Concern about the level of terrain detail in KSP 2

[wpetula]

Concern about the level of surface detail on celestial bodies in KSP 2

Today, I watched a KSP 2 gameplay video with beta footage of a ship landing on Vall. Below is a screenshot from this video, which was posted on Kerbal Space Program's official Twitter page:

When I first watched this video, I thought the footage was from KSP 1. Vall is a jagged ice world, yet the terrain showcased in the video is surprisingly smooth and flat. Considering that boring celestial body surfaces are one of KSP 1's biggest gameplay problems, the lack of terrain detail here is extremely concerning.

Other KSP 2 screenshots and gameplay videos demonstrate the same issue. Consider this image, which was taken directly from Intercept's KSP 2 website:

No surface scatters are visible--just smooth, procedural hills. The sand and rocks the Kerbal is standing on appear to be merely 2D textures with normal mapping.

Here's Bop:

Bop's surface looks better than the other moons because of the terrain scatters, which are spread across the ground in random, uneven clumps. These rocks are simple and samey in appearance.

KSP 2's celestial body surfaces are certainly improvements over KSP 1; however, I don't believe they can be described as having "unprecedented detail" and "variety" at this point in time. 

Edited January 23, 2023 by wpetula

[Da Kerbal]

Quote

Today, I watched a KSP 2 gameplay video with beta footage of a ship landing on Vall. Below is a screenshot from this video, which was posted on Kerbal Space Program's official Twitter page:

When I first watched this video, I thought the footage was from KSP 1. Vall is a jagged ice world, yet the terrain showcased in the video is surprisingly smooth and flat. Considering that boring celestial body surfaces are one of KSP 1's biggest gameplay problems, the lack of terrain detail here is extremely concerning.

Other KSP 2 screenshots and gameplay videos demonstrate the same issue. Consider this image, which was taken directly from Intercept's KSP 2 website:

No surface scatters--just smooth, procedural hills. The sand and rocks the Kerbal is standing on seem to just be 2D textures with normal mapping.

Here's Bop:

Bop's surface looks better than the other moons because of the terrain scatters, which are spread across the ground in random, uneven clumps.

KSP 2's celestial body surfaces are certainly improvements over KSP 1; however, I don't believe they can be described as having "unprecedented detail" and "variety" at this point in time. 

You're right, but i'm pretty sure they'll work on that during early access. I could be wrong though.

[Strawberry]

I'm pretty sure the first image is minmus, tbh I think itd look weird if minmus had terrain scatter, I just dont think itd fit the smoothness of the planet. The middle one is laythe and while I hope theres rocky areas a lot of it is just soil plains so I dont think rocks and stuff would fit there.

[EnderiumSmith]

its likely just unfinished. Bop looks better than it ever did. weird that they focus on that space potato instead of Laythe. but Vall is just an ice ball. i dont expect much there.

[TLTay]

We'll find out in a month. I fear the level of detail and graphics was turned way down to play well with potato computers for a larger market.

[Stephensan]

44 minutes ago, TLTay said:

We'll find out in a month. I fear the level of detail and graphics was turned way down to play well with potato computers for a larger market.

it be hard to figure out if they just lowered it for the photos, or its actual that bad now.

 

i hope its the first one. just to show "even at it worst its better"

[K^2]

4 hours ago, TLTay said:

We'll find out in a month. I fear the level of detail and graphics was turned way down to play well with potato computers for a larger market.

I don't think performance is the problem. An absolute potato will not be able to run the game's physics at anything like a reasonable framerate, and since people tend to upgrade graphics before the CPU, and the type of procedural placement Intercept uses typically runs as a compute shader on the GPU, I can't imagine this being a problem.

For a concrete example, we've been running large open world jungles on PS4 Pro with the view distance that would be totally fine for KSP2 without significant impact to the frame rate. I mean, it'd drop below 30 occasionally, but that was even before the final optimizations round. And we know the KSP isn't coming to 8th gen consoles, at least for now. So this just isn't the limiting factor.

