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

[RyanRising]

On 8/31/2021 at 3:57 PM, Krzeszny said:

  And here's something RAPIER did once but I can't reproduce it:

That one in particular is cause you have ReStock installed - the RAPIER model is one of the ones changed.

Quote

Cool plumes.  How did you change the atmospheric pressure for the GIF in the OP? 

That's done with the Waterfall configuration editor, though I think you need to enable the button to access it in Waterfall's own configuration.

[lajoswinkler]

Amazing, visual experience changing mod, for sure. One of the best things made for KSP in a long time.

I've noticed the mod doesn't support Munar Excursion Module (M.E.M.)'s RCS thrusters so they still do those nasty puff-puffs.

One more thing. Since these plumes look so good and the framework itself has enormous potential, could you do anything about the stupid Vall kettle clouds?

It's been years since they've been released and the design was really bad from the very start. Not only lousy, cheap looks, but also pretty resource draining. Vall has no detectable atmosphere, therefore there can be no convection going on. Any geyser in a vacuum will have a simple transparent cone of gas shooting upwards.

[Krzeszny]

6 hours ago, RyanRising said:

That one in particular is cause you have ReStock installed - the RAPIER model is one of the ones changed.

Then it's not compatible 

@Knight of St John can you make it so that your mod only applies effects to parts which ReStock doesn't override? (Also, please take a look at issues reported in my previous post.) Ideally it'd apply its own effects to ReStock parts but that's probably a lot of work.

[Knight of St John]

12 hours ago, lajoswinkler said:

One more thing. Since these plumes look so good and the framework itself has enormous potential, could you do anything about the stupid Vall kettle clouds?

intriguing idea...
I'll think about it.

12 hours ago, lajoswinkler said:

I've noticed the mod doesn't support Munar Excursion Module (M.E.M.)'s RCS thrusters so they still do those nasty puff-puffs.

I'm only going to support stock. other people will have to make configs for mods.

10 hours ago, Krzeszny said:

@Knight of St John can you make it so that your mod only applies effects to parts which ReStock doesn't override? (Also, please take a look at issues reported in my previous post.) Ideally it'd apply its own effects to ReStock parts but that's probably a lot of work.

this is something that belongs on the waterfall restock thread, not here.

On 9/1/2021 at 12:57 AM, Krzeszny said:

I've also found a few config issues with jet engines @Knight of St John

Yea i know about these. sadly, there's no straightforward way to solve this. and the fact that these modes are rarely used, and the plumes are pretty transparent anyways, is the reason why i didnt bother digging deeper to attempt to fix this.

Edited September 2, 2021 by Knight of St John

[dok_377]

3 minutes ago, Knight of St John said:

I'm only going to support stock. other people will have to make configs for mods.

It's not a mod. That's the pod from Making History dlc. 

[Knight of St John]

1 minute ago, dok_377 said:

It's not a mod. That's the pod from Making History dlc. 

aha! well, I'll add the plumes with the next update then. if i don't, remind me :p

[lajoswinkler]

44 minutes ago, Knight of St John said:

aha! well, I'll add the plumes with the next update then. if i don't, remind me :p

Yes, they are "stock+" let's call it like that. Thank you!

[Rakete]

@Knight of St John would you consider to also provide waterfall configs for the stock SRBs combined with the old-mechanic smoke trail? E.g. Nerteas Cryo engines mod has this effects (old tech smoketrail and new waterfall plume). I think, this would really bring them visually in line to all the other waterfallized engines in the game (yours and the Nertea-mod-ones)

would you consider this, or is this completely out of scope?

Edited September 3, 2021 by Rakete

[Knight of St John]

On 9/3/2021 at 8:38 AM, Rakete said:

would you consider this, or is this completely out of scope?

ah thanks for letting me know. ill take a look at it :-)

[ShuttlePilot]

When is this thing getting a 1.12 update? Seeing the '[1.11.x]' on the thread's name makes me question my existence lol.

[RealKerbal3x]

18 minutes ago, ShuttlePilot said:

When is this thing getting a 1.12 update? Seeing the '[1.11.x]' on the thread's name makes me question my existence lol.

Despite the title saying 1.11.x, it works in 1.12.2 (the plumes have even been updated to work with the revamped Reliant/Swivel engines).

[ShuttlePilot]

It finally got changed, now it's not irritating anymore, thank you.

[lajoswinkler]

You know what would also greatly benefit from this? Reentry.  Waterfall basically uses cones and paraboloids, AFAIK. KSP does have unlocked ability to form reentry trails (something Reentry particle effect renewed now does) but those are highly resource intensive and look pretty horrible. Waterfall could make beautiful rammed bluish plasma in front of the vessel. Stock game basically teaches us wrong, that reentry heating comes from friction with atmosphere, when in reality it's compressed air radiatively heating the body. Friction comes near the end of reentry and isn't that big of a deal.

