[KSP1.12.x] RealPlume - Stock v4.0.8 & RealPlume v13.3.2 [25/JUN/2021]

[Zorg]

28 minutes ago, MDPKH said:

The .625m aerospike engines from RLA have this misplaced blue plume component when using RealPlume 13.3.1 and RealPlume Stock 4.0.1. Without RP, the effects are appropriately placed.

Will take a look for the next update.

[MDPKH]

Thanks.

[Greyyy]

i have this problem where the nuke engines would have one of their shrouds in place even though i never put a decoupler under them. The ship was in flight already when I downloaded the mod and opened the save. I did use the original modulemanager (from the modulemanager forum page) instead of the bundled one and tried to delete the modulemanager and all the config stuff under it to be replaced with the bundled md but still there.

Is there a way to fix this? I saw in a post somewhere that seemed old as well that I could do something with the save file.

edit: Heres the link of the shroud thing I found 

I checked my save file:

and i found that the nukes had the fairingR in the top activejettisonName but the second jettisonName was empty. I put in fairingL for them all but i havent tested yet. Will edit again once I get results.

Edited June 20, 2020 by Greyyy
more info to add

[Zorg]

5 hours ago, Greyyy said:

i have this problem where the nuke engines would have one of their shrouds in place even though i never put a decoupler under them. The ship was in flight already when I downloaded the mod and opened the save. I did use the original modulemanager (from the modulemanager forum page) instead of the bundled one and tried to delete the modulemanager and all the config stuff under it to be replaced with the bundled md but still there.

Is there a way to fix this? I saw in a post somewhere that seemed old as well that I could do something with the save file.

 

edit: Heres the link of the shroud thing I found 

I checked my save file:

and i found that the nukes had the fairingR in the top activejettisonName but the second jettisonName was empty. I put in fairingL for them all but i havent tested yet. Will edit again once I get results.

Regardless of what that old post might have (speculatively) said, I have no reason to believe that RealPlume and smokescreen would have any effect on this. This mod only affects moduleEnginesFX and the EFFECTS node, and has nothing to do with ModuleJettison. I've no idea what the cause of that might be or its solution, sorry.

[Greyyy]

9 hours ago, Zorg said:

Regardless of what that old post might have (speculatively) said, I have no reason to believe that RealPlume and smokescreen would have any effect on this. This mod only affects moduleEnginesFX and the EFFECTS node, and has nothing to do with ModuleJettison. I've no idea what the cause of that might be or its solution, sorry.

rip. ty anyways.

[RyanRising]

Anyone have advice on getting myself to quit this mod? It's so beautiful, but the RAPIERs and aerospikes specifically are death to my framerate. Playing with them feels like suffocating myself with cake - It'd be good for me to go up for air, and I'd feel better after doing it, but the thing keeping me down is just so wonderful.

[Greyyy]

4 hours ago, RyanRising said:

Anyone have advice on getting myself to quit this mod? It's so beautiful, but the RAPIERs and aerospikes specifically are death to my framerate. Playing with them feels like suffocating myself with cake - It'd be good for me to go up for air, and I'd feel better after doing it, but the thing keeping me down is just so wonderful.

save up on pc upgrades. Or strike a deal with ur parents if ur still in school or something.

[RyanRising]

10 hours ago, Greyyy said:

save up on pc upgrades. Or strike a deal with ur parents if ur still in school or something.

Will those help? I’m already running a 4th gen i7 and GTX 1080. I know PC components are never really good enough and you’ll always be upgrading, but I didn’t think I was at the bottom of the totem pole. Are you guys not losing 3/4 your otherwise framerare with a load of RAPIERs? 

[Zorg]

16 hours ago, RyanRising said:

Anyone have advice on getting myself to quit this mod? It's so beautiful, but the RAPIERs and aerospikes specifically are death to my framerate. Playing with them feels like suffocating myself with cake - It'd be good for me to go up for air, and I'd feel better after doing it, but the thing keeping me down is just so wonderful.

clustering a lot of engines always comes with a danger of performance hits. Its just the nature of how particle effects work. The the stock rapier and aerospike in particular use a fairly complex plumes which doesnt help matters if you you are using several of them.