The problem is that building large worlds that look neither empty nor cluttered is hard work, and doing this for dozens of worlds, keeping all of them unique, is particularly taxing. The terrain tech we were seeing was still being tweaked half a year ago. This isn't leaving the artists a lot of time to really make these worlds work. I don't know how good the final product will be, but I don't think what we're seeing right now is that. And yeah, that does mean that worlds might end up feeling a bit barren during the early access and, honestly, possibly even a bit into the release. I don't think they're going to be anywhere near as bad as planets in KSP were, but you shouldn't expect AAA hand-crafted game levels of detail on every patch of land on every planet. That's just not possible to achieve. KSP2 will definitely fall somewhere in between, and hopefully high enough to keep exploration interesting. We'll have to just wait and see, though.

[jastrone]

10 hours ago, wpetula said:

Vall is a jagged ice world

I think that could be minmus. vall in ksp2 looks a lot less green than ksp 1.

[Alexoff]

It is difficult to distinguish commercials from KSP2 from modded  KSP1 without a corresponding caption. Maybe it was worth just fixing the KSP1 spaghetti code and not starting the development of the game from scratch?

[Pthigrivi]

Im just picturing the look on a contractors face when a client says 3 weeks before the house is done "Hmm... maybe we should just rip all this down and start over."

[wpetula]

19 hours ago, jastrone said:

I think that could be minmus

 

On 1/22/2023 at 6:23 PM, Strawberry said:

I'm pretty sure the first image is minmus

If you watch the whole video, it definitely doesn't look like Minmus from higher up. 

[Bej Kerman]

6 hours ago, Alexoff said:

It is difficult to distinguish commercials from KSP2 from modded  KSP1 without a corresponding caption. Maybe it was worth just fixing the KSP1 spaghetti code and not starting the development of the game from scratch?

That would be impossible and would leave you out of all the benefits you get from being able to start over, take a look back and see how everything went wrong with the first game.

[mcwaffles2003]

6 hours ago, Alexoff said:

Maybe it was worth just fixing the KSP1 spaghetti code and not starting the development of the game from scratch?

That's what starting the game from scratch is though... It's not like the games code just needed a few tweaks, it needed to be rebuilt. Would you rather rebuild a unibody car with a rotted out frame and borked wiring, cutting out individual rust patches to weld new bits back in their place and file them down while retracing all the wiring through welded panels or just build a new car? The latter is both easier easier and less costly (and comes with 11 years of unity updates).

Edited January 24, 2023 by mcwaffles2003

[Guest]

17 hours ago, Alexoff said:

It is difficult to distinguish commercials from KSP2 from modded  KSP1 without a corresponding caption. Maybe it was worth just fixing the KSP1 spaghetti code and not starting the development of the game from scratch?

I don't know why but this reminds me of the old fad (was it in the '90s? It's before my time for sure so I don't know the details) of putting body-kits on cheap sport cars to make them look like a specific Ferrari or Lamborghini.

 

On a side note, are we getting the same information? Did you see and read about the new VAB interface, the maneuver nodes, the tutorials and all the stuff that actually matters or you all just care about graphics?

Screw graphics, I would be interested in KSP2 even if they went with a stylized graphics like Sable, Borderlands or Dishonored (and I'm acting on what I'm saying, of all the mil-flight sims out there my favorite is VTOL VR, for its superior gameplay).

 

A whole topic about the terrain texture in beta that completely missed the important part of the new terrain system, the higher resolution in the heightmap, making terrain more interesting on a planetary scale.

