[KSP >= 1.3.1] Distant Object Enhancement (DOE) /L - Under new Management - 2.1.1.16 - 2024-0428

[Lisias]

6 hours ago, G_Force080491 said:

Somehow, when i point mouse on Minmus flare and roll the camera relatively close to my craft, the flare name disappear. Other planets flares looks fine so far.

This happens because the beam that checks whatever is under the mouse's cursor hits your craft's colliders instead of the flare's. You will find that you can't trigger the flare's label if they are occluded by a planet - i.e. no more labels popping up at launch pad or runway while you are running your mouse over the ground.

Please note that the label is drawn slightly above the flare, not over it. So if the flare is being occluded by the craft, the label will disappear even by not being occluded by it.

Additionally, if you are playing the game on low resolution, the flare can be small to a point that the raycast don't hit the flare anymore (apparently, anything under 1 pixel is rounded to be displayed as 1 pixel, but the mesh apparently isn't and so the raycast is missing it).

Cheers!

[G_Force080491]

6 hours ago, Lisias said:

This happens because the beam that checks whatever is under the mouse's cursor hits your craft's colliders instead of the flare's. You will find that you can't trigger the flare's label if they are occluded by a planet - i.e. no more labels popping up at launch pad or runway while you are running your mouse over the ground.

Please note that the label is drawn slightly above the flare, not over it. So if the flare is being occluded by the craft, the label will disappear even by not being occluded by it.

Thanks for the reply!

Yes, of course it is, but the Minmus flare itself is never even close to be occluded by craft.

Here is the pics:

https://imgur.com/a/5TQocNq

[Lisias]

31 minutes ago, G_Force080491 said:

Thanks for the reply!

Yes, of course it is, but the Minmus flare itself is never even close to be occluded by craft.

Here is the pics:

https://imgur.com/a/5TQocNq

Interesting. Mostly Interesting...

The way DOE works is straightforward: it shoots a raycast from the mouse position towards infinity and if it hits a flare, shows the Label.

So, by some reason, the flare is being missed by the raycast when Minmus is near the center of the screen - your screenshots suggests that the craft has no role in this behaviour. 

The only situation I can think this can happen is by the flare being smaller than the configured threshold - so, no flares, no labels. This was what triggered me in coding the Alt-RightClick stunt, by the way.

Or perhaps that crappy situation in which the Flare is so small that it's rounded to 1 pixel size for drawing,  but the mesh is still too small and the raycast misses it. This happens to me a lot on my low res potatoes.

I think that the screenshot were the label is missing had a pretty fading dot for the Minmus flare, but it can be an compression artifact. Can you confirm that a  bright dot is still visible when  you lose the ability to activate the label?

Edited March 8, 2023 by Lisias
Hit "Save" too soon.

[G_Force080491]

2 hours ago, Lisias said:

I think that the screenshot were the label is missing had a pretty fading dot for the Minmus flare, but it can be an compression artifact. Can you confirm that a  bright dot is still visible when  you lose the ability to activate the label?

I dont know, because Minmus (and, of course, Mun) itself are visible from circular orbit around Kerbin, so i cant conclude is it planet itself or it's flare by switching flares on and off in settings. If i properly understand your question, sorry if i'm not.

What i'm noticed, that exactly same thing starts happens with the Mun if i fly close to Kerbin SOI edge (become very far from observer, as Minmus). The problem completely go when you fly faaaar away from Kerbin (interplanetary travel), the flares and names are present in all condition.

https://imgur.com/a/nXmQQhF

So, looks like it's all about distance from body and it's size (which is, well, obvious), but it didn't answer why rolling camera a little closer-farther causing that thing with relatively close objects like Minmus from LKO.

Thanks!

Edited March 8, 2023 by G_Force080491

[Lisias]

1 hour ago, G_Force080491 said:

So, looks like it's all about distance from body and it's size (which is, well, obvious), but it didn't answer why rolling camera a little closer-farther causing that thing with relatively close objects like Minmus from LKO.

Exactly. I'm pretty puzzled, to tell you the true.

