[1.0][Release-5-0][April 28, 2015] Active Texture Management - Save RAM!

[bstpierre]

Are you using DDS loader at the same time ?

My atm configs are as low as before the installation, scale and normal resize to 8, and no mipmap, but You get stronger effects somehow. Maybe some texture I ddsified would have been handled better by atm?

I have not much understanding in this, but I guess I could exclude dxt files when I convert to dds so they would be managed by atm again. Could this be the difference explaning our performance difference ?

I don't use DDSLoader (I'm on a Mac and haven't found a compatible version). Note that this also means that I'm effectively using force OpenGL since Mac doesn't have DirectX.

After playing for a couple of hours my memory is sitting between 1.15G and 1.3G, down from a previous 1.7G to 2.1G after similar amount of time playing. Once in a while the game unloads unused objects and my memory usage drops to 800-900M.

I've only seen one crash since installing this and playing for 3 hours and the crash was due to a nullref in the VAB, not memory usage. I'm completely floored by how awesome this is to the point where I'm considering installing more mods!

[rbray89]

Mine (aggressive 4.0) crashed during load because it ran out of memory ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You might need to run it multiple times... it uses a bit more memory to cache, so it could crash while caching. If that is the case, just start it up again, and it will pick up where it left off.

Does it require DDSLoader?

Moreover, what should I do with B9 ATM .cfg? Replace your stock one with that or just delete the one in BoulderCo?

Are you using DDS loader at the same time ?

My atm configs are as low as before the installation, scale and normal resize to 8, and no mipmap, but You get stronger effects somehow. Maybe some texture I ddsified would have been handled better by atm?

I have not much understanding in this, but I guess I could exclude dxt files when I convert to dds so they would be managed by atm again. Could this be the difference explaning our performance difference ?

It does NOT require DDS loader, and in-fact won't work pretty much at all if you do manually convert your textures to DDS.

[rbray89]

So if no one has major issues, I'll probably try to decrease the initial loading time, but after that, we will be releasing!

[Virtualgenius]

Hi Rbray I tried the new version on my backup copy it just runs out of memory and crashes, under the old system you could watch the memory savings kick in as it loaded I am still in the caching phase and havent made it through the first third of the loading bar before it runs out of memory

[rbray89]

Hi Rbray I tried the new version on my backup copy it just runs out of memory and crashes, under the old system you could watch the memory savings kick in as it loaded I am still in the caching phase and havent made it through the first third of the loading bar before it runs out of memory

Again: You might need to run it multiple times... it uses a bit more memory to cache, so it could crash while caching. If that is the case, just start it up again, and it will pick up where it left off.

[Virtualgenius]

Thanks for the reply on my 5th go so have adopted a diffrent approach am going to just load the monster mods in first and let it cache them then load the smaller ones after its chewed through the large ones like KSO B9 FASA etc

[rbray89]

So it is good enough for a release you guys think?

[dtoxic]

So it is good enough for a release you guys think?

well apart from looooong loading times i personally did not encounter any issues

maybe shorten the loading time just a tiny bit?

anyway you should run for president

[rbray89]

well apart from looooong loading times i personally did not encounter any issues

maybe shorten the loading time just a tiny bit?

anyway you should run for president

All loading times? The first should be long, but all others should be stupid-fast.

I'll keep that in mind if I ever go into politics.

[dtoxic]

All loading times? The first should be long, but all others should be stupid-fast.

I'll keep that in mind if I ever go into politics.

nah nah just the first load...but using god knows how much mods the first load was like 2h+

just saying if there is a way to speed it up on the first load but not to compromise the awesomeness of the plugin then i would be good to have a bit faster loading on first start

ohh and a question do the 3-8 cfg's work with this release too? or should we make new ones?

[rbray89]

nah nah just the first load...but using god knows how much mods the first load was like 2h+

just saying if there is a way to speed it up on the first load but not to compromise the awesomeness of the plugin then i would be good to have a bit faster loading on first start

ohh and a question do the 3-8 cfg's work with this release too? or should we make new ones?

