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

[RenatsMC]

For me, it still does 240mb of compression on some mods I use.

It's not saving anything on squad's side though.

So not much.

[NathanKell]

So, thanks to Texel who made me look again after s/he called BS on my PNG knowledge, I have to eat my words. Normal PNGs _do_ seem to get mipmaps generated. It's just the ones flagged by Squad (or by export from Unity) as "UI" PNGs that don't. So it turns out the order now goes:

MBM

PNG

TGA

[rbray89]

So, thanks to Texel who made me look again after s/he called BS on my PNG knowledge, I have to eat my words. Normal PNGs _do_ seem to get mipmaps generated. It's just the ones flagged by Squad (or by export from Unity) as "UI" PNGs that don't. So it turns out the order now goes:

MBM

PNG

TGA

I don't think that is right. I added pngs and debug information after the textures get loaded. No mipmaps were created for pngs for me.

[Sakata]

Is this .23 Compatible?

Nevermind, was looking at wrong page, didn't see the answer till after I'd posted.

[jrandom]

Is this .23 Compatible?

Seems to work, although I haven't done much in the way of rigorous testing. I won't be able to do really interesting flights until Modular Fuels gets updated.

[pantheis]

I've personally still got huge water lag, even with my graphics settings turned way down.

This, right here. It's literally so bad that if I'm looking down at the water on kerbin during launch, my time turns yellow and it runs at about 1/4 real time. If I pan up to look at the sky, it goes back to green and runs real time. Would this mod fix this?

[Barklight]

Okay, finally getting memory crashes so going to try this out and let you know how it goes. Mods in use include KW Rocketry, Universe Replacer with the 8k Space34 pack, Rareden Milky Way skybox, Clouds & City Lights, plus a plethora of small parts mods.

Lets see how it goes

[lincourtl]

This, right here. It's literally so bad that if I'm looking down at the water on kerbin during launch, my time turns yellow and it runs at about 1/4 real time. If I pan up to look at the sky, it goes back to green and runs real time. Would this mod fix this?

Try increasing your physics delta (move slider to left) on the first tab of the settings screen. Previously it was set at 0.10 by default, but HarvesteR changed it to 0.04 for the 0.23 release. I'm on a memory starved, somewhat underpowered system so I put mine back to 0.10 and now it's only as bad as it was in 0.22. I do notice the other performance enhancements though -- much less time switching between screens or SOI, overall a much smoother experience. The game feels a lot more "solid" now.

[Ruedii]

Is this compatible with non-Windows platforms?

[The-Bean]

This, right here. It's literally so bad that if I'm looking down at the water on kerbin during launch, my time turns yellow and it runs at about 1/4 real time. If I pan up to look at the sky, it goes back to green and runs real time. Would this mod fix this?

I don't know much about modding so but maybe. There is a way to get better performance, but at a cost: the ocean collision will be slightly off.

1) Open settings.cfg

2) Look for all of the areas that say "name = KerbinOcean" (or EveOcean, etc)

3) Under each of the ocean settings, change "maxSubdivision" to "maxSubdivision = 3"

You can also set them to whatever the default low maxSubdivison is, that way the water should have correct collision but it may still be a bit too intensive. Squad have known about the water performance for ages (a post by HarvesteR on the Orbiter forums, I'll find it if someone wants proof), it's been like this ever since the update that added spaceplanes. IMO it's one of the most important optimizations needed, I have no idea why it hasn't been fixed yet.

Edited December 19, 2013 by The-Bean

[Barklight]

Works pretty well, still getting crashes (though less frequently). Just did a full round trip Mun landing mission and the game crashed on splashdown when I tried to recover the vessel Good thing it autosaved at splashdown

All graphic settings maxed, 32 light sources and 24 shadow, using 8k Space34 planets/moons plus the Rareden skybox + city lights/clouds... Then theres KW, KSPX, Kethane, plus a couple of the more common small part and plugin mods.

If I dig around in the error log, can I find out what actually causes the crash? Beyond just a memory access error, I mean. Is there a way to find out what resource / mod caused the hangup?

[rbray89]

Works pretty well, still getting crashes (though less frequently). Just did a full round trip Mun landing mission and the game crashed on splashdown when I tried to recover the vessel Good thing it autosaved at splashdown

All graphic settings maxed, 32 light sources and 24 shadow, using 8k Space34 planets/moons plus the Rareden skybox + city lights/clouds... Then theres KW, KSPX, Kethane, plus a couple of the more common small part and plugin mods.

If I dig around in the error log, can I find out what actually causes the crash? Beyond just a memory access error, I mean. Is there a way to find out what resource / mod caused the hangup?

Not really. You can see if it is a memory issue or not, and that is about it. The next version of this mod should allow full control over all textures (size, mip-maps, compression) including those from Squad, to get the most out of their resources.

