Will 1.1 be the stability update that KSP needed?

[Temeter]

2 minutes ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

They are all community made creations running on the exact same machine.

Not really getting whats so dishonest about that?

Direct quote from the developer: "Unity 5 brings with it significant improvements to performance as well as some changes to the game’s physics which, on the whole, make for a more stable experience. Our testing has shown up to a 400% increase in performance on some machines!" 
 

Then why does the video show a 1200% increase tho?

[Rocket In My Pocket]

Video of random guy building huge machines he claims weren't possible before unity 5 update and gushing over how much smoother it is.

 

[Temeter]

I'm not denying the new unity version brings potentially huge performance improvements, especially the current physX is completely outdated. My post was just about the trailer.

[Rocket In My Pocket]

Just now, Temeter said:

I'm not denying the new unity version brings potentially huge performance improvements, especially the current physX is completely outdated. My post was just about the trailer.

I'm so jazzed for KSP 1.5/Unity 5 and you're harshin my mellow brah. 

[Temeter]

1 minute ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

I'm so jazzed for KSP 1.5/Unity 5 and you're harshin my mellow brah. 

We all are, gonna be wonderfull to be finally able to build big ships again! :^D

 

[Snark]

Regarding KSP stability, and comments such as these:

23 hours ago, JonatanW said:

the game isn't stable, especially with mods

22 hours ago, Skorpychan said:

What stability issues? I've barely had any crashes in the time I've been playing.

20 hours ago, nosirrbro said:

Then obviously you don't use mods

Two points, here:

• It's not Squad's fault if mods crash the game.
• There will still be mod-based crashes after 1.1, because there will always be mod-based crashes.  Hopefully there will be fewer, but there won't be zero, and it's impossible for us to know how much fewer.

Reason:  The very fact that we have so many cool mods to play with is because Squad did an incredibly great job of making sure that the game is very thoroughly (and easily) moddable.

The only way to do that is to open up the game's innards to a very wide degree, to give modders the flexibility to do just about anything.

"Let the modders do anything" is very powerful, because it enables all kinds of cool stuff.  But it's also very "dangerous," because mods are also free to break the game in all kinds of ways, including crashes.

When you add to that the fact that mods typically don't go through rigorous production-code QA cycles, and then add in the fact that there are N different mods out there and bugs can happen to the interactions among them, you end up with an essentially unsolvable QA problem.

The only way for Squad to make it so that mods can't crash the game would be to lock down the API so tightly that mods can't actually do very much. And KSP would be immeasurably the poorer for it.

So yes, it'll be nice if they can do things that will make the platform more tolerant in some ways... but as long as there is the freedom to make powerful mods, there will also be the freedom to make crashy mods.  That's not going to change.

Hopefully the raised RAM limit will help a lot of problems-- but it's not a magic bullet.  If the problem is simply "I have X amount of memory and the mods I'm trying to install require X * 120%," then increasing your available memory will help.  But if the problem is "I'm running a mod that has a memory leak and eventually takes down the game" ... no, that's not going to get better.  If anything, it could be worse, because it could use up all your whole system RAM and lock your entire computer up instead of just crashing KSP.exe.  (Sort of like the saying, "the better the four-wheel drive, the farther from home you are when you get stuck.")

And it's really not Squad's fault if your game crashes because a mod did something wrong.  Go blame the mod author if you like, but don't blame Squad.

 

Regarding the performance increase we'll see with Unity 5:  Faster would be nice.  How much faster is a total question mark.

The thing that mostly slows down KSP is physics, not graphics rendering.  Being able to do multi-threaded physics ought to be great, yes.  But how much of an improvement we get totally depends on how that multithreadedness is implemented, so we really have no clue how much of a difference it'll make. Maybe it'll be 1000% faster... or maybe only 10%.  It's really hard to tell, because multithreaded programming is notoriously difficult to do, and has many counterintuitive results.

Spoiler

You can't generalize from what some other game gets, unless you know that that game is doing exactly the same kinds of operations that KSP does.

For example:  I seem to recall reading something in the forum somewhere that hinted that what will actually change is that each ship gets its own physics thread.  So if the reason you're getting a slowdown is that you have a dozen ships inside your physics bubble, maybe that'll be a big help.  But if what I just said is true (I don't know that it is, but I don't know that it isn't), then you're still going to have a bad experience when you have a single ship with a really high part count (which includes things-docked-together, so say hello to your space station).

I don't know if the specific example I just gave is valid, or even for sure whether I'm remembering correctly, but the gist is there:  we really don't know what the change will be until 1.1 arrives.  We can speculate ("oh boy! maybe 1000%!") ... but that's all it is, speculation.  By all means, do so if you enjoy that.    Personally, I try to avoid it, because I really hate to get hopes up and then be let down.  "Don't know" means "don't know."  So I'm studiously avoiding thinking about it, or at least trying to do so.

