[1.0.0] Firefly - Revamped Atmospheric Effects

[mccdtk]

I'm having some visual conflicts with one of the other mods I have (https://pastebin.com/K9082jrd)

Like a black surface that obstructs things.
Also see-through rocket parts

[lajoswinkler]

There are some things I hope to see polished in the future. I see how the bow shock is made - it's a copy of the first surface encountering the atmosphere. That is not only unrealistic, but inefficient because it renders the whole thing again, no matter how complicated it is. When you try that with a Kerbal, and you are up close to it, its many surfaces drop the framerate of beefier computers, too. If there is a hemisphere with textured or small collision details on it, bow shock will have those details. So it would be easier for the system, and more realistic, to render just a hemisphere. Bow shocks are like simplified surfaces in real life.

I saw no brightness setting and reentries are very bright events. We all saw how cameras with automatic exposures fared during Starship reentries - background, daylit Earth turns into black as the camera tries to correctly expose the plasma. Just setting the plasma brightness higher at peak heating (which is different from peak temperature!), would be nice.

All in all, I'm keeping this mod. Bye, bye, Reentry Particle Effect (Renewed), hello, Firefly.

[DareMightyThingsJPL]

3 hours ago, Stratickus said:

Where is this setting located? I looked and couldn't find it.

Cheers,

Should be in the graphics area of when you first open settings, you may need to scroll down.

[heakhaek]

New visuals mod, aight time to cross my fingers and pray the game doesn't break everything.

[Rocket-Propelled Cat]

6 hours ago, Stratickus said:

Where is this setting located? I looked and couldn't find it.

Cheers,

Is the "Aerodynamic FX" slider, move it all to the left ("minimal")

[Andrewgeorgeea]

On 2/6/2025 at 11:20 PM, MirageDev said:

Firefly [1.0.0]

for KSP 1.12.x

Image by Truthful

Hello! For the past few months, me and @mindseyemodels have been working on Firefly, a complete replacement for KSP's reentry and aerodynamic effects, and this is the post for it.

This mod, as said above, completely replaces the stock effects with it's own system. It features:

• A smoother double-layered plasma trail
• Bowshock in front of the ship
• New particle effects
• In-game effect editor
• Many configuration options

Firefly can have a minor FPS impact, but in some cases it can have the same performance or better than stock. It's mostly on the GPU, due to the amount of triangles generated every frame for the trail.

Enjoy!

 

Media

  Reveal hidden contents

Image by Kuiper_Belt

Image by Kuiper_Belt

Image by Kuiper_Belt

Image by MirageDev

 

Review video by PicoSpace Industries:
https://youtu.be/jSn1UNigxCc

 

See the entire album

 

Wiki

The mod has a wiki! Check it out here.

 

Compatibility

Firefly currently has full compatibility with the entire stock system, RSS and KSRSS. If you make configs for a planet pack and want them bundled with Firefly, then please let me know!

If a planet/moon is unconfigured, then the mod will default to the same config as Kerbin.

 

Credits

The mod's icon and particle sprites were created by @mindseyemodels, who has also made incredible concept arts for the mod and helped shape it the way it is now. The effects would definitely not look as good as they do now without him.

Massive thanks to @JonnyOThan for making some really awesome optimizations and fixes to the mod's plugin, and other support.

The core shader was based on Leah Lindner's paper describing a method of creating promising reentry VFX. Without the paper, this mod would definitely not be possible.

Massive thanks to all the people mentioned above, as well as everyone from the early testing groups, and all the Patrons - without you the mod would probably be much different than it is now, or wouldn't exist at all

 

Licensing

This mod and it's source is licensed under GPL 3.0.

All model and texture assets (.mu, .png, .dds etc.) are All Rights Reserved.

 

Dependencies

This mod's only required dependency is ModuleManager.

It is NOT bundled with the mod, which means that you will have to install it yourself, if you aren't using CKAN.

 

Downloads

We highly recommend installing the mod with CKAN, but here are the downloads if you're installing manually:

1. SpaceDock

2. GitHub

This is a great mod! But I think there might be an issue with RSS+RO. For example, normally when the reentry speed is above 7500m/s, the reentry effects should appear at an altitude of around 100km, but the plasma effect doesn't start until 68km. I wonder if this is a mix-up between the stock and RSS configurations? I remember that in the stock environment, the reentry effects start appearing after 68km. I’d like to know if this is a bug, and if not, how can I fix it? If it is a bug, how can I solve it?

[Grumpy_Bud]

9 hours ago, jebycheek said:

This is  incredible！

Same PFP? Thats cool, I remember taking that screenshot when the trailer first came out. Too bad it ultimately led to failure.