You can press ctrl+P (option+p on mac) to open the smokescreen menu and reduce the maximum number of active particles. Lowering it too much can make plumes look bad but you can try to find a balance that works better for you.

The plumes for those two engines were custom made but not by me so Im not 100% familiar with the config but I'll see if theres any optimisations that can be made when I get around to the next update.

re upgrades your PC is fine, KSP in general is not a well optimised game and as such does not provide the best platform for performance especially when you start to mod it. You must judge for yourself where the right balance is for you and if you want to continue to use realplume. Keep in mind you can also delete configs for specific engines if you like so that they will revert to stock plumes while you use realplume for other stuff.

[Greyyy]

3 hours ago, RyanRising said:

Will those help? I’m already running a 4th gen i7 and GTX 1080. I know PC components are never really good enough and you’ll always be upgrading, but I didn’t think I was at the bottom of the totem pole. Are you guys not losing 3/4 your otherwise framerare with a load of RAPIERs? 

oh damn. idk how on earth ksp uses up all that.

[RyanRising]

2 hours ago, Zorg said:

clustering a lot of engines always comes with a danger of performance hits. Its just the nature of how particle effects work. The the stock rapier and aerospike in particular use a fairly complex plumes which doesnt help matters if you you are using several of them.

You can press ctrl+P (option+p on mac) to open the smokescreen menu and reduce the maximum number of active particles. Lowering it too much can make plumes look bad but you can try to find a balance that works better for you.

The plumes for those two engines were custom made but not by me so Im not 100% familiar with the config but I'll see if theres any optimisations that can be made when I get around to the next update.

re upgrades your PC is fine, KSP in general is not a well optimised game and as such does not provide the best platform for performance especially when you start to mod it. You must judge for yourself where the right balance is for you and if you want to continue to use realplume. Keep in mind you can also delete configs for specific engines if you like so that they will revert to stock plumes while you use realplume for other stuff.

I really should have read the OP (as well as perhaps consult a psychologist about addiction problems instead of consulting a mod thread) huh? That being said, thanks for being so patient with me and helping.

57 minutes ago, Greyyy said:

oh damn. idk how on earth ksp uses up all that.

It's all split between RealPlume, EVE, scatterer, PlanetShine, Distant Object Enhancments, some sound effects mods, parts mods, and my own overbuilt spaceships and cluttered savegame. Considering only the last two actually are built into the game and the rest has to be retrofitted on by people who aren't allowed to have all the blueprints, sometimes I'm surprised the game runs at all.

Edited July 2, 2020 by RyanRising
self-reflection and parentheses

[gamerscircle]

Hi all -

I am a little confused and could use a little help.  I have used this mod before and I loved it.. I have never been to a rocket launch, but I have watched a couple and I can see how the Real Plumes are more like they are IRL vs the stock ones.

I stopped using the mod because the sounds, they were too loud and I was wondering if there is a way to have the "plumes" and keep the stock sounds?

Also, if this has been addressed or talked about, there is 15 pages to read through and I thought I would ask.

Appreciate your time.

[FatherOfGold]

Hello, quick question, is there a way to obtain the old stock configs and put them on the current version of the mod? I definitely prefer the Kerolox and hydrolox plumes from older configs of realplume-stock. Is there a way I can obtain them? Thanks!

[ryan59]

PLEASE UPDATE TO KSP 1.10 ASAP

[Weimaraner]

18 hours ago, gamerscircle said:

Hi all -

I am a little confused and could use a little help.  I have used this mod before and I loved it.. I have never been to a rocket launch, but I have watched a couple and I can see how the Real Plumes are more like they are IRL vs the stock ones.

I stopped using the mod because the sounds, they were too loud and I was wondering if there is a way to have the "plumes" and keep the stock sounds?

Also, if this has been addressed or talked about, there is 15 pages to read through and I thought I would ask.

Appreciate your time.

You can just turn down the spacecraft volume in settings.

[Zorg]

18 hours ago, gamerscircle said:

Hi all -

I am a little confused and could use a little help.  I have used this mod before and I loved it.. I have never been to a rocket launch, but I have watched a couple and I can see how the Real Plumes are more like they are IRL vs the stock ones.

I stopped using the mod because the sounds, they were too loud and I was wondering if there is a way to have the "plumes" and keep the stock sounds?