[SolarAdmiral]

I see so many complaints about ksp2 not looking as good as ksp1 with mods, not having any features that can't be added with mods. But let's give it a month and see how ksp2 performs next to a heavily modded ksp1. And then keep in mind, that mods will come for ksp2 also. With any extra performance headroom, with the new rebuilt base code, let's see what modders can produce with ksp2. It isn't fair to compare unmodded ksp2 with a heavily modded ksp1. Thats adding a whole bunch of unpaid modder hours to the base game dev time. Of course if someone is willing to make something for free with no restraints on time they'll be able to produce something cheaper. Either compare unmodded to unmodded or wait for some mods to come out for ksp2 and compare modded to modded.

Even between modded ksp1 to ksp2, I doubt the comparison is all that glowing. Mod ksp1 to allow for improved terrain, part graphics, clouds, new much bigger ksc, time acceleration while burning, procedural wing parts, improved fairings and interstage, custom painting parts, new building system and ui, non-impulsive maneuvers, rings for dres with colliders, and let me know how it performs. Sure those all exist. What fps do you get and how much ram does it take. Mod ksp1 to remove the kraken attacks that destroy anything with a large number of small parts, suddenly wiggling themselves to death. Mod ksp1 to keep heavy aircraft from exploding randomly in atmosphere. Sounds like ksp2 is even attempting to improve the performance of landing gear and wheels, can we add a Mod to ksp1 for that too.

Or wait for a few more early access steps and add in interstellar, orbital construction, and colonies too. 

Even before interstellar and colonies, there's a lot of additions and improvements to the game. Much more than I think you can achieve with a stable set of mods. Let's not discount all the work the dev team has put in so far.

 

And then there's complaints about having to buy an incomplete game. Everyone seems to forget what ksp1 was like when it first came out. When I bought ksp1 there wasn't a map view. Ksp2 is releasing leagues more finished and complete than ksp1. I paid $27 for ksp1 and put in over 2000 hours. That's a pretty good return on investment. And enough for me to be happy to put in another $50 for a greatly improved base game expecting another 2000 hours. If you're happy with ksp1 stay with ksp1 until you see ksp2 surpasses it.

[TheLoneOne]

2 minutes ago, SolarAdmiral said:

I see so many complaints about ksp2 not looking as good as ksp1 with mods, not having any features that can't be added with mods. But let's give it a month and see how ksp2 performs next to a heavily modded ksp1. And then keep in mind, that mods will come for ksp2 also. With any extra performance headroom, with the new rebuilt base code, let's see what modders can produce with ksp2. It isn't fair to compare unmodded ksp2 with a heavily modded ksp1. Thats adding a whole bunch of unpaid modder hours to the base game dev time. Of course if someone is willing to make something for free with no restraints on time they'll be able to produce something cheaper. Either compare unmodded to unmodded or wait for some mods to come out for ksp2 and compare modded to modded.

Even between modded ksp1 to ksp2, I doubt the comparison is all that glowing. Mod ksp1 to allow for improved terrain, part graphics, clouds, new much bigger ksc, time acceleration while burning, procedural wing parts, improved fairings and interstage, custom painting parts, new building system and ui, non-impulsive maneuvers, rings for dres with colliders, and let me know how it performs. Sure those all exist. What fps do you get and how much ram does it take. Mod ksp1 to remove the kraken attacks that destroy anything with a large number of small parts, suddenly wiggling themselves to death. Mod ksp1 to keep heavy aircraft from exploding randomly in atmosphere. Sounds like ksp2 is even attempting to improve the performance of landing gear and wheels, can we add a Mod to ksp1 for that too.

Or wait for a few more early access steps and add in interstellar, orbital construction, and colonies too. 

Even before interstellar and colonies, there's a lot of additions and improvements to the game. Much more than I think you can achieve with a stable set of mods. Let's not discount all the work the dev team has put in so far.

 

And then there's complaints about having to buy an incomplete game. Everyone seems to forget what ksp1 was like when it first came out. When I bought ksp1 there wasn't a map view. Ksp2 is releasing leagues more finished and complete than ksp1. I paid $27 for ksp1 and put in over 2000 hours. That's a pretty good return on investment. And enough for me to be happy to put in another $50 for a greatly improved base game expecting another 2000 hours. If you're happy with ksp1 stay with ksp1 until you see ksp2 surpasses it.

