Infineon Posted October 8, 2013 Share Posted October 8, 2013 Yes, yes... I know there is entire official post requiring "NOT TO SUGGEST" multithreading / multicore functionality.My problem is, that in about two days of playing KSP I started building four stage rockets, and my 4GHz CPU core doesn't cope with launching it.Well, if ALL SIX cores of my 4 years old CPU would be allowed to participate, I might even be able to add a stage or two... And fly it with more than 0.5 frames per second...I agree that when a small part of customers request some feature - it might be not cost effective to go ahead and implement it.But I believe that majority of KSP gamers have multithreading supported on their computers, or have more than just a single core CPU, and EVERYONE will benefit from additional performance boost.Or is it really just me? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KasperVld Posted October 8, 2013 Share Posted October 8, 2013 KSP itself is multithreaded. The part that is not is the Unity game engine which handles things like the physics. linky. The KSP developers can't really do anything about this unless they spend months or even years writing their own engine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Silverchain Posted October 8, 2013 Share Posted October 8, 2013 One can hope that some future version of Unity will support multihreading. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Infineon Posted October 8, 2013 Author Share Posted October 8, 2013 Am I crazy or is KSP able then to launch multiple instances of Unity engine to work on different pats of flight physics (thrust/weight/gravity/part links/air resistance/etc.) and combine results into a smooth running simulation? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
regex Posted October 8, 2013 Share Posted October 8, 2013 Or is it really just me?Of course it's not just you; everyone wants performance improvements, it just depends on how much they whine about it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Whackjob Posted October 8, 2013 Share Posted October 8, 2013 Perhaps I should just show up at the homes of the unity developers and just stare at them for a while.Until unity update happens. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
llamatoes Posted October 8, 2013 Share Posted October 8, 2013 Yes. I would have an upgrade if you did that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Infineon Posted October 8, 2013 Author Share Posted October 8, 2013 KSP itself is multithreaded. The part that is not is the Unity game engine which handles things like the physics. linky. The KSP developers can't really do anything about this unless they spend months or even years writing their own engine.Is it possible then for KSP to launch several Unity instances to work on different physics calculations (weight/thrust/gravity/speed/air resistance/part links/etc.) and get a smooth flight experience? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KasperVld Posted October 8, 2013 Share Posted October 8, 2013 Is it possible then for KSP to launch several Unity instances to work on different physics calculations (weight/thrust/gravity/speed/air resistance/part links/etc.) and get a smooth flight experience?The short answer seems to be no Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DarthRaptor Posted October 8, 2013 Share Posted October 8, 2013 Even if unity supported multithreading, it might not work. It might not be possible to multithread the physics calculations, because the calculations of each part of the ship are not independent of each other. However, it should be possible to use GPUs to accelerate the calculations Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
earth Posted October 8, 2013 Share Posted October 8, 2013 (edited) http://bulletphysics.org/wordpress/?p=340Learn that Unity's physics engine is years old, can't do multithreading nor use the GPU. Read this. Cry a lot."Note that the ATI Radeon 7970 can simulate 110k rigidbodies at 30fps"(whats more, bullet engine is free and has integration solutions in unity, afaik) Edited October 8, 2013 by earth Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NoMrBond Posted October 8, 2013 Share Posted October 8, 2013 http://bulletphysics.org/wordpress/?p=340Learn that Unity's physics engine is years old, can't do multithreading nor use the GPU. Read this. Cry a lot."Note that the ATI Radeon 7970 can simulate 110k rigidbodies at 30fps"(whats more, bullet engine is free and has integration solutions in unity, afaik)I thought that too, however the BULLET plugin project for Unity3D hasn't been updated since late 2012. I was pretty optimistic when I read about it since it would allow an OpenCL accelerated physics pipeline for Unity but the programmer (chbfiv) working on the project ran out of funding/money ~August 2012 and hasn't been working on it since.Which is really a shame, because that one person managed the whole integration right up to cloth/softbodies in ~4 months, I hope they have a chance to come back and finish it because OpenCL (GPGPU) acceleration would be immensely liberating for the game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Whackjob Posted October 8, 2013 Share Posted October 8, 2013 Fun fact: My beard got six votes in the 2012 presidential elections. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TMS Posted October 8, 2013 Share Posted October 8, 2013 Defeated by a whisker, surely. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Whackjob Posted October 8, 2013 Share Posted October 8, 2013 Find me any whisker that can defeat that beard. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
earth Posted October 8, 2013 Share Posted October 8, 2013 yay. if it aint done in two and a half years, i know what my phd subject is gonna be. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Whackjob Posted October 8, 2013 Share Posted October 8, 2013 yay. if it aint done in two and a half years, i know what my phd subject is gonna be.Beards? I can give you a data point, but samples ain't gonna happen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lammatt Posted October 8, 2013 Share Posted October 8, 2013 i'hve heard the newer unity is multithreading.but that SQUAD is probably not migrating to the new engine probably because it'll require new licensing (which means $)and revamping the codes (which means a lot of manpower and $$)and it takes time Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NoMrBond Posted October 8, 2013 Share Posted October 8, 2013 i'hve heard the newer unity is multithreading.but that SQUAD is probably not migrating to the new engine probably because it'll require new licensing (which means $)and revamping the codes (which means a lot of manpower and $$)and it takes timeThe 0.22 release is based on the newest iteration of Unity (4.2)Multi-threading (which Unity 4+ is) is not the same as being threadsafe (where one processing thread can be split across multiple cores). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spikeyhat09 Posted October 9, 2013 Share Posted October 9, 2013 Is it just me who wants multithreading?yup. its just you. its not like this has ever been discussed before. I sure as hell do not want a feature that would greatly increase the part limit bottleneck, no that would be totally pointless Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stealth2668 Posted October 9, 2013 Share Posted October 9, 2013 I wonder why they went with Unity in the first place if it's so old and only uses 1 core. These days, no one has a single core computer. Aren't there better engines they could have used affordably? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NoMrBond Posted October 9, 2013 Share Posted October 9, 2013 I wonder why they went with Unity in the first place if it's so old and only uses 1 core. These days, no one has a single core computer. Aren't there better engines they could have used affordably?Unity can use multiple cores (multi-threading), it just can't split a thread (i.e physics) between multiple cores (thread-safe).Unfortunately nothing in the thread-safing category was announced in the Unity 4.3 feature set at the Unite 2013, making Unity thread-safe is such a huge deal (programmatically) I'm not sure it's even possible as part of the 4.x series? The GoToState function and blendshape updates to the Mechanim animation system might allow for some neat stuff though Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Motokid600 Posted October 9, 2013 Share Posted October 9, 2013 Squad mentioned a 30% performance increase with .22 if I remember correctly. That's pretty significant. Despite unity being out of date there will always be things Squad can do to optimize their own software in the meantime. We may not get much on the end of fps increases, but what I hope is a stability increase. If we only have 3.5gb of ram to work with then it'd be nice if Squad can lower the footprint a bit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
csanders Posted October 9, 2013 Share Posted October 9, 2013 Some things just can't be multi-threaded.How physical forces traverse through a structure might be one of those things.Sure, the graphics can be off-threaded, but if that physics problem (not sure if it exists, just suspect it does) can't be multi-threaded, we're SOL. Without a lot of work, anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lammatt Posted October 9, 2013 Share Posted October 9, 2013 i guess SQUAD, being new to the gaming industry when this KSP started, didnt know the importance of choosing a potent engine.(i have no idea as i aint in the industry, but i think it's probably that licensing unity was considerably cheaper than other options) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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