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

[Rakete]

9 minutes ago, dok_377 said:

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).  

I'll try this. I didn't know, what this setting does, so I left it untouched since KSP-Install. :-)

I hope it won't eat up the remaining FPS if I set this thing on maximum, as the rapiers currently munch the fps, until they are optimized by Knight. I'll keep you updated.

[dok_377]

14 minutes ago, Rakete said:

I'll try this. I didn't know, what this setting does, so I left it untouched since KSP-Install. :-)

I hope it won't eat up the remaining FPS if I set this thing on maximum, as the rapiers currently munch the fps, until they are optimized by Knight. I'll keep you updated.

I just completely turned the lights off in the Waterfall. I have the same graphics card as you and it wasn't giving me the performance I was hoping for. The lights in the game are just too bad performance wise. As with the rapier, I removed it from the mod. Even without lights, the effects are just too heavy at the time. Considering how Waterfall gives the effects to every single nozzle instead of the whole engine and also including the two modes that rapier has (so two templates for two modes for each nozzle, and for some reason all of the effects are always active, even if the engine is not running) - it can quickly add up and cripple the performance. 

Edited May 25, 2021 by dok_377

[Rakete]

I tuned the pixel lights to maximum and gave up. It renders the game unplayable. The FPS drop to a slideshow.

How can the lighting be turned off in waterfall?

Edited May 25, 2021 by Rakete

[dok_377]

2 minutes ago, Rakete said:

I turned it to maximum and gave up. It renders the game unplayable. The FPS drop to a slideshow.

How can the lighting be turn off in waterfall?

It's the WaterfallSettings.cfg file in the Waterfall folder. The line is EnableLights = True. Set it to False. 

[Rakete]

I will try this.

[Knight of St John]

8 minutes ago, dok_377 said:

Considering how Waterfall gives the effects to every single nozzle instead of the whole engine and also including the two modes that rapier has (so two templates for two modes for each nozzle, and for some reason all of the effects are always active, even if the engine is not running) - it can quickly add up and cripple the performance. 

this is only half-true.
yes, the rapier is especially heavy for your pc because the plumes are rendered 4 times per rapier. (I forget about how many lights though. it could only be one, but maybe 4) and on top of that, I used too many meshes for the rapier. this will get fixed like i said here previously)
However, the different mode plumes that are "active" are culled from the rendering process, unless that's the mode that is active. so your card is only running one of the mode's plumes at one particular time. no need to worry about multimode engines.

[dok_377]

3 minutes ago, Knight of St John said:

However, the different mode plumes that are "active" are culled from the rendering process, unless that's the mode that is active. so your card is only running one of the mode's plumes at one particular time. no need to worry about multimode engines.

Oh, so it was just one mode rendering. It almost fascinates me how heavy this particular plume/engine is. Looking forward to the new release. 

[Rakete]

So I tried turning the lighting off in waterfall... naaah... I'd rather live with reflection bugs by some pixels lights reverting to a more primitive mode on the runway than to miss out on the waterfall lighting.

Maybe @Knight of St John's Optimizations will allow me to tune up the amount of pixel lights in the KSP-settings, as the plumes won't impact on the fps so hard anymore. Otherwise I have to live with the runway bugs. Leaving out waterfalls lighting is just a too big drop in graphics quality of this mod. Really looking forward to the new release. :-) Don't feel in a hurry, but I'd love to see it rather sooner than later :-p

Edited May 25, 2021 by Rakete

[Knight of St John]

2 minutes ago, Rakete said:

but I'd love to see it sooner than later

same here ;-)

[Rakete]

Just now, Knight of St John said:

same here ;-)

any E.T.A. ?  roughly?

 

;-)

[Knight of St John]

Just now, Rakete said:

any E.T.A. ?  roughly?

2-3 weeks minimum.

[Rakete]

2 hours ago, Knight of St John said:

2-3 weeks minimum.

Alright, seems pausible :-) . Really really looking forward to... and while redesigning the plumes please don't forget us guys with weaker GPUs (the actual prices for new hardware are insane right now!) and please be a little bit economical with the fps-heavy effects, if possible without making the plumes visually worse. Maybe just one lighting source per engine and not per nozzle (in case of rapier & kodiak) :-)

Really love the visuals, which you and Nertea created.

Thanks for prioritizing the rapiers as first optimization target.