Yes but think about this, the KSP two devs code these features full-time and get paid to do so, and yet they are being outdone by modders with little to no budget who do their thing for free, in their free time. the new eve build is better cloud-wise than ksp 2. parallax makes the terrain they are showing look really bad. the ksp 2 devs are doing all they can I'm sure, but I can't help but point out that maybe just maybe, they have been outdone by the community, and it's going to make them look really bad when that turns out to be absolutely correct.  I think they promised too much to us for their own good, trust me, if the game is just ksp 1 but slightly better it's going to fail when they open early access in less than a month, it won't generate sales from enough people outside the ksp community... 

[SolarAdmiral]

Just now, TheLoneOne said:

Yes but think about this, the KSP two devs code these features full-time and get paid to do so, and yet they are being outdone by modders with little to no budget who do their thing for free, in their free time. the new eve build is better cloud-wise than ksp 2. parallax makes the terrain they are showing look really bad. the ksp 2 devs are doing all they can I'm sure, but I can't help but point out that maybe just maybe, they have been outdone by the community, and it's going to make them look really bad when that turns out to be absolutely correct.  I think they promised too much to us for their own good, trust me, if the game is just ksp 1 but slightly better it's going to fail when they open early access in less than a month, it won't generate sales from enough people outside the ksp community... 

Again, I'm going to ask, how does ksp1 perform when you mod in all the stuff ksp2 is going to add. Because I'm willing to bet the answer is not well. Sure it will still run well with a couple mods. But add in all the stuff and it won't. And there's all the stuff that mods can't fix, the base core performance of the game, the kraken attacks, stuff only rebuilding the code from scratch could fix. And for me one of the most important things to interest me in ksp2.

If the ksp2 team has done a good job, it means less kraken explosions which alone is good enough for me, and at the end of the day I think that alone would be good enough for most ksp players. When it's out and folks start seeing how well it performs, less kraken, much larger part counts, word will get out and the ksp core players will be on board. Especially with the promise of interstellar and colonies soon. 

I also doubt slightly less than perfect graphics will scare off the casual folks too. For them the selling feature is built in tutorials promising to make the game easier to pick up and play. When ksp2 comes out, a couple main stream streamers will give it a try, everyone watching will see the tutorials and if it is in fact easier to get into. And that will be enough for anyone who was on the fence about the first ksp due to being seen as too hard. The game doesn't need to look the best to get most of the market I think it was going to get anyway.

The way ksp1 looked didn't stop it at all from achieving a wide market and great success. And I'm willing to bet very few players bought ksp1 based on the visuals of mods. And again I'll add that ksp2 will also be moddable. Modders will be able to start from the greatly improved baseline of ksp2 instead of ksp1. Give it a couple years and it will have just as many graphics improvements mods.

I'd also like to point out that many players don't mod the game. I've seen polls here and on the reddit that generally get to about 50/50 modded to unmodded. And you have to keep in mind that the forums and reddit generally attract the more hard core of the player base. Especially for the casual players, I doubt most of them mod the game, or have even seen what parallax and other mods can do. I've played 2000 hours I haven't even bothered looking into those mods and don't know what they can do. I'd be willing to bet that a large segment of those people outside the ksp community don't know what modded ksp looks like either.

So I disagree completely that ksp2 not looking as good as a heavily modded ksp1 will cause a massive negative impact on sales. Already it looks much better to me just adding some clouds and the improved surfaces, and the features promised in the first step of early access are far more than just small improvements on ksp1.

I also don't think getting hung up on comparing a game to what can be done by modders willing who work for free for untracked hours is productive. Its basically saying game devs don't deserve to get paid just because others are willing to do the work for free in their spare time. I can point to dozens of games that got major mods, where the game devs got 'outdone' by the community. And still the later installments still sold just as well. 

