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

[bright Universe]

 

2 hours ago, AtomicTech said:

这是一个问题还是更多的 PSA（不是@panarchist太空联盟）？

it is a problem.

by the way,what does PSA mean？

Edited April 4 by bright Universe
There is repetition in the text.

[AtomicTech]

22 hours ago, bright Universe said:

 

it is a problem.

by the way,what does PSA mean？

It's a joke/nod about panarchist because some of his older mods used the name PSA (Panarchist Space Alliance) in it.

[panarchist]

On 4/5/2024 at 6:51 AM, AtomicTech said:

It's a joke/nod about panarchist because some of his older mods used the name PSA (Panarchist Space Alliance) in it.

Technically, all my mods have PSA in the name, they just all happen to be old. :-D

On 4/4/2024 at 8:41 AM, bright Universe said:

 

it is a problem.

by the way,what does PSA mean？

Public Service Announcement.

[Lyra]

I've got a bug with some engine plumes and I'm certain someone else has encountered it before but I don't know any fixes. Some of the plumes are rendering through the nozzles and other parts of craft.

Here's the full album of pictures from a few different angles. From the engines I've tested, it's affecting the Nerv, Vector, Mammoth (which I presume uses the same plume as the Vector?), and Rhino. Haven't tested RCS yet.

As you can see I have Scatterer and EVE Redux installed. I also have TURD and a few parts mods (OPT Continued and Mk4 Spaceplanes plus dependencies) but I don't think the parts mods should cause any major problems. No Restock if that's not already clear.

[Zacspace]

On 4/14/2024 at 8:07 PM, Lyra said:

I'm certain someone else has encountered it before

You're right about that. The usual cause is you're on opengl, and the usual cause of that is you're on mac or linux. If that's the case,you can work around this bug, and a lot of other bugs in other graphics mods, by using the windows version of the game through  steam proton or wine/dxvk. If you're on windows and this is happening to you, you should check your steam launch options or whatever method you use to launch the game to make sure it's not specifying the opengl backend. It used to be popular to do that to lower ram usage, so if you've been around for a while you might have done it and then forgot.

[Jeb x Valentina]

On 4/6/2021 at 10:18 AM, Knight of St John said:

This means that this mod now has plumes for every engine in the game!

Well, TECHNICALLY....

You still need to add jetpack plumes, as well as waterfall effects for kerbal helmet lights. I just... FEEL like we need 'em

[Lyra]

14 hours ago, Zacspace said:

and the usual cause of that is you're on mac or linux

Yep, I am on Mac. I managed to "fix" it by just grabbing an older version where the bug was absent, and I got the flickering/z-fighting bug that others mentioned but I just did another "fix" by slightly shrinking and offsetting the plume. Not the best but it works for now

[NaviG]

On 3/19/2023 at 2:37 PM, boraklcequinox said:

So i have  a strange bug.
 

Yesterday i was trying to do a minmus mission when i realised that the terrier engine's plume just didn't show up.I tried it at differen't bodies and it worked fine.I also tried different engines and they worked fine too.

https://imgur.com/a/sJFfWkp

Just happened to me, its gone if you disable the refraction effect

Edited May 8 by NaviG

[Joker58th]

With RocketSoundsEnhancement and its default config, WaterFall and Stock Waterfall Effects installed, the jet engines have both stock sounds and RSE sounds.  Can someone help me out?

Log File

[Tanicus]

Amazing mod, find myself watching the plume all the way to vac just to see what it does. Very slick transitions from sea level to orbit.

[GamingHen]

This might be a bit of a long shot, but hopefully someone can help me because I just can't seem to figure this issue out.

With the current mod list I have, the engine light produced by Waterfall causes an insane stutter for a few seconds after launch. Someone on Reddit suggested that it's most likely an interaction between the engine lights and Parallax that causes this and they suggested that I disable the engine lights in waterfallsettings.cfg. That fixed the stutter, but obviously I want engine light because it just looks good.

