Zorg's Screenshots and Customised Visual Set Up

[Zorg]

Zorg's Screenshots and Customised Visual Set Up [Always a work in progress]

I've been getting asked often enough about my visual set up that I thought it best to document it in one place where I can easily point to along with some samples.

 

1. Visual Pack

I play with the JNSQ planet pack, a reimagining of the stock system by Team Galileo which comes with its own visuals. JNSQ is at 2.7x the scale of the stock system ie. roughly quarter the real world scale. More recently I've also been trying out KSRSSVE at 2.5x rescale.

Mini rant unrelated to visuals:

Spoiler

2.5/2.7x scale is the ideal scale to play with stock balanced parts. Parts mods which are based on real world parts use 0.625x the size (rounded to nearest KSP standard or mod standard size), 1/4 irl thrust for sea level engines, 1/2 irl thrust for vacuum engines (or even 1/4 in some mods now), IRL ISP (LH2 resources need to be used for cryogenics for this to make sense) and around 2/3 the IRL engine TWR to figure out the mass. When mods follow these rules broadly, they end up balanced against stock parts and have performance similar to their real counterparts when played at quarter scale. For instance a Titan II should just barely be able to lift a Gemini into low orbit.

if that sounds odd to you consider the fact the "stock" balance is an overpowered balance. Consider the size of a rocket needed to get to the Mun and compare against a Saturn V. Balancing stats against stock parts means performance balancing for a 2.5/2.7x system

The fidelity to realism isnt quite as accurate as Real Solar System + Realism Overhaul but I prefer this since many of my favourite part mods like BDB dont have great RO support. If JNSQ is not your wheelhouse there is also Sigma Dimensions which you can use to scale up the stock or other similar sized planet packs.

Most planet packs come with their own visuals. If you use the stock system then you could use Stock Visual Enhancements  or Astronomers Visual Pack. There are others of course (this is what I used to use).

2. Primary visual mods

JNSQ (and most other planet packs) comes with its own visual configs but they work via these mods

1. Scaterrer - Atmospheric scattering effects, lens flare, sunset/sunrise lighting, fancy oceans and lots more

2. Environmental Visual Enhancements - Clouds

3. Planetshine - reflects light from planetary bodies onto your craft

4. Distant object enhancement - Makes distant planets visible as glowing spots like real planets. More importantly has dynamic sky dimming (we'll get to this).

5. Kopernicus  - Planetary system modifier. Needed for planet packs to work but also some stock visual packs like SVE use it optionally for planetary rings and such.

6. Parallax - the new hotness. Incredible custom ground shader that combines tessellation and displacement mapping to create realistic planetary surfaces. Not in the screens here because I've only just got it and havent been playing much but if you want the best visuals, you definitely want this now if your planet pack supports it. Parallax author Gameslinx does have a set of configs and textures for the stock system and their Beyond Home planet pack of course supports it. 

Downloads

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. The special sauce, TUFX

1. TUFX is a spiritual successor to KS3P. It enables the use of the unity post processing stack with its huge range of effects within KSP. Generally they have a low performance impact compared to Scaterrer and EVE despite how fancy some of the effects might look.

2. Download from here. Its officially supported for KSP 1.9 plus and is working fine in 1.12.2

3. Install my profiles. You can put this anywhere in your game data folder. I suggest creating a dedicated folder. There is no need to put them in the TUFX mod folder as they could be overwritten during updates.

DOWNLOAD TUFX PROFILES

 

4. This file contains multiple colour profiles. Zorg-Neutral is the one I normally use and Zorg-Neutral-xtrabloom is the same just with more blooooom. Not all profiles are suitable for all situations so use them carefully, its easy to switch profiles in TUFX with a couple of clicks.

PROFILES

Zorg-Neutral

Zorg-Neutral-xtrabloom

Zorg-Colour-vintage1-OT - The shadows are VERY blue in this, suggest not using in night or other dark scenes.

Zorg-Flight-BW1-Dark (I rarely use the bright profile but its there if you need it)

 

 

 

5. These profiles are still work in progress so they arent perfect  you might find them a bit dark on the night side, but you can mess with in game ambient light and or planetshine vacuum ambient light settings to your taste.

6. Of course you can tweak and modify them to taste. You can learn how to customise, create and export your own from the instructions on the TUFX thread.

