Why is Scatterer (or similar) not part of the base game by now?

[Kerbart]

It looks like the discussion has shifted from “why u no scatterer” to “why not rebuild KSP so it utilizes the newest and fastest hardware to the max?”

Aside from maybe it should be built-in but optional, the game has a long history, and for reasons that are at this point largely irrelevant, it has a large user base that has not always the best hardware. In fact, the game has a certain appeal to people who would normally not spend significant amounts of money on high-end graphics cards or gaming rigs in general.

Part of the charm of Red Dead Redemption is the realistic sculpting of the game world. Some will argue that it's the saving grace of the game, because without it there wouldn't be a lot to play with. KSP is not that game. Surely it benefits from good looking graphics, but most players are not expecting great graphics. And if a poll were held and the outcome would be somewhat reliable*, the number of players that would say “stop playing it” when the alternate choice are “buy a $1,500 gaming rig to continue playing the game” or “have said rig” would be fairly high.

Candy Crush did great without great graphics. Clash of Clans does great without great graphics. Shredder Chess is great without great graphics. Certain games do just fine without them.

* the bias involving "being a forum member" and "being interested in this thread" alone would throw off the survey results.

[DualDesertEagle]

U want better visuals? There are mods for that!

/Thread

Edited April 6, 2019 by DualDesertEagle

[Gargamel]

Some posts have been removed or redacted.   Since this has decided to go personal, yet again, the thread will be locked for moderation review. 

[Vanamonde]

Resume discussion if you wish, but please remember to keep politics and personal remarks out of it. 

[Xurkitree]

Nah, let's just end the thread already.

Who's up for pizza?

[Pthigrivi]

7 hours ago, Kerbart said:

It looks like the discussion has shifted from “why u no scatterer” to “why not rebuild KSP so it utilizes the newest and fastest hardware to the max?”

Aside from maybe it should be built-in but optional, the game has a long history, and for reasons that are at this point largely irrelevant, it has a large user base that has not always the best hardware. In fact, the game has a certain appeal to people who would normally not spend significant amounts of money on high-end graphics cards or gaming rigs in general.

Part of the charm of Red Dead Redemption is the realistic sculpting of the game world. Some will argue that it's the saving grace of the game, because without it there wouldn't be a lot to play with. KSP is not that game. Surely it benefits from good looking graphics, but most players are not expecting great graphics. And if a poll were held and the outcome would be somewhat reliable*, the number of players that would say “stop playing it” when the alternate choice are “buy a $1,500 gaming rig to continue playing the game” or “have said rig” would be fairly high.

Candy Crush did great without great graphics. Clash of Clans does great without great graphics. Shredder Chess is great without great graphics. Certain games do just fine without them.

* the bias involving "being a forum member" and "being interested in this thread" alone would throw off the survey results.

There are also games that have a lot of visual charm without relying on heavy, realistic graphics, stardew valley, hyper light drifter, even dwarf fortress on the extreme end. 

All that said, scatterer and sve look really great on this game. I have no objection to a stock implementation, its just not high on my priority list.

 

[Rocket In My Pocket]

Am I the only one who hates how Scatterer looks?

I have a great computer now that can run it with no issues, but it just doesn't fit the look of the game at all, and actually makes it look worse in places.

Making it stock? No thanks! We won't even get into how that would affect the minimum system requirements for people with weaker computer setups.

[KerbolExplorer]

5 minutes ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

Making it stock? No thanks! We won't even get into how that would affect the minimum system requirements for people with weaker computer setups.

Graphicals options so the ones that whant scatterer stock can have it and the ones that dont whant to have it stock can just have it disabled

[StrandedonEarth]

9 minutes ago, KerbolExplorer said:

Graphicals options so the ones that whant scatterer stock can have it and the ones that dont whant to have it stock can just have it disabled

And then we’re back to how many players would make use of it vs what features everyone could enjoy 

[klgraham1013]

10 hours ago, 4x4cheesecake said:

snip

Being 2D and pixel based doesn't mean a game has poor visuals.  It's why I hate the term "graphics."  What does that even mean?  The fact is, that little 2D game has a far more interesting and consistent art style than KSP.  At least until recently.  KSP is slowly coming around.  Not the quality of Restock, but it's better than oil drums.

9 hours ago, DualDesertEagle said:

U want better visuals? There are mods for that!

/Thread

Please.  Let's not start with that again.  This is a suggestion for stock.