On a wild guess, and noticing that I couldn't reproduce the problem in the exact same way as you, I'm guessing that display resolution may also be a factor, since DOE trimms out anything smaller than a pixel. I'm guessing some float rounding may be involved- but it's a hunch, as I had coped with this recently. 

[Rutabaga22]

Can I still use restock? What about it isn't supported?

[Lisias]

20 hours ago, Rutabaga22 said:

Can I still use restock? What about it isn't supported?

Problem with ReStock is the (relatively) new PartModules that are fooling DOE into not using them.

DOE uses the PartModules present on the Part to infer how it should draw the part. Has the Mesh some animation? Lights? That stuff.

When ReStock waved known PartModules, DOE lost the information it needs to know what to do with the mesh.

Well, I think I had dragged my feet on this issue long enough. An interesting  situation happened on Day Job and this ended up opening a small window for fooling around, let's see if I can get this fixed today.

https://github.com/net-lisias-ksp/DistantObject/issues/1

— — POST EDIT — — 

Humm… I'm not understanding why some parts are not being displayed anymore since the first time DOE worked fine with ReStock of that time.

This is going to need some R&D first….

— — POST POST EDIT — — 

Oukey, embarrassing news.

TL;DR: @Rutabaga22, you can use DOE with ReStock, but if you have TweakScale installed, you will need to turn VesselDraw off due some glitch on the Mesh Engine for TweakScale that it's screwing up the ReStock parts - or at least, is what my today's test sessions suggested (see the issue I linked above).

It's not a surprise I couldn't find the problem before, as I was looking on the wrong place. The thingy that are in need to be updated is the Mesh Engine for TweakScale.

Edited April 19, 2023 by Lisias
POST POST EDIT

[Rutabaga22]

10 hours ago, Lisias said:

VesselDraw

What is that and how do I turn it off?

 

 

[Lisias]

4 hours ago, Rutabaga22 said:

What is that and how do I turn it off?

VesselDraw is the part of DOE that draws vessels that are on Rails and normally not drawn by KSP. This option is normally off: if you never used DOE before, it's already off for you.

If you had installed DOE before and somehow activated it, open the DOE's Settings and uncheck the Vessel Draw checkbox:

A (more or less) proper walkthrough can be found here: https://github.com/net-lisias-ksp/DistantObject/discussions/35

Edited April 19, 2023 by Lisias
tyops. as usulla.

[Lisias]

ANNOUNCE

Release 2.1.1.12 is available for downloading, with the following changes:

• "Dumb mistakes fixed" edition.
• Closes issues:
  • #34 Hundreds of errors in KSP.log
  • #25 Rework the Settings.
  • #14 Disabling "changeSkybox" non functional
  • #1 Support ReStock!

I'm proud and embarrassed at the same time on releasing 2.1.1.12 with some way late fixes for some known problems, being the most visible (pun not intended) the ReStock one.

TL;DR: I fixed a lot of mistakes, bad decisions or plain stupidities of mine (yeah, I have my bad moments too).

On a side note, I had already said it before and I need to say it again: supporting ReStock is essentially supporting Stock the right way™, and I will try to remember that in the future.

See OP for the links.

— — — — —

This Release will be published using the following Schedule:

• GitHub. Right Now.
• CurseForge. Right Now.
• SpaceDock.  Right Now.

The reason is that I'm working this weekend (again), and I will not have too much time to do proper support. So I will probably update CF Saturday night (assuming nothing blows up in day job), and SpaceDock by Sunday night I think...

Edited April 24, 2023 by Lisias
All your Distribution Channels are belong to us!

[SpudNutimus]

Me patiently waiting for the SpaceDock update so I can finally use this amazing mod on my CKAN install with Restock:

[Rutabaga22]

On 4/21/2023 at 4:24 PM, Lisias said:

ANNOUNCE

Release 2.1.1.12 is available for downloading, with the following changes:

• "Dumb mistakes fixed" edition.
• Closes issues:
  • #34 Hundreds of errors in KSP.log
  • #25 Rework the Settings.
  • #14 Disabling "changeSkybox" non functional
  • #1 Support ReStock!

I'm proud and embarrassed at the same time on releasing 2.1.1.12 with some way late fixes for some known problems, being the most visible (pun not intended) the ReStock one.

