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

[DeepSpaceKraken]

Hi there! I usually use parallax and I'm gonna buy a new PC. What configuration (processor, RAM) do I need? 

[SheepDog2142]

52 minutes ago, DeepSpaceKraken said:

Hi there! I usually use parallax and I'm gonna buy a new PC. What configuration (processor, RAM) do I need? 

Any current gen Intel I7 or I9 or Amd Ryzen will be fine. Id recommend at minimum 32gb of DDR5 preferable 64GB

[Gameslinx]

1 hour ago, DeepSpaceKraken said:

Hi there! I usually use parallax and I'm gonna buy a new PC. What configuration (processor, RAM) do I need? 

It really depends, I wouldn't use Parallax as a metric for determining your PC requirements though!

Avoid intel, I mean seriously - they are going through a huge issue with their last couple generations of CPUs that almost every single one of them is affected by degredation or instability that cause them to fail at an alarming rate. I'm not that knowledgeable on AMD, but their single core performance has come a long way (and that's important for KSP).

GPU-wise a 30 series or 40 series NVIDIA is fine, though the 50 series is coming out soon (so maybe wait for prices to fall when they do?)

For RAM I get by just fine on 32GB. Unless you're doing content creation / install a boatload of KSP mods or are a developer yourself, no need for more than 32 right now. If you're futureproofing, 64 won't hurt though.

Good luck and hope the build goes smoothly.

BTW, these tips are for a fairly mid-high end system. You can run parallax fine on a 10 series card (1070+ I'd say, comfortably) and low-mid range cpu these days

Edited August 23 by Gameslinx

[SheepDog2142]

17 minutes ago, Gameslinx said:

It really depends, I wouldn't use Parallax as a metric for determining your PC requirements though!

Avoid intel, I mean seriously - they are going through a huge issue with their last couple generations of CPUs that almost every single one of them is affected by degredation or instability that cause them to fail at an alarming rate. I'm not that knowledgeable on AMD, but their single core performance has come a long way (and that's important for KSP).

GPU-wise a 30 series or 40 series NVIDIA is fine, though the 50 series is coming out soon (so maybe wait for prices to fall when they do?)

For RAM I get by just fine on 32GB. Unless you're doing content creation / install a boatload of KSP mods or are a developer yourself, no need for more than 32 right now. If you're futureproofing, 64 won't hurt though.

Good luck and hope the build goes smoothly.

BTW, these tips are for a fairly mid-high end system. You can run parallax fine on a 10 series card (1070+ I'd say, comfortably) and low-mid range cpu these days

If they ever want to do RSS in the future they will want 64GB. Plus its just better to have as ram is not that expensive anyways. I regularly hit over 32gb on games these days.

You are right intel is having issues these dats and AMDs new gen they just launched seems pretty solid. Id stick with no lower than a 4060 super or just wait till the next gen at the end of the year. 30 series is becoming dated at this point. 

Edited August 23 by SheepDog2142

[SergeantBlueforce]

4 hours ago, SheepDog2142 said:

If they ever want to do RSS in the future they will want 64GB. Plus its just better to have as ram is not that expensive anyways. I regularly hit over 32gb on games these days.

You are right intel is having issues these dats and AMDs new gen they just launched seems pretty solid. Id stick with no lower than a 4060 super or just wait till the next gen at the end of the year. 30 series is becoming dated at this point. 

For what it's worth I thought I'd chime in and mention that I'm using parallax with tessellation enabled alongside a bunch of other graphical mods (volumetric clouds/scatterer, TUFX, deferred etc.) and I have a pretty consistent 60 FPS  in all scenes on a 3070.

Edited August 24 by SergeantBlueforce

[SheepDog2142]

8 minutes ago, SergeantBlueforce said:

For what it's worth I thought I'd chime in and mention that I'm using parallax with tessellation enabled alongside a bunch of other graphical mods (volumetric clouds/scatterer, TUFX, deferred etc.) and I have a pretty consistent 60 FPS  in all scenes on a 3070.