Also, if this has been addressed or talked about, there is 15 pages to read through and I thought I would ask.

Appreciate your time.

You can always change the spacecraft volume as suggested above. Alternatively it is possible to patch out the sounds using some module manager wizardry but I expect that would be a bit tricky. There's no easy way to do it that comes to mind.

33 minutes ago, ryan59 said:

PLEASE UPDATE TO KSP 1.10 ASAP

Pestering for updates is against forum rules. I expect the current release works fine in 1.10 but its not tested. An official update will happen when I have time for it.

15 hours ago, FatherOfGold said:

Hello, quick question, is there a way to obtain the old stock configs and put them on the current version of the mod? I definitely prefer the Kerolox and hydrolox plumes from older configs of realplume-stock. Is there a way I can obtain them? Thanks!

You can get an older version of the RealPlume-Stock and replace relevant configs . this has to be done on an engine by engine basis.

https://github.com/KSP-RO/RealPlume-StockConfigs/releases

[ACSoft]

What a great mod I have just discovered ! Congratulations and thanks to all persons involved in this project !

Actually, all the solid rocket booster plumes seems to me not very realistic, to not say ugly:

This is to the point I wonder if this is not a bug or maybe, a compatibility problem with the new 1.10 version ?

When testing some other rockets with solid buster, all seem to have the same kind of problems. Flams burn like a "campfire", slags are completely unrealistic. Smoke is maybe the best, if the factor is increased a lot, to avoid the "steam locomotive smoke" effect.

This is sad, because the plumes of liquid fuel engines are great ! I really love the transition from hyper-sonic nodes at see level to more and more expanded flames when climbing to high atmosphere and beyond. 

Editing the concerned (hammer booster) setup file from:

        plumeScale = 0.6
        flareScale = 0.8
        smokeScale = 0.3
        slagScale = 0.6

To:

        plumeScale = 0.8
        flareScale = 0.8
        smokeScale = 0.8
        slagScale = 0.2
 

I was able to improve a bit, but far from being perfect.

Now, I am asking myself: Shall-I rework all solid booster setup file ? Apparently this might be a tremendous work ?

Is there a way to disable all solid rocket plumes of this addon and just let those of the original game, which are also not perfect, but far better looking, even if not very realistic sometimes.

I would really appreciate any help from any experienced Kerbinauts. personally, I come from the world of Orbiter freeware, but completely new to KSP. I am even the author of a well known addon for it: AMSO (Apollo Mission Simulator for Orbiter). I say this not to brag, but just so that the reader can situate my skills in working on addons

any help on this matter would be greatly appreciated !

Thanks in forward !

[Zorg]

1 hour ago, ACSoft said:

What a great mod I have just discovered ! Congratulations and thanks to all persons involved in this project !

Actually, all the solid rocket booster plumes seems to me not very realistic, to not say ugly:

 

This is to the point I wonder if this is not a bug or maybe, a compatibility problem with the new 1.10 version ?

When testing some other rockets with solid buster, all seem to have the same kind of problems. Flams burn like a "campfire", slags are completely unrealistic. Smoke is maybe the best, if the factor is increased a lot, to avoid the "steam locomotive smoke" effect.

This is sad, because the plumes of liquid fuel engines are great ! I really love the transition from hyper-sonic nodes at see level to more and more expanded flames when climbing to high atmosphere and beyond. 

Editing the concerned (hammer booster) setup file from:

        plumeScale = 0.6
        flareScale = 0.8
        smokeScale = 0.3
        slagScale = 0.6

To:

        plumeScale = 0.8
        flareScale = 0.8
        smokeScale = 0.8
        slagScale = 0.2
 

I was able to improve a bit, but far from being perfect.

Now, I am asking myself: Shall-I rework all solid booster setup file ? Apparently this might be a tremendous work ?

Is there a way to disable all solid rocket plumes of this addon and just let those of the original game, which are also not perfect, but far better looking, even if not very realistic sometimes.

I would really appreciate any help from any experienced Kerbinauts. personally, I come from the world of Orbiter freeware, but completely new to KSP. I am even the author of a well known addon for it: AMSO (Apollo Mission Simulator for Orbiter). I say this not to brag, but just so that the reader can situate my skills in working on addons

any help on this matter would be greatly appreciated !

