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[1.1.2][1-1-2] May 13-2016 EnvironmentalVisualEnhancements


rbray89

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With everything down to the bottom of the barrel it played fine and didn't crash. :)

Hmmm... this likely confirms it. I'm probably pushing too much work to the GPU now :). I'll see what I can come up with to alleviate the strain.

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Here are my cfg files. I have never edited them manually, but I noticed this string with "s" error to appear in red before, but not today.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/n5w704fo3z73k9h/cloudLayers.cfg

https://www.dropbox.com/s/546lvwmeifaqd84/userCloudLayers.cfg

In any case I will try to reinstall the whole thing and see if it keeps happening.

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Here are my cfg files. I have never edited them manually, but I noticed this string with "s" error to appear in red before, but not today.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/n5w704fo3z73k9h/cloudLayers.cfg

https://www.dropbox.com/s/546lvwmeifaqd84/userCloudLayers.cfg

In any case I will try to reinstall the whole thing and see if it keeps happening.

Well, I just found a bug in my code with your help. Replace all instances of "FadeDistance" with "fadeDistance" (case change) in userCloudLayers.cfg. That should fix it for you.

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Here are some images from some aerobots on Eve and Duna.

http://imgur.com/a/ZFzwp

Nice! I had no idea if they would work on other bodies or not. Thanks for trying it out!

Yeah, I think I'm going to have to re-visit the shaders to try and align the lighting parameters to more closely match the bodies. Especially on Eve it seems. Not sure what to do about cloud cover and shadows. It is particularly noticeable on Eve. I think it would be really cool to be forced to use RTGs there due to the thick cover.

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Well, I just found a bug in my code with your help. Replace all instances of "FadeDistance" with "fadeDistance" (case change) in userCloudLayers.cfg. That should fix it for you.

That seems to have fixed it!

Thank you!

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Nice! I had no idea if they would work on other bodies or not. Thanks for trying it out!

Yeah, I think I'm going to have to re-visit the shaders to try and align the lighting parameters to more closely match the bodies. Especially on Eve it seems. Not sure what to do about cloud cover and shadows. It is particularly noticeable on Eve. I think it would be really cool to be forced to use RTGs there due to the thick cover.

Consider Eve is a Venus analog it should be the opposite, you should be able to face solar panels straight down (or any direction) while inside the higher clouds layers and still get Kerbin levels of full power! Cloud cover on the surface should be about the same as a highly overcast day on earth (except very red on venus... purplish in Eve case) I would give it say 1/10 the same power input as Kerbins surface. The problem is the need for the ability to phase out ray casting from the sun and replace it with just ambient lighting as a ship enters the clouds, and reduce ambient lighting all the way to the surface and then link that to how ever the solar panel code works. I have little clue of coding outside Matlab, R (and java by proxy) and html but I'm guessing you would have your work cut out for you if you were to try altering how the game generates lighting.

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Consider Eve is a Venus analog it should be the opposite, you should be able to face solar panels straight down (or any direction) while inside the higher clouds layers and still get Kerbin levels of full power! Cloud cover on the surface should be about the same as a highly overcast day on earth (except very red on venus... purplish in Eve case) I would give it say 1/10 the same power input as Kerbins surface. The problem is the need for the ability to phase out ray casting from the sun and replace it with just ambient lighting as a ship enters the clouds, and reduce ambient lighting all the way to the surface and then link that to how ever the solar panel code works. I have little clue of coding outside Matlab, R (and java by proxy) and html but I'm guessing you would have your work cut out for you if you were to try altering how the game generates lighting.

Yeah, the changing lighting thing is actually easy, the hard part is edge cases/shadows. Maybe I'll just make them shadow casters and melt everyone's GPUs :)

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Yeah, the changing lighting thing is actually easy, the hard part is edge cases/shadows. Maybe I'll just make them shadow casters and melt everyone's GPUs :)

Yeah every cloud puff casts a shadow... or could you just disable shadows?

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Yeah every cloud puff casts a shadow... or could you just disable shadows?

Hmm? I meant that I could enable them to cast shadows, then everything would be dark as it should be. The problem would be the area outside of the volumetrics.

In-all the big problems I have are with lighting is how to light areas that are not covered with clouds, vs those that are.

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I was playing with the test release last night and it was glorious... just amazing blasting through clouds with volume. Put a big smile on my face and jaw dropped.

I was thinking about the hexagon problem as I did my gravity turn and if I'm way off base here just ignore me...

