Show and Tell - Terrain progress

[Souptime]

52 minutes ago, Kapitalizing Every Word said:

Sounds like
A: Potato PC running KSP2 
B: Orion drive?

A

Edited August 7, 2021 by Souptime
Oh hey llok new page

[Pthigrivi]

21 hours ago, DunaManiac said:

I just have one question. I'm assuming the rocks are procedurally generated, but will the locations of the rocks be persistent? As in, can I drive around on gilly, then come back to the same spot, and expect the rocks to be in the same positions? Could I leave the game and then come back in later and will the large rocks be still there, or will every scene change or location change cause a new generation?

This is a great question, because you wouldn’t want something collidable to spawn under or inside a rover or landed vessel when you came back to it. It seems like they would always have to generate in the same places. Im not a programmer so I might be wrong or explaining this poorly but I believe you can have things like this generate based on a set seed number thats either the same for all players or generates randomly for each save and then persists. 

1 hour ago, The Aziz said:

Correct. But visible edge between two LODs for the ground looks very off. Would be nice if it could be smoothened a bit, so the two would kinda blend with each other with barely noticeable difference. Like the scatters could gradually disappear into the distance before being unloaded. But if it can be done. I do not know.

I know this is a constant issue in gaming and KSP is somewhat unforgiving because of its scale and frequent lack of atmosphere that could obscure this kind of thing. There’s probably ways to mitigate it too with low-res distant objects and/or having objects’ load distance closely dependent on scale, so bigger rocks pop up farther away and blend that noticeable load edge. Again Im not a programmer so forgive my uneducated speculation. 

Edited August 7, 2021 by Pthigrivi

[MechBFP]

1 hour ago, The Aziz said:

Correct. But visible edge between two LODs for the ground looks very off. Would be nice if it could be smoothened a bit, so the two would kinda blend with each other with barely noticeable difference. Like the scatters could gradually disappear into the distance before being unloaded. But if it can be done. I do not know.

It is without a doubt is going to be better in the end, not perfect of course, but better. Remember these are test scenes that exist to communicate with the rest of the dev team on things being worked on and we just happen to get to see them as well. Consider them all as a 1st rough draft.

Edited August 7, 2021 by MechBFP

[Pthigrivi]

15 hours ago, Admiral Fluffy said:

@Nate Simpson, what is the blue stuff at 0:30 on gilly?

Another great question   Im also digging the way the scatter is clustered as its shown on the Mun, so it isn’t necessarily evenly distributed everywhere and looks much more natural. 

Edited August 7, 2021 by Pthigrivi

[Lewie]

No words can describe this....you folks at Intercept blow us away!!!!

[Vanamonde]

You can really see all the gorillas the aliens left there! 

[SOXBLOX]

*blinks*

*rubs eyes*

"Nah. It can't be..."

But seriously, this is UUOUU.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

 

 

 

                                                    Wow! 

 

 

 

[LHACK4142]

It's really nice! I wonder if you couldn't make the small rocks sorta fade in, like chunks being rendered on the Bedrock edition of minecraft, as demonstrated in this video

[t_v]

2 hours ago, LHACK4142 said:

It's really nice! I wonder if you couldn't make the small rocks sorta fade in, like chunks being rendered on the Bedrock edition of minecraft, as demonstrated in this video

I think that the essential problem of things looking different between different levels of detail persists there. Also, in the case of bedrock, while the fading in does help, the fact that loading chunks are much farther away makes a much bigger difference. the way to get a sort of seamless transition is to have details be represented the same between LOD levels, similar to how some approximation methods such as Fourier transformations look relatively similar between "detail levels" but just gain smaller features. The issue is that setting up the system to be consistent throughout the approach and as different levels of detail are loaded in is mathematically challenging, not to even mention the challenge of implementing it with a custom landscape in a rendering engine with all of the coordinate challenges of ksp. I think that in the future, an update will come out that blends detail levels together, but for now, having a working LOD is good enough for me.

[Guest]

On 8/6/2021 at 10:21 AM, Nate Simpson said:

This is a good note. Will add to our backlog. Thanks!

Will the rocks generate based on saves or be in the same spots for everyone? Just asking for projects like Upsilon

[VoidJumper]

The comment under the op about avoiding boulder fields reminds me of the lunar landing scene in the movie First Man, of which I’m sure you’re all your all familiar with. Point being, the score in the scene is phenomenal and it would be amazing to have intense background music like that while you try and stick a landing in terrain in the video on some major milestone, like say your first mun landing. Just thinking about it gives me goose bumps. Maybe I might make my own lunar landing scene with that music just to prove my point.

[gussi111]

On 8/6/2021 at 11:20 PM, AlamoVampire said:

 

2. I wonder if we will be able to move boulders around?

 

Probably not?

[Tugagon]

Oh yes, I was waiting to see how scatters would look, they add so much detail to the surface.

Also interesting to see how the spawning behavior seems little more complex, there's some nice grouping, areas with some standout large boulders,  singular rocks surrounded by smaller debris, ect. Looks very nice.

[asap1]

beautiful 

my ps4 had to be restrained it thought it would melt and tried to run away

[Dr. Kerbal]

On 8/6/2021 at 9:01 AM, KSPStar said:

This week we added rocks to our terrains. We're living out our Apollo 11 fantasies as we spend precious delta-v flying sideways to avoid boulder fields! Seen here, a few shots of Gilly, Mun, and Pol.

MAY i ask, are the terrain scatter objects collidable? I wont just phase through them right? 