Thanks in forward !

I believe your plumes look bad because they either your framerate is too low or more likely you have lowered the global particle limit below what the smoke trails require.

I am personally of the opinion the SRB plumes look pretty great. I dunno who made them originally back in the day but it was long before I started maintaining this mod. Unfortunately they are the most performance intensive plume type in the mod because they are both high emitting and also the emitted particles persist for the entire physics range of 2km (to allow for the world relative trails). I have made several attempts at trying to make a decent looking SRB plume that also improves upon the existing ones performance-wise and failed to do so (on both fronts really).

With respect to the edits you have above those are modifications to "user facing" parameters of the plume. The plume itself is a complex prefab config that exists in the core RealPlume mod. Changing the prefab is a no go as it could break all sorts of exisiting configs but if you wish to make a PR to change the individual stock SRBs to look better feel free to open a pull request on github preferably with before and after screenshots and I can see if it can be integrated. The majority of pure stock configs were done before my time as well so I dunno what they all look like exactly. I did the restock configs as I use stock parts only with restock.

However before you make any changes do keep in mind this is how the solid plumes are supposed to look, these are mostly from BDB but they are using the same prefabs as the stock ones. I believe the stock ones should look much the same with the particle limit not cramping their style.

Yes its probably 1000 active particles plus per booster but like I said I havent been able to make a better performing prefab that looks as good or better. If anyone can I would be delighted to include such a prefab in the mod.

 

1 hour ago, ACSoft said:

Is there a way to disable all solid rocket plumes of this addon and just let those of the original game, which are also not perfect, but far better looking, even if not very realistic sometimes.

This is quite easy simply delete the config file for the individual engine you wish to revert to stock effects and the realplume will be gone for that engine with no ill effects. 

Edited July 13, 2020 by Zorg

[ACSoft]

1 hour ago, Zorg said:

I believe your plumes look bad because they either your framerate is too low or more likely you have lowered the global particle limit below what the smoke trails require.

Zorg, thanks for your quick answer, I appreciate !

Just tested again now with a FPS display and my frame rate remained locked at 60 FPS during this phase (for an unknown reason, take screenshot of KSP do not take GeForce Experience FPS display).

Speaking of global particle limit, I didn't even knew such a parameter exist and therefore, it should be set to default installation value. So, apparently, this has to be changed and therefore you would be advised to inform the user on which value he must "try" to increase it, to insure the expected rendering.

I suppose this parameter is somewhere inside the KSP setup ?

I will try to found it now and try to tweak !

EDIT: I didn't found any "global particle limit" ?!? Where is this setup, please ?

Edited July 13, 2020 by ACSoft

[Zorg]

22 minutes ago, ACSoft said:

Zorg, thanks for your quick answer, I appreciate !

Just tested again now with a FPS display and my frame rate remained locked at 60 FPS during this phase (for an unknown reason, take screenshot of KSP do not take GeForce Experience FPS display).

Speaking of global particle limit, I didn't even knew such a parameter exist and therefore, it should be set to default installation value. So, apparently, this has to be changed and therefore you would be advised to inform the user on which value he must "try" to increase it, to insure the expected rendering.

I suppose this parameter is somewhere inside the KSP setup ?

I will try to found it now and try to tweak !

 Its part of the in game GUI for smokescreen (the plugin which powers RealPlume). Press Ctrl+P (cmd+P on mac) and it will bring up the smokescreen panel. Simply bump it up to find the best balance between visuals and how the plumes look. these instructions are on this threads OP to. I'll highlight that section for more visibility actually.

I'm not responsible for the defaults for smokescreen (the plugin which powers realplume), but you can suggest to Sarbian about changing the defaults if you wish. I expect he had good reason to settle on the default value (2000 iirc) since a lot of people play on low powered systems. 

 

Edited July 13, 2020 by Zorg

[ACSoft]

14 minutes ago, Zorg said:

 Its part of the in game GUI for smokescreen (the plugin which powers RealPlume). Press Ctrl+P (cmd+P on mac) and it will bring up the smokescreen panel. Simply bump it up to find the best balance between visuals and how the plumes look. these instructions are on this threads OP to. I'll highlight that section for more visibility actually.

