Performance improvements & terrain handling

[Rdivine]

Hello, KSP team!

Many computers nowadays cannot handle the high performance requirement of KSP. Handling 50-60fps on KSP would definitely be a very, very expensive, but good computer. Many people have to turn down the settings to play KSP non-laggy. This causes the graphics to be less desirable.

I've listed several methods on how i think it could be a literal game-changer.

1. Multi-core support!

Frankly speaking, KSP on multi-core computers are so laggy that some may get 1-3 fps. Currently, KSP can't do anything about it as multi-core support is decided on the unity team.

2. Better ocean handling

Oceans are just grids of animations stitched together. Since about 300 grids are being loaded, the enormous amount of animation definitely will cause some lag. I've figured a plan on how to improve it.

The ocean tiles for beige,green and blue will be translucent. The area where the grids will be loaded will increase until 10km, then it will start to shrink until about 30km, where the ocean becomes a translucent body altogether, and all the grids unload. If the craft splashes down, the area where grids will be loaded is about 2km in radius around the craft, where beyond the point, it slowly fades to the background.

3. Smoke trails

Having seen several launches, i noticed that smoke trails of rocket engines do not appear until about an altitude of 10km. Where smoke trails gradually appear, until a height of 30km, where the trails gradually disappear. However, if a camera is focused on a rocket at an altitude of 5km, and is zoomed out from a distance of ~2km, the smoke trails appear as a streak in the sky, which can be done by cropping a sprite and blurring it against the background.

However, solid rockets have more noticeable smoke trails, beginning from launch and disappearing from 25km.

Jet engines have constant smoke trails.

Smoke trails do not need to be groups of smoke bubbles lumped together. They could be just a really large image altogether, stitched with the engine flames.

Sorry if you don't understand me. My english is weak!

[Grover]

Multi-threading is on the WNTS list, so prepare to be locked

also, i have a multi core pc and ive never gone below 60fps running KSP

[pigletx2]

Also, massive changes need to be made to insure complete graphical compatibility with MacOS10 Mavericks, i have sup-par graphics, but my system could run full graphics fine if it wasn't for incompatibilities.

[vexx32]

1. Is on the WNTS. Please read that. It's kind of important.

2. Is, at least to some extent, already kind of in the game, I think. Problem is, the ocean is a sphere -- you can't divide it into square grids. Doesn't work. But yeah, something of this kind already exists, AFAIK. You'd have to talk to a dev to be sure.

3. Smoke trails like that... well, how does it react to the camera being rotated? Is it animated? How will it possibly cope when you have a hundred engines running? Will there be issues with how a whole lot of them overlay on each other if they're translucent? How does it react to sudden engine shutoff -- would the entire trail simultaneously disappear? The present implementation is not the best, no, but I think it works a lot better than a static or even animated image.