KSP2 System Requirements

[Dfthu]

Just now, pandaman said:

I'm running a GTX 1650, and got a bit 'twitchy' on seeing the minimum specs, but I'll give it a whirl and see how it goes.  I'll know in a week if it runs or not.

My PC is a few years old now and I was expecting to need to upgrade to get the 'full effect' anyway and planning/waiting hopefully for another year or so.  I just wasn't expecting that I would be scraping below minimum specs. 

I could upgrade my GC and hope, but that seems a bit pointless given the age of my PC.

I'm in the same boat. I originally got my PC as prebuilt over 4 years ago now. To be fair I was kinda dumb about PCs still and it was on a deep discount. So, it only had a Ryzen 2400G and a GTX 1050. I've already upgraded the RAM (8 to 16GB), GPU (GTX 1050 to a GTX 1660 super), and a whacked out PSU from Best Buy that I'm frankly surprised hasn't blown up yet. Only compounded by the fact I was gifted a new 1080p 144hz monitor. My 1660 super can just barley run Ultra 60 FPS, let alone 144FPS. Being a prebuilt I've done pretty much everything I could to upgrade it. I was hoping to last a little longer with my current system, but this might just push me over the edge. Still I can't wait to buy KSP 2 day 1 and try it out.

[LHACK4142]

4 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

This is probably enabled only on high settings.

Then why haven't we seen this kind of detail in months? And why can I get comparable detail at a solid 30fps in many other games?

[Vegatoxi]

13 minutes ago, LHACK4142 said:

I gotta say...

I know, I know, KSP2 is a modern game for modern computers, and it'll get optimized later on, but this really gave my hype a gut punch. I was hyped to finally, after years of memory leaks, kraken attacks, and 3 minute reverts, be able to do all the awesome missions I had planned out but gave up on because of said problems. However, this prospect appears to be entirely gone. And what the heck is KSP2 using all that power for?? If I can get this:

on my GTX 1650, why will we get this:

on a fricken RTX 2060??

And whatever happened to this?

How dare you?!

[GoldForest]

15 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

True. I even posted in the Marketing thread that I understand now why there was so little fanfare. Guess marketing was really pointless.. EA really is for Early Adopters.

Told you marketing it right now would kill KSP 2. And this just confirms it. 

Most people, imo, don't look at the specs and go, "Oh, I'm below the minimum specs... I should try it out just to see if I can run it decently."
Most people go, imo, "Let's see the min specs... oh... oh no... I can't run it. " and then go to another game that they can run.

Most people, imo, don't understand that min specs are a guideline, not a rule. 

6 minutes ago, LHACK4142 said:

Then why haven't we seen this kind of detail in months? And why can I get comparable detail at a solid 30fps in many other games?

Because the boys and girls who texture/model the planets haven't been giving screenshots to the social team. 

Most of what we've seen in the last 4 months has been low settings screenshots from the team working on EA release build. 

Edited February 18, 2023 by GoldForest

[TheKrakenHerder]

5 hours ago, GoldForest said:

I've been seeing people posting expectations so high for KSP 2 and the more realistic/conservative among us trying to tell them "Temper your expectations." only for them to push back and ignore us. And now reality is hitting them, and it's hitting hard, and they're complaining about their own mistakes. All I can say is...

Here's the thing: I was one of those realistic/conservative people. 
I also expected to be able to play the game sometime in the next few years.
The GPU requirements make no sense, considering the graphics upgrades are essentially just KSP1+EVE+Scatterer+Parallax. 

We, as a community, were completely blinded by all these shiny teasers they showed us. We thought "WOW!" and asked questions like "Hmm, I wonder when interstellar travel will come out", when what we really should've been thinking was "Hey, how come at that preview event, they were all using top-of-the-line PCs?" and "Hey, how come that really high-end PC company advertised their product as "what's required to run KSP2"?" and "Hey, how come all those teasers have really bad framerates. Something isn't right here..." 

My friends, I wish you luck in KSP2. I hope that someday I can join you. 
-TheKrakenHerder

[GoldForest]

1 minute ago, TheKrakenHerder said:

Here's the thing: I was one of those realistic/conservative people. 
I also expected to be able to play the game sometime in the next few years.
The GPU requirements make no sense, considering the graphics upgrades are essentially just KSP1+EVE+Scatterer+Parallax. 