Configs will work just fine

[dtoxic]

Configs will work just fine

well then my vote is Release

[Kerbas_ad_astra]

Might wanna hold off just a bit. I found all of the clouds had vanished between the last version of ATM and this one (though the faster load time is much appreciated). Found this error in the log:

NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
  at OverlaySystem.TextureSet.initTexture () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 

  at OverlaySystem.TextureSet..ctor (.ConfigNode textureNode, Boolean bump) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 

  at Clouds.Clouds.LoadConfigNode (.ConfigNode node, System.String url, Boolean useVolume, Boolean defaults) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 

  at Clouds.Clouds.loadCloudLayers (Boolean defaults) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 

  at Clouds.Clouds.Awake () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
UnityEngine.GameObject:Internal_AddComponentWithType(Type)
UnityEngine.GameObject:AddComponent(Type)
AddonLoader:StartAddon(LoadedAssembly, Type, KSPAddon, Startup)
AddonLoader:StartAddons(Startup)
AddonLoader:OnLevelWasLoaded(Int32)

There was also the usual litany of NullReferenceExceptions spawned "at Clouds.Clouds.Update () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 ", but I've never had them cause any problems before.

I know that there is much more testing I can do on my end to nail down the cause further, but it's late and I want to get this down before I forget it.

[Virtualgenius]

I found it was better to break the mods into sections and let it cache that way it was quicker, I have 78 folders in my gamedata folder and completed it in just over an hour and its damn quick to load now. Play ability I havent seen an issue its saved me a further 200mb over the old version

Atm 3 = 2.6gig opengl switch

Atm 4 = 2.4 gig opengl switch (Loads much faster after cache is done)

[Misucat]

Might wanna hold off just a bit. I found all of the clouds had vanished between the last version of ATM and this one (though the faster load time is much appreciated). Found this error in the log:

NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
  at OverlaySystem.TextureSet.initTexture () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 

  at OverlaySystem.TextureSet..ctor (.ConfigNode textureNode, Boolean bump) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 

  at Clouds.Clouds.LoadConfigNode (.ConfigNode node, System.String url, Boolean useVolume, Boolean defaults) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 

  at Clouds.Clouds.loadCloudLayers (Boolean defaults) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 

  at Clouds.Clouds.Awake () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
UnityEngine.GameObject:Internal_AddComponentWithType(Type)
UnityEngine.GameObject:AddComponent(Type)
AddonLoader:StartAddon(LoadedAssembly, Type, KSPAddon, Startup)
AddonLoader:StartAddons(Startup)
AddonLoader:OnLevelWasLoaded(Int32)

There was also the usual litany of NullReferenceExceptions spawned "at Clouds.Clouds.Update () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 ", but I've never had them cause any problems before.

I know that there is much more testing I can do on my end to nail down the cause further, but it's late and I want to get this down before I forget it.

I have this error wit ATM Pre4-0 (aggressive), the clouds disappear. But no problem with the ATM 3.8 I use EvE 7.4 and Astronomer's Visual Pack Interstellar.

Edited December 8, 2014 by Misucat

[sebi.zzr]

Same here.No clouds with ATM Pre4-0 (aggressive) and Astronomer's Visual Pack Interstellar.(i use 32 bit version fof KSP)

EDIT:If i remove BoulderCo.cfg from GameData/BoulderCo/ActiveTextureManagerConfigs the clouds are back.

Edited December 8, 2014 by sebi.zzr

[Saint-Stanislas]

I've tried it on different scaling settings, everything seems to work fine for me, i'm not using any clouds though.

First Loading is really long but the subsequent one are faster than in 3.8. The first launch also seem to use more memory when you scale smaller. With a 1Gb Gamedata I had 200Mb of difference spread between scale 1 to 8. But I assume it is the scaling process itself since seconds loading are then using less memory as scale goes down.

