[0.25/0.90] Better Atmospheres [V5 - June 14th, 2014]

[phoenix_ca]

Or the same sentence. That makes more sense now.

[sanity]

is there a way to get the better atmo effect of "better atmospheres", ie better terminator and atmo colors, without the changed teture effects, i'd like to use it with the current stock volumetric clouds

[Thesonicgalaxy]

Loving the shadows under the clouds on Kerbin. A few things I'd love to see changed in any future versions though:

• I'm not sure if this has been mentioned already, but Kerbin doesn't appear to have clouds on the night side. The city lights shine through as though the cloud layer ends at the terminator (see pic).

Also noticing that the night side is a bit too dark, both from low orbit and near the surface as others have mentioned. It makes the game harder to play and isn't entirely realistic (see video).

http://i.imgur.com/CYYwiakl.png https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6X5DqKdi8A4

• It would be nice to have a higher resolution cloud option as with the city lights. Because they now have shadows, it seems to exaggerate how pixelated they look (see pic):

http://i.imgur.com/70djOx6l.png http://i.imgur.com/e0Wr8RYl.png

• For the 2048 city textures the .tga files are the wrong way round as far as I can tell. The 2048 Details.tga is actually a high-res version of CityDetails.tga and vice versa.

• It would be nice to have a better explanation of how to install the high-res city textures. In the readme you say: "Put the city lights into the city lights texture folder under \GameData\BoulderCo\CityLights\Textures and put the daytime cities under - \GameData\BoulderCo\Clouds\Textures" but there's no explanation of which file is which. It's easy enough to work this out by opening the targa files in photoshop or equivalent, but not if you don't have access to these programs. It would be better to just state explicitly which file goes where I think.

• I'd like to make note that for things like this I am now stealing your center dot idea.

• I don't think it's actually possible to make the clouds appear better on the night side.

• A higher res cloud texture/detail is going to be in V5. I'm currently working on a schedule for next week to see if i can work BA into it so I can get out of this hiatus.

• Really? XD Oh my god. I'm so stupid!

•Will do!I'll admit I should have made the install a little easier on the city textures.

[Taki117]

Interesting bug(?) with the current version. The night lights don't match up with the coast.

You can clearly see lights over the water just above my aircraft.

Edited May 4, 2014 by Taki117
Never Mind!

[BFGfreak]

Yeah, it's a limitation of EVE, just pretend they're the docks.... or Venice.

[Thesonicgalaxy]

Interesting bug(?) with the current version. The night lights don't match up with the coast.

http://i.imgur.com/vfYUcme.png

You can clearly see lights over the water just above my aircraft.

This will be fixed in V5.

[Taki117]

This will be fixed in V5.

Thanks for that!

[Nexus-7]

Could someone please tell me which file is the city lights, and which one is the daytime cities?

Thanks for all the amazing work. I've been away from KSP since .21 and this (and EVE) are what brought me back. Awesome stuff.

[Thesonicgalaxy]

Could someone please tell me which file is the city lights, and which one is the daytime cities?

Thanks for all the amazing work. I've been away from KSP since .21 and this (and EVE) are what brought me back. Awesome stuff.

detail.tga is the citylights, DetailCity is the Daytime cities.

[optimusjamie]

1. How do I remove the stupid grey skies on the Mun?

2. Do they happen on similar bodies (Dres, Gilly, etc.)

[Thesonicgalaxy]

1. How do I remove the stupid grey skies on the Mun?

2. Do they happen on similar bodies (Dres, Gilly, etc.)

You need to set the fadedist on the Mun to 100. Hit ALT+N in map view/tracking station when you've selected the Mun, click on advanced settings, then under SETTINGS(not scaled settings) Look for the fadedist option and change it's value to 100. It should save for you but of course EVE always screws up saving for some people.

[optimusjamie]

You need to set the fadedist on the Mun to 100. Hit ALT+N in map view/tracking station when you've selected the Mun, click on advanced settings, then under SETTINGS(not scaled settings) Look for the fadedist option and change it's value to 100. It should save for you but of course EVE always screws up saving for some people.

Thanks. That fixes it.

[problemecium]

Well, EVE sure is screwing up saving for me. For some reason, the CFG that comes with BA includes data for a "DEFAULTS" setting and for a "SAVED" setting. Which are different. So even without changing anything yet, when I click the revert buttons I find two options available.

Judging by its appearance, I presume the SAVED version is V4. I do like it better. But for some reason my attempts to clear the skies of Eve a bit by reducing the alpha on the clouds... always fail. I get a perfectly good setup, and then click "Save", and then I find that if I click the revert button it either goes to DEFAULT or a slightly different version of SAVED. And then it gets weirder - next I go to tweak Kerbin, and I find that Kerbin is at the DEFAULT setting. So I revert to saved, and that makes Eve go back to DEFAULT with those horrible opaque clouds. (Not that they're ugly, they're just impossible to see through, so a horrible nightmare for prospective landers).