I'm not responsible for the defaults for smokescreen (the plugin which powers realplume), but you can suggest to Sarbian about changing the defaults if you wish. I expect he had good reason to settle on the default value (2000 iirc) since a lot of people play on low powered systems. 

 

Zorg, Thanks for the trail to particle tuning !

Just for your information, I have tested again without 60 FPS lock and I have 67 FPS, with all graphic setup to max. So, to my humble point of view, it surprise me very much to get these graphic rendering results on a vanilla installation. Anyway, thanks to your precious help, I have now everything I need to investigate, study & optimize that.

Again, thanks for your help !

[ACSoft]

Me again ! LOL !

I didn't succeed with Ctrl-P, but in revenge, I founded a configuration file inside the mode which contain:

SmokeScreen
{
    maximumActiveParticles = 1000
    atmDensityMult = 1
    globalCollideDisable = False
    globalPhysicalDisable = False
}

What setup would you recommend ?

Unfortunately, there are no explanations on these parameters inside the mod zip. By chance, do-you have something ?

Or shall-I contact Sarbian for this ?

Thanks in forward.

 

Edited July 13, 2020 by ACSoft

[Zorg]

23 minutes ago, ACSoft said:

Me again ! LOL !

I didn't succeed with Ctrl-P, but in revenge, I founded a configuration file inside the mode which contain:

SmokeScreen
{
    maximumActiveParticles = 1000
    atmDensityMult = 1
    globalCollideDisable = False
    globalPhysicalDisable = False
}

What setup would you recommend ?

Unfortunately, there are no explanations on these parameters inside the mod zip. By chance, do-you have something ?

Or shall-I contact Sarbian for this ?

Thanks in forward.

 

Lol maybe it was alt+P sorry.

I usually open it from the toolbar menu button added by the toolbar mod. I'll double check and make sure the OP is correct.

 

Um anyway just change maximum activeParticles  it really depends on your system. Try something like 6000 and launch something that you might use that has several engines. And if it seems too much bring it down to 4000 or 2000.

I have mine set to 10,000 iirc.

[ACSoft]

Funny, because before reading your last answer, I tried 2000, which didn't really improved, so I tried 10000 with the following result:

Massive hit on frame-rate, which dropped down to 33 FPS and generated anomalies. First, I simply didn't had the smoke rendering, only the flams, which were, I admit, much better and these ridiculous amazingly unrealistic slag flow.Then, after maybe 1 second, came the smoke in a ridiculous very strewn rendering in an "Indian smoke message" mode !!! Simply HOR-RI-BLE, believe me ! LOL !

Also something I didn't mentioned until now, which always happen (in all tests and configs):

When the booster are ejected, the plumes remain attached to the booster and therefore, you can see these plumes making a gracious circular arabesque, according to the booster rotation, before they disappear ! This is horrible too !

Sorry to say that, but for me, these solid rocket plume flames are just a catastrophe right now ! Almost speaking of the RT-10 "Hammer", but also the Ariane 5, I tested yesterday seemed bad, and probably most of all other's. OK, my PC is probably not the most powerful one, but 16GB RAM with an Intel 7700 PCU and a 1080 GTX GPU, should be able to run this.

I don't know how you obtained the plumes you showed to me on the pictures in your first answer, but I really doubt this is feasible with this mod on an actual KSP 1.10 installation, on a PC like mine.

Hope this feedback may help to improve in the future and me, for now, in the meantime, I will remove all these flames, to obtain vanilla version instead.

Cheers Zorg !

[R-T-B]

8 hours ago, ACSoft said:

What a great mod I have just discovered ! Congratulations and thanks to all persons involved in this project !

Actually, all the solid rocket booster plumes seems to me not very realistic, to not say ugly:

This is to the point I wonder if this is not a bug or maybe, a compatibility problem with the new 1.10 version ?

Looks to me like you aren't rendering the smoke portion, like, at all.  I dunno, mine looks nothing like that and I'm on 1.10.  I can only guess some mod incompatibility.  Sorry you are having bad luck with this.

I agree your screenshot looks pretty bad, but that's also not how it's supposed to function.

Edited July 14, 2020 by R-T-B