The computer argument

[Vindelle_Sunveam]

Lately, in this section, I noticed that some people were discussing gameplay issues using the following argument to dismiss other's ones :

"if your computer isn't powerful enough, you don't have a part in this" meaning that only people with what they redeem being a powerful enough computer can discuss the game and it's performances.

I recognize that this is a valid argument as I cer-tainly won't take seriously (for that matter, not in general) somebody trying to run KSP on a '98 average computer, I also think it is quite unfair to limit the game to those who have little yet good processing power at their disposal.

With regards to that, and as I feel this issue must be discussed and quite definitely set to smooth some aspects of the discussions we can have in this part of the forum, I would like whomever has the knowledge to do so, to discuss it here. I lack such knowledge and so I trust you with this.

Edit : while writing this, I definitely forgot to ask the final question : what do you think a minimal configuration for KSP is ?

(I feel like I have a good computer (a 2013 HP with a i7Quadcore, Win8 (64bits OS) some 8GB o' RAM and a GPU nice enough to run AAA games in High graphics (TES V, Batman AC and Dark souls 2))

Edited May 13, 2014 by Vindelle_Sunveam

[r4pt0r]

its just how it is. i couldnt play ksp with any ship, a 3 part pod-fuel-engine craft was running at 7fps. so i had to get a new graphices card (Nvidia gtx 660, highly recomended) and a new cpu(amd x3, it did good). that was the simple fact of it. its required to have a decent pc.

edit: since then ive built a shiney new pc, but upgrading to a decent cpu/graphics card doesnt need to be over the top expensive. shop thrifty

Edited May 13, 2014 by r4pt0r

[Red Iron Crown]

I play on a 2.0Ghz Core2Duo with a fairly weak discrete GPU. This limits my game in eye candy (don't care) and part count/simultaneous flights (care greatly). I will be sad the day that KSP's requirements grow enough that I can no longer play on this machine, since I can't really justify a powerful PC for just this one game.

For all that, I think it's important to keep KSP's requirements as modest as possible, especially in GPU. The most popular type of PC sold these days is a laptop with integrated graphics, if you exclude those people from playing it would eliminate a substantial potential customer base. This is more important for KSP than most other games, as it can appeal to people outside the traditional "hardcore" gamer market who are less likely to already have a powerful gaming PC.

[pizzaoverhead]

For all that, I think it's important to keep KSP's requirements as modest as possible, especially in GPU. The most popular type of PC sold these days is a laptop with integrated graphics, if you exclude those people from playing it would eliminate a substantial potential customer base. This is more important for KSP than most other games, as it can appeal to people outside the traditional "hardcore" gamer market who are less likely to already have a powerful gaming PC.

The great thing about graphics settings is that they are generally very scalable: Making higher settings available doesn't restrict people using integrated graphics in any way. The argument often seen on these forums is that, as there are some people who won't be able to see the benefit, any work towards improvement should not be undertaken, often due to a misplaced fear of performance loss.

[Red Iron Crown]

The great thing about graphics settings is that they are generally very scalable: Making higher settings available doesn't restrict people using integrated graphics in any way. The argument often seen on these forums is that, as there are some people who won't be able to see the benefit, any work towards improvement should not be undertaken, often due to a misplaced fear of performance loss.

I agree. It is definitely important for KSP to keep improving visually, graphics are a big part of what sells games these days. Just leave it adjustable enough that a modern integrated graphics system can run it with everything dialed down.

[Kasuha]

This is very two-sided issue.

I still remember when id software was developing a successor to the Doom series and John Romero was claiming that "since majority of people use a 486 machine today, it will run on 486, it will be full 3D and it will support 100 player multiplayer". In the end, the game was almost unplayable on 486, if you wanted to play it at decent framerate you needed to buy a pentium CPU which was pretty new piece of hardware. And still, 100-player multiplayer was a pipe dream for many years to come. At that time, id software chose quality over compatibility and in long run it was a wise choice as Quake became a phenomenon even though many people needed to buy a new PC to play it.

Today and with KSP, the situation is a bit different. First of all, CPU frequencies (while being about 40 times above frequencies at the time I mentioned) are not growing that fast anymore. If you want to increase the "horsepower", you need to go parallel. And that's the KSP's weak spot due to Unity's physics engine. But the choice is the same - either you continue supporting low-end hardware and then you cannot go too crazy with features, or you just cut a bit higher and give the rest more to play and to look at.