TL;DR: I fixed a lot of mistakes, bad decisions or plain stupidities of mine (yeah, I have my bad moments too).

On a side note, I had already said it before and I need to say it again: supporting ReStock is essentially supporting Stock the right way™, and I will try to remember that in the future.

See OP for the links.

— — — — —

This Release will be published using the following Schedule:

• GitHub. Right Now.
• CurseForge. Right Now.
• SpaceDock.  A bit less Soon™

The reason is that I'm working this weekend (again), and I will not have too much time to do proper support. So I will probably update CF Saturday night (assuming nothing blows up in day job), and SpaceDock by Sunday night I think...

Thank you! As a long-time restock user this mod will now be a go-to for my visual setup.

[SpaceX]

Thank you for all the hard work for both this update and this mod over the years... it's been such a must have for me for such a long time. Love it!

[Lisias]

31 minutes ago, SpaceX said:

Thank you for all the hard work for both this update and this mod over the years... it's been such a must have for me for such a long time. Love it!

Welcome!  

And since we are here, kudos for @TheDarkBadger, @MOARdVand @Rubber Ducky for keeping it alive before me!

Cheers!

If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.
Newton, Issac

[darthgently]

On 4/21/2023 at 4:24 PM, Lisias said:

ANNOUNCE

Release 2.1.1.12 is available for downloading, with the following changes:

• "Dumb mistakes fixed" edition.
• Closes issues:
  • #34 Hundreds of errors in KSP.log
  • #25 Rework the Settings.
  • #14 Disabling "changeSkybox" non functional
  • #1 Support ReStock!

I'm proud and embarrassed at the same time on releasing 2.1.1.12 with some way late fixes for some known problems, being the most visible (pun not intended) the ReStock one.

TL;DR: I fixed a lot of mistakes, bad decisions or plain stupidities of mine (yeah, I have my bad moments too).

On a side note, I had already said it before and I need to say it again: supporting ReStock is essentially supporting Stock the right way™, and I will try to remember that in the future.

See OP for the links.

— — — — —

This Release will be published using the following Schedule:

• GitHub. Right Now.
• CurseForge. Right Now.
• SpaceDock.  Right Now.

The reason is that I'm working this weekend (again), and I will not have too much time to do proper support. So I will probably update CF Saturday night (assuming nothing blows up in day job), and SpaceDock by Sunday night I think...

By far, this little mod adds more to the game byte for byte than any other mod in my view.   When it comes sky gazing in real life the ability to look up and see Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and other celestial bodies truly brings home, in a visceral way, the vastness and inspiring awe of our solar system and feeds the yearning to explore outward.  DOE brings this subtle but deep magic to KSP in such an elegant and efficient way.   The flares from other craft in orbit, especially when on the distant approach during a rendezvous, adds so much immersion for the cost of a few pixels.   The best immersion mod for potato computers by far and a must have even on high end gaming machines.

[jost]

On 4/21/2023 at 10:24 PM, Lisias said:

ANNOUNCE

Release 2.1.1.12 is available for downloading, with the following changes:

• "Dumb mistakes fixed" edition.
• Closes issues:
  • #34 Hundreds of errors in KSP.log
  • #25 Rework the Settings.
  • #14 Disabling "changeSkybox" non functional
  • #1 Support ReStock!

I'm proud and embarrassed at the same time on releasing 2.1.1.12 with some way late fixes for some known problems, being the most visible (pun not intended) the ReStock one.

TL;DR: I fixed a lot of mistakes, bad decisions or plain stupidities of mine (yeah, I have my bad moments too).

On a side note, I had already said it before and I need to say it again: supporting ReStock is essentially supporting Stock the right way™, and I will try to remember that in the future.

See OP for the links.

— — — — —

This Release will be published using the following Schedule:

• GitHub. Right Now.
• CurseForge. Right Now.
• SpaceDock.  Right Now.

The reason is that I'm working this weekend (again), and I will not have too much time to do proper support. So I will probably update CF Saturday night (assuming nothing blows up in day job), and SpaceDock by Sunday night I think...

