An ocean of lag...

[Pachi3080]

I'm just tired about the whole thing of having extreme lag on Kerbin, Eve and Laythe... This lag it's caused by the fact that the oceans are loaded as... ENTIRE PLANETS! The lag it's not caused because our computers are crappy or something. it's because we are loading TWO PLANETS AT ONCE! this is a waste of memory, in fact. The only solution for this now is changing the settings.cfg file... but... at the cost of lowering the ocean level, and getting some kind of invisible ocean...

So... post your ideas!

How the ocean should be loaded?

[The-Bean]

IIRC the oceans were fine before 0.15 (or whatever version it was that added spaceplanes), ever since though the ocean has been an FPS killer. HarvesteR is (or at least was) aware of it: http://orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?p=394876#post394876

IMO it's one of the more important issues, I'm surprised it still hasn't been fixed.

[Pachi3080]

IIRC the oceans were fine before 0.15 (or whatever version it was that added spaceplanes), ever since though the ocean has been an FPS killer. HarvesteR is (or at least was) aware of it: http://orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?p=394876#post394876

IMO it's one of the more important issues, I'm surprised it still hasn't been fixed.

Ok, now i'm happy to know that the devs are aware of this...

[jshier]

I never noticed oceans on other planets giving me FPS problems, but setting the KerbinOcean rendering to the lowest possible helps my Kerbin flight a little bit. I still get major lag from the horizon below about 150km though, which is bizarre.

[skyace65]

I always thought the lag was because me computer was old.....this is something that should be fixed very soon if possible than.

[jshier]

Well that too. But when the same craft gets good FSP looking straight up but horrible FPS whenever the horizon is in frame, there's probably another issue at hand.

[KWilkiePJ]

I have been playing 0.21.1 for awhile and have seen zero lag over oceans or anything else for that matter perhaps you should post your core system specs for comparison!

Mine is i5 3750K quad core ivy bridge OC to 4.2Ghz

Mem: 16 GB

Graphics: NIVIDA GTX 660TI

[MR4Y]

I had zero lags regarding oceans as well(although I have mine tweaked in the settings just in case). But I have heaps of lag with procedural craters, down to the point of the game even freezing completely when swtiching to the Mun's SOI. Now image if Laythe had procedural craters as well as the ocean...

[Fleb]

I don't get any lag around KSC at all, but if I fly a spaceplane mission hdg 90 degrees from there, I get hit with a massive lag spike no matter what craft I am flying, my fps instantly halves a couple of minutes after take off. Then when I get higher in my ascent the lag suddenly goes away. The only way to fix it is doing the ocean config edits and setting half res textures. It's a problem I can live with. My system is an [email protected], 16gb ram, 6950 2gb. I first noticed it 0.18 and it's still the same in 0.21.1.

[Themohawkninja]

I don't get any lag whatsoever as a result of the oceans I only get lag from huge ships and SOI transitions.

I agree with KWilkiePJ about posting specs, that might explain the lag a bit better.

CPU: i7-2600k @3.5GHz

GPU: GTX 580

RAM: 8 GB

[TwoHedWlf]

Can you post when you're receiving this lag(Is it lag or low framerate? I'm assuming you mean FPS) and how we can replicate it? I'm getting a constant 60FPS from launch and I just tried dropping a pod into the ocean with no change from 60FPS.

Oh

CPU: I5-750 @ 2.8ghz

GPU: GTX 660

RAM: 4 gb

[Fleb]

I made a quick video showing where it happens to me. I normally get 45-65fps, Fraps was taking about 15-20 frames. You can see just after 4:30, the FPS drops in half to below 20 and stays there, until I reach 24km at 6:50 and it doubles.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji0NKwtp4z8

[zarniw00p]

IIRC the oceans were fine before 0.15 (or whatever version it was that added spaceplanes), ever since though the ocean has been an FPS killer. HarvesteR is (or at least was) aware of it: http://orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?p=394876#post394876

IMO it's one of the more important issues, I'm surprised it still hasn't been fixed.

Hm.... This post of HarvesteR is more than one year old, so I don't think its a priority for them to fix this in the near future.

[Stu82r]

The oceans are the only fps problem I have with the game. Nothing else kills my frame rate like Kerbans ocean. Without the water fix, with every setting as low as they can go, it is still a slideshow at the KSC launchpad. Even in orbit, looking towards Kerban drops fps to below 10. It makes the game near unplayable. However with the water fix, the game runs smooth and consistently, even with highest settings/SM3 shaders. There are the occasional small lag spikes which are not a real problem, so I can live with it.

