Hopes for KSP in Unity 5!

[DuoDex]

52 minutes ago, steve_v said:

Yeah, to take advantage of the new UI system in U5. If it was being done for optimisation reasons alone, why wasn't it re-written long ago when its deficiencies were first identified?

To quote your link (emphasis mine):

They have scrapped 90% of the UI in KSP.
Currently 3 systems. They scrapped that.
The new U5 system is so much better.

This is not optimisation, unless it so happens that the new U5 UI is more efficient, in which case credit for that goes to Unity3D.

So, changes by Squad that improve performance (it's been mentioned that there is a 30% or 40% improvement due to the UI switch) don't count as performance optimizations? It seems that you would like Squad to stick with Unity 4 with its bugs and issues rather than switch to a newer, faster, and more modern engine.

[steve_v]

54 minutes ago, Hobbes Novakoff said:

Switching to a different method of doing a thing which does the same thing but runs better is literally the definition of optimization.

Uh, yeah... which is why that wasn't the whole sentence:

1 hour ago, steve_v said:

...unless it so happens that the new U5 UI is more efficient, in which case credit for that goes to Unity3D.

The bit I take issue with is the "Squad is doing things to make the game run better, i.e Unity 5",  when most if not all the credit for speculated Unity 5 performance improvements should be going to those who optimised Unity 5.

I see Unity getting the blame for a whole raft of bugs and performance issues, on a semi-regular basis. What I haven't seen is optimisation or performance improvements from Squad, that don't involve waiting for a game engine update.

 

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29 minutes ago, DuoDex said:

So, changes by Squad that improve performance (it's been mentioned that there is a 30% or 40% improvement due to the UI switch) don't count as performance optimizations?

Of course they do, but again it's simply taking advantage of new features provided by Unity. If the UI system was such a performance black-hole, why has it taken so long to do something about it (AKA wait for Unity to fix it)?

Edited December 16, 2015 by steve_v

[Hobbes Novakoff]

7 minutes ago, steve_v said:

Of course they do, but again it's simply taking advantage of new features provided by Unity. If the UI system was such a performance black-hole, why has it taken so long to do something about it (AKA wait for Unity to fix it)?

Since the dev team has been working nearly nonstop on the UI overhaul for several months, I'm pretty sure that there is a whole lot of SQUAD work in there. They were waiting so long because rewriting everything takes a ton of work. Think about how many UI systems are in the game. The loading bar, the main menu, the "start game" screen, the flag selection screen, the load game screen, the scenarios screen, the tutorial screen, all the tutorial text-box-things, the entire settings screen (especially the keybind sections), the prompt asking if they can send back data, the "are you sure you want to quit?" dialog box, and the spinny-planets-loading-thing, and that's before you've even started playing the game. They were forced to upgrade to the new Unity UI system, which is generally why the update is taking so long.

 

13 minutes ago, steve_v said:

What I haven't seen is optimisation or performance improvements from Squad, that don't involve waiting for a game engine update.

*cough cough* stock textures converted entirely to .dds file format *cough cough*

[steve_v]

2 hours ago, Hobbes Novakoff said:

They were forced to upgrade to the new Unity UI system.

Exactly. Not done to improve performance (though this is nice, thanks Unity) but because the system they were using went away.

2 hours ago, Hobbes Novakoff said:

*cough cough* stock textures converted entirely to .dds file format *cough cough*

*cough cough* ~15 minutes of script-writing to do it for you *cough cough*
Almost zero man-hours in this, if you use a command-line utility (e.g. nvcompress) + some script foo. You could even run said script at load-time, as ActiveTextureManagement does.

I'll also note that this "optimisation" comes with some extra ugly compression artefacts...

Edited December 16, 2015 by steve_v

[Hobbes Novakoff]

4 hours ago, steve_v said:

*cough cough* ~15 minutes of script-writing to do it for you *cough cough*

Fair point.

4 hours ago, steve_v said:

I'll also note that this "optimisation" comes with some extra ugly compression artefacts...

If they exist, that's the first I've heard of them.

[steve_v]

57 minutes ago, Hobbes Novakoff said:

If they exist, that's the first I've heard of them.

I'd post my own examples, but I'm lazy and a 5 second search of this very forum does it for me.

[selfish_meme]

My hopes are that it works well, not too many initial bugs, has some new prettiness from shaders and more memory and is stable even when heavily modded. Larger ships, OK I am not expecting too much here, but then i have realised that when my part count gets too high I was usually just doing things inefficiently. Stability first, more memory (64bit), easy porting of mods so they get updated quickly, me = happy. 

[steve_v]

20 minutes ago, selfish_meme said:

not too many initial bugs

I'll believe that when me poop turns purple and smells like strawberry sherbet... but one can hope.

64bit OTOH is becoming a necessity... I don't care much personally (GNU/Linux here), but the stock game is getting dangerously close to the limit as it is, and this pretty much means no new parts or not-boring texture updates until 64bit on Windows is a thing...
Or until some form of texture management / streaming is implemented, like most other memory intensive / open-world games.
 

[StarManta]

One of the features just added in Unity 5.3 (released last week) is potentially huge for KSP, and has so far gone mostly unnoticed: multiple display support. It's now possible that we could have one display always showing our map view!

[fourfa]

ohhhh that would be sweet

[nohelmet]

On 12/14/2015, 8:43:26, skyace65 said:

-VR support, Exploring the mun or leaving orbit in VR would be amazing 

I'd love that!

[Guest]

On December 14, 2015 at 11:43:26 PM, skyace65 said:

down the road this is what I'm hoping Unity 5 lets them do

-better lighting

-maybe some better looking water

-VR support, Exploring the mun or leaving orbit in VR would be amazing 

Imagine IVA!

[Jarin]

11 hours ago, steve_v said:

I'll believe that when me poop turns purple and smells like strawberry sherbet... but one can hope.
 

 

1 hour ago, fourfa said:

ohhhh that would be sweet

Regardless of what it smells like, you probably shouldn't taste it. Also a visit to the doctor might be in order in that eventuality.