CKAN doesn't work at the moment:

Are you still to busy with real life work or should i report the issue to the CKAN folks?

 I downloaded and installed the release from github instead so it's not a big issue for me.
Best regards, Jost

 

[Lisias]

42 minutes ago, jost said:

CKAN doesn't work at the moment:

Are you still to busy with real life work or should i report the issue to the CKAN folks?

 I downloaded and installed the release from github instead so it's not a big issue for me.
Best regards, Jost

 

Well, CKAN problems should be reported to CKAN themselves, as I don't have control about how they do things there.

All I can do is try to do a preflight check about what their robot is doing and save some time.

The NetKAN file looks good: https://github.com/KSP-CKAN/NetKAN/blob/master/NetKAN/DistantObject.netkan

My repository is online:  https://github.com/net-lisias-ksp/DistantObject/releases

And the meta files are fine too:

• https://github.com/KSP-CKAN/CKAN-meta/tree/master/DistantObject
• https://github.com/KSP-CKAN/CKAN-meta/tree/master/DistantObject-default

In special:

• https://github.com/KSP-CKAN/CKAN-meta/blob/master/DistantObject/DistantObject-v2.1.1.12.ckan
• https://github.com/KSP-CKAN/CKAN-meta/blob/master/DistantObject-default/DistantObject-default-v2.1.1.12.ckan

So, nope. CKAN itself is looking fine. Perhaps SpaceDock?

https://spacedock.info/mod/2274/Distant Object Enhancement /

Humm… Nope, it looks fine too. I tried a direct download using the download link from the CKAN file, https://spacedock.info/mod/2274/Distant Object Enhancement /L/download/2.1.1.12 , and it worked too.

So I don't have the slightest idea about what could be happening, but it looks link something on the CKAN application itself. You will need to reach CKAN guys for help.

 

Edited May 13, 2023 by Lisias
kinda of tyops.

[jost]

53 minutes ago, Lisias said:

Well, CKAN problems should be reported to CKAN themselves, as I don't have control about how they do things there.

All I can do is try to do a preflight check about what their robot is doing and save some time.

The NetKAN file looks good: https://github.com/KSP-CKAN/NetKAN/blob/master/NetKAN/DistantObject.netkan

My repository is online:  https://github.com/net-lisias-ksp/DistantObject/releases

And the meta files are fine too:

• https://github.com/KSP-CKAN/CKAN-meta/tree/master/DistantObject
• https://github.com/KSP-CKAN/CKAN-meta/tree/master/DistantObject-default

In special:

• https://github.com/KSP-CKAN/CKAN-meta/blob/master/DistantObject/DistantObject-v2.1.1.12.ckan
• https://github.com/KSP-CKAN/CKAN-meta/blob/master/DistantObject-default/DistantObject-default-v2.1.1.12.ckan

So, nope. CKAN itself is looking fine. Perhaps SpaceDock?

https://spacedock.info/mod/2274/Distant Object Enhancement /

Humm… Nope, it looks fine too. I tried a direct download using the download link from the CKAN file, https://spacedock.info/mod/2274/Distant Object Enhancement /L/download/2.1.1.12 , and it worked too.

So I don't have the slightest idea about what could be happening, but it looks link something on the CKAN application itself. You will need to reach CKAN guys for help.

 

Thanks, will do

[Lisias]

ANNOUNCE

Release 2.1.1.13 is available for downloading, with the following changes:

• 2023-0718: 2.1.1.13 (LisiasT) for KSP >= 1.3.1
  • An embarrassing memory leak was detected and fixed.

See OP for the links.

— — — — —

This Release will be published using the following Schedule:

• GitHub. Right Now.
• CurseForge. Right Now.
• SpaceDock.  Right Now.

Being a simple fix release, I published it on everything and the kitchen's sink at the same time.

[Krazy1]

21 hours ago, Lisias said:

memory leak

Ah... there it is. 

Spoiler

 

[1straycat]

I've loved this mod for years, but recentlyish realized that I was not seeing planetary flares anymore... they would only appear at the far right or left edges of my screen, as seen in this vid with Duna: https://i.imgur.com/xOggZ1s.mp4
I spent a few hours tinkering, tried messing around with all the settings to no avail, but incidentally discovered that disabling Dynamic Skybox Dimming makes it so the flares don't ever appear.

