0.17 concerns

[spikeyhat09]

A great many of us with mid-end computers (low enders being left in the dust eons ago) have experienced some lag with the game, especially once you start building ginormous rockets. This doesn't pose much of a problem usually, because you only have to suffer through it for a few moments after liftoff, and the ultimate target is only the Mun or Mimus. With nearby targets such as these, the according vehicles don't grow TOO too big. Some of us might chug along abit at first, but after you're out of the atmosphere, its easy going on our somewhat slower CPUs and GPUs.

I've also noticed a trend in the Kerbal updates: every new version brings with it more lag. I suspect this version will be no different, particularly because of all the new things to simulate (more celestial bodies, higher detailed background sky, physical kerbals inside the cockpit, etc.). Now, when we launch an interplanetary rocket, it will be by no means small. The rockets we take to other planetary systems will no doubt have many times more parts and pieces than our mun and minmus rockets. coupled with the expected increase in lag, I wouldnt be surprised at all if the game simply crashed before it even rendered on the launchpad (on those of us who have budget PCs anyway).

My request is that along with all the other cool stuff coming in 0.17, some time is invested in making enormous performance improvements (multicore support (if it isnt there already) would be nice too ).

Thanks for reading.

[nhnifong]

I believe the ball is in unity's court to make the physics multi-core.

[Shortsonfire79]

Addendum:DunaLab! The first space station scheduled to be placed in orbit around another planet.

Also, here's the launcher:

While I stand by you with the mid-end computer and huge vehicles (mine are always too large), I think that Nova has just shown us that he can get a considerable sized mass to Duna.

If I'm not mistaken (I haven't been following 0.17 news until yesterday), Duna is the red dot on the red rail here.

That looks pretty far away (not the farthest) and Nova was able to do it with mostly stock parts in a 4 (possibly 5) stage rocket (maybe around ~100 pieces, I made it to 64 at the station stage). I think that the majority of us need to refine our rocket designs so that we don't get the massive amounts of fps drop. You could probably get to the green dot (is that Meander or Jool?) with another middle stage with the 3200 tank and a large thruster.

I do agree that the update will most likely bring lag, but as nhnifong put it, the ball is in Unity's court with their Physx. (I think thats what its called)

[Accelerando]

KSP .16 actually decreased lag for me, which was somewhat surprising because I had expected new features to increase its load on my system. Maybe .17 will be similar – I hope so.

[cocomoe1002]

While I stand by you with the mid-end computer and huge vehicles (mine are always too large), I think that Nova has just shown us that he can get a considerable sized mass to Duna.

If I'm not mistaken (I haven't been following 0.17 news until yesterday), Duna is the red dot on the red rail here.

That looks pretty far away (not the farthest) and Nova was able to do it with mostly stock parts in a 4 (possibly 5) stage rocket (maybe around ~100 pieces, I made it to 64 at the station stage). I think that the majority of us need to refine our rocket designs so that we don't get the massive amounts of fps drop. You could probably get to the green dot (is that Meander or Jool?) with another middle stage with the 3200 tank and a large thruster.

I do agree that the update will most likely bring lag, but as nhnifong put it, the ball is in Unity's court with their Physx. (I think thats what its called)

Where is the first lanet that was sopesed to be added called Moho? the new lava planet??

[Accelerando]

It's not visible in that picture because it's too close to the sun.

[UNSC]

This is what I'm worried about. My large rockets cause My computer to run at 5fps until I drop the SRBs. At this point it is ~20 fps. To get to other planets I will need some larger rockets and more efficient memory usage or whatever slows down computers.

[what-the]

At the moment the way I reduce lag on large rockets is to use mechjeb to get me into orbit with the window minimised. Then I leave the flight and return once in orbit. I should know as I play on 1.8GHz dual core with intel HD 3000 lol.

[Tommygun]

I think the Devs have said that getting the game to run faster was more for the Beta stage of the game.

[Bluejayek]

One thing that I believe would help with this is to make four extra fuel tanks. These would be double and triple the length of the LFT-400 and LFT-3200.

So therefore we would have the following tanks

LFT-200 LFT-400 LFT-800 LFT-1200

LFT-1600 LFT-3200 LFT-6400 LFT-9600

I often use three tank stacks on top of engines, and adding these parts would let me do this with 1 part instead of three. This would cut down significantly on the number of parts that need to be simulated (as I understand it is part number, not part size that cause problems), which would make the game run faster.

Further, I believe this would be something that would be easier to implement then an efficiency overhaul of the game code, and something a modder could do for us instead.

For example, the ship below currently has 174 fuel tanks in 3 tank stats. With this addition, 174 tanks would be reduced to 58, leaving 116 less objects for the physics engine to render.

This is the first ship I have built that has the capability of interplanetary return trips (As tested by flying out to 20Gm, landing on kerbin, back out to 20Gm, and relanding).

A final thing that I believe the devs are doing in this update is to fix the weakness of the connections on some of the larger parts. This will cut down on the number of struts required on these ships, further dropping the number of parts required on ships, easing the physics load. That being said, adding a stronger version of the strut might also be helpful.

