How long before a performance increase?

[Daisy Blossom]

Theres always someone on this forum telling you how he gets "perfectly fine" performance on his toaster. The thing is: Some people consider five minute loading times and three fps on maximum deltaT with bare minimum details as perfectly fine.

This. The fact of the matter is if I build a space station (say, 300 parts) and then bring my interplanetary cruiser complete with attached lander (say, 300 parts) up to dock with it for a fuel transfer, the docking turns into a slideshow and is simply not an enjoyable experience even with a very speedy CPU.

I just want squad to acknowledge this as an issue they're seriously looking into because for me it's far more important than resources/campaign/more parts.

[Jason_25]

Theres always someone on this forum telling you how he gets "perfectly fine" performance on his toaster. The thing is: Some people consider five minute loading times and three fps on maximum deltaT with bare minimum details as perfectly fine.

Even worse, these same people have no skill or ambition at building craft so their 20 part design that barely makes it to orbit is perfectly fine.

[ThePyrateCaptain]

Real rocket scientists wouldn't use ancient technology when they have modern tech available. That's what Unity is compared to some other engines. Ancient tech.

Lol! Ok ok, assuming we are the only species in the universe, our tech is primitive. Chemical rocket propulsion? What a backwards group of apes!

[ThePyrateCaptain]

Theres always someone on this forum telling you how he gets "perfectly fine" performance on his toaster. The thing is: Some people consider five minute loading times and three fps on maximum deltaT with bare minimum details as perfectly fine.

Hey man, I run it at 120fps, on my seiko digital watch!

[Fel]

Sorry about derailing it again (thread is pointless anyway), but regarding fps topic I remember some pictures, there also was online test but I forget where it was .

http://i.minus.com/iKuvI6jaWm9cy.gif(I decide to not overload page by big gifs)

http://i.minus.com/iRShSUFLPSeAa.gif

[non working spoiler]One of pictures at pair 30 fps and another 60 (intended to be by design - I don't know how well browsers maintain framerate of gifs, have different frame rate anyway) can you distinguish where which one?[/non working spoiler]

Obviously they're both the same and just intended to get people to "claim" there is a difference.

[Clamps]

This is actually wrong as well Unity has supported multi-core CPU's for awhile as has KSP (if you check your release notes).

So why does it still only do physics processing on a single core?

If it supported it properly, it wouldn't lag so bad.

Stop saying it supports multicore. It obviously doesn't if my i7 lags while playing.

[zzz]

they're both the same and just intended to get people to "claim" there is a difference..

Or to "claim" there is no difference. It will work in both way.

But if people just imagine a difference, and pictures is the same - all will say which one where differently. (Do you really didn't notice difference?)

[Deadweasel]

You want to keep a decent framerate on this game? Play it as it was originally designed to be played first, then comment if you feel there's something more that needs the devs' attention.

How far have you extended the vanilla install?

• Unload the mods and extra parts and try again.
  
• The devs can't be expected to accommodate the additional demands that mods might place on your particular system. Mechjeb makes the whole game tangibly slower for me when I'm flying a large ship, so I don't install it, and I generally have fun with even multi-hundred-part ships.
  

How many *other* processes are running on your computer at the same time?

• Close uTorrent
  
• Alternatively, close Vuze/Auzureus (HUGE memory-hogging wastes of code for simple download clients)
  
• Close Winamp/Windows Media Player/Foobar2000/wtf ever media player you favor
  
• Close EVERY freaking add-on, theme app and other sundry running process you've installed (aside from anti-virus and necessary services of course) on top of the OS
  

Which OS are you running?

• Windows/Mac: good as long as your hardware isn't sweating before the game is even running. Windows Vista/7/8 is NOT appropriate for a P4/AthlonXP/Celeron-D, and OSX is NOT appropriate for PowerPC. The OS devs are building for the largest common current and future hardware, NOT a system that has a "Built for Windows XP" sticker on it. Though there are a few rare exceptions, generally you can't just keep upgrading the OS over the years without eventually upgrading the hardware too.
  
• Linux: Sorry, too many variables here. No central dev team working from a locked spec means every single little element, from the kernel itself to the lowliest insignificant config file, can be influenced by anybody's individual preferences. Your install could be the best possible config for that distro and still suffer from a bug in a driver or procedure call somewhere. Or you could be running Ubuntu, in which case, my condolences.
  

What hardware are you using?

• Time to chuck that old Dell Dimension XPS/Compaq Presario/Gateway2000. Pentium-D was the bee's knees... six years ago, when WoW players were spouting these same gripes about a "measly" 40fps in massive battles.
  
• For the love of Jeb, can you save for a week or two and install a bit more than the 1 or 2GB your machine came with when you bought it? If your machine can't handle more than 2GB, then it was never designed to run games like KSP and can't be made to do so fluidly, no matter how many tantrums you throw. A 2GB limit on the motherboard is an indicator of age or intentional power limitation for basic purposes like web surfing and navigating corporate spreadsheets.
  
• Intel integrated video = shattered dreams and dead unicorns. Sorry, that laptop was not meant to be used as a gaming rig, and KSP is a far cry from Farmville and Bejeweled 2.
  

Please note, none of these were meant to single anybody out, they were meant solely as tongue-in-cheek suggestions to point out various factors that *could* be responsible for perceived poor performance.

In all seriousness, no mention is ever made in the OP about installed mods or even current hardware config, so all this discussion could very well have been sprung from some kid running a hand-me-down eMachine on Debian Sarge, for all we know.