It seems that something in Parallax does this; as I've been able to replicate with only DOE and parallax installed, while it was working normally with all my other usual graphics mods installed.

It occasionally works normally even with parallax installed, but I haven't been able to find a pattern to this, and changing the scene makes it broken again.

[Lisias]

49 minutes ago, 1straycat said:

I've loved this mod for years, but recentlyish realized that I was not seeing planetary flares anymore... they would only appear at the far right or left edges of my screen, as seen in this vid with Duna: https://i.imgur.com/xOggZ1s.mp4
I spent a few hours tinkering, tried messing around with all the settings to no avail, but incidentally discovered that disabling Dynamic Skybox Dimming makes it so the flares don't ever appear.

It seems that something in Parallax does this; as I've been able to replicate with only DOE and parallax installed, while it was working normally with all my other usual graphics mods installed.

It occasionally works normally even with parallax installed, but I haven't been able to find a pattern to this, and changing the scene makes it broken again.

Apparently, Parallax is changing something in the KSP guts that it's inducing DOE to misbehave. But it may be also something that I did when I tried to make the flares to disappears behind the atmospheres… Or both.

In a way or another, I will working on it. https://github.com/net-lisias-ksp/DistantObject/issues/37 . 

Thanks for the report, you may had found the trigger for this other insidious bug.

[Krazy1]

20 hours ago, Lisias said:

Apparently, Parallax is changing something

Just adding that I've seen this too on a 1.12.3 KSP install with Parallax 2x but CB fading works normally on my KSP 1.12.5 JNSQ install without Parallax. 

[1straycat]

On 7/31/2023 at 11:33 PM, Krazy1 said:

Just adding that I've seen this too on a 1.12.3 KSP install with Parallax 2x but CB fading works normally on my KSP 1.12.5 JNSQ install without Parallax. 

Hey, my main career save is on exactly the same KSP  version with JNSQ and Parallax too! o/

So I found there's a pretty easy gameplay fix for flares, just open map view and they'll display properly when you switch back. You do have to do this each time you load a new scene though.

[Lisias]

On 8/8/2023 at 2:57 AM, 1straycat said:

Hey, my main career save is on exactly the same KSP  version with JNSQ and Parallax too! o/

So I found there's a pretty easy gameplay fix for flares, just open map view and they'll display properly when you switch back. You do have to do this each time you load a new scene though.

Humm… interesting.

Let me explain a bit what I think it's happening:

Unity uses a layered model for the screen. It's like having many different screens being painted separately, and then someone stacks them one over the other, sorted by priority, before sending the thing into the framebuffer where the bits will be converted into a frame that it's sent to the Monitor.

Conceptually, it's not different from this:

Well, by analysing the code's history log, I concluded that the layer used by painting the flares were decided kinda by trial and error in order to avoid screwing up 3rd parties, at the same time it tried to avoid being screwed by them.

This is the reason I didn't managed to hide the flares behind atmospheres - the atmosphere of a planet is on the lowest plane, with the planet being drawn on a layer above the atmosphere's one. I just didn't managed to move the flares to a lower plane without making them plain vanish at all from the scene - I suspect that I inadvertently moved the flares to a plane behind the skybox (or exactly in the skybox's plane, with my flares being painted first, and then the skybox just overwriting the flares on painting).

Parallax, apparently, may be drawing things on the same plane DOE is using to draw the flares because by some reason the trick you did induced the flares to be shown again. Apparently Parallax doesn't need to re setup its things on every scene change, and so DOE gets a chance to draw it's flares again after a scene change.

The problem I have now is to find time to dig into Parallax code in order to understand what it is doing and where, so I can think on a way to work around it.

Your hint about restoring DOE's flares on scene change surely will help me on such work around, if not on a proper fix - perhaps DOE is the one doing things weirdly after all, perhaps Parallax is the one doing things right and I'm on its way.

In a way or another, I will need some time to dig on the Parallax code to understand it.

Cheers!

Edited August 24, 2023 by Lisias
Grammars. Don't you hate this thing?