[shdwlrd]

28 minutes ago, Dr. Kerbal said:

MAY i ask, are the terrain scatter objects collidable? I wont just phase through them right? 

Nate answered that question on the 1st page.

[Dr. Kerbal]

27 minutes ago, shdwlrd said:

Nate answered that question on the 1st page.

oh

[Acid_Burn9]

On 8/6/2021 at 7:17 PM, Nate Simpson said:

There's a size threshold below which we don't intend to calculate collision -- that's still in flux, but we don't want your rovers to rattle themselves apart on apple-sized rocks. But yes, the big stuff is collidable. 

I'd rather have my rover rattle over any rock even nut sized tbh. Anything that deepens the gameplay while you're on the surface of some body you've flown to. I hope you don't set the threshold too low, so that you can't disregard any of the rocks you see. It would've been amazing if all of the terrain features you've shown in this video would've been collideable. Or at least if there was a way to disable the ones that don't have collision. Nothing ruins the immersion more, than just phasing through something you wanted to drive/walk over.

Edited August 10, 2021 by Acid_Burn9

[Kerminator K-100]

This seals the deal. Must buy new PC. Maybe 3070s will be back in stock soon?

[The Aziz]

7 hours ago, Acid_Burn9 said:

Nothing ruins the immersion more, than just phasing through something you wanted to drive/walk over.

I think the threshold is about right. You wouldn't mind driving over a rock you could grab with one hand, but you'd definitely want to slow down before hitting something the size of a typical curb.

So in theory we're talking about objects ~10cm/4inch in size, but then we don't know how resistant to impacts the wheels and suspensions are.

[MARL_Mk1]

Thinking about performance while watching this gave me the chills.

 

[Acid_Burn9]

12 hours ago, The Aziz said:

I think the threshold is about right. You wouldn't mind driving over a rock you could grab with one hand, but you'd definitely want to slow down before hitting something the size of a typical curb.

So in theory we're talking about objects ~10cm/4inch in size, but then we don't know how resistant to impacts the wheels and suspensions are.

Well those <10cm objects can be a reason to design something that will be able to drive over them without jumping all over the place, to use better wheels, to plan your route. If they turn out to be too much of a pain in the ass - their density can be adjusted, but IMO they should have collisions either way.

If something is not collideable, it probably shouldn't even exist.

Edited August 11, 2021 by Acid_Burn9

[RyanRising]

For all you worried about performance, it seems pretty clear you’re not going to get this game running well on a machine whose GPU struggles with KSP1. There’s so much more detail here, and it’s just a game that started out later. It’s not going to be made for the same sorts of PCs. However, KSP’s issues with performance, as far as I’m aware, have almost always stemmed from the physics or handling of large-scale player-created structures and systems. I think a reasonable expectation is that KSP2 is, at a base level, harder to run smoothly than KSP1, but as you build up large crafts and bases performance doesn’t decrease anywhere near as drastically as it did with the first game, and at crafts with large part counts KSP2 actually does run smoother than the equivalent craft and situation in KSP1. 
 

Also, as for a solution to pop-in on airless bodies, I’ve seen some games that have detail slowly rise up from underneath (or the visual ground level sinks down to reveal it?) less detailed meshes as you get closer to it, usually far enough away and subtly enough that it’s not noticeable. I imagine that would be a workable solution here, though I’m still thinking in terms of “up and down,” whereas if there will be caves and overhangs it would be more suitable to have the detail “grow out” from less detailed meshes (or the less detailed mesh “shrink” to reveal new detail.)

7 minutes ago, Acid_Burn9 said:

Well those <10cm objects can be a reason to design something that will be able to drive over them without jumping all over the place, to use better wheels, to plan your route. If they turn out to be too much of a pain in the ass - their density can be adjusted, but IMO they should have collisions either way.

If something is not collideable, it probably shouldn't even exist.

I disagree. Clouds in most games aren’t collideable, nor is grass, but I nonetheless appreciate having them both.

Edited August 11, 2021 by RyanRising

[Acid_Burn9]

4 minutes ago, RyanRising said:

For all you worried about performance, it seems pretty clear you’re not going to get this game running well on a machine whose GPU struggles with KSP1. There’s so much more detail here, and it’s just a game that started out later. It’s not going to be made for the same sorts of PCs. However, KSP’s issues with performance, as far as I’m aware, have almost always stemmed from the physics or handling of large-scale player-created structures and systems. I think a reasonable expectation is that KSP2 is, at a base level, harder to run smoothly than KSP1, but as you build up large crafts and bases performance doesn’t decrease anywhere near as drastically as it did with the first game, and at crafts with large part counts KSP2 actually does run smoother than the equivalent craft and situation in KSP1. 
 

Also, as for a solution to pop-in on airless bodies, I’ve seen some games that have detail slowly rise up from underneath (or the visual ground level sinks down to reveal it?) less detailed meshes as you get closer to it, usually far enough away and subtly enough that it’s not noticeable. I imagine that would be a workable solution here, though I’m still thinking in terms of “up and down,” whereas if there will be caves and overhangs it would be more suitable to have the detail “grow out” from less detailed meshes (or the less detailed mesh “shrink” to reveal new detail.)

I disagree. Clouds in most games aren’t collideable, nor is grass, but I nonetheless appreciate having them both.

You can fly through the clouds, walk through the grass, but you still cannot phase through the rocks. Not a fair comparison. 

Edited August 11, 2021 by Acid_Burn9