[ShuttlePilot]

1 hour ago, lajoswinkler said:

You know what would also greatly benefit from this? Reentry.  Waterfall basically uses cones and paraboloids, AFAIK. KSP does have unlocked ability to form reentry trails (something Reentry particle effect renewed now does) but those are highly resource intensive and look pretty horrible. Waterfall could make beautiful rammed bluish plasma in front of the vessel. Stock game basically teaches us wrong, that reentry heating comes from friction with atmosphere, when in reality it's compressed air radiatively heating the body. Friction comes near the end of reentry and isn't that big of a deal.

Agree, a great idea. I think that Waterfall needs a whole revolution. Going from simply better looking rocket nozzle exhaust to the ideas of expanding it to make better visual effects overall (Using cones. Obviously. There's nothing better than cones).

[Rakete]

On 9/4/2021 at 9:23 AM, Knight of St John said:

ah thanks for letting me know. ill take a look at it :-)

Really would love to see SRBs waterfallized... 

[RyanRising]

9 hours ago, lajoswinkler said:

You know what would also greatly benefit from this? Reentry.  Waterfall basically uses cones and paraboloids, AFAIK. KSP does have unlocked ability to form reentry trails (something Reentry particle effect renewed now does) but those are highly resource intensive and look pretty horrible. Waterfall could make beautiful rammed bluish plasma in front of the vessel. Stock game basically teaches us wrong, that reentry heating comes from friction with atmosphere, when in reality it's compressed air radiatively heating the body. Friction comes near the end of reentry and isn't that big of a deal.

While it's true that Waterfall could in theory achieve something like that, it wouldn't conform at all to the shape of the vessel. Reentry effects are highly dependent on the shape of the body reentering, and I do think stock shows that pretty well in a way that this isn't set up to do. I don't really agree that stock implies it's friction that heats up a vessel, and it's also not entirely correct to say radiative heating is responsible for most of the reentry heating - that does become true at high-than-LEO velocities AFAIK, but it's not the case for "everyday" reentries, where it's the compression of the atmosphere in a shock wave that provides most of the heat. That said, I'm no aerothermodynamicist, so I'd love to be corrected on that.

At any rate, I think this would be better discussed in the Waterfall thread - it's an application of the plugin outside of what this attempts to do.

[dok_377]

Took a liberty of making the MEM config for myself, just to see how it would look. Well, it looks like this:

The plumes are a little bit smaller because of the angular low poly nozzles. It just clips otherwise. 

[EnderKid2]

huh, I'd say you could make them twice as wide without clipping, from the looks of it...

[dok_377]

8 hours ago, EnderKid2 said:

huh, I'd say you could make them twice as wide without clipping, from the looks of it...

Probably. I'm not really using this part that much, so naturally didn't spend a lot of time tweaking the plume. 

[dok_377]

Oh, and apparently I used the wrong template  

I used the template from Waterfall package, when I should've used the template from Stock Waterfall Effects, which looks eons better and has an actual core in the plume.   

 

@Knight of St John again proves that his configs are the greatest thing that ever happened to stock parts.  

[tg626]

 

On 2/13/2021 at 4:21 PM, Knight of St John said:

some engines might lag your game if you use too many of them.

Ok, but the waterfall framework post specifically mentions that the old particle system would cause lag with lots of particles ..?

So all things being equal, which is less of a load on a system? Realplume/smokescreen or Stock Waterfall Effects/Waterfall?

Its obvious waterfall is the future but just like I use Eve and DO NOT use a super hires graphics config, I dont want to step up(?) to Waterfall if it's going to hammer my beleagured gaming rig. 

(FWIW, I use stock, breaking ground, and making history parts only - I dont even use restock for fear of high vertex counts and large textures.)

Edited September 18, 2021 by tg626

[EnderKid2]

In theory, Waterfall is significantly better-performing, as it's just some textures and meshes as opposed to loads of particles. I think the lag is specifically talking about the Rapier plumes, which are scuffed in some way that they're much harder on your graphics than other engines.

[Rakete]

The rapier plumes were updated in Knight's last config release in order to cut down on the hardware loads. Haven't tried my edge usecases with my 20-rapier-SSTO yet

Edited September 19, 2021 by Rakete

[Knight of St John]

the more complex plumes will lag a bit more. I remember Startzenblitz testing the vector, and the performance was similar to stock particles.
However, the vector probably has the most complex plume of all the engines (aside from the rapier), so for the other engines it should be better, and sometimes even way better.
In about a month or two, I'll probably have made a second pass at most of the engines, and improved the lag quite a bit.

[tg626]

I've since installed this, and kept realplume for SRBs - I haven't specifically tested to see if its better than particles but I certainly haven't seen any drop in performance. Which means no flashing yellow time, no visible low frame rate. 

I do miss the smoke sometimes even if it wasn't always accurate.