 

 

 

Apart from that: It's kinda insane, how inefficient KSP's graphics engine is in itself. A game (vanilla) with graphics with a look of the late 90's eats FPS like cookies, as soon as you add a little mod that adds some nice effects and lights. Insane... Mhhhmmm... cookies... :-D gotta buy some more for my engineering RL job

Edited May 25, 2021 by Rakete

[Rakete]

After the rapiers, the Rhino could also get some love. Looks in vacuum a little bit like an unstable/unsteady burn at the end of the plume... maybe a bit more powerful overall. But this just a minor minor hint. ;-) barely worth mentioning, as this mod is a masterpiece.

Edited May 25, 2021 by Rakete

[Probus]

2 hours ago, Knight of St John said:

this is only half-true.
yes, the rapier is especially heavy for your pc because the plumes are rendered 4 times per rapier. (I forget about how many lights though. it could only be one, but maybe 4) and on top of that, I used too many meshes for the rapier. this will get fixed like i said here previously)
However, the different mode plumes that are "active" are culled from the rendering process, unless that's the mode that is active. so your card is only running one of the mode's plumes at one particular time. no need to worry about multimode engines.

Uh oh, I was working on some FASA engines and one of them had 1 plume for 4 nozzles (a quad retro To be specific) and I had to duplicate your FX x 4. I think it was from the spark engine which has like 19 effects plus the effects to brighten the inside of the nozzle. So the final engine had over 100 effects I believe. It looked great on the test stand.

  Sounds like that is going to really eat up the frame rate when playing the game. Is it?  Since they are all dupliates, will that make a difference?

[Knight of St John]

12 hours ago, Probus said:

 Sounds like that is going to really eat up the frame rate when playing the game. Is it?  Since they are all dupliates, will that make a difference?

hmm. normally, if you choose the right transform name, (in stock its usually "thrustTransform"), then the plumes will be automatically copied to all the nozzles on that engine.
so perhaps check with the engine part file what the transform names are.
manually copying them will give you more cpu load. but gpu will stay the same. but you really wanna keep cpu load down, so better find the right transform name.
also: the spark is intended as a small kerolox engine. so if you are using it on a larger kerolox engine, maybe use one of the other kerolox plumes. with the update i'm working on, the spark plume will get a lot less heavy too, btw.

[ShuttlePilot]

Really good, but unfortunately RealPlume's plume expansion is more realistic. But I would really like to prefer this mod over that RealPlume, because my game doesn't stutter and the plume is so smooth. While RealPlume needs some serious optimization for systems and it's plumes don't look as great, they have that dirty janky look. Thanks for this stock config

-SP

[Probus]

Luckily Waterfall is very adaptable as is Real Plume. Do you have any videos of RL plume expansion that you would like to share?  I thought some plumes matched the Merlin engine and were very realistic for instance. 

[ShuttlePilot]

2 hours ago, Probus said:

Luckily Waterfall is very adaptable as is Real Plume. Do you have any videos of RL plume expansion that you would like to share?  I thought some plumes matched the Merlin engine and were very realistic for instance. 

You know, RealPlume is working in 100% realtime, but Waterfall is programmed to expand at certain atmosphere levels, which is why RealPlume lags more. Also RealPlume expands more realisticly (at least for me). What I'm trying to say that by realism I prefer RealPlume, but for more beautiful FX i would choose Waterfall

It looks gorgeous.

 

[Al2Me6]

4 hours ago, ShuttlePilot said:

You know, RealPlume is working in 100% realtime, but Waterfall is programmed to expand at certain atmosphere levels, which is why RealPlume lags more. Also RealPlume expands more realisticly (at least for me).

 

I think you're misunderstanding how expansion works. AFAIK expansion works the exact same in Waterfall and RealPlume -- it's directly related to the current atmospheric density. The reason RealPlume is slower is because it's particle-based, not because it's doing some kind of additional computation re. expansion.

If you want to adjust how the expansion correlates with atmospheric density, you can mess with this: https://github.com/post-kerbin-mining-corporation/Waterfall/blob/master/GameData/Waterfall/WaterfallSettings.cfg#L21 (note that this exists in RP too).

[Zorg]

6 hours ago, ShuttlePilot said:

You know, RealPlume is working in 100% realtime, but Waterfall is programmed to expand at certain atmosphere levels, which is why RealPlume lags more. Also RealPlume expands more realisticly (at least for me). What I'm trying to say that by realism I prefer RealPlume, but for more beautiful FX i would choose Waterfall

It looks gorgeous.

