Orbital Stations? Can't play anymore

[Ginger Ripley]

Hi

i was expecting to build big Space Stations in this game, this is for me the most funny feature of this game...

I set 2 orbital station,

-one little around Kerbin with almost 150-200parts which run fine but without many ways to evolve (2 small docking ports)

-one bigger around the Mun with the purpose of refuelling ships.

I successfully docked 2 mediums fuel tanks on the secondary (bigger), but now i can't dock anything else on it because of excessive lags occuring when approachin at less than 500meters.

TH elittle one as i said, isn't very interessting because of it's little size and without fuel tanks atm.

Since i'm getting fps drop, each time i try to evolve my Space Stations...i just get bored and alt+f4 the game.

So i'm not playing anymore because i can't do anything only travelling and landing with mediums spaceships.

This issue with FPS has to befixed asap.

ps:my computer is not that bad, phenom2 x4, radeon 7850, 4go ram and win7, I wasn't expecting to lag that much while running this game in ultra-+low settings..

ps: yes i klnow it is an alpha, but getting FPS drops so early in this kind of game is not reassuring....

any plan on this to be fixed ? any people getting the same issue?

i see lot of screenshot from ppl who built giant space station in this game, why i can't do the same? does this ppl got a 2013' computer to run this game?

Edited June 3, 2013 by Ginger Ripley

[Scotius]

That's odd. I ran version 0.19 on very similiar rig (GForce 9800 GT instead of Radeon) And it was getting unplayable only around 500-600 parts. Do you use 32 bit version of Win 7? If yes, try switching to 64 bit version. It should help a bit, but don't expect radical improvement - AMD processors have trouble with KSP.

[sadron]

I'm having real trouble understanding what he's trying to say x-x

[Scotius]

Well, i kinda had this same problem with lags, constant crashes and overall suckiness of KSP on Phenom II, 4 giga RAM and Win 7 32 combo. So i can understand OP.

[NeoMorph]

I had the same problems when I had 4gb ram. Now I have 12gb ram I don't have the probs anymore it seems. I AM running an Intel i5 760 at 2.8GHz though with a Geforce GTX460 graphics card though.

[stupid_chris]

KSP is a 32bit game, so it can only use 4Gb of ram, no matter how much you have, and I think it will have other limitations on your CPU. So no matter how powerful your computer is, it will be limited to the 32bit specs. Even if you are running on a 64bit PC. I guess someday they will release a 64bit version of the game, but it probably will take a while. And yes, KSP tests your computer's cooling system and with each update they try to work under the hood to optimize the performances, but it's very limited right now. So we can just wait I guess.

Also, this should be in the development thread.

[NeoMorph]

But then there is running stuff in the background too. Your operating system doesn't run on thin air, utilities such as Fraps for recording your missions etc.

I'm also not sure how it takes into account the mod DLL's.

[Captiva]

The game lagging with a lot of parts Is a well know problem I hope they fix in the future. Mine starts lagging bad at around 700ish parts.

[Blaylock1988]

I also noticed a huge performance drop going from 0.19 to 0.20. I had a HUGE station that I am trying to rebuild in 0.20 and I am only 1/4 of the way there and am already experiencing a larger than normal FPS drop with only 150-ish parts.

[Zaiyd]

Like a poster has said before please keep in mind that this is a 32-bit game that can only run off 4Gb of ram and it only runs off your CPU and only one core at that (which is standard for the majority of games out there). This isnt a limitation of the game more a limitation of the engine to address it would either have to build a game engine from scratch or heavily mod the engine to support more things. For now you just have to me more efficient and mindfull of the limits. If you're having problems with the game between patches .19 and .20 consider doing a clean install. If you're on steam and you only delete your local content it cloud saves both .19 and .20 so you are loading both files.

[Uberick]

I stopped adding to mine around 450 parts. . . it gets FPS in the mid teens, which is the lowest that I'm comfortable having it at. Until the game gets optimized further I'm just gonna stick with building multiple medium sized stations for various roles.

Or maybe I'll go put together a new computer with one of those new haswell cores. . . I wonder how well that'd run this game. . .

[Vade]

I think the problem is with your ram

I have a 2.6 GHz processor and a radeon 7850 but with 16g of ram and mine runs perfectly fine

[Shadow86]

I've started getting very noticeable framerate issues when exceeding 500 parts. I just finished building a space station which sports just over 700 parts, and I believe my framerate in its proximity sinks all the way down to low teens.

RAM has probably little to do with it unless you have 4 gigs or less, given the game can't use more than that, being a 32bit application. The engine being single-core also further strains performance. It's a real shame that, even ten years after their introduction to the mainstream market, multi-core processors and 64bit operating systems aren't fully utilized by many (most?) applications.

