[1.12.x] Parallax - PBR Terrain and Surface Objects [2.0.8]

[Gameslinx]

2 hours ago, Sky Kerman said:

Do we have a date of relace?

I'm aiming for "soon"

[Gameslinx]

I've been messing around with Duna and decided to go full Mars with it. I'm really happy with how the rocks have turned out - the dust scattered across the top really adds to the environment and helps them blend in

 

[Ictiv]

What I find quite spectacular, is that upon installing this, and half expecting the game to start having a bad time (as I'm running a sizable mod load as is), I found it instead improved my performance and decreased my memory use.

Jus wanted to say: Well done, you glorious stand-up guy! Hopefully you'll never turn to use your fell sorcery for evil!

EDIT: I was unaware this forum had word filters, but I guess that makes sense. Don't think illegitimate child is that bad of a word, but it's fine. Just wanted to clear up the weird word choice.

Edited July 17, 2022 by Ictiv

[AlfredoCavatelli]

Encountering a puzzling bug. Black spots are appearing on the textures for some reasons. (screenshot below) I've played around with the parallax configurator and increased subdivision levels, played with texture scale but nothing seems to fix it. All my terrain settings are as they should be. This is with a 2.5x rescale Stock + OPM system. KSP.log doesn't appear to have any unusual errors regarding Parallax, but I can provide it if needed. Just not sure if this is a known issue with rescale or anything.

Spoiler

Edited July 17, 2022 by AlfredoCavatelli

[Gameslinx]

59 minutes ago, AlfredoCavatelli said:

Encountering a puzzling bug. Black spots are appearing on the textures for some reasons. (screenshot below) I've played around with the parallax configurator and increased subdivision levels, played with texture scale but nothing seems to fix it. All my terrain settings are as they should be. This is with a 2.5x rescale Stock + OPM system. KSP.log doesn't appear to have any unusual errors regarding Parallax, but I can provide it if needed. Just not sure if this is a known issue with rescale or anything.

  Hide contents

Enable scatterer's depth buffer mode, or update scatterer to the newest version. This should fix it

[Killerbanana]

On 7/17/2022 at 4:54 PM, AlfredoCavatelli said:

Encountering a puzzling bug. Black spots are appearing on the textures for some reasons. (screenshot below) I've played around with the parallax configurator and increased subdivision levels, played with texture scale but nothing seems to fix it. All my terrain settings are as they should be. This is with a 2.5x rescale Stock + OPM system. KSP.log doesn't appear to have any unusual errors regarding Parallax, but I can provide it if needed. Just not sure if this is a known issue with rescale or anything.

  Reveal hidden contents

Hello, I would like to get this mod setup as well (OPM + Parallax + 2.5x Rescale) and am wondering if I can ask how you did it? What version of KSP are you running it on and are you using Ckan to download the mods or the forum. I would like to do 1.12 but can go to a lower version if need be. 

Anyone else with tips on how to do this would be appreciated.

[AlfredoCavatelli]

35 minutes ago, Killerbanana said:

Hello, I would like to get this mod setup as well (OPM + Parallax + 2.5x Rescale) and am wondering if I can ask how you did it? What version of KSP are you running it on and are you using Ckan to download the mods or the forum. I would like to do 1.12 but can go to a lower version if need be. 

Anyone else with tips on how to do this would be appreciated.

Sure. Just grab Parallax, Parallax Stock Textures, OPM, and OPM Parallax from CKAN. Then grab SigmaDimensions and Galileo's rescale configs from their github pages (linked) and follow their install instructions. Then you should be good to go.

[Moose]

I rarely post, but I had to - I just want to say @Gameslinx that your work on the scattering systems is one of two mods that actually have me excited for the state of KSP modding at the moment (the other being the incoming volumetric clouds), and I'm looking forward to release. Good work.

[Motokid600]

On 7/17/2022 at 1:51 PM, Gameslinx said:

I've been messing around with Duna and decided to go full Mars with it. I'm really happy with how the rocks have turned out - the dust scattered across the top really adds to the environment and helps them blend in

Eat your heart out KSP2. This looks awesome I cant wait.

Edited July 21, 2022 by Motokid600

[HafCoJoe]

Greetings @Gameslinx

Spectra is finally getting a proper update for 1.12.3 with the help of @Benzo Kerman, and in testing things I found that your bioluminescent beaches on Laythe looks gorgeous next to the bioluminescent clouds in Spectra!

I just wanted to comment saying how beautiful your mod is, and how thankful I am that I upgraded to 32 GB of RAM  recently, as my usage is sitting at around 18GB of usage with all my visual mods installed...

Edited July 22, 2022 by HafCoJoe

[Vandest]

Awesome, with a bonus reflection of Jool on Laythe's ocean !

[mcbmaestro]

On 7/10/2022 at 5:58 PM, Gameslinx said:

I've finished Gilly and Eeloo's scatters. Only 4 more celestial bodies to go!

 

 

 

All the preview pics look amazing.  I'm seriously craving this update and so is my new 3070ti - something I got for KSP more than anything else

I especially love this pic you posted.  Can you imagine driving around in that with procedural roads?   I know procedural roads would be a whole nother beast but we can dream.

Edited July 24, 2022 by mcbmaestro

[MAFman]

I'm getting a lot of Z-fighting. Has anyone else had this?

