Will Unity V finally open the door to more planets?

[CaptainTurbomuffin]

I'm not sure why anyone wants more planets when that just means more terrible low-res heightmaps with no props.

That's it! Exactly! If current planets were redone properly, you wouldn't need even more planets, as you would go to Minmus or Duna several times, and you would find something new every time.

[Torquemadus]

Adding a proper outer solar system to the game would give us an incentive to use Joolian gravity assists to get there!

[Gkirmathal]

I had a dream last night that they finally added GP2 as a surprise bonus xD It was blue and Neptune-like and had one large-ish moon.

Anyway, opening the door to more planets isn't so much a Unity 5 / 64-bit issue so much as a limitation on the way planets are currently handled. While the PQS terrain system does shut off at a certain distance, planets still render as fairly high-poly sphere meshes even when so far away they're smaller than a pixel.

The best thing to do would be to have the planets stop rendering at a certain distance and perhaps be replaced with a small "star" sprite. SpaceEngine does something similar to this, and I think DOE implements the sprites but doesn't turn off the sphere mesh. Having just a sprite means big memory and FPS savings, as it's a simple thing to just draw a small image on the screen rather than to map an HD texture all over a bunch of tiny triangles.

Indeed I have been wondering about exactly this for some time now! How much of a gain would you expect from something like this? An estimate.

Sorry to sound critical

I have used OPM and several others Copernicus mods. But never really ran into them (added bodies) giving mea worse performance over stock.

Except one one huge issue/con, that is: KSP/Unity loading all it's assets on startup. Instead of employing ondemand streaming technology.

So how would rendering a sprite, instead of the orbital model and hi res orbital texture as we have now, give a memory saving if all these assets are still loaded on KSP startup? As far as I have read, U5 wont bring ondemand texture/LOD loading.

[Renegrade]

You are already mastering all the current planet?

Getting to Moho?

Returning from Eve?

Getting bored at Dres?

Hehe..My doctoral thesis is on getting bored at Dres

That's it! Exactly! If current planets were redone properly, you wouldn't need even more planets, as you would go to Minmus or Duna several times, and you would find something new every time.

Meh, I'd eventually run out of things to find. So..I want both. More planets, and more detail at existing planets. A bit demanding, for sure, but hey..

(plus I have dreams of exploring a Pluto-like system of very small muns..)

[Aladran]

My guess is that we will get new planet around Christmas If I remember right, Eloo was a christmas surprise and wasn't announced in the official patch note prior release.

[cantab]

Indeed I have been wondering about exactly this for some time now! How much of a gain would you expect from something like this? An estimate.

Sorry to sound critical

I have used OPM and several others Copernicus mods. But never really ran into them (added bodies) giving mea worse performance over stock.

In my testing adding the New Horizons mod gave about a 5% framerate drop in a test that was primarily in a CPU-bound situation (600 parts 5 fps kind of stuff). Not a massive performance killer, smaller than the variation I've had from changing game settings, but it's measurable and for me unwelcome considering KSP performance is marginal enough as it is.

[Eric S]

So how would rendering a sprite, instead of the orbital model and hi res orbital texture as we have now, give a memory saving if all these assets are still loaded on KSP startup? As far as I have read, U5 wont bring ondemand texture/LOD loading.

There are caveats, but Unity does support on demand loading and unloading of assets. http://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/AssetBundle.html

As for the main topic, Maxmaps suggested that 64-bit addressing on all platforms might open up the possibility for more stock planets during one of the Squadcasts, but it was only a discussion of the possibility and his personal interest, nothing like "We're all excited about the possibility of more planets, YAY!"

[GDJ]

Well, I'm not going to start getting really excited about Unity5 unless KSP is 64 bit in Mac OS X.

I've seen some demo's with Unity 5 from the official site and it looks great, plays smooth even on my old iMac, and I think it will be a great improvement for KSP.

[waterlubber]

I had a dream last night that they finally added GP2 as a surprise bonus xD It was blue and Neptune-like and had one large-ish moon.

Anyway, opening the door to more planets isn't so much a Unity 5 / 64-bit issue so much as a limitation on the way planets are currently handled. While the PQS terrain system does shut off at a certain distance, planets still render as fairly high-poly sphere meshes even when so far away they're smaller than a pixel.

The best thing to do would be to have the planets stop rendering at a certain distance and perhaps be replaced with a small "star" sprite. SpaceEngine does something similar to this, and I think DOE implements the sprites but doesn't turn off the sphere mesh. Having just a sprite means big memory and FPS savings, as it's a simple thing to just draw a small image on the screen rather than to map an HD texture all over a bunch of tiny triangles.

I had that same dream. whoa

Either way, I would be up to GP2. I would love to see the wonderful idea's of easter eggs that were laid out and abandoned.

[Joonatan1998]

Unless the new planets have something different about them they are a bit pointless.

Why add something that is basically just a different colored copy of something that already exists.

I think a new gas giant could be added, but it would need something like rings that can be interacted with.

Spawn a lot of asteroids that despawn as soon as they go 2km away. (Not sure if this would cause too much lag) If flying trough the rings at high speed in timewarp cause the ship to explode.

A lot more asteroids with orbits similar to Dres. All would be invidually boring, but together they could be fun.

Comets would be nice, but seem hard to implement properly.

Even more extreme versions of Moho/Eve/Tylo could give advanced players some new challenges.

-large planet with thicker atmosphere than Eve and even more gravity.

-Small asteroid very close to Kerbol

-larger Tylo, maybe place it extremely far from Kerbol to justify it having no atmosphere.

Maybe a planet in retrograde orbit, medium inclination so it seems like it was somehow captured by Kerbol.

Planets being able to have tilted axis would also open some new possibilities.

The problem with adding more planets may be that some people are using very old computers.

Edited August 28, 2015 by Joonatan1998

[Eric S]

Well, I'm not going to start getting really excited about Unity5 unless KSP is 64 bit in Mac OS X.

I'm pretty sure that I've read somewhere that they're aiming 1.1 at 64 bit for all current platforms.

[GDJ]

I'm pretty sure that I've read somewhere that they're aiming 1.1 at 64 bit for all current platforms.

That makes me happier.