Would there be a way to use the texture map for the clouds like an alpha shader in Photoshop? Basically the volumetric clouds would be placed in the 3 hexes with density based on that image (and maybe height? could be random too or weighted based on the opacity of the color). Then maybe a method so the outer edges of the hexes fade out, the density of the particles is reduced as you approach the outer edges of the hexes and they populate more particles based on the image map as they approach where the 3 hexes meet. If this is even possible then the volumetric clouds would work and blend even with replacement textures! It seemed to me some sort of fade on the particles is the right answer here, either by density or maybe the opacity of the particles themselves. I don't know anything about unity or how KSP does this so not sure if that's even possible. If it worked and you wanted to do weather or a procedurally generated cloud pattern, maybe even a shifting one the groundwork would already be there. You'd procedurally generate, maybe even animate, the texture and as the pixels move, so would the cloud particles if within range.

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Hi there,

Just started KSP following a system reboot and I've had another failure to initialise on Test 5. Same as last time. No layers or volumetric and menu is empty,

Output Log: http://www./view/37g29m2so1srwy1/output_log_(cloud_failure_29-03-14).txt

Specs below in sig line.

EDIT: City lights still appear, however.

Edited by TMS
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Hmm? I meant that I could enable them to cast shadows, then everything would be dark as it should be. The problem would be the area outside of the volumetrics.

In-all the big problems I have are with lighting is how to light areas that are not covered with clouds, vs those that are.

...

like I said my understanding of such coding is very limited... I'll trust you'll improve it somehow, what you have done so far is a massive improvement in game immersion
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I was playing with the test release last night and it was glorious... just amazing blasting through clouds with volume. Put a big smile on my face and jaw dropped.

I was thinking about the hexagon problem as I did my gravity turn and if I'm way off base here just ignore me...

Would there be a way to use the texture map for the clouds like an alpha shader in Photoshop? Basically the volumetric clouds would be placed in the 3 hexes with density based on that image (and maybe height? could be random too or weighted based on the opacity of the color). Then maybe a method so the outer edges of the hexes fade out, the density of the particles is reduced as you approach the outer edges of the hexes and they populate more particles based on the image map as they approach where the 3 hexes meet. If this is even possible then the volumetric clouds would work and blend even with replacement textures! It seemed to me some sort of fade on the particles is the right answer here, either by density or maybe the opacity of the particles themselves. I don't know anything about unity or how KSP does this so not sure if that's even possible. If it worked and you wanted to do weather or a procedurally generated cloud pattern, maybe even a shifting one the groundwork would already be there. You'd procedurally generate, maybe even animate, the texture and as the pixels move, so would the cloud particles if within range.

That is actually pretty close to what I do already. The problem is actually twofold. Firstly the particles are much bigger than a pixel, so sampling at a single point will be used for a larger area. Second: lighting is hard to match. The normamap on the 2d complicates it further.

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I've noticed a pretty big performance hit when at the title screen at the Mun (like 10FPS), while only suffering a slight performance hit everywhere else. I'm also using Universe Replacer with the HD Kerbin & Raredan's Skymap.

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I've noticed a pretty big performance hit when at the title screen at the Mun (like 10FPS), while only suffering a slight performance hit everywhere else. I'm also using Universe Replacer with the HD Kerbin & Raredan's Skymap.

Hmmm... there shouldn't be issues with the title screen. At that point, volumetric elements don't even render. Could be Universe Replacer. Texture Replacer (from Shaw) is a MUCH better alternative.

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New Volumetric release: MASSIVE performance update. Went from 20FPS back to nearly 60:

[TESTING VERSION]https://github.com/waka324/VisualEnhancements/releases/tag/VOLUME_TEST6

Release notes has more info if interested.

Can confirm FPS boost. From the ground I'm back to mostly 60, there are some drops to 45 or so below the clouds. It still drops to 30 when above and looking below, it is a lot better though.

Unrelated childish remark: 420 posts!

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Can confirm FPS boost. From the ground I'm back to mostly 60, there are some drops to 45 or so below the clouds. It still drops to 30 when above and looking below, it is a lot better though.

Unrelated childish remark: 420 posts!

There is a distinct possibility that the drop when looking down may be due to the "water" bug, as I noticed that too, but only when water was in view. When all clouds were in view, but no water was, I was back to max speed.

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Test 6 runs at a solid 30 fps (which is what I usually get) and the game didn't crash once.

Which can't be said for my plane! I was happily flying through the clouds at 4x time acceleration when this loomed out at me.

pre_crash.jpg

I might not have crashed if I'd not taken the time to take a picture, but I had to take the picture. :)

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Hmmm... there shouldn't be issues with the title screen. At that point, volumetric elements don't even render. Could be Universe Replacer. Texture Replacer (from Shaw) is a MUCH better alternative.

I'll give that a shot. Before trying out the volumetric clouds beta, using the latest official release of this mod, the title screen was noticeably slower, but only slightly. There was also a slightly flickering cloud effect on Kerbin in the background (only on the Mun crash landing scene) which is still present in the beta. I'll see if Texture Replacer helps. EDIT: Also using your Memory Reduction mod, Basic IIRC.

Edited by Castun
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