I also skimmed through the CFG file and found that there seem to be a lot of redundant cloud layers for Jool, including some that appear to have multiple DEFAULT settings, which I have a hunch is leading to confusion for the game engine. Could you see about releasing an optimized CFG that gets rid of the extra fluff, and also doesn't have all those Planet Factory configs in it (A lot of us don't have PF and thus have no use for those, and I do believe they are slowing things down at least a bit)?

I love the idea of this mod, but for me it seems a bit unstable at the moment.

[Kerbrud]

This mod truly makes the Kerbol system look really beautiful! Great work!

I have a question though - is it possible to tweak the mod so that I only get the crisp shadows and the new celestial body textures? I fear that adding volumetric atmospheres will melt my graphics card=P I'm already experiencing a bit of low framerate after installing RPM. I'm willing to go so far as to say that the main thing I'd like for this mod to do, is crisping up the shadows, actually - that's what caught my attention in the first place. I'm comfortable with either tweaking the settings in-game or hacking the configuration files.

Thanks in advance! And again, GREAT work. I truly regret possibly having to refrain from using every tweak you've made...

[Elmetian]

I don't think it's actually possible to make the clouds appear better on the night side.

• A higher res cloud texture/detail is going to be in V5. I'm currently working on a schedule for next week to see if i can work BA into it so I can get out of this hiatus.

Can't wait for V5. I'm a sucker for beautification mods XD

Kinda sad clouds on the night side aren't possible but I guess having clouds at all is brilliant.

[Lei07]

Hi TheSonicGalaxy, firstly, great mod. Aesthetically pleasing and technically striking, it's a great addition to Rbray's also fantastic Envionmental Visual Enhancements mod.

Now my question and a possible bug report. With retrospect I should have made a capture of the debug log, but I'll ask. This mod uses elements of Real Solar System to work, does that mean the mesh of each astral body is also larger than the stock/EVE mesh.

My example, which occured to me just a few moments ago. I went to the Mun in a fresh install to test this mod (alongside my other mods, of course). Firstly, Kerbal Enginner's surface readout was about 2000m out from the surface I touched down on. Now, at this point I'm thinking its an issue with KER. On the return flight I reenter the atmosphere, all fine, chutes get semi deployed as usual, all good.

Now it is at this point that EVE decides to bug out, showing the atmos layer through a transparent surface (I know this is EVE as this has happened before, a fresh install usually fixes things), so seeing the surface was no longer a possibilty, not a problem, it's all pretty automatic from here. I open KER surface readout once more, and again, about 2000m above where KER thinks the surface is the CM just explodes. Hitting F3, the flight recorder indeed states that the pod crashed with the surface.

As the chutes failed to fully deploy I'm beginning to think that the RSS components are raising the terrain's collision mesh but the game thinks the actual terrain is 2km lower. Now I'm going to retry this after making a fresh install of my build as it may have been a one off occurance, but is this a possible glitch with either BA or EVE? Not to point the finger at BA but I did not have this issue with EVE alone. Will keep an eye on KER also, see if the current version is bugged in some way.

Again it may have been just that install. I regularly back up my saves so I can test this reentry time and time again 'til it works, over different installs.

Thanks for your time if you get to read this, and any response or comment will be great

EDIT: Additional info.

Other than the module included in BA I otherwise do not use RSS. The only graphics improvement/management mods I use are EVE and Active Texture Management.

As regards the EVE bug I described, that was due to an optional tweak for Duna that was based off the older 7.2 version of EVE. The current version, 7.3, is the one I use (recently decided to try the HD textures) and does not suffer from this bug as Rbray got it fixed.

Please note this post is questioning the 2km difference between the terrain that BA gives and where the game believes the terrain to be.

Pingopete, this edit was started before your reply, sorry!

Edited May 5, 2014 by Lei07
Further additional info

[pingopete]

Hi TheSonicGalaxy, firstly, great mod. Aesthetically pleasing and technically striking, it's a great addition to Rbray's also fantastic Envionmental Visual Enhancements mod.

Now my question and a possible bug report. With retrospect I should have made a capture of the debug log, but I'll ask. This mod uses elements of Real Solar System to work, does that mean the mesh of each astral body is also larger than the stock/EVE mesh.

My example, which occured to me just a few moments ago. I went to the Mun in a fresh install to test this mod (alongside my other mods, of course). Firstly, Kerbal Enginner's surface readout was about 2000m out from the surface I touched down on. Now, at this point I'm thinking its an issue with KER. On the return flight I reenter the atmosphere, all fine, chutes get semi deployed as usual, all good.

