Less memory usage by using OpenGL

[Rocinante89]

This makes me want to install linux again! Is it easier to install with 8.1 these days? Last time I tried it I had an endless amount of grub issues so i got rid of it.

[skeevy]

This makes me want to install linux again! Is it easier to install with 8.1 these days? Last time I tried it I had an endless amount of grub issues so i got rid of it.

You shouldn't have much of an issue, though my shrink the disk and install to there experience is a bit lacking since I have a lot of HDD's laying around. A few installs back, I shrunk my w8.1 partition down 100GB and use that as a ZFS root and didn't have any issues. A few before that I really screwed up and accidentally deleted my Win 8 boot partition because it was on a different drive than windows itself and I wiped the MBR as I realized it said "Windows Boot" instead of "Boot"...talk about fun (ended up a reinstall of everything...didn't have to, but with Windows, eh, that's basic system maintenance).

My only Grub issue lately was it installing to the wrong HDD (sda instead of sdc...my OS's and PC's bios see those drives reversed...the cause of many headaches). But that's a simple fix of just changing the HDD load order in the bios (usually...). I've had some ZFS + Grub issues, but that's an whole other deal involving running a CDDL'd file system with a GPL'd kernel and the workarounds involved doing so (not for the feint of heart, but well worth it in the end).

@NWDogg

If you install Linux to the USB flash drive, it'll almost be necessary to copy KSP from the flash drive over to the partition Windows is installed on and play from there (I'm assuming you only have a single hdd). You'll have horrible performance trying to play a game as intensive as KSP with the speeds and bandwidth limitations of flash storage.

[Renegrade]

2) This was also me. I've been in the IT sector for over 18 years and I've been using Linux for 19 years (I was using Slackware in 1995). Even back when I started out, it was common knowledge that OSes go on their own drives, data on other larger ones.

Not to derail the thread further, but I wouldn't call that "common knowledge" (sorta like how "common sense" isn't common). My last job involved a lot of system administration for client servers and VMs, including internal machines, and you would not believe how many people (allegedly administrators) are sticking their OS/programs and user-created data on a single (tiny) drive and calling it a day. :/

[NWDogg]

@NWDogg

If you install Linux to the USB flash drive, it'll almost be necessary to copy KSP from the flash drive over to the partition Windows is installed on and play from there (I'm assuming you only have a single hdd). You'll have horrible performance trying to play a game as intensive as KSP with the speeds and bandwidth limitations of flash storage.

I actually have no problem with doing that, unless that requires creating a new partition. The only limitation is my single HDD is only 500gb, and I have a LOT of games on it, so I'm working with just about 75gb at the moment (and soon to be less). Certainly not enough room for a separate Linux-specific partition. However, if I can run KSP through Linux, from the Windows partition, then that solves most of the problems I've been having trying to set this up to begin with. I may go ahead and post over in the Linux thread, to get some help setting that up.

[xtoro]

Not to derail the thread further, but I wouldn't call that "common knowledge" (sorta like how "common sense" isn't common). My last job involved a lot of system administration for client servers and VMs, including internal machines, and you would not believe how many people (allegedly administrators) are sticking their OS/programs and user-created data on a single (tiny) drive and calling it a day. :/

True. Guess I should say common knowledge for people who know what they're doing...

[troyfawkes]

So uh... 3,000 MB to 1,700 MB... Yeah I'm going with this. EVE, Better Atmospheres, Texture Replacer, ALL OF THE PARTS, WELCOME HOME!!!!!!!!

[skeevy]

I actually have no problem with doing that, unless that requires creating a new partition. The only limitation is my single HDD is only 500gb, and I have a LOT of games on it, so I'm working with just about 75gb at the moment (and soon to be less). Certainly not enough room for a separate Linux-specific partition. However, if I can run KSP through Linux, from the Windows partition, then that solves most of the problems I've been having trying to set this up to begin with. I may go ahead and post over in the Linux thread, to get some help setting that up.

All you'd do is install Linux to the flash drive as normal, do everything you'd normally do to get Steam running, then once KSP is downloaded, just mount your Windows drive and copy/paste it somewhere over there. It'll take about 1.5GB + mods worth of data, which is a heck of a lot less than the 30GB you'd need to do it the other way.

And 500GB max...ouch. 500GB is what I use for just games. I have 3.2TB over 3 disks just for my internal disks. For external....one at a time because of limited USB ports and I only have one case...but another TB or so worth of old disks in the closet.

