[1.12.x] Stock Waterfall Effects (SWE) - A Waterfall config set for realistic rocket exhaust plumes for the stock engines

[Probus]

It looks like Realism Overhaul ROE's Waterfall project has some solid rocket plumes it appears:

https://github.com/vevladdd/ROE-Waterfall

You could check them out and see if you can reconfigure them for the SRBs you are using. 

[Jcking]

9 minutes ago, Probus said:

It looks like Realism Overhaul ROE's Waterfall project has some solid rocket plumes it appears:

https://github.com/vevladdd/ROE-Waterfall

You could check them out and see if you can reconfigure them for the SRBs you are using. 

Looking at the SRBs that use WF configs, they are all upper stage srbs meant to be used near or in vacuum, and it is my understanding that you don't get the big billowing smoke clouds from srbs high up.

Edited May 18, 2021 by Jcking

[Al2Me6]

8 hours ago, Jcking said:

Looking at the SRBs that use WF configs, they are all upper stage srbs meant to be used near or in vacuum, and it is my understanding that you don't get the big billowing smoke clouds from srbs high up.

Yup, I made that template specifically for vacuum motors. Vacuum SRM plumes are actually pretty clean and can be replicated by Waterfall fairly well:

[SpecR]

I'm using ReStock+ and have successfully added the stock waterfall effects for the missing engines (cheetah, bobcat, thud, aerospike and jets) but the Vernor engine seems to be missing. Struggeling a bit with this one since all rcs are contained in the same config.

[Knight of St John]

On 5/12/2021 at 6:54 PM, Rakete said:

@Knight of St John

Can you also make some waterfall plumes for SRBs, so that they match the look to liquidfuel engines in terms of widening of the plume with decreasing atmospheric pressure? I'd love to see that.

 

I think I found a bug. Either in the config by @Knight of St John or in Waterfall itself. @Nertea : The Rapier Engines produce while starting a vessel on the run way strange wind-like reflexes around the vessel. Tested it with 4 Vessels. I coundn't screenshot it, cause these wind-like reflexes are to fast for me to capture. Also: the effect of the rapiers are very heavy load on the fps. 20 + x Rapiers really pull down the FPS-rate (no other mods installed - fps drops only, when rapiers are active)... (please don't understand as complaint but as useful input for you for further improvement)

I won't be making srb plumes, because you cant make trailing smoke with waterfall.
If I can't make them good in atmospheres, I'm not going to make any for only the vacuum regime.

if you are talking about sudden smoke particles here and there, then that's a squad bug. not waterfall.

about the rapier plume: yes it's badly designed by me. i made those fairly early on, when i didn't know what i was doing lol.
so I'll be updating them in the future. don't worry :-)

4 hours ago, SpecR said:

I'm using ReStock+ and have successfully added the stock waterfall effects for the missing engines (cheetah, bobcat, thud, aerospike and jets) but the Vernor engine seems to be missing. Struggeling a bit with this one since all rcs are contained in the same config.

might have to do with the transform names not matching up. check the part cfg files see the transform names.

Edited May 19, 2021 by Knight of St John

[Probus]

I've been replacing the plumes on SpaceY and FASA engines and while I was learning how Waterfall works, I accidentally assigned multiple effects to an engine.  It was a mess, but it did contain Waterfall plumes mixed with Real Plumes (I think) and presto, I got Waterfall FX with puffy SRB smoke trails.  Something tells me this accident can be put to good use by someone with much more talent than I.

I'll see if I can duplicate what I did and take a screenshot or something.

[Rakete]

3 hours ago, Knight of St John said:

I won't be making srb plumes, because you cant make trailing smoke with waterfall.
If I can't make them good in atmospheres, I'm not going to make any for only the vacuum regime.

if you are talking about sudden smoke particles here and there, then that's a squad bug. not waterfall.

about the rapier plume: yes it's badly designed by me. i made those fairly early on, when i didn't know what i was doing lol.
so I'll be updating them in the future. don't worry :-)

might have to do with the transform names not matching up. check the part cfg files see the transform names.

Ah okay... that's sad but understandable. But great job on the liquid-driven engines. I love them. Everyone!