 

4. Additional Customisation

1. Kopernicus Sunlight boost (probably not neeeded)

In addition to tone mapping applied byTUFX I actually boost the sunlight intensity via Kopernicus. Space has harsh lighting since there is no atmosphere and increasing the sunlight intensity can help with achieving this look. Im not entirely sure if this is still needed with the new controls we have with TUFX but for now I am using this patch. This works with JNSQ and can go anywhere in your gamedata. I suggest a personal patches folder. I'll post instructions for more general use when i have the time if you dont have JNSQ.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ogb1cc3kzpbmrkp/JNSQ_SUN_boost.cfg?dl=0

2. Increase Planetshine Intensity [WIP]

3. Distant Object Enhancement Settings [WIP]

5. Screenshot Tips and Techniques

1. Changing your field of view. 

• Its quite easy to change your field of view. (on windows) press Atl and then scroll with your mouse wheel to make the FoV narrower or wider. Usually making it narrower produces pleasing results. A narrow field of view is like using a longer lens on a camera. You get less distortion on your subject for a similar framing (due to further distance the camera needs to be from the subject) and the background is magnified. This is what photographers called telephoto perspective compression. I use a narrow field of view most of the time.
• Making the field of view wider is also useful from time to time. The wider you go the more the image looks like it was taken with a wide angle lens. You will get some distortion, what photographers call keystone distortion. A wide field of view can give a sense of scale and I mostly use it on the launch pad or when landed for certain shots.

Comparison

Spoiler

In this picture I've made the field of view wider. It allows for more context as you see more of the background. But note the keystone distortion. The towers tilt inward a lot as my "camera" is pointed up a bit.

This picture is taken with a narrow field of view. Note how the pad on the background looks relatively large and there is no distortion on vertical objects. [i should probably update this with a better comparison at some point]

 

6. Other Recommendations

There Is No Up (TINU)

Fantastic mod that unlocks pitch controls for the camera. Might take some getting used to but it allows you to control the camera at any angle in any camera view mode. Also some of you might be aware that pressing pause and then F2 in KSP 1.9 gives you a screenshot mode essentially where you can control the camera. (at time of writing this post, 13 sep 2021, TINU does not seem to be working in KSP 1.12, perhaps this will change in the future, )

 

1. Kerbal Konstructs - allows you to set up csutom statics (buildings like in the KSC).

2. KSC Extended - A Kerbal Konstructs based mod that gives you can awesome space center using KSC Extended and Omegas Stockalike structures. Not officially compatible with JNSQ yet but you can make it work with some effort.

3. Modular Launch pads - adds launch towers for epic launches. The best complement to KSC extended.

4. RealPlume with RealPlume-stock - Adds plumes which expand as you rise up the atmosphere. Also has epic smoke trails for SRBs. Can be performance intensive on your GPU. I am tooting my own horn here as I recently took over both mods  I have added something like 25 new plumes built using Nertea's ReStock and Near Future effects and Jade Of Maars Plume party.

4.5 Waterfall with Waterfall-restock. Waterfall is IMO the new gold standard for KSP plumes. Using mesh based plumes it offers better looking plumes in most situations with better performance as well compared to realplume. RealPlume is still the best solution for SRBs but both mods can work together with Waterfall configs taking precedence over RealPlume if something is configured by both. 

5. Parts mods - No point having your planets look awesome if your craft look like butt . Just a few recommendations by no means comprensive.

• ReStock - Comprehensive stock overhaul [essential!]
• Bluedog Design Bureau - 900 parts of american historical rockets and spacecraft ( I'm part of the team there so tooting our own horn a bit  )
• ReDirect - Shuttle derived launch vehicles
• Tantares - Russian stuff!
• Commonwealth Rocketry Establishment - British rockets
• Chrayol Design Org - Indian rockets
• Knes - French rockets including lots of cool never built concepts.
• Nertea's stuff - Everyone knows this right? Near Future, Kerbal Atomics, Cryoengines etc etc
• Probes plus - Lots of probes, Lots of cool science parts.
• Universal Storage 2 - Awesome service modules with truly universal series of modular "wedges" to fill them up. 

