Performance Issues Need Addressed

[skyace65]

the game does need some optimization. most notably making kerbin only load is 1 planet. the whole thing loads as 2 planets, 1 for terrain, the other for water. if that got fixed lag would be drastically reduced. the devs have said that they are aware of it but we still haven't had it fixed yet

[Apollo13]

the devs have said that they are aware of it but we still haven't had it fixed yet

They don't know how to fix it? Or don't care? (I know you can't answer this; I'm just asking aloud.)

While we're discussing fixes...shiny new toys and features in pre-alpha updates are nice. HOWEVER...Squad should prioritize the bug fixes for 0.22, such as the buzz-killing "undocking" bug. Forget the "oooo" "ahhhh" feature updates.

[Stealth2668]

To the rest, I think people just need to accept you're playing an alpha version of a game, performance increases are going to be lower on the list and rightly so.

People need to get over it a a bit.

You're not going to like me saying this, but it is your setup, not the game, you probably are going to want to overclock your cpu.

I'd disagree with this. It's 2013. Why would they make a game that only uses 1 core? This isn't 2000 anymore. Most people I think have a quad core or at the VERY least a dual core. Making a game these days that can only use 1 core is bad design because when the game gets more complex, and more parts are added, people will need an expensive, top of the line cpu just to run it "reasonably". Those of us with mid range PC's.. Lol forget it, we aren't able to make anything big with 3 of our cores sitting there watching.

[stupid_chris]

The problem doesn't lie in Unity not being multithreaded, because it is. The problem lies where the current physics thread isn't threadsafe, meaning it can't be split between multiple cores. For now, all the calculations can only be done using one core. The point is not about this being 2013 and the developers still making a single core game, it's simply that they cannot split the biggest part of the CPU usage of the game to other cores. This is where the limitation of the Unity engine comes from, and we can't do much but wait for some additional support from Unity.

[Anton P. Nym]

Here's my current system build:

http://pcpartpicker.com/user/Caelib/saved/24mL

I wouldn't describe my problem as lag, but rather an intermittent hitch/stutter/sputter. I play many games and I run most of them on ultra settings and they are smooth as butter ... this is a problem with the game KSP, not my system.

Your hardware specs are at least as good as mine, and I only see "lag" when building very large (500+ parts) rockets or using a lot of lighting. I suspect there's either software running in your background that's crowding the game or some mods that are not playing nice with each other. That being said, I do get hitches with 0.21.1 that I didn't get with 0.21 or 0.20; I suspect the patch solving the "trapped in the VAB/SPH" bug has added some extra cleaning-up behind the scenes that's sucking up extra horsepower.

The game's still in development and hasn't been optimised for performance yet, which certainly doesn't help... but that's not going to be solved until soon before 1.0 (commercial release) arrives.

I can wait, myself; I've easily gotten my $15 of fun out of KSP and there's a lot more yet to be had.

-- Steve

[OdinYggd]

So kind of a gee whiz dumb question here but I always see people throw out that this game is still in Alpha testing. What exactly is the difference between alpha and beta testing? I always assumed that alpha testing is considered to be in house and/or limited release and beta is a wide release or just the public at large. Is there something specific that changes this to a beta?

Alpha stage means that the game is still far from complete and may experience game-breaking changes or general brokenness at any time in the development process. They are still trying to implement all of the major features and may have to redo older ones to make new ones fit.

Although the two stage testing process for each update does yield updates that more often than not have fewer bugs than a lot of mainstream titles, they do still exist.

The bottlenecks caused by Unity have been a real sticking point for a long time now. Because of Unity limitations, KSP is incapable of using more then 1.5 threads and 4GB of RAM unless you are using the 64-bit Linux only binary that removes the RAM limit. Nearly any system will stutter as a result.

Unfortunately it is also upstream restrictions, as there is no 64-bit Unity for Windows/Mac and support for more than 1.5 threads is taking a long time for them to implement.

[xeon_1]

Performance improvements are in every update, don't forget that. If something breaks and the game starts to play like pants you can almost guarantee that it'll be fixed within the next few updates.

Also, this is in the wrong forum I think.

Because forget the fact that game development is difficult, if they don't do something you want obviously they're being lazy.

And making 3D max / blender / adobe premier / Photoshop / sony vegas / final cut / autocad / inventor /... isn't difficult to make?

And i don't want multicore / 64bit support i want a game that runs smooth.

Don't care how they do it.

For instance a max 100 part limit.

and the game will run smooth despite the crappy unity engine.

[Donziboy2]

I found increasing the TurboBoost on my 2500k made a huge difference.

99% of the time my GPU is still idling..... But it does not stutter as often with the boost in speed on the CPU.

[itsme86]

And making 3D max / blender / adobe premier / Photoshop / sony vegas / final cut / autocad / inventor /... isn't difficult to make?

And i don't want multicore / 64bit support i want a game that runs smooth.

Don't care how they do it.

For instance a max 100 part limit.

and the game will run smooth despite the crappy unity engine.

Can't you self-impose your own part limit without unnecessarily hindering game play on faster computers?

[Capt'n Skunky]

And making 3D max / blender / adobe premier / Photoshop / sony vegas / final cut / autocad / inventor /... isn't difficult to make?

Apples and oranges.

Look folks, buggy builds and laggy game play are part of development and testing. The developers are well aware of the issues and you folks calling them "lazy" isn't really called for. If it's that big an issue for you, drop back a version or play something else until the next release.

This thread is providing no value to the community and is just being used to bash the devs, so we're done here.

Cheers!

Capt'n Skunky

KSP Community Manager