I hoard PC components & my current PC is a chop-shop of parts I found in the garbage can outside work a year ago...seriously. I'd show pics, but it's not something I'm proud of...like the full ATX boad in a midsize ATX case that only fits because it's on its side and the bottom removed with a grinder cut-off wheel to make it fit. I have a fan just laying on the ram because my water cooler loop removed the mount needed for the other fan...another fan is just hanging from the internal frame...it's sad, but it works and it's mine. My internal DVD-RW drive is just sitting on the top side of it all because it doesn't work sideways in it's bay where it belongs...Black Friday needs to hurry up and come so I can build a new PC with last years tech for cheap. Dammit...here...

And yes, that is a motherboard and a tv tuner card just laying on my dirty laundry. And that cell phone in the pic....that's how my PC connects to the internet -- it connects to my home wifi and I tether that to my PC. Sucks being out of ethernet range of the router.

I told you it was sad....and my power supply needs a good dusting...

Edited September 29, 2014 by skeevy

[juanml82]

I just realized something -- If you're trying to install any Linux on that HDD with OSX, remember that OSX uses GPT instead of MBR, and with GPT, you also need a "bios boot" partition (2MB iirc) for Linux to even boot up. The MBR to GPT transition, which has been going on for the past few years, is the source of many headaches in the Linux install world.

Yep, that seems to be what's causing the issue - whatever the issue is.

I got thinking about running Linux from a flash drive (bah, a microsd card in a card reader) and running Linux KSP from a HDD, but wouldn't running an OS from a microsd card cause a lot of wear and tear on the card?

And yes, that is a motherboard and a tv tuner card just laying on my dirty laundry. And that cell phone in the pic....that's how my PC connects to the internet -- it connects to my home wifi and I tether that to my PC. Sucks being out of ethernet range of the router.

I told you it was sad....and my power supply needs a good dusting...

You could buy a long ethernet cable and run it through your house until it reaches your computer. AFAIK, ethernet can run up to 100 meters without issue. On the other hand, depending on the length, a cheap wireless card might be on par in price with a long ethernet line and you don't need to run cables all over your house.

[xtoro]

And that cell phone in the pic....that's how my PC connects to the internet -- it connects to my home wifi and I tether that to my PC. Sucks being out of ethernet range of the router....

You need this http://www.netgear.com/home/products/networking/powerline/

Uses your home electrical wiring as network cables

[skeevy]

Yep, that seems to be what's causing the issue - whatever the issue is.

I got thinking about running Linux from a flash drive (bah, a microsd card in a card reader) and running Linux KSP from a HDD, but wouldn't running an OS from a microsd card cause a lot of wear and tear on the card?

You could buy a long ethernet cable and run it through your house until it reaches your computer. AFAIK, ethernet can run up to 100 meters without issue. On the other hand, depending on the length, a cheap wireless card might be on par in price with a long ethernet line and you don't need to run cables all over your house.

It'll put some wear and tear on some flash, but mostly on the part of the disk you select to be the swap volume. I can't tell ya how many times I've filled and wiped my phone's SD card...I used to be a crack rom flasher and I have a rather large audio collection I've accumulated over the years (somewhere in the 64GB range), so needless to say, I do a lot of writes to my sd cards, and they all still work fine. You might lose a small percentage of space over the course of a year or two. I've lost 1GB out of 29 in more than 2 years and 3 phones on my primary "32"GB micro sd...32 my ass, came with 29 and I'm down to 28 now. Just like my 2TB drive really being 1.88GB....lying ass Western Digital...

Can't stand GPT...not much experience because I don't have an EFI system...but, for a basic step by step (assuming Mint or Ubuntu)

• shrink 30+GB from your largest Windows partition. Two of us here have posted that Linux + KSP takes up around 16GB, so 20 can be a minimum, but you'll be cutting it close and won't have much room for mods or doing anything else.
  
• you'll then need to make a partition that's 1-2mb in size and set it with the bios_boot label in the partitioning tool (might not be necessary, small enough you might as well have it)
  
• after that make another partition for a swap volume that's at least 4GB, more doesn't hurt, but less can.
  
• then take the rest of the space and make a single partition from the rest of the data
  
• Then continue on installing. After this is done, your PC will boot into Grub and from there you can select Windows or Linux.
  

You can also make a separate /boot volume that's 1 or 2 GB if you're gonna use more kernels than what comes stock and set as read only after boot for safety reasons, like a power outage corrupting the drive, but with /boot being read only, it minimizes it being corrupted and allows you to possibly restore a broke system. There'a also a separate /home partition that's commonly used, but with only 30GB and half going to the system and KSP, and single volume with everything (except maybe /boot) is better.

If anybody else here sees this and has more GPT dual-booting experience than myself, which is none, please chime in. We'd appreciate it.