So I wanted to try and replace the engine light effects using Engine Lighting Relit. The problem is that whenever I have any sort of Waterfall config installed, Engine Lighting Relit just doesn't do anything. If I have Waterfall and all it's dependencies installed, just without any configs that actually change anything, Engine Lighting Relit still works. But the moment I install any sort of config, it stops working.

Does anyone have any suggestions for me? I don't care whether it's a suggestion to get Engine Lighting Relit working or whether it's a solution to eliminate the stutter caused by Waterfall engine light.

[shelshok]

On 4/17/2024 at 3:28 AM, Lyra said:

Yep, I am on Mac. I managed to "fix" it by just grabbing an older version where the bug was absent, and I got the flickering/z-fighting bug that others mentioned but I just did another "fix" by slightly shrinking and offsetting the plume. Not the best but it works for now

Which version did you go back to?

[Lyra]

22 hours ago, shelshok said:

Which version did you go back to?

0.6.2 I believe. Still getting various problems with plumes showing through parts (vector, mammoth, closed cycle rapier in high atmosphere, some RCS) but I just live with it for now as I'm too lazy to fix it

[Knight of St John]

14 hours ago, Lyra said:

0.6.2 I believe. Still getting various problems with plumes showing through parts (vector, mammoth, closed cycle rapier in high atmosphere, some RCS) but I just live with it for now as I'm too lazy to fix it

Those plumes use a volumetric effect, which is different from most other plumes. It relies on the depth buffer to tell the plume if is being clipped from view by other parts. This is needed to make the plume look decent when it hits other parts or the ground.
For some reason, a very limited set of people's hardware doesn't play nice with this effect, and instead of detecting that there are parts in front of the plumes (using the very same depth buffer), it thinks nothing is clipping it, so it renders it in front of everything.
I have no idea what causes this. it may be that you have different hardware or settings than most people... but I have way too little time to figure out a fix for this. sorry

As mentioned by @Zacspace, It's likely because you are using mac or linux, for instance.

On 4/16/2024 at 11:37 PM, Jeb x Valentina said:

Well, TECHNICALLY....

You still need to add jetpack plumes, as well as waterfall effects for kerbal helmet lights. I just... FEEL like we need 'em

I tried looking at this. Kerbals are handled differently than craft parts, when it comes to engine and light effects, so I couldn't solve this easily with waterfall.

Edited July 7 by Knight of St John

[Lyra]

8 hours ago, Knight of St John said:

It's likely because you are using mac or linux, for instance.

I'm almost certain it's this, especially cuz I'm on a rather old OS. Alas the solution is just to save up for and buy myself an actual good PC, which will... take some time

[shelshok]

19 hours ago, Knight of St John said:

I have no idea what causes this. it may be that you have different hardware or settings than most people... but I have way too little time to figure out a fix for this. sorry

As mentioned by @Zacspace, It's likely because you are using mac or linux, for instance.

I am indeed on Mac (actually two different Macs and happens with any settings).

A while back, I did figure out a partial fix for this by changing two lines in the shader:

 

It seems to have the apparent side effect of rendering the engine nozzle in front of the bright part of the plume inside it, but for me, that's less important than not having all plumes visible through all parts. Maybe that's a starting point for an actual fix? I'm guessing reverting or adjusting one of those lines might do it, but I'm not currently set up to try it. @Nertea @Knight of St John

0.9.0 on left (note the RCS thrusters visible through the wing and tank as well), changed version on right:

Edited July 8 by shelshok

[Knight of St John]

9 hours ago, shelshok said:

I am indeed on Mac (actually two different Macs and happens with any settings).

A while back, I did figure out a partial fix for this by changing two lines in the shader:

 

It seems to have the apparent side effect of rendering the engine nozzle in front of the bright part of the plume inside it, but for me, that's less important than not having all plumes visible through all parts. Maybe that's a starting point for an actual fix? I'm guessing reverting or adjusting one of those lines might do it, but I'm not currently set up to try it. @Nertea @Knight of St John

0.9.0 on left (note the RCS thrusters visible through the wing and tank as well), changed version on right:

good find! I'll see if I can figure out the root cause from this.