 

 

2 hours ago, Al2Me6 said:

I think you're misunderstanding how expansion works. AFAIK expansion works the exact same in Waterfall and RealPlume -- it's directly related to the current atmospheric density. The reason RealPlume is slower is because it's particle-based, not because it's doing some kind of additional computation re. expansion.

If you want to adjust how the expansion correlates with atmospheric density, you can mess with this: https://github.com/post-kerbin-mining-corporation/Waterfall/blob/master/GameData/Waterfall/WaterfallSettings.cfg#L21 (note that this exists in RP too).

Indeed RealPlume (via Smokescreen) and Waterfall are doing the exact same thing. Defining the shape of the plume at any given moment against an atmosphere density curve. For the Waterfall templates that I made, I used the exact same expansion curves I used in RealPlume before and I believe KnightofStJohn has used a few of my templates (or ones derived from them) in this config set. Some of his own templates use slightly different curves and expand a bit slower so that you can enjoy the shock cones for longer. Of course you may prefer one over the other for various reasons, but the way the plume expansion is being controlled at a fundamental level is very much the same.

[ShuttlePilot]

RealPlume is more realistic. That's exactly why it's called REAL, because it's real. It's supposed to be real. Do you even get the point? Don't you?

[OrdinaryKerman]

38 minutes ago, ShuttlePilot said:

RealPlume is more realistic. That's exactly why it's called REAL, because it's real. It's supposed to be real. Do you even get the point? Don't you?

I'm pretty sure Zorg does, he's the maintainer of RealPlume after all. Also, the reason that Waterfall isn't called RealErPlume is because it's a completely new method (for KSP) of rendering engine plumes that nobody had done before, that doesn't make it any less realistic. Waterfall and RealPlume are both approximations of IRL engine plumes. Waterfall does it by representing the plume with a few deformable cylinders, while RealPlume does it by displaying a <bleep>ton of particles on the screen. Also as Zorg stated, both do plume expansion to the same degree of realism, and the reason RealPlume lags more is due to its more 'antiquated' plume rendering method. Not because it somehow computes plume shapes more realistically.

Edited June 12, 2021 by OrdinaryKerman

[ShuttlePilot]

42 minutes ago, OrdinaryKerman said:

I'm pretty sure Zorg does, he's the maintainer of RealPlume after all. Also, the reason that Waterfall isn't called RealErPlume is because it's a completely new method (for KSP) of rendering engine plumes that nobody had done before, that doesn't make it any less realistic. Waterfall and RealPlume are both approximations of IRL engine plumes. Waterfall does it by representing the plume with a few deformable cylinders, while RealPlume does it by displaying a <bleep>ton of particles on the screen. Also as Zorg stated, both do plume expansion to the same degree of realism, and the reason RealPlume lags more is due to its more 'antiquated' plume rendering method. Not because it somehow computes plume shapes more realistically.

NONONO the rain is getting into my room while my window is opened. Wait! Thank god, I managed to succesfully close the window.  Yes, that's the thing.

Beautiful visuals = Waterfall

Realistic expansion = RealPlume

[Probus]

@ShuttlePilot, are you even reading the responses?  Can you give us an example or are you purely trolling?

I don't think he is even reading your responses guys. 

[OrdinaryKerman]

1 hour ago, ShuttlePilot said:

NONONO the rain is getting into my room while my window is opened. Wait! Thank god, I managed to succesfully close the window.  Yes, that's the thing.

Beautiful visuals = Waterfall

Realistic expansion = RealPlume

 

15 hours ago, Zorg said:

RealPlume (via Smokescreen) and Waterfall are doing the exact same thing. Defining the shape of the plume at any given moment against an atmosphere density curve. For the Waterfall templates that I made, I used the exact same expansion curves I used in RealPlume

 

17 hours ago, Al2Me6 said:

expansion works the exact same in Waterfall and RealPlume -- it's directly related to the current atmospheric density. The reason RealPlume is slower is because it's particle-based, not because it's doing some kind of additional computation re. expansion.

Waterfall expansion is just as realistic as RealPlume's,. If you still think otherwise, go on and use RealPlume and make your computer suffer just that little bit more.

3 minutes ago, Probus said:

@ShuttlePilot, are you even reading the responses?  Can you give us an example or are you purely trolling?

I don't think he is even reading your responses guys. 

Thanks, I'm somewhat inexperienced on the internet and can sometimes find it hard to spot trolls

Edited June 12, 2021 by OrdinaryKerman