Edited June 26, 2013 by Deadweasel

[marach]

So why does it still only do physics processing on a single core?

If it supported it properly, it wouldn't lag so bad.

Stop saying it supports multicore. It obviously doesn't if my i7 lags while playing.

Because of a limitation in PHYSX not of the game itself.

PhysX is an ass of a physics engine, unfortunately it's cheap and easy to put into a game engine (hell NV will even pay you to put it in and infact DID pay for it to be in Unity). Now if you switch out physX for something like Bullet or Havok you see instant performance increases (both of these are properly optimized and threaded). On top of that Unity still uses PhysX 2.something from an era when it still used unoptimised instruction types (X87 instead of SSE etc) and is single threaded (can be made multithreaded but you have to pay for a source licence to do so which is rather expensive).

Now add all those together and KSP could be the most heavily threaded program you've ever seen and it would STILL lag like hell due to the physics being stuck as a single thread. Now teams out there HAVE integrated Bullet into Unity infact here watch this.

Now first note the sturdiness of the structure using bullet (look no more wobble!) next note the speed it's running at actually here check the speed of this...

thats 500 objects in freefall using bullet.

Now I know this is a small dev team but looking at all the improvements it brings, I think you'll agree, they need to spend the time and move over to a new physics engine. Theres even a good chance the Rawbots team will share their wrapper with them saving them a LOT of coding time.

[earth]

bullets wrappers for unity can be bought with bullet itself!

[ASnogarD]

Physics are a bit of a laugh on this game...

Rockets wobble like a stack of saucers recently washed, or dangle like a baby's hanging toy.

Make no sense when you try apply logic to strengthen up areas... I try brace up some rocket stacks and the thing pulls the rocket apart, dont brace it and it bounces like crazy but the ship flies... dont try fob this off with flexibility vs rigid structures, shearing and twist factors, the physic simulations are a mess.

Not Squads fault though, its the limited tools they have at their disposal... not to mention that modding has accelerated the growth of the game feature wise.

Still annoying as hell when one time the ship flies, then the very next time it blows up on the pad... and why the [ beep bleeeep beep beeeeep bleeeeeeep ] do the bloody things spin so much. Finally got the power right, yet on a perfectly symmetrical ship there is uncontrollable spinning... canards ? Dont work. SAS on individual stages + ASAS on the main control stage ? Dont make a difference. More RCS on the outside stages ? No good.

[zzz]

I begin to think these people don't need joints physics at all. Just leave colliders and destroy part on collision beyond treshold. All will be allways straight "like real rockets" and all happy.

[Stealth2668]

I would imagine the game got a lot bigger than Squad had originally planned, and got caught up trying to add features to keep the fanbase happy but now is near or actually beyond what the engine is capable of providing.

Then what did they originally plan? Are we not suppose to build space stations with rockets big enough to carry them into space and even orbits around other planets? What's the point of the game then? They made a mistake on choosing an outdated engine that only supports 1 core. This isn't 2002...

[zzz]

Then what did they originally plan? What's the point of the game then?

To land at the Mun, I suppose.

Edited June 26, 2013 by zzz

[comham]

Now add all those together and KSP could be the most heavily threaded program you've ever seen and it would STILL lag like hell due to the physics being stuck as a single thread. Now teams out there HAVE integrated Bullet into Unity infact here watch this.

Now first note the sturdiness of the structure using bullet (look no more wobble!) next note the speed it's running at actually here check the speed of this...

That is pretty impressive. Bullet integration is now on my wishlist for KSP.

[Deadweasel]

I get the impression that PhysX is nothing more than a promotional gimmick that's being touted so heavily because it's "better than nothing", and that's how it's being treated by the development community. At the time of its introduction, it was mind-blowing because there really WAS nothing better back then.

Now? It's just dated and all-around crap (in comparison to other projects like Bullet) since it hasn't really been expanded upon all that much, except to support more modern hardware. It feels like Adobe Flash, where it never really got buffed up after release because of its initial grand reception, and now the devs are just sitting back and raking in the royalties thanks to the lack of competition.

And, just like Adobe, they (nVidia) are now so deep in their complacency that others are now coming out of the woodwork to produce the improvements and refinements to the idea that they didn't feel motivated to stay on top of. With any luck, PhysX will eventually be relegated to just another first-comer story who was left completely behind. At least, that's how I'd like to see it happen, because honestly, with something that has such broad and positive implications, I find it saddening that a company wouldn't try to expand their reach by working out a deal with AMD and other video card developers instead of doggedly focusing on supporting only their own hardware, let alone at least try to keep the public interest focused on them by staying ahead of the game (so to speak) in terms of physics emulation.

Seems like since PhysX's release, most -if not all- of the improvements have been coming from OTHER (third-party) developers, and that's just sad.

[NeoMorph]

Theres always someone on this forum telling you how he gets "perfectly fine" performance on his toaster. The thing is: Some people consider five minute loading times and three fps on maximum deltaT with bare minimum details as perfectly fine.

Sorry... KSP doesn't run on Cylon OS so this is a fallacy.

[CCKinnison]

PhysX was originally designed to make things blowing up be pretty. I remember when it was first released, getting cards that could support it so I could see it function in City of Heroes... I think that somewhere at the core of it, it still wants all the parts of whatever it's trying to model to come apart in a spectacular fashion.