We, as a community, were completely blinded by all these shiny teasers they showed us. We thought "WOW!" and asked questions like "Hmm, I wonder when interstellar travel will come out", when what we really should've been thinking was "Hey, how come at that preview event, they were all using top-of-the-line PCs?" and "Hey, how come that really high-end PC company advertised their product as "what's required to run KSP2"?" and "Hey, how come all those teasers have really bad framerates. Something isn't right here..." 

My friends, I wish you luck in KSP2. I hope that someday I can join you. 
-TheKrakenHerder

The PC's at the insider event were no indication that we should have suspected something wrong. I mean, if you setup a big grand event, would you give your guests a mediocure experience or a "Wow!" experience? Intercept went for wow. If the specs call for 3080s, why did they have 4090s? The insider event was to give their guest the best experience possible. 

Also, it's not that bad. Recommended specs and min specs are not the "If you don't have this, it won't run" that a lot of people take it for. KSP 2 will work on 900 and even 700 series GPUs, just don't expect all the prettiness that the higher end users will enjoy. 

[whatsEJstandfor]

I had assumed my 5700 would be up to the task of playing on an ultrawide, but it's looking like that's probably not the case.

I'll be really interested to see what kind of graphical optimizations take place during EA because boy howdy, targeting a 2000-series card as a minimum spec is pretty out to lunch. Yes, this game is no doubt huge and ambitious. And yes, that card is now 2 generations behind. But it's also... only two generations behind. I hate to say it, but I'm baffled. I'm optimistic, but just baffled.

[m4ti140]

9 hours ago, Kerbart said:

Let's see, we've been promised:

• Large vessels with amazing detailing
• Better physics with thrust under timewarp
• Micrometer precision at interstellar travel
• Transparent cockpits with animated Kerbals inside
• Clouds! Water! Trees!

And everyone seriously thought this all came for free?!

Seriously, y'all need a reality check. I'm just happy my local PC Seller has hardware meeting requirements for less than $1000, not as bad as I thought it would be. But I'll let others (that means, yes, YOU who are reading this) do the dirty work of finding out what works and what doesn't before I spend a dime on that.

Ok, wasn't going to even comment but I find people poor shaming others over an educational game aimed at kids to be extremely offensive behaviour.

The reason KSP 1 looks the way it does is not because the engine can't handle it (as evidenced by mods, which arguably make the game look prettier than what we've seen of KSP2 so far at lower hardware cost, despite alleged poor optimization) but because it deliberately never received significant graphics upgrades to make it as accessible as possible. The truth is, if you make enough money to be able to afford to shell out $1000 (realistically it's going to be $2000 especially outside of US) for a gaming PC then you're literally not the target audience for Kerbal Space Program. And you're a part of an extreme nieche. KSP is an educational game. It's supposed to make kids interested in aeronautics and spaceflight. The school license exists for a reason. And that reason is gone in KSP2. KSP1 ran fine on school computers, do you expect schools to shell out for RTX 2060s to run KSP2? Or do you maybe expect kids to ask their parents for $2000 PCs to play KSP2, especially outside of the US again. By the time these kids will be able to afford a PC, they will probably have lost all interest in spaceflight, not to mention any opportunity they could have had for education towards aerospace engineering. You are disconnected from the reality 99% of people live in if you think this is fine. Overwhelming majority of people this game is aimed at will probably never be able to play it. KSP2 has one of the highest graphics requirements on Steam right now when per its mission it should be aiming at the exact opposite.

I do not live in the US and I literally can't afford a PC that can run this game with my salary, so for me it's end of the road until PCs become more affordable. And same applies to the majority of existing KSP users.

Edited February 18, 2023 by m4ti140

[Pulstar]

I have a GTX 1660 and I'm hoping I'll get at least an old school v0.18 slideshow heavy launch experience out of it with tolerable fps in orbit once lifter stages are dropped at high-ish part counts (I also honestly forgot just how good/bad the PC I had back then was). My card is not that much worse than a RTX 2060, and if the target for minimum was 60 fps then an expected 40 fps on my card seems decent, if the target is 30 then 20 is still playable at least for me. Single digit fps during launch I already lived through once, it will make me feel like when I was younger I guess.