(Just a bit of inspiration for you: in real life some engines give a little green burn at ignition due to hypergolic ignition fuels... see SpaceX's upper stage... not a complaint, just an inspiration).

On the Rapiers: You plan on updating the config on them? In terms of performance or new visual design? The strange effects on a runway run with the rapiers appear just for parts of seconds. No smoke particles. They are more strange white-ish reflections of exhaust gases even in front of the vessel or beneath it (ahead of engines). The only happen in the middle of a acceleration run... but it's just a minor problem. It does only happen with the rapiers. I can reproduce them on every of my rapier driven SSTOs. 

I wouldn't consider the rapier plumes badly designed. In fact, i love their visuals/coloring etc. . What will you improve/redesign?

 

And a thought on the bobcat and the other hypergolic engines, They could be a little bit brighter & and a little bit more dense. Just a little bit. Again: No complaint, just inspiration.

Edited May 19, 2021 by Rakete

[Knight of St John]

5 hours ago, Rakete said:

(Just a bit of inspiration for you: in real life some engines give a little green burn at ignition due to hypergolic ignition fuels... see SpaceX's upper stage... not a complaint, just an inspiration).

hmm yes, but waterfall can only do that half-right. you'd also see the ignition flame when you're on low throttle. so not very realistic.

5 hours ago, Rakete said:

I wouldn't consider the rapier plumes badly designed. In fact, i love their visuals/coloring etc. . What will you improve/redesign?

there's a huge amount of meshes in those rapier plumes. with the work i'm doing now (behind the scenes of waterfall) I'll be able to cut down on the performance impact a lot, while keeping the same look.
stay tuned, i'd say ;-)

5 hours ago, Rakete said:

And a thought on the bobcat and the other hypergolic engines, They could be a little bit brighter & and a little bit more dense. Just a little bit. Again: No complaint, just inspiration.

If you look at the titan II rocket for instance, the plume is almost transparent. that's the inspiration for the bobcat btw.
hypergolics are just... not very glamorous looking :p
although there do exist some nicely colored hypergolic engines, (like the chinese engines of the long march) no engines in ksp are inspired on those.

[Rakete]

14 hours ago, Knight of St John said:

hmm yes, but waterfall can only do that half-right. you'd also see the ignition flame when you're on low throttle. so not very realistic.

there's a huge amount of meshes in those rapier plumes. with the work i'm doing now (behind the scenes of waterfall) I'll be able to cut down on the performance impact a lot, while keeping the same look.
stay tuned, i'd say ;-)

If you look at the titan II rocket for instance, the plume is almost transparent. that's the inspiration for the bobcat btw.
hypergolics are just... not very glamorous looking :p
although there do exist some nicely colored hypergolic engines, (like the chinese engines of the long march) no engines in ksp are inspired on those.

On the ignition flash: You are right: If it would also burn greenish on low thrust it would not be realistic. Maybe it will become possible with waterfall-framework updates in the future. But it's not so important. It was just an idea.

 

Oh I'm really looking forward to perfomance-upgraded rapier plumes. Then I can revive my bigger SSTOs, which I mothballed due to poor performance with waterfall (Yes, your plumes won in a priority comparison between using the big SSTOs with 20 Rapiers vs. using waterfall. - So good are your plumes! :-) ) Is there any E.T.A on a update? (Yes, I really really like it. Please don't feel put under pressure... for me waterfall itself & the configset of plumes are the best mods, i've seen so far for ksp. An I hope someday Waterfall will enable ways to fit SRBs with smoke trails and nice waterfallized plumes as well...

 

Ah okay. Didn't know, that the plumes if the titan 2 are almost light-less. Yes, the Chinese rockets nowadays have nice plumes. Great show, when they lift off.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 20, 2021 by Rakete

[Al2Me6]

13 hours ago, Knight of St John said:

hmm yes, but waterfall can only do that half-right. you'd also see the ignition flame when you're on low throttle. so not very realistic.

Can't this be done properly with https://github.com/post-kerbin-mining-corporation/Waterfall/wiki/Controllers#ignition-event?

