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

[panzer1b]

6 hours ago, Gameslinx said:

Can you double check that you are on the latest Parallax version? I'll be investigating this over the weekend, but I know this was an issue in an earlier version which was a result of the PQS maxLevel on those planets being artificially too high. This was fixed, and you might only be seeing it now because the latest update (1.12.4) wiped the planets in Settings.cfg.

Updated to recent version (i was on one of the older ones), Ike, Tylo, and Minmus are fixed.  Bop is still missing scatters though (not sure if it ever had it as i rarely go there and just randomly teleported a tank there to drive around with as i dont have any good civilian vehicles besides a fiat 126 replica which is unbelieveably slow as a homage to the real thing).

Edited November 4, 2022 by panzer1b

[Gameslinx]

28 minutes ago, panzer1b said:

Updated to recent version (i was on one of the older ones), Ike, Tylo, and Minmus are fixed.  Bop is still missing scatters though (not sure if it ever had it as i rarely go there and just randomly teleported a tank there to drive around with as i dont have any good civilian vehicles besides a fiat 126 replica which is unbelieveably slow as a homage to the real thing).

Did you delete Settings.cfg after updating? I forgot to mention this, but you should do this so that it regenerates the planet terrain presets. Also make sure your terrain detail is set to High

[panzer1b]

1 hour ago, Gameslinx said:

Did you delete Settings.cfg after updating? I forgot to mention this, but you should do this so that it regenerates the planet terrain presets. Also make sure your terrain detail is set to High

I always make a new settings for new game versions, only copy over my keybinds using cfg edits as i cant be bothered to rebind 50 different controls (im assuming that just the control bindings have nothing to do with the mod).  Still, ill try to delete the settings and just recopy the non terrain related bits.  I also have terrain to high and shader to high (dont use maximum as i feel the game look plenty amazing without tesselation enabled and well the game lags badly enough with 500 part bases...

[BSS_Snag]

Playing with a 2.5x scale system, what Configs would people recommend to get it looking like standard scale again?

[THE_KERBAL]

my computer has igpu so in the future i would like to see more perfomance options. like only showing larger scatters. and lower resilotion scatters 

Edited November 8, 2022 by THE_KERBAL

[Moose]

@Gameslinx I've been having a great time pushing the thing up to its limit, and other than some CPU hitching when running grass (even with default settings) it's holding up damn well. Great job!

I was wondering, though, if there is something I can do to mitigate this geometry crawl at the edge of the tesselation range. It's incredibly distracting. I know it's the geometry being calculated up on the fly but any suggestions welcome.

 

[THE_KERBAL]

The game stutters a small for a few seconds but then I get a good 40fps with scatters on  and collision on my ryzen 3 3200g igpu. The only issue is kerbals moving slowly. My settings are set to 0.5 percent of loading distance and density.

Edited November 9, 2022 by THE_KERBAL

[Gameslinx]

6 hours ago, Moose said:

if there is something I can do to mitigate this geometry crawl at the edge of the tesselation range

Reduce tessellationEdgeLength in the ParallaxGlobal.cfg. Although, this will impact performance since you will be tessellating more geometry inside that range

[THE_KERBAL]

Are the textures 8k and in the future will we be able to use lower resolution textures?

Edited November 9, 2022 by THE_KERBAL

[Gameslinx]

Just now, THE_KERBAL said:

Are the textures 8k and in the future will we be able to use lower resolution textures?

The terrain textures are 4k, the scatter textures are also mostly 2k - 4k, although some rocks use a texture atlas which is 8k but there's usually only one of these textures per planet.

You will not be seeing lower res texture packs, since I don't want to have to manage and upload them each time I need to update the mod. Parallax uses on-demand loading to only load exactly what you need rather than everything all at once, so the memory usage of the textures is generally low. I have been experimenting with an option that resizes the textures to a lower resolution when they are loaded, but I didn't have it finished in time for release. Right now, I'm focused on bug fixes before I finish that

[THE_KERBAL]

3 minutes ago, Gameslinx said:

The terrain textures are 4k, the scatter textures are also mostly 2k - 4k, although some rocks use a texture atlas which is 8k but there's usually only one of these textures per planet.

You will not be seeing lower res texture packs, since I don't want to have to manage and upload them each time I need to update the mod. Parallax uses on-demand loading to only load exactly what you need rather than everything all at once, so the memory usage of the textures is generally low. I have been experimenting with an option that resizes the textures to a lower resolution when they are loaded, but I didn't have it finished in time for release. Right now, I'm focused on bug fixes before I finish that

Ok that will cool when it’s done. I am amazed how I get a good fps on my crap pc

[Moose]

Final edit ahead of all the others: I ended up reinstalling Parallax, Eve and Scatterer and that fixed it. It seemed to be some odd combination of the three and some setting somewhere. But it's fixed for me. Leaving this here for the future but shouldn't be anything that needs fixing in the mod itself.

On 11/9/2022 at 3:47 PM, Gameslinx said:

Reduce tessellationEdgeLength in the ParallaxGlobal.cfg. Although, this will impact performance since you will be tessellating more geometry inside that range

Performance isn't a concern, thank you for the quick response! I'll do that and have some fun.