In my opinion, people with low end hardware have full rights to complain that the game does not run very well on their PCs. But it is ultimately developer's decision if they get or don't get the support they're asking for. What I can see is that for now, they do get as much support as possible - seeing all the effort put into bugfixes and optimizations in last few releases.

[Pesoen]

so i had to get a new graphices card (radeon gtx 660, highly recomended)

you do know, radeon and gtx 660 dont match, gtx 660 is a Nvidia card, while radeon is ATI. other than that, no problems, please have a nice day.

[Pesoen]

to answer your question, i think the minimal is a Core 2 Duo, and onboard graphics, bear in mind, this is a laptop, one of my friends got for school work, it can still play CS:GO fairly good, just limit the graphics in KSP and it runs fine. what I would recommend is the following

CPU: Intel Core i3

GPU: GTX 460

RAM: 4 GB and above

the above setup will run KSP at medium graphics, with no problems. anything better than that, is great for running ksp, but its not limited to these specs and above, as said, it can run on older computers as well, just dont expect the best graphics and quality.

[OrbitusII]

My system is pretty cheap but I wouldn't really consider it ow end. Even with a $60 Pentium G2020 and GeForce GT 630, I can run KSP pretty well. I like to stream, so it's not really a good system for that, but for everyday playing it's a beast. A minimal build (critical internal parts only) with my specs would only be about $200, but it's not the lowest end system you can run KSP on. I won't be running Battlefield 4 on ultra settings, but my computer can handle around 200 parts before any significant lag shows up.

The way I see it, buy or build (I prefer the latter) the system you can afford, but make sure to get the best you can for the money, and you won't be disappointed.

[neamerjell]

My current PC has an Intel i5-3570k 3.8GHz quad-core CPU, 8 GB of memory, and a GeForce GTX 670. It plays Skyrim on "ultra" settings and Crysis 3 at high settings (not maxed out). It is possibly overkill for KSP. If it wasn't for the 4 GB memory limit of the Unity game engine, and bugs that arise from the addition or incorrect installation of mods, the game would never crash on my PC.

For any game in general, when it is released, should have the following requirements:

Minimum: a budget PC at the time of release (something you could buy off the shelf for about $600 just for the PC, no monitor, kb, or mouse)

Recommended: baseline PC at the time of release (the best bang for your buck at $800-1500, but by no means the best that money can buy)

To max out the settings: the best that money can buy ($2000+)

[r4pt0r]

you do know, radeon and gtx 660 dont match, gtx 660 is a Nvidia card, while radeon is ATI. other than that, no problems, please have a nice day.

DERP. my bad lol.

[That guy who builds stuff]

Edit : while writing this, I definitely forgot to ask the final question : what do you think a minimal configuration for KSP is?

This is easily answered.

These are the recommended specs from the store website:

2.0Ghz Dual Core CPU or higher (preferably higher)

4GB RAM

512MB Video Card, Shader Model 3.0

1GB Free HD space

Windows XP, Vista, 7 or 8

or

An Intel-based Mac running Mac OS X 10.6 or higher

or

A Debian based Linux distro

Anyone whose computer meets them should be allowed the minimum expectation of decent performance when running stock at default settings.

[Grover]

The simple fact is that old computers are quickly outdated, just look at a simple graph showing the value of a megabyte of hard drive capacity over a 20 year span (in $ per Mb) and youll see that technology is advancing at a ridiculous rate. Unfortunatley this puts the average life of a "gaming" pc at around 4 years (highly variable) before you find noticable decreases in performance across most new games.

KSP is designed to take advantage of modern systems' power and capabilities, and simulating a whole solar system populated by many spacecraft was always going to be a resource-intensive program, never mind bringing graphics, control, telemetry and analysis systems into the mix (calculatng manoeuvre nodes and transfer orbit visualisation is no easy task)

Having said that however, it should always be on the dev team's agenda to make the game playable on as many weaker systems as possible, since from a commercial point of view, this increases the audience size to include those without high-spec computers.

[Vindelle_Sunveam]

Snip

Actually, I am aware of those. However, it is also specified (since the software is still under heavy developement) that these specs can change.

I still think that you brought a valid point, just saying it is not set in stone, and as is, can raise some fear of seeing the program becoming too ressource intensive for long time players who grew to love the game and do not have very high end computers (as user Red Iron Crown seems to represent a part of).