[Motokid600]

What is the status for the other texture compression mods? Squad, KW and NovaPunch all had one. Bobcat doesn't have a compression mod for his stuff yet, but apparently he is working on optimizations so that should compliment all this nicely.

And how do these compression packs react to this mod rbray? I've been digging for awhile. Can't find an answer to that.

And.. one more thing. How does this react with Universe Replacer? Sorry that post is a bit of a mouthful I'm just trying to quell my concerns in one go.

[rbray89]

What is the status for the other texture compression mods? Squad, KW and NovaPunch all had one. Bobcat doesn't have a compression mod for his stuff yet, but apparently he is working on optimizations so that should compliment all this nicely.

And how do these compression packs react to this mod rbray? I've been digging for awhile. Can't find an answer to that.

And.. one more thing. How does this react with Universe Replacer? Sorry that post is a bit of a mouthful I'm just trying to quell my concerns in one go.

All this mod currently does is compress the textures loaded into memory using Unity's Texture2D.Compress() method. Most texture formats are already compressed (PNG, MBM) but TGAs are not. Those are the textures that will be compressed. In the future, there will be settings to automatically re-size all/specific textures at load and control mipmap generation.

[Donziboy2]

Well I was having issues with a hiccup on the KSP Interstellar TurboJets.... After some searching I found that the hiccup is an old sound issue caused by GarbageCollector in C# halting. Well I noticed I was using 3.4+gb which is not normal even thou I had a number of mods. Well it turns out that I have the Texture reduction packs for B9, KW, and Squad. Installing them over the normal files actually increased my ram usage.....

AMR works up until I added the texture reduction packs then it all went south....

Texture reduction packs....

Edit....

It also seems as if the game uses more memory once you start adding mods then before, I have fewer mods now then in 0.22 and im already close to the limit....

Edited December 20, 2013 by Donziboy2

[rbray89]

Well I was having issues with a hiccup on the KSP Interstellar TurboJets.... After some searching I found that the hiccup is an old sound issue caused by GarbageCollector in C# halting. Well I noticed I was using 3.4+gb which is not normal even thou I had a number of mods. Well it turns out that I have the Texture reduction packs for B9, KW, and Squad. Installing them over the normal files actually increased my ram usage.....

AMR works up until I added the texture reduction packs then it all went south....

Texture reduction packs....

Edit....

It also seems as if the game uses more memory once you start adding mods then before, I have fewer mods now then in 0.22 and im already close to the limit....

I think some of the texture may have been renamed/converted to different file types. You may want to make sure none of the files have been duplicated.

I think the extra memory usage comes from the performance enhancements. Often you can trade loading time and FPS for memory depending on implementation.

[likke_A_boss]

I just want to let you know that the reduction will not work on the squad parts. I will add more details in a few hours.

Edited December 20, 2013 by likke_A_boss
Finally got ahold of some more info

[rbray89]

I just want to let you know that the reduction will not work on the squad pack. I will add more details in a few hours.

Which "squad pack"? If it is MBM or PNG based, it won't. Compression right now barely does anything (~2MB) for a stock install, and that is only because there are a few leftover TGAs. This mod really only helps with uncompressed TGA textures ATM. This will change with the next release of this mod though.

[Nereid]

Well... I was really sceptical to try this mod. But actually it works very well for me. No crashes so far. And in KSP we need every opportunity to save memory. So good work.

[therealcrow999]

I'm trying to figure out what to use, KW Rocketry or KW Rocketry with Redux textures? Would there big a big difference using this mod with either one of KW's options?

[jrandom]

I'm trying to figure out what to use, KW Rocketry or KW Rocketry with Redux textures? Would there big a big difference using this mod with either one of KW's options?

I've been using KW with just Active Memory Reduction and it seems to work okay. (Although just recent I went through and individually deleted a lot of parts from a lot of mods since they were redundant with the Real Solar System / Realism Overhaul mod sets. Really helped with both memory consumption and load times.)

[Ravien]

therealcrow999: I compared memory usage of KSP with and without Active Memory Mod using different plugins and texture packs here so You can see results and decide yourself.

Edited December 21, 2013 by Ravien

[therealcrow999]

Thanks. There seems a give and take with reduction packs.

I compared memory usage of KSP with and without Active Memory Mod using different plugins and texture packs here

[Talisar]

Well, I didn't go looking at hard numbers, but after installing a few new mods that I didn't normally use, my game started to crash after an hour or so of playing. I installed this mod today and got 4 hours of play with a lot of launches and craft switching with no issues at all. For reference, I'm running with about 50 different mods, including KW, B9, LLL, and Novapunch.

[sirius777]

it looks awesome