[panzer1b]

Ill be perfectly honest, but i do not feel the devs need to spend much time adding new or extra visuals, nor do i even want them to take resources into that since we already have scatterer, planetshine, distant object, KS3P, EVE (and specifically my own config for EVE: SciFiVE), and a few others i dont remember at this time, all free, available, relatively bug free, and easy to install for those of us with good enough GPUs to run them.  Id rather the devs focus on improving what is currently subpar visually with the stock game then add new shiny stuff.

 

The 1st good step that the devs have made recently (and its been ages since i seen anything truly worth aplauding) is making a better skybox.  Now im not 100% sure whether ill like it (and we have texture replacer or dirt mods to change it ourselves), but from the screenshots its way better then the old one and may actually be something ill permanently hold onto (albeit its extremely hard to beat this skybox: https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/173722-14x-the-horsehead-nebula-4k-skybox-for-texturereplacer-replaced/).

What i would personally like the devs to focus on primarily in the coming future is revamping land textures and possibly geometry to add some more small scale features (like rolling hills, small valleys, canyons, ect).  Planets right now are just so ugly up close (the textures are either very blurry and low res, or have major tiling issues which result in the same texture repeating very obviously everywhere (go look at EVE's surface, it looks unbeareable when flying abobve it).  If we cant get a geometry revamp (which would be welcome), at least fix the low res tiley crap we have now so that landing on planets would actually look cool.

The other major issue i have is the stock sunflare.  Its so bad that i HAVE to install scatterer just to replace the awful stock one which i cant stand anymore (and this is really the only reason i must use scatterer). 

Scatterer's other features are nice eye candy, but its sunflare replacement is essential to make me actually play the game for any length of time.

 

Finally, i disagree with the current part model/texture revamps to be a waste of time.  i know not everyone likes them (and there are plenty of revamps that id have loved done differently), but they are from my point of view far better then the old random junk parts which were not consistent at all with lousy details and plenty of visual bugs (like bad/lacking glow textures when firing them up).

[RocketSquid]

KSP is resource-intensive on any computer, and also scatterer makes the oceans turn into kraken ink for me. It's fine as just a mod.

Plus, I don't play KSP for the graphics. If I wanted to pay money to get beautiful pictures of the KSP solar system, I could find an artist who does that sort of thing and commission a drawing. 

[DualDesertEagle]

13 minutes ago, klgraham1013 said:

Please.  Let's not start with that again.  This is a suggestion for stock.

Yeah, but quite oviously one that most people don't agree with.

Edited April 6, 2019 by DualDesertEagle

[4x4cheesecake]

1 hour ago, klgraham1013 said:

Being 2D and pixel based doesn't mean a game has poor visuals.  It's why I hate the term "graphics."  What does that even mean?  The fact is, that little 2D game has a far more interesting and consistent art style than KSP.  At least until recently.  KSP is slowly coming around.  Not the quality of Restock, but it's better than oil drums.

It was not my intention to say that the 2D game from the screenshot got poor visuals (I like it tbh). I just tried to say that comparing KSP with Red Dead Redemption and other AAA games is like comparing apples and pears. The focus of these games are totally different and while other games will benefit from better visual effects, it does not necessarily apply to KSP. Just because it is possible to create some astonishing effects, not every game need them...that's all I've tried to say.

I would agree on the messed up art style of KSP but the ongoing part revamp is a step into the right direction. Like I said before, I would consider "building stuff" as a core element of KSP so a consistent art style/part design (or however you want to call it) for the parts actually enhances the game...atmospheric scattering, clouds, different trees, etc. doesn't help you to build fancy stuff.

[Klapaucius]

1 hour ago, panzer1b said:

What i would personally like the devs to focus on primarily in the coming future is revamping land textures and possibly geometry to add some more small scale features (like rolling hills, small valleys, canyons, ect).  

This is a very good suggestion.  I'd like to see that care go into what is underwater as well.  At the end of the day, one of the big reasons to go to space is to land on other planets and moons and explore them.  The real Mars may be barren, but it is a lot more interesting than Duna.

[Lisias]

1 hour ago, 4x4cheesecake said:

I would agree on the messed up art style of KSP but the ongoing part revamp is a step into the right direction.

Damn! I`m really the only one that likes the old Look & Feel from the Porkjet times?  

[4x4cheesecake]

9 minutes ago, Lisias said:

Damn! I`m really the only one that likes the old Look & Feel from the Porkjet times?  