[Knight of St John]

A new release is out!

Stock Waterfall Effects 0.8.0

I am currently working on compatibility with ReStock. If you install this version of SWE, and the WaterfallRestock mod together, all engines should now be configured correctly.
In future updates, any remaining compatibility issues should get ironed out.

Fixed misalignment of the plume for some ReStocked Engines:

• Rapier
• Dart

If both WaterfallRestock and StockWaterfallEffects (SWE) are installed, some SWE plumes will now override some of the WaterfallRestock configs for the following engines:

• Vector (more updated version of the SSME plume + additional options for other plumes in the part menu)
• Mammoth (more updated version of the SSME plume + additional options for other plumes in the part menu)
• Nerv
• Rhino
• Skiff
• Skipper (A plume config made by @Zorg for the BDB RS68 engine)
• Spark

If you don't like some or all of these overrides, you can delete the corresponding config files in GameData/StockWaterfallEffects/Mod Configurations/ReStock/WaterfallRestock_overrides.

Edited July 8 by Knight of St John

[HB Stratos]

Hey @Knight of St John, I'd like to make some pull requests towards StockWaterfallEffects. What branch would you like me to target?

[Knight of St John]

On 7/11/2024 at 12:40 AM, HB Stratos said:

Hey @Knight of St John, I'd like to make some pull requests towards StockWaterfallEffects. What branch would you like me to target?

I'd prefer if you targeted the dev branch.

Thanks :-)

[bazem]

I just installed this config via CKAN and it looks awesome, however I have an issue with action groups and thrust limiters.

I noticed that on all of my crafts where I use action groups to toggle the Nerv or Aerospike engines, the action was lost. I also have a ship where some of the aerospikes were saved with 64.5 thrust limiter, but after installing the mod they all go to 100.

This happens with ships that are on orbit right now, as well as when I open a pre-saved ship in the space plane hangar. As soon as I remove the mod and open the game again, they all return to normal.

I don't know if this affects other engines, those are the 2 that I noticed. For example, ships with the RAPIER and Whiplash still have their action groups working for toggling the engines, in the same ship where I lost the action for Nerv.

Edited July 19 by bazem
typos

[VoodooChile]

I'm having an issue with the NERV nuclear engine where the plume does not appear at all. After investigating, it appears to be the throttle controller always reports as 0. If I override the throttle setting, the plume reappears. To add, it is not a fuel type issue.

I have a couple other mods running that could definitely be causing this, but this seemed to show up for me after the recent update. If it's something broken in a cfg, is it something I can manually fix for now?

 

Edit: The fault seems to be a conflict with KerbalAtomics. It modifies the `engineID` value. I made a working fix in `Nerv_Restock.cfg` that checks for `zzKerbalAtomics`, and if found changes the engineID under the thrust controller to `LF` or `LH2`.

Edited September 11 by VoodooChile

[Lyra]

On 7/8/2024 at 2:30 AM, shelshok said:

A while back, I did figure out a partial fix for this by changing two lines in the shader:

 

It seems to have the apparent side effect of rendering the engine nozzle in front of the bright part of the plume inside it, but for me, that's less important than not having all plumes visible through all parts. Maybe that's a starting point for an actual fix? I'm guessing reverting or adjusting one of those lines might do it, but I'm not currently set up to try it. @Nertea @Knight of St John

Where is the file that you changed? Is it in SWE or Waterfall

[shelshok]

18 hours ago, Lyra said:

Where is the file that you changed? Is it in SWE or Waterfall

https://github.com/post-kerbin-mining-corporation/Waterfall/blob/master/Source/ShaderLab/Additive Volumetric.shader

[Lyra]

9 hours ago, shelshok said:

https://github.com/post-kerbin-mining-corporation/Waterfall/blob/master/Source/ShaderLab/Additive Volumetric.shader

I can't find it locally on my computer, do I download the folder where it is and if so where do I put the folder/files? Been doing trial-and-error for the last 5 hours and no luck.