Edited March 3, 2016 by Snark

[Temeter]

Honestly tho, I can't even remember when I had a mod related crash the last time, it's almost always memory. Most KSP-mods are surprisingly stable and bug-free, even ridiculous stuff like the realism mods.

In regards to physics, to my understanding Unity 5's support of more recent PhysX versions will give us the bulk of the performance increase, the current version is very much outdated. That should also be the reason why Besiege runs a lot better.

Edited March 3, 2016 by Temeter

[Snark]

2 minutes ago, Temeter said:

Honestly tho, I can't even remember when I had a mod related crash the last time, it's almost always memory. Most KSP-mods are surprisingly stable and bug-free, even ridiculous stuff like the realism mods.

Yeah, the big problem is why the mod has memory issues.  "Because it just needs a lot of RAM" is a solvable problem, but "because it leaks RAM" isn't.  (Or, at least, the only solution is to fix the mod.  There's nothing the game can do about that.)

I've had pretty good luck with crashes lately, myself.  RemoteTech seems kinda crashy if I let my comm network get big, but other than that, I hardly ever get crashes.  Of course, I'm not running 87 mods, either; I've got about a half-dozen or so, and they're mostly fairly small.  From browsing around on these forums, it looks like it's not all that uncommon for some users to be running dozens (or more) mods, so I'm not surprised there are issues.

[Temeter]

My Real Solar System install has 62 mod folders! <3

Still next to no mod related crashs. Think I had an issue a month ago, but that went away. Memory is a huge issue tho, the solar system (maybe even the tons of additional code?) itself is incredibly memory heavy and even dwarfs part mods.

edit: Wondering about memory leaks tho, hard to say: KSP itself tends to have some memory management issues, like the growth during scene changes.

Edited March 3, 2016 by Temeter

[StarManta]

32 minutes ago, Snark said:

But if what I just said is true (I don't know that it is, but I don't know that it isn't), then you're still going to have a bad experience when you have a single ship with a really high part count (which includes things-docked-together, so say hello to your space station).

This just gave me an interesting thought. If the "single-ship = single-thread" principle is true, then I could have a game crawling at 5fps when I have a giant space station... and then jump to 40fps when I smash into that space station and break it into a dozen pieces. Players might start to get concerned if there is a sudden framerate increase.

Edited March 3, 2016 by StarManta

[Renegrade]

29 minutes ago, Snark said:

Regarding the performance increase we'll see with Unity 5:  Faster would be nice.  How much faster is a total question mark.

The thing that mostly slows down KSP is physics, not graphics rendering.  Being able to do multi-threaded physics ought to be great, yes.  But how much of an improvement we get totally depends on how that multithreadedness is implemented, so we really have no clue how much of a difference it'll make. Maybe it'll be 1000% faster... or maybe only 10%.  It's really hard to tell, because multithreaded programming is notoriously difficult to do, and has many counterintuitive results.

I love your post - well written, well informed, great illustration - except for this one tiny thing: you left out the possibility of performance being worse after the update.  It could very well be that the code was memory bandwidth limited for whatever reason, and that multi-threading it just kills cache coherency, or somesuch. 

 

29 minutes ago, Snark said:

 Personally, I try to avoid it, because I really hate to get hopes up and then be let down.  "Don't know" means "don't know."  So I'm studiously avoiding thinking about it, or at least trying to do so.

 

Very, very, very wise.  I'm personally going with the 'expect the worst/hope for the best' thing.  So here's to 1.1: burning my entire complex down and irradiating the entire planet with some sort of magical sci-fi radiation that does insane things.

(making multiple quotes in IPS 4 is so much fun, it's like being dropped into a barrel full of angry electric porcupines soaked in lemon juice and then being stirred vigorously.  VERY angry porcupines.)

[StarManta]

43 minutes ago, Snark said:

You can't generalize from what some other game gets, unless you know that that game is doing exactly the same kinds of operations that KSP does.

 

While this is wise and true - doesn't Besieged do pretty much exactly what KSP does in terms of its heavy processing? Large groups of rigidbodies and colliders (mostly primitives), attached by joints? Pretty much all KSP adds to the formula is patched conics and the rails physics, but that's hardly a performance hog.

Personally, I'd been fairly reserved about the performance improvements to be expected until now, for all the reasons you enumerate - but if Besieged can improve by a factor of 10x in optimal situations and 4x in normal ones (based on their 'advertised' performance increase), that bodes extremely well for estimating the performance improvement we might see in KSP. The common wisdom on these forums has been that a doubling of framerate would be foolishly optimistic - but honestly, now, that seems almost conservative.

[justspace103]

ill be siked for 1.1 no matter what. we will just have to wait and see how good it runs