On one hand I do want to complain we should have gotten the fps target for minimum and benchmark scenario information explained (is this during launch, what part count?) in addition to the resolution, but on the other I guess it's just a week away anyway to release so rather than pester Intercept with a billion clarifications on performance it seems better to just wait for buyers to post impressions on performance.  I would wait a week before grabbing the pitchforks first, doubt the private division testers have every possible configuration of potato to determine the exact minimum specs

That and I anyway planned to upgrade this year, and plan B was to go ahead with it a few months earlier if KSP 2 doesn't run at all on my desktop due to some hard requirement.

 

 

 

Edited February 18, 2023 by Pulstar

[sjwt]

I recall the glory days of KSP1, launching giant space stations in one go well before docking..
Running an high end PC, with a CPU Chosen specificly for higher cycles and not cores jsut for KSP, and counting my FPM, Fames Per Minuite. 

 

 

[Elthy]

The required specs are so strange...

The mentioned Athlon is an extremly weak CPU, its from the times before Ryzen and way slower than the i5 6400. But to low minimum specs arent much of an issue, to high ones are:

An 2060/5600XT as "minimum" is just crazy. It would be justified for a ultra shiny "the next Crysis" AAA-game, but not for a game with allready outdated graphics, where most of the screen is usually an empty skybox. When comparing the screenshots to other games i would expect something like an 1050ti as minimum, of less...

[magnemoe]

13 hours ago, Kerbart said:

Does it matter if they release them three months in advance? You can't play the game anyway until it's released.

If you plan on buying hardware for the game, based on specs, that'd be spectacular unwise. I'd always recommend to see what the feedback from actual gameplay is before dropping coin. What does "minimum" really mean? 300×200 @ 5FPS? And if you want to go a little bit above that, should you put your money in clock speed or a better GPU? The specs won't tell you, real world experience will.

Agree, these specifications is for build colonies and interstellar ships, still it must render the ground anyway. I'm on an wait now, first how the gameplay is and then how it perform on below low specification systems. 
I then has to decide that to buy, most realistic a 3080 or jump to a 4080

[TheKrakenHerder]

30 minutes ago, m4ti140 said:

Ok, wasn't going to even comment but I find people poor shaming others over an educational game aimed at kids to be extremely offensive behaviour.

The reason KSP 1 looks the way it does is not because the engine can't handle it (as evidenced by mods, which arguably make the game look prettier than what we've seen of KSP2 so far at lower hardware cost, despite alleged poor optimization) but because it deliberately never received significant graphics upgrades to make it as accessible as possible. The truth is, if you make enough money to be able to afford to shell out $1000 (realistically it's going to be $2000 especially outside of US) for a gaming PC then you're literally not the target audience for Kerbal Space Program. And you're a part of an extreme nieche. KSP is an educational game. It's supposed to make kids interested in aeronautics and spaceflight. The school license exists for a reason. And that reason is gone in KSP2. KSP1 ran fine on school computers, do you expect schools to shell out for RTX 2060s to run KSP2? Or do you maybe expect kids to ask their parents for $2000 PCs to play KSP2, especially outside of the US again. By the time these kids will be able to afford a PC, they will probably have lost all interest in spaceflight, not to mention any opportunity they could have had for education towards aerospace engineering. You are disconnected from the reality 99% of people live in if you think this is fine. Overwhelming majority of people this game is aimed at will probably never be able to play it. KSP2 has one of the highest graphics requirements on Steam right now when per its mission it should be aiming at the exact opposite.

I do not live in the US and I literally can't afford a PC that can run this game with my salary, so for me it's end of the road until PCs become more affordable. And same applies to the majority of existing KSP users.

This, all of this. All these people gatekeeping and saying "JUST UPGRADE!!!!" are being incredibly offensive.

[PixelDude]

Wow, this is really making waves. I'm split, on the one hand I can understand the displeasure, but at the same time I can't either.