[mcwaffles2003]

2 hours ago, TheLoneOne said:

Yes but think about this, the KSP two devs code these features full-time and get paid to do so, and yet they are being outdone by modders with little to no budget who do their thing for free, in their free time. the new eve build is better cloud-wise than ksp 2. parallax makes the terrain they are showing look really bad. the ksp 2 devs are doing all they can I'm sure, but I can't help but point out that maybe just maybe, they have been outdone by the community, and it's going to make them look really bad when that turns out to be absolutely correct.  I think they promised too much to us for their own good, trust me, if the game is just ksp 1 but slightly better it's going to fail when they open early access in less than a month, it won't generate sales from enough people outside the ksp community... 

This is still just fixating on the paintjob and not the car. About 20 people make up intercepts KSP 2 team, based on what we have seen from posted images of their zoom meetings, and not all of them are devs, They have built the game from scratch (possibly twice) while making all their codes intercompatible and with modding in mind. Graphics matter, but they are the easy fix and not the priority.

[shdwlrd]

I find it funny that everyone is complaining and worrying about the littlest details about the screen shots that Intercept is posting. It's akin to saying a cupcake without the sprinkles is horrible and the one with sprinkles is much better. They are both cupcakes and bound to be good. But you haven't gotten the cupcakes yet, so you don't know for sure. So, waiting until you can actually get and taste the cupcakes, you would know if the one with sprinkles is better or not. Or they can both be just as good. Yeah... I have no idea where I'm going with this.

Basically, what I'm saying is; wait until the game is released and then pick it apart. Until then, you just don't know what Intercept is planning on serving up.

Mmm... cupcakes... I guess I should make something to eat now. Enjoy the cupcakes in the spoiler.

Spoiler

 

[Vl3d]

4 hours ago, shdwlrd said:

Until then, you just don't know what Intercept is planning on serving up.

This is a very big problem for potential buyers.

[GoldForest]

13 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

This is a very big problem for potential buyers.

Not really. 

Early Access. Things will improve over time. _{At least they should.}

I wouldn't worry about it until we're getting closer to 1.0 and it hasn't been fixed. 

[Vl3d]

On 1/22/2023 at 10:59 PM, wpetula said:

Vall is a jagged ice world, yet the terrain showcased in the video is surprisingly smooth and flat.

What I'm really interested in is if we can drill or melt down a probe to reach the underground ocean and search for life.

[GoldForest]

1 minute ago, Vl3d said:

What I'm really interested in is if we can drill or melt down a probe to reach the underground ocean and search for life.

More than likely, no. 

The terrain system can't support caves IIRC, and if it can't support caves, it can't support multi-layer crust. 

That and the terrain isn't destructible. You'd need a destructible terrain to 'drill or melt.'

[Vl3d]

Just now, GoldForest said:

More than likely, no. 

The terrain system can't support caves IIRC, and if it can't support caves, it can't support multi-layer crust. 

That and the terrain isn't destructible. You'd need a destructible terrain to 'drill or melt.'

There are technical solutions if there's will. But just imagine how cool it would be to scan the icy moon and discover an actual underground ocean or lake, then design and send a mission to explore it and maybe even find signs of life. That would be an epic gaming moment.

[GoldForest]

16 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

There are technical solutions if there's will. But just imagine how cool it would be to scan the icy moon and discover an actual underground ocean or lake, then design and send a mission to explore it and maybe even find signs of life. That would be an epic gaming moment.

Some modders might be able to do some trickery, or a modder might make a subterranean system for KSP 2. But as far as official support, I don't think we'll see any subterranean stuff as I believe the planet creator can't do it. If it can, it's probably a janky half-baked thing that has a lot of bugs in it and so they're avoiding it. 

It would be kool, yes, but we might not get anything like that, at least for a while. Hell, I imagine it will take modders a long time to come up with something to even make that work.