So these are my current specs
8700k, 3080, and 64gb of DDR4 3400mhz ram everything on a m.2 drive.
Running, Paralax, Scatter, Blackracks volumetric clouds, deferd rendering, TUFX, RSS reborn with 42k textures. 

So it can be done but why would anyone spend all that money to build a system with already outdated tech like our 30 series cards is my logic. Plus building a PC in the vacuum of one game is not the best idea.
 

[SergeantBlueforce]

You're not wrong, but I just wanted to provide a reference point for performance. Even modded, this game isn't as demanding as many people fear it is.

[SheepDog2142]

22 minutes ago, SergeantBlueforce said:

You're not wrong, but I just wanted to provide a reference point for performance. Even modded, this game isn't as demanding as many people fear it is.

yea not unless your crazzy and try and run RSS and even then thats more ram than anything.

[Gameslinx]

Parallax Continued - Preview and Changelog

Happy Saturday! Parallax Continued is now available via Patreon preview (or you can compile the source code on my Github). Due to forum posting rules I don't believe I can link directly from this post, but it's the same rodeo as the Volumetric Clouds mod. The link you're looking for is in the OP. Until there's a public, full release, there can't be a dedicated forum post dedicated to Parallax Continued. For any posts relating to it please do specify which version of the mod you are using so I can best support you.

I have some features to add over the next few months such as terrain ambient occlusion, particle system scatter support and adding more varied terrain surface objects to the planets. I'm also working on documentation here: https://github.com/Gameslinx/Parallax-Continued/wiki

Obligatory Requirements:

1. The source code is here: https://github.com/Gameslinx/Parallax-Continued/tree/master

Public release will be in the order of months, and should hopefully not reach anywhere near a year.

The changelog is a long one and hopefully worth the read!

Parallax Continued Changelog - Release 1.0

Please note - existing planet packs that do not specify they support Parallax Continued will not work yet!

Overview
 - The mod has been rewritten from the ground up, almost every line of code is new - expect massively improved quality, performance and reliability
 - Long time users of the mod will be very pleased to see the fixes section

Features / Improvements

GUI / Accessibility / Quality of Life
 - Added new GUI button in the space center and flight that lets you customise the mod's settings in-game
 - Added a new GUI keybind (Ctrl + P) which opens the terrain shader and scatter editor
 - Added a new setting "Show Collideable Scatters" in the settings GUI which highlights which scatters your craft can collide with - I am looking into a version of this that shows Breaking Ground surface objects
 - Added a new setting "Use Advanced Blending" which toggles the new terrain texture blending quality setting
 - Added a new setting "Light Shadows" which toggles vessel light shadow casting
 - Added a new setting "Light Shadows Quality"
 - Added a new setting "Fade Out Start Range" which controls the despawn start radius for scatters
 - Added a new setting "Collision Level" which controls how small an object can be to be considered collideable, allowing you to set the difficulty accordingly
 - Added various debug options to both the GUI and global config

Terrain - General
 - All planets: Improved the terrain displacement to reduce visually floating/sinking objects
 - Kerbin: New terrain textures
 - Mun: New terrain textures
 - Eve: New terrain textures
 - Bop: New terrain and scaled space textures
 - Terrain will now cast shadows from all light sources, unless this option is disabled

Terrain - Shader
 - Textures are now blended using displacement rather than just using a fade
 - Shader tessellation and displacement quality hugely increased
 - Shader reflection probe environment lighting now supported in forward rendering
 - Displacement can now affect all texture levels
 - Displacement range can now be set to any value
 - Improved specular/gloss calculation in forward rendering
 - Improved tessellation range falloff and edge length calculation
 - Improved displacement falloff calculation