I noticed something also, with the previous versions I stopped using the "texture res" options in the game to use atm scaling options instead, so I am not sure if it was already behaving like that before ( and I don't have the courage of moving any plugins files around anymore ) . Messing with the in game options was working over it but pointless. Now, I've tried changing it, whit atm scale set to 2, and it's only affecting the terrain texture ... Maybe I'm just really tired and it was always like that, but I feel like maybe ATM is keeping ksp from changing the res of certain texture, and in this case it would be the good ones. So with atm scale at 2 and FullRes ingame I have about 2gb of memory, If I lower it to eight res I have 1600mb of memory usage, but my ship,interior,kerbals,props stayed the same. The terrain are 1/16th though. So either it's new or I just discovered it, I'm really happy ! Either an average ship in an average land or a nice shiny ship on a blurry planet for the same memory ?

I removed dds loader since I don't really know anymore how to figure which files ATM is not managing. In fact I never knew it

Is ATM giving a log of what he is doing, maybe I could extract a file list from such log and then use it as an exceptions list for a dds converter ? Or is someone witty enough to write a script that would do it from the log ? Anyways, wrong thread

+1 for release, and throw the cloud in the compression = false zone ? ( about that, is there a patch for toolbar buttons cfg so they don't scale down? I wrote my own for mj,el,vv etc, but just in case )

[Agost]

So, is this release official or still in beta?

[LostOblivion]

While waiting for the first load... does this massively reduce the memory footprint from previous versions of ATM? My main issue was running out of memory and KSP crashing.

When having this long initial load, do you recommend backing up the cache when, say, playing around with installed mods? Is the cache cleaned up at any point?

Edited December 8, 2014 by LostOblivion

[rbray89]

So, is this release official or still in beta?

It has been released! There *shouldn't* be issues with EVE, Though I've been primarily testing with the upcoming EVE release.

While waiting for the first load... does this massively reduce the memory footprint from previous versions of ATM? My main issue was running out of memory and KSP crashing.

When having this long initial load, do you recommend backing up the cache when, say, playing around with installed mods? Is the cache cleaned up at any point?

The memory footprint should be smaller than usual, without any negative side effects I believe.

You won't need to back up the cache, it will automatically check the hash files against the originals at load, so if it detects modifications, it will re-cache textures. The only annoying thing is that it could increase loading times a bit while you make changes, and you may want to restart after the initial re-caching.

[Wampa842]

What is this update like in terms of memory saving and resulting quality compared to the previous one?

I'm asking because when I had ATM 3-8 and huge mods (B9, KW, KSPI, Umbra Space Industries) plus many smaller mods, my game was near crashing at 3.2 GB while still looking like it had gone through the Kraken's digestive system several times, and I'm not sure it would be worth it to leave it running at night. (my computer is not particularly fast.)

[sarbian]

Congratulation on the release

[Virtualgenius]

@Wampa842 it you are using windows and you use this in-conjunction with the opengl switch you will save roughly a gig of ram maybe a little more. I am runiing an obscene amount of mods and I am sitting at 2.4 gig ram usage

[Kerbas_ad_astra]

I still don't see any clouds or city lights with the release (using EVE 7-4 with Astronomer's Visual Pack Interstellar). Going into BoulderCo.cfg and setting "enabled=false" didn't help.

I also tried using the new EVE (without AVP), and there were no clouds visible from orbit and no ground textures:

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary in the log.

EVE has always been kind of finicky (especially when trying to install AVP on top of it), so I will try tinkering more over the next day or so...

[rbray89]

I still don't see any clouds or city lights with the release (using EVE 7-4 with Astronomer's Visual Pack Interstellar). Going into BoulderCo.cfg and setting "enabled=false" didn't help.

I also tried using the new EVE (without AVP), and there were no clouds visible from orbit and no ground textures:

https://i.imgur.com/Gpu69XC.png

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary in the log.

EVE has always been kind of finicky (especially when trying to install AVP on top of it), so I will try tinkering more over the next day or so...

Hmmm... weird... what is inside GameData/ActiveTextureManagement/textureCache/ ? I tested it with the upcoming release of EVE, and it worked there just fine... Did you restart it after loading it the initial time?