part mods, I have to reduce graphics details, or the game runs out of address space. Many of those with newer Macs are less lucky. They have to reduce graphics details even when playing completely stock, apparently because their GPU drivers reserve more address space for themselves.

[Paul Kingtiger]

Watching Max play KSP is painful. Reading your synopsis of him playing is hilarious!

Thank you