Scatters - General
  - Scatters now show in the KSC
  - Reworked the wind system
  - All scatters are now persistent, including small scale scatters such as foliage or small rocks
  - Scatter LOD processing and frustum culling now updates every frame
  - Scatter default render distance increased
  - Improved scatter render distance radius - it is no longer a hard cutoff
  - Render distance is now computed from the camera position rather than the craft position
  - Improved scatter altitude based density falloff
  - Scatter densities now properly account for the quad density distribution differences caused as a result of the cube-sphere transformation
  - Improved the appearance of the cutoff between biomes
  - All planets: Changed the random distribution of all scatters
  - Kerbin: Grass now takes on the terrain colour beneath rather than being a constant colour
  - Kerbin: Improved grass cutoff at the edge of the render distance
  - Kerbin: Updated oak tree scatter models and textures
  - Kerbin: Updated daisy scatter models and textures
  - Kerbin: Updated grass and tall grass LOD2 (furthest LOD) model and textures
  - Kerbin: Updated iceberg textures
  - Eve: Added rocks and slabs to the surface
  - Minmus: Replaced highland ice scatters with metallic minerals
  - Gilly: Significantly reduced the number of rocks
  - Ike: Improved the lighting dynamics for the crystal scatters
  - Laythe: Adjusted the grass colour to better match the terrain it appears on
  - Laythe: Improved the mushroom tree LOD2 (furthest LOD) texture
  - Vall: Updated ice slab scatter models and textures
  - Vall: Updated ice crystal scatter models and textures
  - Bop: Updated rock scatter models and textures
  - Eeloo: Updated ice slab scatter models and textures

Scatters - Collisions
  - Added new Collision Level setting which allows you to control which scatters are collideable
  - Trees are now collideable by default. Have fun!
  - Colliders are significantly more reliable
  - Colliders are now persistent

Scatters - Shaders
  - Added subsurface scattering
  - Added refraction
  - Added ability for scatters to be coloured by the terrain
  - Added more random distribution noise types
  - Improved scatter lighting in vessel lights
  - Improved the lighting of the bubble shader
  - Improved the distortion of the bubble shader
  - Unified lighting calculations across different scatter types

Performance

Terrain Shader / System
  - Massively optimized terrain tessellation performance
  - Massively optimized the performance of additional lights in Forward and Deferred rendering
  - Parallax terrain subdivision is now multithreaded using Burst Jobs, and is non-blocking
  - Optimized terrain pixel shader texture bandwidth
  - Quad build times as a result of Parallax are hugely reduced
  
Scatter System
  - Collider processing is now multithreaded using Burst Jobs, and is non-blocking
  - Removed the reliance on PQSMods for determining scatter biomes - this is done on the GPU now
  - Removed the reliance on PQSMods for generating scatter distribution noise - this is done on the GPU now
  - Optimized scatter generation times
  - Optimized scatter compute shaders
  - Stutters related to the scatter system are now largely (if not completely) gone
  - Massively reduced the VRAM usage of the scatter system
  - Massively reduced the RAM usage of the scatter system
  - Only one compute shader is needed per scatter, instead of one per quad per scatter
  - Fixed common and large stutters when generating colliders

Bug Fixes

Terrain System
  - Fixed texture seams that would appear on a planet as a result of applying the terrain textures before quad normals updated
  - Fixed terrain texture "flicker" that would happen when the camera passes a certain altitude
  - Fixed a calculation the tessellation shader stage that resulted in tessellation cutting off abruptly