Post-experiment Edit:

Right @Gameslinx I have tried this and I've seen no change. But after various attempts at increasing the quality settings deep in config (using your wiki) I have come to the conclusion that it's not the tesselation itself that is the problem, it's that tesselating the Moutain biome is just broken. It leaves lots of black squares where the texture isn't applied (this is with the default Parallax_StockTextures package from CKAN) which make the crawling geometry much more apparent than if it was matching the colour of the terrain.

Unfortunately, I have no idea how to fix this, so flagging it as a bug. I've supplied a picture with the coordinates on Kerbin so you can see for yourself (this is with stock settings). It is important to mention that this is unrelated to shadows - regardless of time of day, the missing texture mapping stays in the same place. 

There are no errors in the logs at all. I think there is a mismatch between a couple textures somewhere, or normals are flipped on some of the vertices, but I am unsure how to see this as it doesn't output anything to the logs.

Further edit: This is happening across all surfaces and is definitely holes in the mesh, I can see clean through the Mun with this bug in place. https://i.imgur.com/IBPrs5g.png

Edited November 11, 2022 by Moose

[Nagysziszmo]

Gamelinx pls see that: https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/210565-gamelinx-pls/#comment-4197785

[jebalicious]

On 11/5/2022 at 5:07 AM, Gameslinx said:

Can you double check that you are on the latest Parallax version? I'll be investigating this over the weekend, but I know this was an issue in an earlier version which was a result of the PQS maxLevel on those planets being artificially too high. This was fixed, and you might only be seeing it now because the latest update (1.12.4) wiped the planets in Settings.cfg.

You can disable stock scatters in the main menu by unchecking 'enable scatters'

Only individually in each planet config. There are parameters for minScale and maxScale for each scatter. You can use the GUI (Ctrl + P) to do this in-game

Thanks for the help on that one @Gameslinx. I've been able to change sizes of things in game and see them changing as i edit their values. One question though. When I hit "save kerbins scatters to config" should this be saving in the actual config file in Gamedata? I'm assuming Gamedata/Parallax/Exports. It seems as though when I reloaded KSP a second time everything reverted back to their original sizes...if the save didn't work will i need to change the values in the config file myself to see permanent changes?

 

[Gameslinx]

3 minutes ago, jebalicious said:

Thanks for the help on that one @Gameslinx. I've been able to change sizes of things in game and see them changing as i edit their values. One question though. When I hit "save kerbins scatters to config" should this be saving in the actual config file in Gamedata? I'm assuming Gamedata/Parallax/Exports. It seems as though when I reloaded KSP a second time everything reverted back to their original sizes...if the save didn't work will i need to change the values in the config file myself to see permanent changes?

 

A config is created in Parallax/Exports. It also has "-EXPORTED" at the end of the root node, which you must remove then paste over the existing config to apply the changes.

I'm also seeing the grass is discoloured. Are you on Linux? I plan to read through all these replies in more detail over the weekend and hopefully upload a release with some much anticipated changes

[THE_KERBAL]

why is the kerbin ground lighter then it is supposed to be

[Gameslinx]

45 minutes ago, THE_KERBAL said:

why is the kerbin ground lighter then it is supposed to be

This happens when you set your terrain shader quality to low. I made a very easy-to-run version of Parallax which enables itself when you set your quality this low. It's a very barebones shader without any of the bells and whistles. Set your terrain shader quality (in the main menu settings) to Medium, High or Ultra. Ultra will enable tessellation, whereas there is no difference between medium and high except for correct colouration.

[THE_KERBAL]

also what does changing the lods do

[Gameslinx]

2 minutes ago, THE_KERBAL said:

also what does changing the lods do

LOD = Level Of Detail. The Parallax objects (trees, grass, rocks, etc) have varying levels of detail. Objects close to the camera use a high LOD. Objects far away are much smaller, and use a lower LOD. The range at which these LODs change is a tradeoff between visual quality and performance. Lowering the LOD range multiplier in the ParallaxGlobal.cfg will improve your performance, but will sacrifice visual quality.

[THE_KERBAL]

so will shanging the range without changing the range density make scatter more dense becuase it says it effects the amount of scatters in the range. also some of the large scatter have no collison

 

Edited November 12, 2022 by THE_KERBAL

[Gameslinx]

8 minutes ago, THE_KERBAL said:

so will shanging the range without changing the range density make scatter more dense becuase it says it effects the amount of scatters in the range

Changing the range literally just changes the distance from the craft at which scatters will appear at. Changing the density will affect how many are within a given area.

9 minutes ago, THE_KERBAL said:

also some of the large scatter have no collison

I am aware that this is happening but I haven't been able to deduce what causes this yet. Seeing as collisions appear to work for all smaller objects now, I don't see why this would be happening

[desert]

I'm wondering if its possible to make good-looking buildings as Parallax scatters, to place them randomly around Kerbin. Sadly I don't have modelling skills, but maybe someone would pick up the idea.

[LordJuice]

Help! I can't see the large seaweed/kelp shown in the video! Did I do something wrong in the install? I use ckan for mods, is that the problem?

[Astronomer]

WOW this mod is next level!

[Budster667]

I've noticed a lot more lag with my modpack after I updated to 2.0,  Although I love 2.0 I think I may need to downgrade. Is downgrading Parallax from 2.0 to the version under that while in the middle of a save something I'm able to do without breaking it?