Edited May 20, 2021 by Al2Me6

[Knight of St John]

4 minutes ago, Al2Me6 said:

Can't this be done properly with https://github.com/post-kerbin-mining-corporation/Waterfall/wiki/Controllers#ignition-event?

hmm yes indeed, perhaps.
I never used those events. I may have a look into it.

[Rakete]

@Knight of St John

Another hint for optimization: The poodle engine (two bell-variant) shows inside of the engine bells white centers... they don't match to visuals of the other vacuum engines, which don't have these sharp contrasted white insides while burning.

Maybe you want to optimize this in your next iteration as well ? Just a proposal by a fan of your great work :-)

Edited May 21, 2021 by Rakete

[Knight of St John]

2 minutes ago, Rakete said:

Maybe you want to optimize this in your next iteration as well ? Just a proposal by a fan of your great work :-)

it's already fixed in my dev-version. I'm just waiting on an update from Zorg's realplume to release a new minor update that fixes that, and some other stuff.

[Rakete]

3 hours ago, Knight of St John said:

it's already fixed in my dev-version. I'm just waiting on an update from Zorg's realplume to release a new minor update that fixes that, and some other stuff.

Do you share a change log/patch notes list on each update? I'm curious, what's new and shiny in the new version. :-)

 

Just for interest: How are realplume and your waterfall configs connected? Aren't they separate mods?

Edited May 21, 2021 by Rakete

[Knight of St John]

1 minute ago, Rakete said:

Do you share a change log/patch notes list on each update?

If you go look at the releases on github, you'll see i list the major changes each update.
the new update will just have some deconflicts for realplume, and the fix for the poodle dual nozzle.

[Rakete]

1 minute ago, Knight of St John said:

If you go look at the releases on github, you'll see i list the major changes each update.
the new update will just have some deconflicts for realplume, and the fix for the poodle dual nozzle.

Ah great. So we are at version 0.5.0. What do you plan to implement before reaching a first main release 1.0 ?

I guess some optimization like the rapiers etc. Are there more waterfall highlights coming up next / to look forward to, which are currently growing in your and nertea's cabinet? (just for interest...)

[Knight of St John]

2 minutes ago, Rakete said:

What do you plan to implement before reaching a first main release 1.0 ?

Some plumes need to be redesigned with more efficient mesh shaders, which we are working on right now.
Apart from that, I'm also going to improve the look of some of the plumes I'm not that content about.
So when all that is done, It'll be version 1.0.

[Rakete]

On 5/21/2021 at 11:24 PM, Knight of St John said:

Some plumes need to be redesigned with more efficient mesh shaders, which we are working on right now.
Apart from that, I'm also going to improve the look of some of the plumes I'm not that content about.
So when all that is done, It'll be version 1.0.

....really looking forward to...

[Rakete]

@Knight of St John: I finally managed to snapshot the strange effects of the rapiers on the runway after hundreds of attempts. They happen to flash up for fractions of seconds in various orientations and widths as the vehicle moves along the runway. As they look white/violet I would guess they come from the rapier plumes, as they only happen with the rapiers and waterfall. All other engines are not effected by this, as far as I could see. They happen with all my Rapier-driven SSTOs - but not with other engines than rapiers. Maybe you want to have a look into it, when improving their plumes.

Maybe it's a bug from waterfall itself? I don't know. I'm no expert on this. Just giving you hints to potential bugs. Hope you find this useful. Again: No complaint, just a hint for you as a developer.

Maybe it's of interest for @Nertea as well. I don't know. Just tryin' to help you debugging things and make the thing even better for all users.

It does not show up 100% of the time. I can't tell what it depends on.  --> E.g. Right now on my freshly booted KSP-Instance on my PC it does not show up currently... Don't know. It's kind of random.

 

Asymmetric violet reflection for a fraction of a second:

 

Big symmetric violet reflection for a fraction of a second.

 

Big violet asymmetric reflection for a fraction of a second:

 

Reflections from distance for fractions of seconds:

 

Also for debugging reasons my graphics settings of KSP: (unfortunately in german, but I'm sure you can identify what everything is...)

Install: KSP 1.11.2

Graphics Card GTX 1060 6GB with actual drivers.

