my proposed visual improvements for reentry effect (nate simpson, and whoever is working on the VFX for reentry, please respond)

[mindseyemodels]

ok so first of all i posted this initially on the discord channel under feedback... so we are all aware of what the new reentry effects look like. and how they conform to the shape of the craft and change color depending on (temperature? could that be a factor?) and atmosphere composition

 

now i'm not complaining about how it looks, it looks hella awesome. HOWEVER... my ONLY 2 complaints (really just suggestions at this point) is that it lacks 2 very simple but effective things that would make it look hotter and more violent/dangerous. that being sparks from bits of your ship burning off, and bow shock: the super compressed plasma IN FRONT of the ship which creates a VERY bright hazy glow on the leading surfaces which is honestly even more simple than the sparks.

 

and here is the improved reentry effect i really hope the devs decide to implement (image edited in krita so sparks and bloom were manually applied). the sparks are simple, just get a second and slightly larger layer of the reentry effect but instead of a fire texture it's animated sparks. this would go well with the plasma colors in other atmospheres because the sparks are glowing hot molten metal so they are ALWAYS orange. As for bow shock, that is exceptionally simple. just a 3rd shader layer but very short, only to cover all the surfaces that are exposed to the reentry effect and it is VERY bright. and as such creates A LOT OF BLOOM (i'm talking halo 3 mcc levels of bloom)  so the bloom (or light bleed for those who are not well versed in lighting terms) creates a hazy glow around the part surfaces visible to the effect which gives a crude but effective visual bow shock. if implemented properly this ought to make reentry look far better as well as convey more of the danger of reentry. i mean this improved effect looks like something you would see in a movie and the players deserve nothing less than jaw dropping spectacular

Edited September 22, 2023 by mindseyemodels
updating the idea

[Gargamel]

Moved to suggestions. 

[Pthigrivi]

This is lovely. They're hard at work and may not respond but I know they watch in this subsection. 

[mindseyemodels]

20 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

This is lovely. They're hard at work and may not respond but I know they watch in this subsection. 

thank you. i really hope the technical artist sees this post and decides to try my idea. i mean, a second layer of an effect he made but for sparks, and a bright shader with bloom for bow shock, it should be really easy and shouldn't affect performance very much at all

Edited September 22, 2023 by mindseyemodels

[S_Coriolis]

Gib sparkly plasma

[mindseyemodels]

Someone pointed out that a method that is better in terms of performance is instead of lights to make the Bloom for bowshock. You instead have a third layer of shader for bowshock. And make it REALLY bright as to give Bloom. So you have 3 layers of shader going from inner to outer, You have fire/plasma, sparks, then bow shock. the posts and comments i made earlier have been retroactively edited for this idea

Illustrated here is the concept in 2d. Solid line=fire, dotted line=sparks, and radiant line= bowshock. The length of the radiant lines show brightness and or opacity. The first sketch is supposed to be the current single shader 

Edited September 22, 2023 by mindseyemodels

[Vortygont]

It's well idea for future reentry effects improvements. I think that these additional effects could be reltively easier to be done. Also I want to suggest too effect - the hot smoke trail, for example like in Apollo 13

 

[mindseyemodels]

On 9/24/2023 at 10:28 AM, Vortygont said:

It's well idea for future reentry effects improvements. I think that these additional effects could be reltively easier to be done. Also I want to suggest too effect - the hot smoke trail, for example like in Apollo 13
 

that's a pretty good idea until you get to larger and more intricate crafts then the particle effects start to really get out of hand and i imagine they would really bog down performance

On 9/21/2023 at 4:58 PM, S_Coriolis said:

Gib sparkly plasma

btw i just gotta ask you... since this thread is about reentry effects, can we expect to see videos soon on how they change when first entering the atmosphere or accelerating to orbital speed in atmosphere? like how in ksp1 it would start with a faint glow and a few licks of flame, then before long it's a raging inferno around the ship. or how mach cones would transition to plasma trails.

[mindseyemodels]

@Nate Simpson so now that i figured out you can directly ping people on the forums. what do you think of my idea? i need to hear what the creative director of ksp2 thinks about my idea for visual improvements and it is the best chance i have of hearing what the actual developers think 

[uglyduckling81]

They won't do it. The game already runs at 15FPS on a 4090. They can't afford to implement any more visual effects unless they sort out the horrendous performance of the game first.

[mindseyemodels]

9 hours ago, uglyduckling81 said:

They won't do it. The game already runs at 15FPS on a 4090. They can't afford to implement any more visual effects unless they sort out the horrendous performance of the game first.

huh... that's funny because my rtx 3060TI does really well getting AT LEAST 40fps (60 on average)... it's almost like it runs differently on different machines

Edited October 3, 2023 by mindseyemodels

[Alpha_star]

On 10/3/2023 at 11:26 PM, mindseyemodels said:

huh... that's funny because my rtx 3060TI does really well getting AT LEAST 40fps (60 on average)... it's almost like it runs differently on different machines

Me too. 60+ FPS all the way except for maybe 10% of the time with my 3080 and 5900X. Maybe he is talking about complexed crafts or an earlier version of the game? Anyways, I think the visuals won't be too hard to add since KSP2 already has some neat particle effects. However, a shockwave would likely be harder to make with KSP2's thermal effects system than in KSP2, but someone will eventually mod this. They have also stated that they want the performance to be good, so probably wait for a while (2 or more months) until those neat visual uplifts get implemented.

[mindseyemodels]

On 10/8/2023 at 7:54 AM, Alpha_star said:

 However, a shockwave would likely be harder to make with KSP2's thermal effects system than in KSP2, but someone will eventually mod this.

eh not really. bowshock in reentry is like a plasma equivalent to the water frothing you see in front of a boat when it's moving fast and in this case a simple shader would do the job nicely. a slightly enlarged but MASSIVELY shortened version of the reentry effect but WAY brighter to cause bloom to give it that hazy glow of the supercompressed plasma right at the leading edges of the plasma trail

[Kerbal Koin]

Honestly this looks amazing and I would love to see this implemented and if it is bad for performance then they can just put it as an option in the graphical settings!

[regex]

At the very least adding the sparks effect would add so much for (what I presume would be) so little.

[mindseyemodels]

i noticed @Aaron VFX had liked this post. what an honor. so what do you think? would this idea be feasible? it certainly is beautiful. and quite realistic considering it would bring reentry closer in line with pics like this 

[Kerbart]

Still unrealist. What I'd really want to see are little gremlins trying to tear your ship apart, just as in real life!