Ghost Mountains

[Findthepin1]

Once, a long time ago, there was a KSP player. They were sitting in their pyjamas at a desk eating a muffin during a blizzard. Playing KSP. During an otherwise flawless, routine Mun mission, this happened.

They promptly took a screenshot and posted it on the KSP Forums.

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Seriously, what is this? I seem to have created ghost mountains in KSP. My ship was on route to the Mun and it was some ways above Kerbin when I saw this. I'm not sure if it's a glitch. Those are the mountains in the middle of the continent opposite the one KSC is on. The rest of Kerbin looks fine. Has this ever happened to any of you?

Edited January 10, 2016 by Findthepin1

[*Aqua*]

There are two systems which render planets. When you are near a planet or moon the 3D model with heightmap will be rendered. From afar and in map mode/tracking station a simpler, scaled down variant will be used.

You made your screenshot just at the right time where the system switched between both modes.

Edited January 10, 2016 by *Aqua*

[Spraki]

Kraken skyline, if you ask me. 

Or maybe the graphics settings might be a bit low. Then again, Aqua's assumption is most plausible.

[Wjolcz]

Aww man those are the worst kinds of ghosts. They just slide into your room for whatever reason and then occupy the whole block for a few days leaving ectoplasma all over the neighbourhood.

[cubinator]

I've seen this too. It seems to be due to the way the game switches from the complex mountainous heightmap to the flat lower-res mode at high altitudes. 

[SpacedCowboy]

And then all the little Kerbys said "WTH?!?"

[problemecium]

Yes, confirming here that it's due to the terrain system.

Long story short (but less short than above), Kerbal Space Program uses a procedural generator for terrain. Some features are hard-coded in, such as the large-scale arrangements of continents and biomes, but filling in the details would consume an absurd amount of storage space. Thus, things like mountains, rocks, and trees are placed via an algorithm which generates pseudorandom numbers based on the local conditions (e.g. makes cacti in a desert or makes hills in a grassland).
Bu nobody needs to see little rocks and cacti from Eeloo. Plus, the terrain generator, as far as I can tell, only bothers with one planet or moon at a time. So if you go to the Mun, Eeloo, or wherever, the terrain engine shuts off for Kerbin (or wherever you were last). In order to not look ugly, it has apparently been coded to "fade out" and reduce its opacity based on altitude and gradually reveal the simplified planet sphere. Ideally this doesn't occur until you're so far away that you can't tell (because mountains would only be one pixel tall), but performance constraints meant that SQUAD had to make it fade out a lot closer. Thus if you keep a sharp eye on the horizon, you'll often see artifacts such as this.

The good news is that this is not (knock on wood) the Kraken!

...Oh, who am I kidding - this is the KSP forum. EVERYTHING is the Kraken xD

[Renegrade]

Those 'ghost mountains' are much nicer than the invisible walls on Pol~

 

[monophonic]

"Ghost Mountains" sounds like it should be an amazing amusement park. I would go visit that in a heartbeat.