[Nuke]

i dont think a new game should be officially supporting hardware/software that is a over decade old. ive pulled computers out of dumpsters that show less age. i have a machine in my shed that is about a decade old, and it doesn't play ksp very well at all. sure you can make it work for you, but if it is so far below the minimum requirements then it should not be the developer's problem. from a support standpoint i dont really think it fair on the developer that they have to support hardware that isn't even manufactured anymore. support for modest hardware manufactured in the last 5 years seems appropriate for this kind of game, considering the educational market (school computers are always old).

This is very two-sided issue.

I still remember when id software was developing a successor to the Doom series and John Romero was claiming that "since majority of people use a 486 machine today, it will run on 486, it will be full 3D and it will support 100 player multiplayer". In the end, the game was almost unplayable on 486, if you wanted to play it at decent framerate you needed to buy a pentium CPU which was pretty new piece of hardware. And still, 100-player multiplayer was a pipe dream for many years to come. At that time, id software chose quality over compatibility and in long run it was a wise choice as Quake became a phenomenon even though many people needed to buy a new PC to play it.

quake's requirement was that it needed a floating point unit. a 486dx or 486sx with 487 co-processor. if you ran the game under dos it was kind of acceptable. problem was if you wanted to play over the internet, you needed to run it under windows, which pretty much doubled the memory requirements and slowed things down a great deal.

Edited May 15, 2014 by Nuke

[Seret]

Until quite recently I was running KSP on a Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM and an Nvidia 8500GT and it was fine. So if you're looking for a minimum spec you'll have to head somewhere south of that.

[technicalfool]

At that time, id software chose quality over compatibility and in long run it was a wise choice as Quake became a phenomenon even though many people needed to buy a new PC to play it.

Quake runs quite well on a DX2/66! DX4/100 will kick its backside like it ain't no thing. Maybe not so well on an SX or SLC/25.

Okay, so now I feel old.

[technicalfool]

Current spec: AMD X4 640 @ 3ghz. NVidia GTX650.

GPU is more than powerful enough. The CPU starts hating me after a couple of hundred parts. It's enough to set up small Mün bases and multi-reactor KSPi power stations at least. The game remains just-about playable up to around 800-1,000 parts, but it gets a bit flick-showy and the Mechjeb Ascent Autopilot is almost mandatory at those frame rates. Hit the launch button, go get cup of coffee.

[Superfluous J]

Quake runs quite well on a DX2/66! DX4/100 will kick its backside like it ain't no thing. Maybe not so well on an SX or SLC/25.

Okay, so now I feel old.

Heck I played Quake 1 (and Hexen) on a DX2/50. I don't remember (even caring about) the framerate but it was playable.

I also played Doom on an SX/25. It was actually the same computer. I bought the DX2/50 chip for cash in a parking lot and pushed it into the non-ZIF slot by hand. Had the pattern of the motherboard imprinted on my left hand for the next 24 hours.

You kids these days with your iPods.

[Nuke]

ive probibly changed every part in my 4th gen ipod. maintaining an old computer is easy in comparison. i mean there aren't even any screws, you have to use a bezel cracking tool and you never have any idea where the clips are. its easy to break something in the process. old computer you can just use a screw driver. once you are inside everything is tiny and fragile. changing the screen was a pita, trying to get a very short ribbon cable into a tiny connector. batteries are a little bit easier. and the board density makes it hard to change out a headphone jack. repairing modern electronics is hard.

i should point out that the first computer i built was an early pentium, around the time 486es were being phased out.

Edited May 15, 2014 by Nuke

[technicalfool]

Heh, even new PCs are a breeze to repair by fondle-slab standards. I'd dare to say that almost anybody who can wield a screwdriver can get an ATX box, motherboard, CPU, RAM, HDD and PSU and stick the lot together. Add a graphics card if you want extra sparkly. Get a motherboard with a Via HD 7.1 (or similar) sound chipset on board, and that's frankly aurally satisfying enough for anybody outside of the Golden Ear Brigade and studio technicians. I mean once you've gotten to a maximum of 192Khz/24 bit and no detectable hiss or computer noise whatsoever on the outputs, I don't think even bats or dogs would have cause to complain with that rigged up to a decent set of speakers.