Scatter System
  - hoo boy
  - Fixed interaction with Waterfall where both mods use the background texture, causing a conflict - Parallax now uses refraction approximation and no longer samples the background texture
  - Refractive scatters now render in Deferred as they are no longer technically transparent
  - Fixed scatters becoming disconnected from the ground - this will never happen now
  - Fixed scatter textures not loading
  - Fixed scatters displaying the wrong textures
  - Fixed scatters appearing too dark
  - Fixed scatter lighting when lit up by vessel lights
  - Fixed scatters flickering when the craft is destroyed (or otherwise)
  - Fixed scatter frustum culling stopping when the game is paused, HUD is hidden, and camera is rotated
  - Fixed occasional holes in shadows
  - Fixed shadow acne/banding effect in scatter shadows
  - Fixed billboarding shader lighting
  - Fixed occasional random intense blooming effect on scatters with high specular/gloss values
  - Fixed scatter specular/gloss calculation
  - Fixed scatter shader normal mapping for world space texture coordinates
  - Fixed colliders not closely matching the visual geometry
  - Fixed colliders disappearing on scene reload
  - Fixed being able to fall through colliders at random points (mainly on icebergs)
  - Fixed incorrect craft bound calculation causing colliders to despawn too soon while they were in range
  - Fixed incorrect scatter bound calculation causing collider ranges to be computed from the largest scatter bound, which reduced performance
  - Fixed colliders not respecting the world origin shift and becoming disconnected from the visual geometry when moving around
  - Fixed scatter system breaking seemingly randomly when flying around
  - Fixed scatter system breaking when teleporting to another body
  - Fixed a calculation in the distribution code that caused too many objects to be generated, and would generate at a fixed position with random rotation, causing lag when in the view frustum

I hope you enjoy!

Edited August 24 by Gameslinx
minor spelling mistake

[SergeantBlueforce]

I'm going to be frank and say that I'm getting pretty bad vibes from the proliferation of paid mods. This is a slippery slope.

[Gameslinx]

13 minutes ago, SergeantBlueforce said:

I'm going to be frank and say that I'm getting pretty bad vibes from the proliferation of paid mods. This is a slippery slope.

It is a completely valid concern. If there is any solace, know that I will stay true to when I say the mod will release fully and freely once the features I mentioned are in (or after a certain amount of time, if those features are not feasible to implement). I did this when Parallax had its original 2.0 release back in 2022ish, and stayed true to that commitment then - I fully intend to do now

For the record, Patreon allows me to pay my content licenses and subscriptions for the programs I use to develop the mod so I can at least break even, as they can be quite expensive (looking at you, Adobe) - although on the other hand, one could argue that I chose a hobby with these requirements and that doesn't justify it. I'm not here to convince anyone how they should feel about the concept of early access but my perspective may be valuable.

That being said, while your concern is heard, I would appreciate it if this thread does not devolve into a discussion around that topic if that's alright

 

Edited August 24 by Gameslinx

[RileyHef]

32 minutes ago, SergeantBlueforce said:

I'm going to be frank and say that I'm getting pretty bad vibes from the proliferation of paid mods. This is a slippery slope.

EDIT: Removing most of my comment to keep the thread on topic at the author's request.

I think it is good to support major modders (especially those laid off by T2 who are still modding) but I agree that it can be a slippery slope.

Anyway, I'm so excited that this is finally out! I've been looking forward to it with the recent dev updates. Will the public release be 2.0 and is this thread the best source for updates, feedback, and updates until the new thread is out for the public release?

 

Edited August 24 by RileyHef

[softweir]

3 minutes ago, RileyHef said:

*snip* the possibility of smaller mods being inspired to become paywalled is a real possibility. However, this late in KSP's life I doubt we would see a dramatic change like that.

I too would be sad to see that, however only really significant mods will make any money from paywalling and the trivial mods that we don't really need will simply not make cash, acting as a disincentive to further such behaviour.

[SergeantBlueforce]

31 minutes ago, Gameslinx said:

It is a completely valid concern. If there is any solace, know that I will stay true to when I say the mod will release fully and freely once the features I mentioned are in (or after a certain amount of time, if those features are not feasible to implement). I did this when Parallax had its original 2.0 release back in 2022ish, and stayed true to that commitment then - I fully intend to do now

For the record, Patreon allows me to pay my content licenses and subscriptions for the programs I use to develop the mod so I can at least break even, as they can be quite expensive (looking at you, Adobe) - although on the other hand, one could argue that I chose a hobby with these requirements and that doesn't justify it. I'm not here to convince anyone how they should feel about the concept of early access but my perspective may be valuable.