[Gameslinx]

10 minutes ago, MAFman said:

I'm getting a lot of Z-fighting. Has anyone else had this?

Z-Fighting occurs with EVE city lights

[MAFman]

15 minutes ago, Gameslinx said:

Z-Fighting occurs with EVE city lights

Oh, so EVE is at fault here. Thanks!

[Gameslinx]

12 minutes ago, MAFman said:

Oh, so EVE is at fault here. Thanks!

Haha, it's actually my fault. In order to fix weird depth issues on Mac and Linux, I had to sacrifice EVE city lights, but I might be able to fix it for the next update  

[qromodynmc]

Tbh it was a good sacrifice to make, i personally find city lights bit outdated and kinda absurd, all of a sudden lights grow on all these green lands!

[Nightside]

3 hours ago, Gameslinx said:

Haha, it's actually my fault. In order to fix weird depth issues on Mac and Linux, I had to sacrifice EVE city lights, but I might be able to fix it for the next update  

 

12 minutes ago, qromodynmc said:

Tbh it was a good sacrifice to make, i personally find city lights bit outdated and kinda absurd, all of a sudden lights grow on all these green lands!

I'm interested in seeing where this goes. I was experimenting with creating actual cities with scatter at the locations of city lights, but Kopernicus's scatter definition wasn't reliable when trying to target the city lights locations. Might be able to do better with the next version of Parallax.

 

[Gameslinx]

37 minutes ago, Nightside said:

I was experimenting with creating actual cities with scatter at the locations of city lights, but Kopernicus's scatter definition wasn't reliable when trying to target the city lights locations. Might be able to do better with the next version of Parallax.

The new scatter system can't distribute objects 'orderly', it's just random distribution where objects are placed, so cities wouldn't look 'structured', but scattering small houses like in towns without much order would be more feasable

[Nightside]

55 minutes ago, Gameslinx said:

The new scatter system can't distribute objects 'orderly', it's just random distribution where objects are placed, so cities wouldn't look 'structured', but scattering small houses like in towns without much order would be more feasable

I agree with that assessment, there is an alternate solution - going super dense where the scatters sort of merge and overlap. with the right models I think it could look good. Fun to play with in any case Thanks for your work on this!

[HafCoJoe]

A user mentioned that Parallax and PlanetShine cause a lot of lag when put together—is this true/is there a known reason why?

[Gameslinx]

10 minutes ago, HafCoJoe said:

A user mentioned that Parallax and PlanetShine cause a lot of lag when put together—is this true/is there a known reason why?

Short answer: PlanetShine creates lights. More lights = more lag

Long answer: 

Unity has different rendering modes - Forward and Deferred. In Forward rendering, there is a main directional light (in this case, the Sun). Shaders have a shader pass which renders objects with the primary light source, which is called the ForwardBase pass. Shaders have another pass, called the ForwardAdd pass, which runs for every subsequent light in the scene. So, this means that for every next light, the terrain needs to be tessellated, every vertex is processed, and every pixel is calculated and added to the previous light's value. This includes texture sampling. Since tessellation is an expensive and the most performant intensive stage, it's why Parallax takes a greater hit when used alongside PlanetShine. And as PlanetShine creates lights for every planet instead of just modifying the ambient light level, which it should do, your FPS begins to tank.

In Deferred rendering (which I am less familiar with, since KSP uses the Forward path), each light is bundled into one pass and calculated simultaneously which means you can have practically unlimited light sources with no additional performance impact. Almost every AAA game uses a technique like this, and I believe since KSP 2 uses the High Definition Rendering Pipeline in Unity, it will also be using Deferred instead. I could be wrong. Since KSP is old, I don't think the Deferred pass was around, possible, or within the scope of the project when it was originally made.

[HafCoJoe]

Gotcha, wonderful explanation <3

[basic.syntax]

On 7/26/2022 at 1:37 PM, Gameslinx said:

The new scatter system can't distribute objects 'orderly', it's just random distribution where objects are placed

While the main scatter loop is RNG, could you implement a scatter container object - which would enable predefined 'scenes'?   (The container would be a list of scatter objects, and their XY coordinate offsets from an origin point.) While some players are thinking of towns and cities, I'm thinking desert oasis.    

[Gameslinx]

1 hour ago, basic.syntax said:

While the main scatter loop is RNG, could you implement a scatter container object - which would enable predefined 'scenes'?   (The container would be a list of scatter objects, and their XY coordinate offsets from an origin point.) While some players are thinking of towns and cities, I'm thinking desert oasis.    

I think you're overthinking it lol. You can just create a bunch of scatter objects (like a bunch of trees or houses or whatever) and combine them into one mesh to use as that scatter, then lower the density. I actually do this for a lot of the rocks to break up the uniform distribution a bit more, but it can result in cases where objects far away from the mesh origin can float or sink into the ground.

The scatter system works on each terrain chunk by processing each triangle in the terrain mesh and distributing at random a bunch of points on that triangle. It's unaware of any of the other triangles or where any of the other scatters are. So if by an XY offset you mean 'a point nearby that is attached to the mesh' sadly that's too difficult to implement.

However, a desert oasis is definitely possible; there are a lot of different distribution methods from per-biome, altitude and procedural noise. You could create a custom biome map for the planet with an area you want your oasis in, and instruct Parallax to place specific objects in that region