I realize the game is far from finished, and that performance optimization is not a top priority right now. I just hope the Unity engine doesn't ultimately put a significant damper on how much KSP can be optimized later.

For the record, I'm running Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit, have a Phenom II X4 955 processor, an AMD Radeon 5850 graphics card, and 8 gigs of RAM.

[Dortmunder]

I also get some pretty low frame rates when at space stations/bases etc.

Running Win 7 Ultimate 64

i7 920 OC to 3.66 Ghz

24 gigs Corsair Vengeance

2x Velociraptors in Raid 0

2x GTX 570 HD SuperClocked

How do you tell if a program is using more than 1 CPU?

I opened the task manager, and I'm looking at this. 3-4 of my cores spike when I launch KSP.

[Krizzen]

I just built my largest station (~350 parts). It's an absolute lagfest around it. I really wish there was a way that when you change a vessel to "Station" that it would somehow simulate the whole thing as one part rather than all 350 wiggling around. I would gladly sacrifice a bit of realism, and even make the station indestructible to gain a ton of frames.

[Boffinbox]

just plough on through the FPS lag and build the station as a showpiece, then create a new station which is just a fuel tank, rcs and a docking port. no "useful" reasons to have a station other than for refuelling, lets be honest.

(screenshot of me station early on)

[Akalaël]

As Boffinbox, I cut through parts to make space stations, and vessels with the less parts possible.

As my frame rate gets low when I hit the 300 parts, I try to stay below, that's all.

It's sad, of course, I sacrifice my pleasure to utility, but I'd rather play with something usefull than having a huge, fantastic and finally useless space station/vessel.

The question is : will this evolve in the future ?

I remember the devs saying that the major graphical improuvement will occurs near the release. Am I correct ?

And another thought : if the game supports one day let's say 1000 pats without lagging, I can see from here the future posts : "I built a mere 2000 parts space station and I get low frame rate, I don't understand !"

Edited June 3, 2013 by Akalaël

[Brotoro]

Part of engineering is learning to live within the limitations imposed by the universe.

[Scotius]

And part of being a human is to stretch those limitations to the breaking point.

[Ginger Ripley]

thks for your feedback

actually i agree with the fact that last update increased lags and fps drop.

i can't dock anymore on

A big solar station with 779 part, i've got a 150part ships waiting to dock but too many lags so it is just sitting there...

A big Mun Orbital Station with 216 parts and i got a 150 part ship waiting to dock but too many lag (wtf only 216 parts?!!!!!)

btw i'm using win7 64b and i always close the software i could have launch in the background

since i got this FPS drop issue with a ridiculous 216parts station...i think this is a big memory leak or anything related to the game devellopment, I add than i successfully launched and landed with some 500-600 parts ships with no lags aat all, and i succeeded to put the 779parts solar station on orbit without fps drop difficult

and sry for my almost not that bad english ^^'

[Ginger Ripley]

i'm feeling that the issue with the fps drops is caused by some graphical issue with the RCS because of this:

As you see, the RCS smoke seems to be broken, i checked it with ultra-low and ultra-high settings, the fps drop is the same and only happenning when i activate the RCS in order to adjust&dock the graphical display remains the same: big blank cloud as seen on screenshot

[Captiva]

I also noticed a huge drop in frame rate when Kerban is in view. I turned the camera away and it ran perfect, flipped it around and it ran like crap, noticed before update, but seems worse now. I have a 64b 12gb Ram 6 core 3 ghz processor...

[SalmonellaDingDong]

Stop writing like you're 7. Capitalization, punctuation, spelling, and general sentence structure all make it possible for people to actually understand what you're trying to say. They will also take you seriously and value your opinion... something that won't happen if u rite li3k dizz all D@YYYY.;'/!!..

AMD processors are inferior to Intel ones in single thread performance. That's why KSP lags. Once we have proper multicore and hyperthreading support it will be a lot better.

Not to mention 64 bit, GPU acceleration, and actual PhsyX support.

Oh and multi screen support. Game on one monitor, map on the other.

Try overclocking, might help a little.

Edited June 4, 2013 by SalmonellaDingDong

[Vanamonde]

Stop writing like you're 7.

Please keep in mind that many people here do not use English as their native language.

[SalmonellaDingDong]

I considered that, but this seems more like a kid too young for the internet rather than someone who has difficulty with the language. It's taught alongside the national language in many countries and is spoken around the world. If I can go to India and have everyone be able to speak English to me then he can write w1thou typ1ng li3k dis nd cnfsing ppl.

If he really just does have trouble speaking it I apologize. But with everyone using English on the internet I don't know how you wouldn't get better over time due to exposure, immersion, and practice.

I seem like an a-hole either way.

space stations are cool!

Edited June 4, 2013 by SalmonellaDingDong