Yes, it feels like the system requirements for good quality are high, if not very high. That is a bit surprising, but you also have to be honest with yourself. For weeks, the screenshots have been scolded for their "poor quality". I think if you want contemporary graphics, then you have to accept higher requirements, unfortunately. Especially since, and this was also mentioned in the announcement, optimizations are also being worked on as development progresses.

Hey, the game comes as EA and gefühglt 90% expect the finished product, which is optimized and polished. I find the policy on the part of the developers honest, certainly this process was not desired from the beginning, but they say you get a finished framework on the 24th, we see how it goes and then go further.
Who refuses this, the MUST not buy, can gladly wait 1-2 months and see how it goes. You are free in your decision. Buy and take "problems" in purchase, wait and beruteilt the situation. Actually quite simple..just not in our world today. Shades of gray no longer exist, only deepest black or bright white, everything else is not accepted or talked to death. Very sad...

[magnemoe]

11 hours ago, snkiz said:

is above the recommended, witch is a 3070. No one in their right mind sets recommended spec, as new 80 class card. Setting a 2060 as the min was just stupid, there are old faster cards that would have lessened the blow. The 20 series was a turning point in GPU, a 75% markup. 

Some posted this https://imgur.com/ss74z8H they could just as well used the 1080

  

 

[Alexoff]

8 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

Can't wait to not hear that when people get their hands on the game and see that no matter how bad development has been going, it will be a million times better than the unstable poorly-planned janky Sibelius-grade bug-overrun heap of smeggy spaghetti we've been trying to mod into something playable for the past ten years. Just to avoid repeating myself, I will quote myself, again. (sorry Kerbart, for overrunning your notifications panel, but it needs saying - however, I'm not rephrasing myself for every Joe that undermines KSP 2 and puts KSP 1 on a pedestal). 

Have you already played KSP2? Is the game stable there? No bugs? Is it well optimized?

1 hour ago, Elthy said:

The mentioned Athlon is an extremly weak CPU, its from the times before Ryzen and way slower than the i5 6400.

Because the processor calculates only your crafts. If you made a craft from three parts, then such a processor is enough. And if you have a big rocket, then it's your problems, get used to low fps on any system.

[Elthy]

10 minutes ago, Alexoff said:

Because the processor calculates only your crafts. If you made a craft from three parts, then such a processor is enough. And if you have a big rocket, then it's your problems, get used to low fps on any system.

Not realy, its responsible for a lot of things. Physics are usually the limiting factor in KSP due to running on a single thread, but its also doing lots of work in graphics (feeding the GPU with what do do), sound, backgroud simulation. But ive mainly mentioned it because it doesnt fit in with the other mentioned hardware, the other three boxes have comparatable pairings.

[Alexoff]

Just now, Elthy said:

Physics are usually the limiting factor in KSP due to running on a single thread, but its also doing lots of work in graphics (feeding the GPU with what do do), sound, backgroud simulation.

Apparently in KSP2 these things will not strain the processor much. There are no bases, so there is no need to calculate something behind the scenes.

[Kerbin Launch Coalition]

5 minutes ago, Alexoff said:

Apparently in KSP2 these things will not strain the processor much. There are no bases, so there is no need to calculate something behind the scenes.

The entire game is a 'calculate behind the scenes' sorta game. The one thing I see with these requirements is that *maybe* some or a lot of that physics simulation stuff has been off-loaded to the GPU instead of the CPU as with the previous game. The main limiting factor to the original Kerbal Space Program was the single core, physics heavy setup, that's why the more parts (i.e the more physics stuff to do with interactions between the parts) the slower the game ran. That and that sudden jump in framerate that is common when leaving the atmosphere, as aerodynamic physics (albeit wooden as hell) are no longer a factor.

[TheKrakenHerder]

Honestly, I think we're all probably gonna be okay. Even if the system requirements don't decrease over EA, I suspect that they're just hugely overinflated so the devs can cover all their bases.

[Grenartia]

2 hours ago, GoldForest said:

The PC's at the insider event were no indication that we should have suspected something wrong. I mean, if you setup a big grand event, would you give your guests a mediocure experience or a "Wow!" experience? Intercept went for wow. If the specs call for 3080s, why did they have 4090s? The insider event was to give their guest the best experience possible. 