Probably not but I started playing KSP with version 1.4.1. I know how some parts look in 1.3 and I know the fancy Porkjet engines, that's all. Despite of these engines, I have honestly no idea what you are talking about  

[OHara]

I also suspect that graphics are relatively less important to KSP players than to the people surveyed on 

On 4/3/2019 at 7:48 AM, DMagic said:

Maybe KSP's player-base differs a little from the overall Steam population, but I doubt if there is a more representative source of hardware information available. 

https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/

According to Steam about 50% of users have at least a GTX 1050 or higher

My only basis for that suspicion is my own situation, but I don't think that is too strange.  I currently use a 3-year-old laptop ---a laptop so I can take it to jobs.  It has a good processor, and dedicated GPU good enough for things like CAD viewing (Radeon R7 M360).  This would seem to be a typical computer.

So I can have as many parts as I like, with no trouble doing the physics simulation, but the frame rate drops whenever the camera faces a planet with an ocean, I appreciated the introduction of an option to remove the VAB ground crew, and I used no shadows until performance improved around version 1.2. 

Some graphics mods don't require too much of the GPU, yet add a lot to the game.   I now use EVE (with my customization of Panzer's SciFiVE configuration) so I have clouds to fly through and I like that very much -- a nice reminder of how far I should be in a gravity turn or space-plane deceleration.  Planetshine works well for me, too.  The Restock mod is also very nice, as it gives the same number of pixels to GPU, just better-looking pixels.  The new stock artwork is looking nice for the same reason.  If they want to make me happy, they would put a lot of effort into textures, and stick with low-triangle-count meshes.

Edited April 7, 2019 by OHara
looked up my graphics card

[mystik]

On 4/6/2019 at 5:18 AM, 4x4cheesecake said:

The point is: a game doesn't become better by improving the graphics.
KSP is about building rockets and space exploration. Most time spent in KSP will be in the editor or in space, while looking at your craft and the skybox. I really don't see any benefits in improving the environmental graphics.

On the other hand, improving the parts and the skybox, which will be visible on your screen like 95% of the time makes sense and creating a more consistent design for the parts will allow you to build a rocket which doesn't look like a hotchpotch. I would consider "building stuff" a core element of KSP...there is basically nothing else you can do without building something. So will the game benefit from improved parts? Kinda...at least more than from an environmental graphics update.

Don't bother to explain. I got used to the cognitive dissonance [snip] on the forum. On one side you say you want the outdated graphics but you praise the skybox update in the same post. It didn't trigger a light bulb, did it? That's ok.

I especially love how you mentioned that skybox is visible 95% of the time on your screen. I guess the atmosphere, scatterer or planet shine will be on your screen up to 90% of the time, thus not meeting your arbitrary limit pulled out of your dump logs, to put it mildly.

[snip]

Edited April 7, 2019 by Vanamonde

[Xurkitree]

[snip] Get scatterer and play. It exists, it works. 

And Space is far, far bigger than any atmosphere. Just sayin'. We all try to escape the clutches of atmospheres. 

[snip]

 

Edited April 7, 2019 by Vanamonde

[mystik]

[snip] Also, I already established that the reason these mods should be stock is the period between update and the mods being updated making the game unplayable for weeks until everyone catches up. People are too fragile and sensitive around here. Anyways, we've established that a lot of people don't have mirrors in their house and the graphics still suck so we can swipe this thread under the rug. The game has been fixed through the power of ignorance. This is my last post here. I mean, I saw some posts that understood what I am saying, [snip]. I'll go post on Steam, where we can get actual feedback that's not constantly coming from the likes of "I'll gladly accept anything for the money I payed because I like all things and all things are always great and #allgraphicschipsetareequal #nogpuhate #thisgameisperfect and such" crowd.

Edited April 7, 2019 by Vanamonde

[Vanamonde]

Thread re-cleaned. If it turns sour again we'll have to close it for good, so please play nice with each other. 

[KerbolExplorer]

Ok so looking that this thread has cool down a bit....

I think that scaterer should just stay as a mod...even thought i think i said in this thread that it should be toggeble it could affect the loading time of the game greatly(As if the time it takes to load isnt enought already)

Aslong as the mods is being worked on theres no need for it being in the game.

And what if it takes a a week or two for it to update?...The latest updates didnt brake the mod.heck I even think the 1.4 version works for 1.6.1