totm march 2020 Kerbin without oceans

[Klapaucius]

So,

 

I had not read through the KSP announcements, so was surprised when my KSP booted up as 1.9. Wahoo!  I was wondering with all the new textures if the environmental mods would work. Well, if you have ever wondered what Kerbin, Eve or Laythe look like without oceans, here is your chance. The water is still there, but it has been rendered invisible. It's like one of those National Geographic topographical maps. Pretty cool, actually.

The mountain lake

[MechBFP]

Looks like all that blue water has stained the ground.

[The Aziz]

I can't be the only one who is bothered by the fact that the ground underwater is just blue for no reason.

[Ogberi]

Drastic effect of where the blue food color plant had a catastrophic leak?

[The_Arcitect]

4 hours ago, The Aziz said:

I can't be the only one who is bothered by the fact that the ground underwater is just blue for no reason.

I am too, I wonder why they did that?

1 hour ago, Ogberi said:

Drastic effect of where the blue food color plant had a catastrophic leak?

That is a reasonable explanation.

[The Aziz]

I think I figured out the reason for that - water as is, I mean the surface, isn't rendered when the ship is high enough, but the ground always is. So to keep Kerbin look from space like there are indeed bodies of water (same applies for shiny Eve seas and grey-ish blue oceans of Laythe) they appropriately colored the ground under the surface.

[Poodmund]

You can avoid that by having two textures, one without the blue stained ocean ground that is used to set the ground colour for the PQSMod VertexColorMap for when you are near the surface and then another texture that is used for ScaledSpace that has the blue stained ocean ground that renders when you are high up in orbit. You essentially fade between the two when the ocean starts to get rendered through the ScaledSpace <-> PQS transition.

[The Aziz]

I suppose that's right, but I also suppose that Squad didn't bother with it at that moment of creation in the past.

[fulgur]

I believe that the cause is Scatterer; it was working before I installed it, and I don't think it's Kerbal Engineer.

Edited February 15, 2020 by fulgur

[Zeiss Ikon]

Anyone who played There (MMO sandbox-ish world) long ago ought to be comfortable with the blue ocean floor.  The first six or eight years of There, the oceans of that were were "blue concrete".  They added water eventually, about a meter deep, with waves, to the great disappointment of some folks who'd been used to being able to drive a dune buggy at 500+ km/h on the smooth blue ocean.

[Klapaucius]

5 hours ago, fulgur said:

I believe that the cause is Scatterer; it was working before I installed it, and I don't think it's Kerbal Engineer.

That's my guess as well. I have not gone through one-by-one yet. I just removed all of them for the moment.

[archiebald]

I can confirm it is Scatterer.

EVE also has a different problem for me with black clouds.  From the surface I had a black sky during daytime. 

[Arco123]

I've got all my mods ready for 1.9.x but Scatterer and maybe EVE just need to update. Although, I don't care just yet. They have done a lot of work and you can't really expect someone to update something in 1- a week of a release.

But, I'm ready and this update looks good!. A nice reason to use the stock textures for the planets and use TextureReplacerReplaced for the suits and reflections. I had the same issue but I did change to the newest EVE and didn't change to 1.9.x after it. So, I don't know if I have the black sky. Darn it. Just when I got all my mods updated!

[archiebald]

15 hours ago, Arco123 said:

I've got all my mods ready for 1.9.x but Scatterer and maybe EVE just need to update. Although, I don't care just yet. They have done a lot of work and you can't really expect someone to update something in 1- a week of a release.

But, I'm ready and this update looks good!. A nice reason to use the stock textures for the planets and use TextureReplacerReplaced for the suits and reflections. I had the same issue but I did change to the newest EVE and didn't change to 1.9.x after it. So, I don't know if I have the black sky. Darn it. Just when I got all my mods updated!

I don't use Steam so no worries about being updated without my knowing.  I am still running 1.8.1 but I have 1.9 set up in another folder to test when the mods I want will work.

Currently Scatterer is way off, EVE looks suspicious and TCA is not displaying most of the interface, but otherwise about 60 mods going all the way back to 1.6 are running fine.  Also, I copied a recent save game into the 1.9 folder to be sure it will work with my current Career.  Seems to be fine.

[Klapaucius]

3 hours ago, archiebald said:

I don't use Steam so no worries about being updated without my knowing.  I am still running 1.8.1 but I have 1.9 set up in another folder to test when the mods I want will work.

I keep several copies with planet packs on another drive, but I just let my main one update when it sees fit.  Keeps me on my toes.

[Rocket Witch]

Are there any large surface features normally hidden or is Kerbin's undersea terrain mostly flat-ish?

What does the crater rim area look like?

 

[Klapaucius]

52 minutes ago, Rocket Witch said:

Are there any large surface features normally hidden or is Kerbin's undersea terrain mostly flat-ish?

What does the crater rim area look like?

 

I have not seen any hidden features but have not looked at the whole planet. The pictures above with the island are the crater rim, unless you are referring to another location.

On 2/15/2020 at 10:39 AM, The Aziz said:

I think I figured out the reason for that - water as is, I mean the surface, isn't rendered when the ship is high enough, but the ground always is. So to keep Kerbin look from space like there are indeed bodies of water (same applies for shiny Eve seas and grey-ish blue oceans of Laythe) they appropriately colored the ground under the surface.

Notice though that the deep mountain lakes are not blue.

Edited February 18, 2020 by Klapaucius

[Rocket Witch]

5 minutes ago, Klapaucius said:

I have not seen any hidden features but have not looked at the whole planet. The pictures above with the island are the crater rim, unless you are referring to another location.

Oh, no, that's the one, I see now. It's a lot flatter up close than it looks from orbit.

[Klapaucius]

Wow, I guess the moderators liked seeing the planet this way as well. I just noticed this is Thread of the Month. Maybe I need to reinstall Scatterer and post some more pictures.

[Anth]

Not a mod issue. The water disappears in certain situations since 1.9.0 was released. I dont use visual mods. And the problem happens without any mods at all

Edited March 2, 2020 by Anth12

[Zabloo]

because the surface under Kerbin's oceans is blue, it looks like the oceans are still there, but there are waves in the oceans. You can see this especially in picture #3.

[brain__washed]

Amazing  this happened to me too after trying to install AVP (including Scatterer of course). Spent a few hours flying around admiring the view.

In case anyone is wondering - there are workarounds available to play with Scatterer enabled again. Links to the workarounds are found in the OP

With Scatterer "patched", I'll stick with 1.9.1 - starting a new (apart from visual enhancements) stock playthrough

[Goaty1208]

Paint kerbin with red paint and the Kerbol space system will have two Duna

[R-T-B]

On 3/4/2020 at 8:24 AM, brain__washed said:

With Scatterer "patched", I'll stick with 1.9.1 - starting a new (apart from visual enhancements) stock playthrough

We have unofficial builds at the end of the thread that truly work without workarounds on 1.9, but they have a few small bugs (mainly, terrain shadows don't work, but KSP added something like that anyways, so...).

They are actually pretty decent quality other than that, if you want to try them until blackrack returns.

https://github.com/R-T-B/Scatterer/releases

[brain__washed]

2 hours ago, R-T-B said:

We have unofficial builds at the end of the thread that truly work without workarounds on 1.9, but they have a few small bugs (mainly, terrain shadows don't work, but KSP added something like that anyways, so...).

They are actually pretty decent quality other than that, if you want to try them until blackrack returns.

https://github.com/R-T-B/Scatterer/releases

Thanks for the info! I will give it a shot once I get home. Hats off to you sir!