I hope this guide is useful to help you get started with a nice visual setup. When I wrote this guide originally there weren't any really good profiles out there at the time. I've been too busy with part modding to develop these further since then but in the meantime lots of people have produced excellent profiles, with far more creative flair. While I think my profiles are still useful I would encourage you to check out the more creative efforts such as the ones linked below. TUFX makes switching profiles trivial so the more to choose from the merrier.

 

Edited September 13, 2021 by Zorg

[Zorg]

Some sample images with the v6.1 70s Negative v1 config [obsolete, this is old KS3P stuff]

Edited April 21, 2020 by Zorg

[Friznit]

Terrific!

Worth including the high resolution screenshot game config setting.  That's pretty essential to get those clean looking lines.  Also key is a half decent graphics programme that can rescale and compress images without diminishing quality is worthwhile - something like GIMP for example (it's free).

It would be handy to get some tips on taking good screenshots too - there's technical tips like using alt+scroll wheel to reduce FoV and give that 'camera lens' look; hold middle mouse button to move the camera around; and Easy Vessel Switch mod which adds a handy shortcut key for switching camera focus quickly.

The final artistic flare that makes a good screenshot great is beyond my capability - things like knowing what angle to position the light, and how to arrange subject/object/background.

Edited October 11, 2019 by Friznit

[Zorg]

1 minute ago, Friznit said:

Terrific!

Worth including the high resolution screenshot game config setting.  That's pretty essential to get those clean looking lines.  Also key is a half decent graphics programme that can rescale and compress images without diminishing quality is worthwhile - something like GIMP for example (it's free).

It would be handy to get some tips on taking good screenshots too - there's technical tips like using alt+scroll wheel to reduce FoV and give that 'camera lens' look; hold middle mouse button to move the camera around; and Easy Vessel Switch mod which adds a handy shortcut key for switching camera focus quickly.

The final artistic flare that makes a good screenshot great is beyond my capability - things like knowing what angle to position the light, and how to arrange subject/object/background.

Oh yeah, thing is I havent been using supersampling as it seems to mess with the EVE clouds above a certain altitude threshold (last I tried). I have a 2560x1440 monitor so I get decent res without but will add that in. Good points about the rest, will incorporate more into the first post gradually.

[Drakenex]

Thanks for being a good magician and revealing your tricks!

[Deltac]

Screen shot tax

No film grain, and I haven't adjusted the kopernicus sunlight settings, but looking good!

[rettter3]

Hey there,

Just had thought about whether you could maybe add your PC-SPECS and average fps in OP?

Just an idea, so we could get an example for a dedicated ksp PC.

 

Edited October 14, 2019 by rettter3

[NewRetroMan]

Hey! Can you help me resolve a few questions? I would like to use KS3P, but I am facing a number of problems. Firstly, do you have blue part icons when using dx 11? And secondly, my settings in KS3P are not saved after restarting the game. And when I download a third-party profile, the settings change is not displayed.

Edited November 23, 2019 by NewRetroMan

[Zorg]

Oof I have not kept up with this thread and didnt have notifications on! sorry for the months late responses

On 10/14/2019 at 1:13 PM, rettter3 said:

Hey there,

Just had thought about whether you could maybe add your PC-SPECS and average fps in OP?

Just an idea, so we could get an example for a dedicated ksp PC.

 

Um I have a rather powerful PC, but for running the visual mods I dont think you necessarily need such specs. However the more things you want to have running together the better it is. Also the JNSQ planet pack in particular recommends at least 16GB of RAM.

KSP performance is mostly limited by the single thread CPU performance and whether you have sufficient RAM for the number of mods you are running. 

Having said that my specs are:
i7 6700K oc to 4.6Ghz

Nvidia GTX1080ti

64GB of DDR4 3200mhz ram

Samsung 970 evo SSD (helps with the loading time to an extent)

 

On 11/24/2019 at 12:07 AM, NewRetroMan said:

Hey! Can you help me resolve a few questions? I would like to use KS3P, but I am facing a number of problems. Firstly, do you have blue part icons when using dx 11? And secondly, my settings in KS3P are not saved after restarting the game. And when I download a third-party profile, the settings change is not displayed.

You get blue icons from running DX11 in ksp versions older than KSP 1.8. You can fix this by installing Textures Unlimited. If you make changes in game, you have to export using the export settings function and copy those settings into the various profile cfgs in the KS3P folder.

If you download a 3rd party profile you need to overwrite any existing profile with the same scenes. At the moment (even for Clusta's unofficial patch) KS3P only supports 1 profile per scene.