Now it is at this point that EVE decides to bug out, showing the atmos layer through a transparent surface (I know this is EVE as this has happened before, a fresh install usually fixes things), so seeing the surface was no longer a possibilty, not a problem, it's all pretty automatic from here. I open KER surface readout once more, and again, about 2000m above where KER thinks the surface is the CM just explodes. Hitting F3, the flight recorder indeed states that the pod crashed with the surface.

As the chutes failed to fully deploy I'm beginning to think that the RSS components are raising the terrain's collision mesh but the game thinks the actual terrain is 2km lower. Now I'm going to retry this after making a fresh install of my build as it may have been a one off occurance, but is this a possible glitch with either BA or EVE? Not to point the finger at BA but I did not have this issue with EVE alone. Will keep an eye on KER also, see if the current version is bugged in some way.

Again it may have been just that install. I regularly back up my saves so I can test this reentry time and time again 'til it works, over different installs.

Thanks for your time if you get to read this, and any response or comment will be great

When Rbray brings out the next EVE release, it'll have several fixes to make it work with RSS. I've been waiting on this to produces an RSS config for BA, but until then it really doesn't look to great on real sized kerbin. The cloud meshes have far too few vertices given the radius of earth/kerbin and thus sometimes dip below terrain. This is something that'll be fixed in next EVE release, hence why I'm waiting on it, not much point until it's out, I've tried already.

[Lei07]

Thanks for your response Pingopete! It overlapped my edit slightly so I apologise for you not having the additional info when you posted.

So bottom line, its the interaction between Better Atmosphere's RSS components and EVE thats creating the 2km difference in terrain. (Have I read that right?) Not a problem, I'd hapilly wait for an official fix on either/both sides for this to work as intended. In the interum, if I keep BA in my build, I can just manually adjust for the 2km discrepancy.

Again thanks for your time and all of your hard work to made these mods what they are. Base KSP is great but mods really add to the experience, and the fun! Keep it up!

[pingopete]

Thanks for your response Pingopete! It overlapped my edit slightly so I apologise for you not having the additional info when you posted.

So bottom line, its the interaction between Better Atmosphere's RSS components and EVE thats creating the 2km difference in terrain. (Have I read that right?) Not a problem, I'd hapilly wait for an official fix on either/both sides for this to work as intended. In the interum, if I keep BA in my build, I can just manually adjust for the 2km discrepancy.

Again thanks for your time and all of your hard work to made these mods what they are. Base KSP is great but mods really add to the experience, and the fun! Keep it up!

Yeup I'll warn you though, the RSS component of BA does pretty much the opposite of what is stated for RSS on the OP It improves the Atmosphere from ground aspect of BA on stock ksp, but removes all atmosphere/gradient from BA in RSS, resulting in black sky's.

And about the terrain altitude offset; I found it to be closer to -4000 meters, try placing the lowest cloud layer (not shadows, don't bother at all with shadows except for scaled space) at 8150m, that should place it roughly at 4km ASL, although as stated the 'mountainous pyramids' of the cloud mesh will rise and fall with rotation, but this altitude should keep it on average at 4km.

I really just gave up until next eve release, eve's just not currently designed for RSS! :'(

EDIT: and just out of interest are you using NathanKells earth kerbin, or kerbin kerbin?

Edited May 5, 2014 by pingopete

[Lei07]

Kerbin Kerbin! As stated, any graphical alterations come from EVE and ATM. I prefer having the game as the "Kerbol System", as opposed to the "Sol System". So essentially, removing EVE(and BA) and ATM would give the default stock textures and sizes of the various astral bodies

And yeah, it was most likely more than 2km difference on Kerbin, that was purely based off the 2km discrepancy on the Mun.

Again thankyou so much for your swift and concise replies! Really looking forward to V5 and the new EVE. Any realistic chance your team could team up with the EVE team to make an "official" conjoined version of the mods? Would be so great =3

[Lei07]

EDIT : Double post due to my error. Sorry!

Edited May 5, 2014 by Lei07
Double Post

[Grunf911]

Hi Again,

Anyway, just wanted to say, I upgraded EVE from 7-1 to 7-3 and the look of this mod has improved tenfold. Now I see why all people were singing praises. Kudos to you, and sorry if i was harsh a bit before.

For others that see clipping through blue layer, and problematic minmus clouds try upgrading EVE to 7-3. It fixed it for me.

[Thesonicgalaxy]

Hi Again,

Anyway, just wanted to say, I upgraded EVE from 7-1 to 7-3 and the look of this mod has improved tenfold. Now I see why all people were singing praises. Kudos to you, and sorry if i was harsh a bit before.

For others that see clipping through blue layer, and problematic minmus clouds try upgrading EVE to 7-3. It fixed it for me.

How were you harsh? Infact that was great feedback! EVE 7-1 had a saving issue, I should put that info in the OP later.

[DasBananenbrot]

Totally unrelated but just noticed you have yet another avatar

[Thesonicgalaxy]

Totally unrelated but just noticed you have yet another avatar

I like avatars c: They're fun.