I appreciate your candour, and for the record I would like to state that I have subscribed to one month of second-tier membership on your Patreon as I think you do excellent work and deserve a donation.

If it is indeed your intention to release this new version freely on a timely schedule then that's good. Unfortunately I've seen perpetual "early access" as a reason to charge for mod a dozen times before. Sorry for being sceptical, but "fool me twice" and all that.

31 minutes ago, Gameslinx said:

That being said, while your concern is heard, I would appreciate it if this thread does not devolve into a discussion around that topic if that's alright

Yes I completely understand, apologies if I prompted to other people to join the topic.

Edited August 24 by SergeantBlueforce
Ok, that was probably prompting further discssion.

[Gameslinx]

59 minutes ago, RileyHef said:

Will the public release be 2.0 and is this thread the best source for updates, feedback, and updates until the new thread is out for the public release?

Pretty much yes, the new thread will be called Parallax Continued when the mod goes public - for now, this one is fine for feedback and potential bug reports 

[nyae]

23 hours ago, SheepDog2142 said:

If they ever want to do RSS in the future they will want 64GB. Plus its just better to have as ram is not that expensive anyways. I regularly hit over 32gb on games these days.

You are right intel is having issues these dats and AMDs new gen they just launched seems pretty solid. Id stick with no lower than a 4060 super or just wait till the next gen at the end of the year. 30 series is becoming dated at this point. 

Yeah, but tbh, when you have more ram avaliable than what you really need, programs tend to cache *everything* and be insanely bloated.

You can play with much less ram, one example.

Cities skylines is infamous for using massive ammounts of RAM, like, it can easily use +40GB of RAM, but in my experience, unless you have hundreds of mods, 16 is fine (just for the game)
Would it be better to have 32GB? Yeah

But when I played, the game literally was using 99% of my RAM, it was a stutter fest, but once it has loaded, it stabilizes pretty nicely, even when 95% or something stupid of the RAM is used.

(EDIT: this is because I, by mistake, suscribed to a Workshop collection of like 200 assets or something stupid high, and when I realised what I had done, I already saved my game, besides, I don't want to unsuscribe to literally hundred of mods manually)

Edited August 24 by nyae

[Viper_214]

On 8/16/2024 at 12:25 PM, Wilhelm von Hermann said:

no logs no support

bro i just looked and none of this excrements makes any sense to me lmao

[Brigadier]

8 hours ago, Gameslinx said:

Parallax Continued - Preview and Changelog

Thank you very much for your continued work; the Parallax-Continued (P-C) notes suggest some remarkable improvements that could make it easier on my low-end system.  Some comments/questions before I've tried installing (a work in progress at this very moment):

1. Ctrl-P is already mapped in my modded install.  Have you included a way to change the default key binding?
2. I'm going to give the compiling route a try.  Since I'm not well versed (well, not at all, really ) in C#, do I clone the repo, open the .sln file in Visual Studio and build?
3. When I do so, I'm given an option to update the solution to .NET Framework 4.8.  Do you recommend doing so or sticking with 4.7.1?
4. Will subsequent Preview Releases follow the same pattern so that all I have to do is update the clone and rebuild?
5. If I already have Parallax installed, do I remove it with CKAN before installing P-C?
6. Any caveats or noticeable effects on current Parallax-modded games?
7. An improvement suggestion for the wiki might be to include instructions on how to "roll-you-own".  I can offer a little contribution for Visual Studio, if you wish (once I figure it out).

Again, thanks for all your superb work on the mod and support you offer in these forums.

[610yesnolovely]

22 hours ago, Gameslinx said:

Scatter System
  - hoo boy

Hoo boy indeed! This is a tour-de-force of an update, congratulations on the results of the tons of hard work. My oh my, KSP will be looking glorious.