[Zorg]

OP updated with new Neutral profile that resolved AO issues with some planet packs when landed. (weird bright or dark edges like a rectangular vignette). Done through removing high precision in the ambient occlusion settings

Fixed grain node has been added

Small tweaks to brightness.

[Moncasta]

These screenshots look stunning!!

[Beetlecat]

Quick Q -- do you turn off in-game AA when using KS3P?

[Zorg]

Small update to the download link since it was confusing people as to what to use. I have no separated out the blank configs. The contents of the folder now have the same file names as you would have after installing Clustas patch. Simply replace ALL the files with the contents in the donwload folder.

On 2/15/2020 at 4:52 AM, Beetlecat said:

Quick Q -- do you turn off in-game AA when using KS3P?

I didnt actually. I presume the KS3P takes precedence and overrides the stock settings. Should probably check at some point if it makes a difference to anything

[Beetlecat]

56 minutes ago, Zorg said:

Small update to the download link since it was confusing people as to what to use. I have no separated out the blank configs. The contents of the folder now have the same file names as you would have after installing Clustas patch. Simply replace ALL the files with the contents in the donwload folder.

I didnt actually. I presume the KS3P takes precedence and overrides the stock settings. Should probably check at some point if it makes a difference to anything

True -- that, or maybe it's double up on things needlessly. I have mixed experience with this from game-to-game, so it's always good to check.  I'll play with some settings and see what minimal AA in KSP settings vs KS3P looks like.

[Zorg]

Just now, Beetlecat said:

True -- that, or maybe it's double up on things needlessly. I have mixed experience with this from game-to-game, so it's always good to check.  I'll play with some settings and see what minimal AA in KSP settings vs KS3P looks like.

That would be great, do share your results. I think because KS3P does its thing via the unity post processing stack and not a 3rd party injection like reshade, it might be ok. But doesnt hurt to check.

[Beetlecat]

3 minutes ago, Zorg said:

That would be great, do share your results. I think because KS3P does its thing via the unity post processing stack and not a 3rd party injection like reshade, it might be ok. But doesnt hurt to check.

That was my biggest question mark -- whether or not it's literally embeleshing/overriding the same unity bits as the in-game settings, or whether it was just a coat of paint over the top like reshade or the ENBs for bethesda games.

[Friznit]

Small suggestion to add Engine Lighting Relit to the list of potential additions.  It's not 100% compatible with all engines (some will 'shine' even when not lit, which can be weird) but the effect especially at night is gorgeous.

[moguy16]

can someone pls provide a link for a non dropbox download? it isn't working for me

[Fan777]

On 3/4/2020 at 9:42 PM, moguy16 said:

can someone pls provide a link for a non dropbox download? it isn't working for me

Which file do you need?
Not this one?

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1pNGeYCMw8yf-ejbihrPO-GQa6MYVm4oL

 

[moguy16]

nah but i figured it out, it was the KS3P configs

 

[Zorg]

With the advent of the new TUFX mod, KS3P is pretty much obsolete. Will update this post with my TUFX configs at some point. Still working on them.

[Zorg]

Updated post with new neutral colour and 2 black and white profiles for the TUFX post processing mod, which replaces KS3P.

 

 

[Nightside]

@Zorg, this looks great!

[Virtualgenius]

@ZorgI have been following this thread intensely and have a few questions. I have  setup a seperate install  for  this (1.9.1) with most of the visual mods but some of them havent been updated yet Scatterer just updated but Kopernicus hasnt and EVE is still on a non official update, Koernicus throws an error is there a way around it or a development beta we can use any help would be appreciated or do you just install JNSQ and get the lot anyway.

Regards,

VG

Edited April 20, 2020 by Virtualgenius

[Zorg]

7 hours ago, Virtualgenius said:

@ZorgI have been following this thread intensely and have a few questions. I have  setup a seperate install  for  this (1.9.1) with most of the visual mods but some of them havent been updated yet Scatterer just updated but Kopernicus hasnt and EVE is still on a non official update, Koernicus throws an error is there a way around it or a development beta we can use any help would be appreciated or do you just install JNSQ and get the lot anyway.

Regards,

VG

Im just on KSP 1.8.1, everything except HDR rendering seems fine with TUFX.