 

Only other mods: Eve Redux & Spectra in the newest version. / Tried also on a vanilla KSP-Install - same result.

Edited May 23, 2021 by Rakete

[Knight of St John]

8 hours ago, Rakete said:

I finally managed to snapshot the strange effects of the rapiers on the runway after hundreds of attempts

well, this sure looks strange. I've never seen anything similar happen with any waterfall plume.
are they like lights shining on the runway, or are they appearing above the round in mid air, where the rapiers are?

[Rakete]

@Knight of St John: Can't really tell. They shine behind and ahead of the vehicle as it speeds up. But they are more like short flashes. I changed the angle of view and I think they don't flash up in the air as well, but i'm not perfectly sure... As it is totally random how they appear, and even if they appear (in 80% of the runs they do. With some SSTOs more likely and intensive than other SSTOs). I think it has to do with how near the engines are to the runway. In midair flight no reflections happen. The plumes work perfectly there. That's why I think it has to do with strange runway reflections.

 

Update 24.05.2021 / 11:55 UTC:   Verified: No reflections in the air, if you change the angle of view to nearly horizontal on the runway. These effects seem to happen only directly on the runway as reflections. Also: This time it happened even on a freshly booted KSP-instance, so therefore cumulative memory leaks or something like this (KSP-typical bug reasons) seem not to be the reason.

 

Update 24.05.2021 / 12:42 UTC:  Both Rapiermodes produce the above mentioned reflections on the runway.

 

The respective affected SSTOs can be seen here:  nothing unusual - only stock parts.

 

Edited May 24, 2021 by Rakete

[Starseeker]

On 5/20/2021 at 7:10 AM, Al2Me6 said:

Can't this be done properly with https://github.com/post-kerbin-mining-corporation/Waterfall/wiki/Controllers#ignition-event?

ooo, that looks interesting; might see if I can't do some neat stuff with it myself

[Knight of St John]

On 5/24/2021 at 9:23 AM, Rakete said:

These effects seem to happen only directly on the runway as reflections.

Alright. then it probably has to do with the engine lighting that waterfall does. looks like the lights bug out for some reason.
the rapier plume will be the first one i redesign, so i wont be trying to fix your issue.
if it persists after the redesign though, i will look into it.

[Rakete]

1 hour ago, Knight of St John said:

Alright. then it probably has to do with the engine lighting that waterfall does. looks like the lights bug out for some reason.
the rapier plume will be the first one i redesign, so i wont be trying to fix your issue.
if it persists after the redesign though, i will look into it.

Sounds like a good plan. Just give me a ping as soon as the redesign is available (as i don't check the forum thread everyday) I'll give you feedback as soon as I manage to test, if you want.

[dok_377]

On 5/24/2021 at 10:23 AM, Rakete said:

@Knight of St John: Can't really tell. They shine behind and ahead of the vehicle as it speeds up. But they are more like short flashes. I changed the angle of view and I think they don't flash up in the air as well, but i'm not perfectly sure... As it is totally random how they appear, and even if they appear (in 80% of the runs they do. With some SSTOs more likely and intensive than other SSTOs). I think it has to do with how near the engines are to the runway. In midair flight no reflections happen. The plumes work perfectly there. That's why I think it has to do with strange runway reflections.

 

Update 24.05.2021 / 11:55 UTC:   Verified: No reflections in the air, if you change the angle of view to nearly horizontal on the runway. These effects seem to happen only directly on the runway as reflections. Also: This time it happened even on a freshly booted KSP-instance, so therefore cumulative memory leaks or something like this (KSP-typical bug reasons) seem not to be the reason.

 

Update 24.05.2021 / 12:42 UTC:  Both Rapiermodes produce the above mentioned reflections on the runway.

 

The respective affected SSTOs can be seen here:  nothing unusual - only stock parts.

 

Turn your pixel light count in the settings to the maximum and see if this still happens. Looks like some of the lights might be switching to vertex mode instead of the pixel mode.  In plain English, you just running out of proper lights to render (rapier uses a lot of them, probably at least 4 for each engine, one for each nozzle; and you also have the landing gear lights on by the looks of it).  

Edited May 25, 2021 by dok_377