How to how to load the oceans better? I don't know. The new Mun and KSC have gained so much more detail, while managing to decrease the workload on systems. I think that the devs will be giving all planets/features the same treatment at some point, but right now the focus is career mode, putting new content into the game. The reason clouds/weather/heat etc are not in the game, is because they have yet to figure out a suitable way of implementing them without killing already overloaded systems. It's obvious that this is not a problem for everyone, it may be more of an optimization issue for different hardware. But one things for sure, as the devs improve the game, they learn more about what is possible and put it into the game the best they can. I'm sure that one day Kerbin will look like a gigantic Warthunder map, while we all enjoy 60fps and live happily ever after.

[Nalin_Airheart]

The ocean gives me a tolerable 20~ fps on my laptop.

Model: HP G-60 237US (2009)

MoBo: Wistron 303C

CPU: AMD Turion RM-72 Dual-core (2.1ghz)

GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 8200M G (Integrated crap)

RAM: 2048x1 1024x1 DDR2 667Mhz

The Mun on the other hand makes me crash almost every [Redacted] time I come into contact with it's SoI.

[Dewm]

Kinda wish they would do something about lag all together, I get pretty bad lag going from space map to spacecraft view.

And I lose a little FPS over oceans

i7 960 3.2 Ghz Quad core

24GB ram

Radeon 5870

With these specs I SHOULD be able to run 4-10 KSP's at the same time. But this game suffers the same issue that most indie game suffer from.. Poor optimization. (Minecraft suffered from this same issue for a long time)

[Rhyunix]

Frankly, looking at the damn surface of kerbin makes my computer cry. God only knows why. It also means that I have to look up every launch instead of looking across the ocean

[Skorpion]

I made a quick video showing where it happens to me. I normally get 45-65fps, Fraps was taking about 15-20 frames. You can see just after 4:30, the FPS drops in half to below 20 and stays there, until I reach 24km at 6:50 and it doubles.

I noticed your frame rate drops just before the shock heating effects appear, and jumps back up just after the shock heating effects disappear. I wonder if you can turn those effects off and see if it makes a difference.

[Rhyunix]

I second this, it might want to generate the heating effects but there might not be any

[Fleb]

@Skorpion

It doesn't make any difference. The lag only happens when doing a spaceplane ascent, unless I use the ocean lag config edits. I get even brighter heating effects during reentry and it doesn't affect my fps at all.

[Superfluous J]

Hm.... This post of HarvesteR is more than one year old, so I don't think its a priority for them to fix this in the near future.

Actually it's 8 months old, but the point is still the same. Isn't there a "sphere" object in Unity? Can't they just slap a 600-km radius one down instead of this mesh?

/not a programmer.

//it shows.

[mhoram]

I have the Ocean-Lag-Problem (low FPS while the ocean is visible) on my laptop - but only under certain conditions.

If I play on the display of my laptop, I get the ocean lag, but if I play on an external display, I don't get the ocean-lag.

Here are the dxdiag outputs:

Lag on Laptop Display

http://justpaste.it/3k9h

No Lag on External Display

http://justpaste.it/3k9i

[SlenderClaus]

I'd Just Like to add and let everyone know that Kerbal Space Program does not currently utilise GPU's at all, unless that has changed in .22, Also the current unity version it's running on does not support multi-threading of cores so 1 core will say be looking after the physics and then another textures and so on...

I learnt this from other threads similar to this one so it may not wholly be right Shift+R improves the quality of this image. Shift+A improves the quality of all images on this page.

[Northstar1989]

Frankly, looking at the damn surface of kerbin makes my computer cry. God only knows why. It also means that I have to look up every launch instead of looking across the ocean

The lag is still around in 0.23, and I still experience the same thing here. I took to building my space stations at a higher altitude just so I wouldn't have Kerbin taking up as much of my field of view...

The problem is definitely the oceans, though. The Mun, Minmus, Duna, Jool- all work like a charm; I can easily run them on high graphics even on my aging laptop with a memory leak. Kerbin and (especially) Eve- it's nearly unplayable much of the time...

Interestingly, the lag on Kerbin is a BIG part of the reason why I'm building a Duna colony to launch all my future ships from- although I don't mention it as a motivation on my Mission Reports thread: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/57509-Kerbin-and-Beyond-a-Maturing-Space-Program

I'd like to colonize Eve, but I wouldn't DREAM of it with the current lag there- for whatever reason it's 5x worse than on Kerbin.

I'm considering the water fix- but the invisible portions of the ocean could be a major problem for me when flying low over the ocean...

Regards,

Northstar

Edited January 31, 2014 by Northstar1989

[jwenting]

maybe if you didn't build 10.000 part stations and instead used sensible numbers of parts you'd, like the majority of users, not have any trouble.

I've no lag because of any oceans, flying my normal sized ships of a few hundred parts.