Also, it's not that bad. Recommended specs and min specs are not the "If you don't have this, it won't run" that a lot of people take it for. KSP 2 will work on 900 and even 700 series GPUs, just don't expect all the prettiness that the higher end users will enjoy. 

Honestly, I never *expected* my gameplay experience to look as flashy as it does in the teasers. I've been playing OG KSP on my 4th gen i5 for 7 years. Heavily modded, even (just without visual mods). It looked just fine, even on integrated graphics. I only just recently got a 1050 TI. I don't need or want to see every individual blade of grass at the KSC blowing in the wind, even at 1080p. As long as I can tell parts apart, and can tell who is Val and who is Jeb, and can tell whether my Ap is 60km or 88km, I don't care about graphics. What I do care about is better (and more accurate) physics performance, and new and improved features. Anything else is a luxury I can do without.  

[Kerbin Launch Coalition]

Just now, Grenartia said:

Honestly, I never *expected* my gameplay experience to look as flashy as it does in the teasers. I've been playing OG KSP on my 4th gen i5 for 7 years. Heavily modded, even (just without visual mods). It looked just fine, even on integrated graphics. I only just recently got a 1050 TI. I don't need or want to see every individual blade of grass at the KSC blowing in the wind, even at 1080p. As long as I can tell parts apart, and can tell who is Val and who is Jeb, and can tell whether my Ap is 60km or 88km, I don't care about graphics. What I do care about is better (and more accurate) physics performance, and new and improved features. Anything else is a luxury I can do without.  

As 'flashy' as the teasers? We must be looking at different games here.

[GoldForest]

Just now, Grenartia said:

Honestly, I never *expected* my gameplay experience to look as flashy as it does in the teasers. I've been playing OG KSP on my 4th gen i5 for 7 years. Heavily modded, even (just without visual mods). It looked just fine, even on integrated graphics. I only just recently got a 1050 TI. I don't need or want to see every individual blade of grass at the KSC blowing in the wind, even at 1080p. As long as I can tell parts apart, and can tell who is Val and who is Jeb, and can tell whether my Ap is 60km or 88km, I don't care about graphics. What I do care about is better (and more accurate) physics performance, and new and improved features. Anything else is a luxury I can do without.  

No news on physics as of right now. We don't know if they went PhyX or Havok. CPU physics or GPU physics.

[Nazalassa]

Are the devs trying to kill their game, or what? If they are trying to expand their playerbase... I think their playerbase will instead shrink. Even if these requirements are a joke, I think the bare minimum will still be way too high for most people, including current KSP players.

I don't know if I'm buying it or not. Probably not, except if it turns out that these requirements are really overestimated (by a factor of at least 2).

 

Sorry.

[Kerbin Launch Coalition]

Just now, GoldForest said:

No news on physics as of right now. We don't know if they went PhyX or Havok. CPU physics or GPU physics.

Even though nothing has been said, there has to be some GPU based physics to be requiring those cards, with the visuals we've seen. Don't get me wrong it looks good, a definite step up from Kerbal Space Program but I don't know how that translates into requiring *that* much more hardware for rendering. If the physics have been off-loaded to the GPU it certainly serves to explain the quite dramatic jump from minimum to recommend, physics plus graphical bells and whistles. Maybe?

Just now, Nazalassa said:

Are the devs trying to kill their game, or what? If they are trying to expand their playerbase... I think their playerbase will instead shrink. Even if these requirements are a joke, I think the bare minimum will still be way too high for most people, including current KSP players.

I don't know if I'm buying it or not. Probably not, except if it turns out that these requirements are really overestimated (by a factor of at least 2).

 

Sorry.

There's definitely a lot of really 'confused' people over on the Facebook and Twitter KSP communities. That said, I'm still stoked for the release and can't wait to see what's what. I'm somewhere between minimum and recommended (though I have a better processor and RAM) so I'm expecting it'll run well enough. That said it's still essentially an alpha build so I'm fully prepared for bugs, random unexpected slowdowns and what not. All part of being an Early Access participator.