Edited September 2, 2012 by Bluejayek

[NetBlitzer]

I believe the ball is in unity's court to make the physics multi-core.

You are correct. The main lag issue is the lack of multicore/thread support. PhysX recently updated to add it, and now it's Unity's turn to do the same. Once that's done (hopefully soon), expect a MASSIVE increase in performance. I mean, even What-the should see about a 50% increase in speed or more on his dual-core system (laptop?).

Also, it really doesn't take that much to launch a rocket. Even Nova's rocket has a lot of dead-weight in the station part.

[Bluejayek]

You are correct. The main lag issue is the lack of multicore/thread support. PhysX recently updated to add it, and now it's Unity's turn to do the same. Once that's done (hopefully soon), expect a MASSIVE increase in performance. I mean, even What-the should see about a 50% increase in speed or more on his dual-core system (laptop?).

Also, it really doesn't take that much to launch a rocket. Even Nova's rocket has a lot of dead-weight in the station part.

Launching a rocket that is capable of getting to one of the planets is easy, and doesn't take a large rocket. The problem occurs when you want to build one that is capable of getting home again. This requires a rocket that can deliver at least the entire payload of the first rocket to the surface, which results in rather large rockets...

[NetBlitzer]

Launching a rocket that is capable of getting to one of the planets is easy, and doesn't take a large rocket. The problem occurs when you want to build one that is capable of getting home again. This requires a rocket that can deliver at least the entire payload of the first rocket to the surface, which results in rather large rockets...

True, but you yourself are avoiding this by launching two rockets: a lander that will land, then reach orbit; and a rendezvousing orbiter that will reach orbit, then leave with the pilot of the lander. I don't think anyone is going to truly be able to land on a planet (especially Eve) and be able to take off and return easily for some time yet.

[UNSC]

There seems to be a glass sealing here. My comp specs are:

AMD A4-3300M APU with Radeon HD Graphics 1.9 GHz processor Duel-core

And 6 GB Ram

Not as good as some of the people's computers others in the community use, yet I still get the same amount of lag with large rockets and the game on the highest settings... I may be spouting complete garbage but could it be problems on the software end?

Edited September 2, 2012 by UNSC
Forgot to add an important detail

[_Aramchek_]

I don't think anyone is going to truly be able to land on a planet (especially Eve) and be able to take off and return easily for some time yet.

I certainly will be trying, so challenge accepted.

I have made many a rocket with more than enough spare fuel, I don't try to be "efficient", I brute force it and in this game that works well.

[spikeyhat09]

You are correct. The main lag issue is the lack of multicore/thread support. PhysX recently updated to add it, and now it's Unity's turn to do the same. Once that's done (hopefully soon), expect a MASSIVE increase in performance. I mean, even What-the should see about a 50% increase in speed or more on his dual-core system (laptop?).

Also, it really doesn't take that much to launch a rocket. Even Nova's rocket has a lot of dead-weight in the station part.

your making me salivate. with a quad core system, but only 2.2 Ghz, naturally one of the cpus gets slammed, while the others sit around and do crap. maybe then ill be able to look at the horizon without throwing the framerate out the window

[etildard]

i have a dual core intel i3... and its in my gaming rig that i built for about 600 dollars back in 2011. dont slam dual cores, man!

[spikeyhat09]

i have a dual core intel i3... and its in my gaming rig that i built for about 600 dollars back in 2011. dont slam dual cores, man!

who's slamming dual cores?

[Maxed-Rockets]

Cries quietly into his quad-core.

I do have a nice graphics card to make up for it though.

[vexx32]

Hmm. If we get multi-core support, my machine will run it with no lag on even the mightiest of rockets

(6-cores and an awesome gfx card here )

[nhnifong]

Errr, I have a new gaming computer with the fastest chips on the market right now, and it still simulates a 200 peice rocket in KSP at about 1 FPS. So, don't worry that it's your machine. It's the code, they haven't optimized anything yet. (which is saving work in the long run)

[Awaras]

Does hardware physx make a difference in performance? Has anyone done tests with similar computers with and without physx? (a computer with a physx enabled nvidia card VS. the same computer with a similar AMD card that does not support physx)?

[UNSC]

As I stated earlier, my computer isn't all that great and you guys with quad-cores and great graphics cards arn't running it any better. I'm fairly certain that it's the code.

[Werwolf]

There seems to be a glass sealing here. My comp specs are:

AMD A4-3300M APU with Radeon HD Graphics 1.9 GHz processor Duel-core

And 6 GB Ram

Not as good as some of the people's computers others in the community use, yet I still get the same amount of lag with large rockets and the game on the highest settings... I may be spouting complete garbage but could it be problems on the software end?

I think you're on to something here.

I tried disabling half my ram from 4GB to 2GB, and noticed no decrease in performance. It was still laggy as usual when running large ships. I think it may indeed be the game that needs optimizing.

[nhnifong]

We should agree upon a rocket design, some settings, resolution, and orbital trajectory for testing hardware.

We can hardly say we know anything about KSP's performance on various machiens if we have never performed a controlled experiment.

Also, does anyone know how to turn on a framerate monitor?

Edited September 2, 2012 by nhnifong