Edited May 15, 2014 by technicalfool

[DeepOdyssey]

KSP is like arma. You can't play arma on weak pc. You may ask why, and the answer is simple. Physics!, the amount of physics the game has to calculate is much, much higher than in any other game, in which environment and objects have only one thing in common, that they are a mesh covered with texture. You can't expect to play a game on a medium end laptop, or weak pc with highest detail, while flying >200 part ship.

Hell i have I5 4670k[non oc for now], 8gb of ram and gtx 660, and i still have to lower the AA because on big ships, my game lags. And i have no problem with that, beacuse i understand the game engine. The only thing i would like to see is 64 bit implementation, so my game won't crash with mono.dll error, because i exceeded that 3,5gb of ram.

[Nuke]

Heh, even new PCs are a breeze to repair by fondle-slab standards. I'd dare to say that almost anybody who can wield a screwdriver can get an ATX box, motherboard, CPU, RAM, HDD and PSU and stick the lot together. Add a graphics card if you want extra sparkly. Get a motherboard with a Via HD 7.1 (or similar) sound chipset on board, and that's frankly aurally satisfying enough for anybody outside of the Golden Ear Brigade and studio technicians. I mean once you've gotten to a maximum of 192Khz/24 bit and no detectable hiss or computer noise whatsoever on the outputs, I don't think even bats or dogs would have cause to complain with that rigged up to a decent set of speakers.

i was a system builder way back in 2002, building pentium 4 rigs. i still build my own rigs because i dont trust oems to not jack me. my formula always was start with the cpu and work your way out from there. i almost always get ram off of the mobo's qvl. then add whatever else you want. i usually choose the power supply last, after ive figured out the power requirements.

Edited May 16, 2014 by Nuke

[Bilfr3d]

This is certainly a very interesting topic to discuss, as PC performance can be a big factor in how the game runs. However, this shouldn't be something to use to exclude people from posting suggestions/discussions. Does it really matter if someone only gets 15 fps running on the lowest settings? No, it doesn't. They may not be able to play it smoothly, but they should be able to play it. In this case, the only time they should be excluded is when they complain about lag.... because its pretty obvious where the problem is. Me? I have two kits. My laptop, which is rather old with a Pentium 2.1Ghz dual core, with 4gb of ram and integrated intel HD graphics. On the lowest settings, I can run ksp at around 20-25fps with a ship of about 65-100 parts. My second kit, my desktop pc, has a core 2 duo 2.9 Ghz dual core, with 8gb of ram and a NVidia GTX 510. I can run it fairly smoothly, with around 30 - 40 fps at medium settings. Does that mean that I can't post suggestions and discussions? certainly not. We shouldn't be judging/discriminating anybody that doesn't have a kit that can't run ksp. Nobody should be excluded from the suggestions/discussions unless they can't actually play the game at all or they complain about lag when they don't have enough power to run it well. That's all in this post

[phoenix_ca]

*facepalm* Yeah, sure. Tell people that their information about performance doesn't matter because their computer isn't the best in the world. That's definitely how development is done right? Only cater to the top 5% of the market. That'll work.

The physics problem is also something that actually can't be remedied yet. That will take Unity 5 and the PhysX 3.3 SDK that comes with it to fix. As it stands, KSP requires a fair number of physics calculations, but that is handled in an anachronistic way. All of that is done on a single thread, meaning only one CPU core gets used at any time. In these conditions, a quad-core CPU has little-to-no advantage over a dual-core CPU. This will only be fixed with a software update, and until then, the only way to really leverage an appreciable amount of extra performance from KSP's physics is to overclock your CPU. To do so substantially requires a custom liquid-cooling loop (more esoteric cooling would use liquid nitrogen or liquid helium for cooling of the CPU, but it's safe to say this is far out-of-reach of most if not all KSP players). You might cry "but what about a dedicated discrete GPU", but nVidia GPUs (the only ones that support off-loading PhysX to them ever since nVidia bought PhysX) are massively parallel computers. A single-threaded PhysX process can't be pushed through that with any appreciable increase in performance, and even the most recent versions get little to nothing out of it. CPUs are actually better. What fun.

If anyone is actually saying that people's reports of crap performance don't matter because they aren't using the latest-and-greatest, they need to be hit over the head with a baseball bat for their elitism. The people who matter are the majority with mid-range hardware, not the minority with top-of-the-line stuff. To develop strictly for the latter is just bad business. It's for this very same reasoning that one sees so little support in games for multi-monitor setups. They are rare, and so rare that they aren't worth wasting time catering to.

Edited May 16, 2014 by phoenix_ca