[Errol]

On 2/6/2025 at 12:22 PM, modus said:

I suppose Reentry Particle Effect becomes obsolete now?

 

On 2/6/2025 at 12:33 PM, mindseyemodels said:

yeah i suppose. it was showing it's age anyways and was in dire need of an upgrade

 

Honestly, I would really miss the long glowing tails that you can see from really far away that it provides. I did try this mod alone first, and I realize that it does create some plasma/tails smoke effects, but those bright glowing tails of plasma are a big deal to me. I tested both mods together with just a basic mk1 pod from LKO and besides the smoke tail from this mod being almost completely invisible inside the renetry particle effect mod, they both seemed to run fine together with no apparent conflicts.

[modus]

3 hours ago, Errol said:

 

 

Honestly, I would really miss the long glowing tails that you can see from really far away that it provides. I did try this mod alone first, and I realize that it does create some plasma/tails smoke effects, but those bright glowing tails of plasma are a big deal to me. I tested both mods together with just a basic mk1 pod from LKO and besides the smoke tail from this mod being almost completely invisible inside the renetry particle effect mod, they both seemed to run fine together with no apparent conflicts.

Guess I'll have to try both with and without

[Oreo Kamoreo]

I'm having an issue where none of the atmospheric effects are showing up. The parts on my crafts seem to glow, but that is the only change. I've installed using CKAN, and even when removing all other mods, it still hasn't changed anything.

[mark7]

23 hours ago, JonnyOThan said:

Try turning off temporal antialiasing in scatterer and tufx.

You’re on a fairly old scatterer version as well,  And somehow you have TSSafetyNet and TweakScale /L.

Update my scatterer to the latest version does do the trick, thx!

[Grenartia]

On 2/6/2025 at 9:20 AM, MirageDev said:

in some cases it can have the same performance or better than stock.

Out of curiosity, what cases would they be?

[jimmymcgoochie]

I can't find this mod on CKAN for some reason, am I missing something?

[Grenartia]

3 minutes ago, jimmymcgoochie said:

I can't find this mod on CKAN for some reason, am I missing something?

Try refreshing it?

[ColdJ]

21 minutes ago, jimmymcgoochie said:

I can't find this mod on CKAN for some reason, am I missing something?

There are also links for Spacedock and Github on the first page. Try installing manually, you may find that it is easier than you realise.

[TheSky4]

Amazing!

[Marsflugzeug]

i'm absolutely loving this! Sadly i'm a linux guy and have to use Proton to play KSP as other visual mods (parallax) don't run (without glitches) on the native linux client.

 

 

So, any idea how to workaround or fix the glitch in lower atmosphere on Linux/Proton yet? I tried but didn't find any posibility to affect the  effect state other then  in the effect editor... this might be one dirty fix...

 

BTW, it's working fine in upper atmosphere...

 

[JonnyOThan]

2 hours ago, jimmymcgoochie said:

I can't find this mod on CKAN for some reason, am I missing something?

If you're using a really old version of CKAN, it won't be visible.  Try updating to the latest.

[jimmymcgoochie]

4 hours ago, JonnyOThan said:

If you're using a really old version of CKAN, it won't be visible.  Try updating to the latest.

How odd, my CKAN was on 1.33.2 and when I updated it to 1.35.2 there Firefly was, along with a load of updates to other mods that had just never been picked up. Weird… 

[Rakete]

On 2/6/2025 at 4:20 PM, MirageDev said:

If a planet/moon is unconfigured, then the mod will default to the same config as Kerbin.

Just a short question:

I have some old planetpack installed (REX)... How does firefly behave if the planets are unconfigured: Will Firefly obey, that most planets don't have an atmosphere? Do i have to configure every planet in the mod, or is it sufficient to have a look at the ones with atmospheres and configure them, due to the ones without atmospheres are ignored by firefly automatically? 

[modus]

2 hours ago, Rakete said:

Just a short question:

I have some old planetpack installed (REX)... How does firefly behave if the planets are unconfigured: Will Firefly obey, that most planets don't have an atmosphere? Do i have to configure every planet in the mod, or is it sufficient to have a look at the ones with atmospheres and configure them, due to the ones without atmospheres are ignored by firefly automatically? 

From the OP: If a planet/moon is unconfigured, then the mod will default to the same config as Kerbin.

[Infinite Aerospace]

This mod is *ridiculous* by the way, as Matt Lowne said it's one of those moments that come around where someone develops a mod that really changes something so big. Congratulations on the release, there's been a lot of really well deserved praise.