[Gameslinx]

16 hours ago, Brigadier said:

Thank you very much for your continued work; the Parallax-Continued (P-C) notes suggest some remarkable improvements that could make it easier on my low-end system.  Some comments/questions before I've tried installing (a work in progress at this very moment):

1. Ctrl-P is already mapped in my modded install.  Have you included a way to change the default key binding?
2. I'm going to give the compiling route a try.  Since I'm not well versed (well, not at all, really ) in C#, do I clone the repo, open the .sln file in Visual Studio and build?
3. When I do so, I'm given an option to update the solution to .NET Framework 4.8.  Do you recommend doing so or sticking with 4.7.1?
4. Will subsequent Preview Releases follow the same pattern so that all I have to do is update the clone and rebuild?
5. If I already have Parallax installed, do I remove it with CKAN before installing P-C?
6. Any caveats or noticeable effects on current Parallax-modded games?
7. An improvement suggestion for the wiki might be to include instructions on how to "roll-you-own".  I can offer a little contribution for Visual Studio, if you wish (once I figure it out).

Again, thanks for all your superb work on the mod and support you offer in these forums.

I've sent you a message

There are some workflow configs I need to provide, which I will get round to over the next few days. You'll need to wait on me for that though

1. I haven't got a way of changing the keybinding, I'll take a look into this. Out of curiosity what is the binding used for right now? I know Kopernicus' GUI, if it's installed, uses it.

3. Stick with the version the mod is built on. Apparently VS is telling me I'm on 4.8 but I'm fairly sure I'm on 4.7.1. You can always try both :p

4. You will need to build source and build the shaders each time. The source will compile in seconds, the shaders will take up to half an hour.

5. Yes, PC and P2.0 are incompatible with each other

6. Nothing negative, but the scatter positions will be different so if you have any bases, exercise caution

7. I'm working on getting instructions for upgrading existing parallax configs for planet modders, and then I will work on instructions for building with all the relevant configs and tools needed

[NuclearBaloney]

I cannot seem to run the mod as I keep running into problem 2 listed on the troubleshooting thing.  Neither of the 2 fixes worked, is there a way to fix this?

[dave1904]

Before I get this how well does it scale with rescaled systems compared to the previous versions? I'm aware it's not designed for it but neither was the last version. It still did pretty well. 

I'm assuming old planet config files for modded planets are not compatible either. 

[Gameslinx]

15 hours ago, NuclearBaloney said:

I cannot seem to run the mod as I keep running into problem 2 listed on the troubleshooting thing.  Neither of the 2 fixes worked, is there a way to fix this?

Can you send me your KSP.log file?

1 hour ago, dave1904 said:

Before I get this how well does it scale with rescaled systems compared to the previous versions? I'm aware it's not designed for it but neither was the last version. It still did pretty well. 

I'm assuming old planet config files for modded planets are not compatible either. 

This one should scale better, but give me some time to collect some data/screenshots for you before you make a decision. What rescale do you typically play at so I can match it?

Edited August 26 by Gameslinx

[dave1904]

39 minutes ago, Gameslinx said:

This one should scale better, but give me some time to collect some data/screenshots for you before you make a decision. What rescale do you typically play at so I can match it?

You don't need to collect data or screenshots. I'm aware of the "risks". I play on 3.5 rescale and wouldn't want you to spend any time on that scale. 2.5 rescale would probably be the best one to test because the major part mods target that scale. I would assume its the most popular. Your time would be better spent on that scale. 

I'll download it this evening and give it a shot anyway. I've been looking forward to this for to long to wait honestly. 

[Gameslinx]

11 minutes ago, dave1904 said:

Your time would be better spent on that scale. 

Cheers

With Continued, it's possible to write rescale patches now so over the next few days I'm going to make some for (most) scales and bundle them into a download that people can choose from. For now, it should be the same story - Square the rescale factor and that is your new density multiplier in the Global config. As before there is a limit (hardware limit to how large the buffer that holds the scatter data can be), but it should be slightly higher. Let me know if you run into any issues, hope it goes smoothly