And I have 2 50ft ethernet cables to run through the house. About $4 each on eBay with free shipping. They came in a few days ago, and, unlike what my PC will let you believe, I don't like to half ass things and I just haven't felt like drilling holes in the floor and running cables under the house yet. My Moto Bravo is a good enough wifi card until then...other than it doesn't work with UPnP media servers on my PC...something in the IP or DNS routing I haven't felt like figuring out. I could also just buy the antenna for the wifi on my motherboard...or bust out the solder and some copper wire.

[skeevy]

You need this http://www.netgear.com/home/products/networking/powerline/

Uses your home electrical wiring as network cables

That stuff costs way, way too much for just 500mpbs of speed. I also bought some ethernet cables the other day and I've been a bit lazy in getting around to properly running them. You know, drilling the holes and crawling around under the house. Wires running down the hallway is a bit tacky for my tastes.

[PPR]

Skeevy, looking at your computer I don't know whether to be impressed or horrified. It's like looking at Frankenstein's monster. It's a monster, but..."It's ALIVE!"

[skeevy]

Skeevy, looking at your computer I don't know whether to be impressed or horrified. It's like looking at Frankenstein's monster. It's a monster, but..."It's ALIVE!"

It works and I only had to buy the ram, gpu (both new), and a refurbished motherboard (hard to find decent legacy boards these days). It'll hold me over until I have the money to buy an FX-8350, motherboard, ram, case, and power supply.

To put this thread back on topic

Linux Mint 17 x64

Mods: All USI Mods, B9, BDArmory, Toolbar, Chatter, EVE, Community Resource Pack, Crew Manifest, CrossFeed Enabler, Deadly Reentry, Distant Object, Editor Extensions, EPL, FAR, Hullcam VDS, Imporved Chase Camera, KSPI Lite, Raster Prop, KAS, KASA ISX, Kerbal Joint Reinforcement, KSO, KSPX, Infernal Robotics, MechJeb 2, MechJeb 2 FAR extension, MFT, Module Fixer, Module Manager, ModuleRCSFX, EVA Follower, ORS, ORSX, Part Catalog, Precise Node, Real Chute, Real Fuels, ScanSat, SmokeScreen, SPP, Stock Rebalance, Texture Replacer*, TAC-LS, Time Control, Trajectories, Kerbal Alarm Clock, TVPP...About 60 mods once some of the dependencies I didn't list are accounted for (64 folders under gamedata)

5049 MB Ram, NO ACTIVE TEXTURE MANAGEMENT, Full Graphics Settings (no AA, AMD GPU), Fully Playable with minimal frame loss and lag. The new B9 PNG update really helped me a lot.

*Using Rarden's Skybox & 5 different space suits (no heads or planet mods, removed them when tracking down a lag situation that ended up being caused by crappy Catalyst Control Center settings....grrrrr)

As ya'll can see, I have a ton of mods, somewhere around 2200 Mod Manager patches, no ATM, and a fully playable game. Linux 64bit is the only way to go if you want to play a heavily modded KSP. I could probably push this to 80 or 100 mods if I enabled ATM (I only have 8GB of ram, so I'm getting close to my no-ATM limit). I can't tell ya how nice it is playing with all these mods with no texture compression and pretty parts. All my slowdowns, usually from 60 to 30 or 40fps, are related to my crap quad core CPU clocked at 2.5ghz and 100+ part ships. I'd love a 4-5ghz AMD FX.

My system starts to slow on stock when I hit the 100 part mark. I've OC'd to 3Ghz and that really didn't help much, so it's down to needing a new system, because, let's face it, there really isn't a point at throwing money towards a Socket 775, DDR2 based system, or at least no more than the $150 I did for the motherboard and ram. It's still playable up to the 250-300 part range...but just barely (stock and modded)

[Veelay]

I'm running an integrated Intel chip (HD 4000), and OpenGL refuses to load on my machine. It doesn't crash, it just goes unresponsive indefinitely. It also tries to run in fullscreen for some reason. I've heard that there are some issues with Intel chips running OpenGL, does anyone know if there's a workaround for this, or is it simply not supported at all?

[skeevy]

I'm running an integrated Intel chip (HD 4000), and OpenGL refuses to load on my machine. It doesn't crash, it just goes unresponsive indefinitely. It also tries to run in fullscreen for some reason. I've heard that there are some issues with Intel chips running OpenGL, does anyone know if there's a workaround for this, or is it simply not supported at all?

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/SearchResult.aspx?lang=&ProductID=3712&ProdId=3712

Either the first (32bit) or second (64bit) will be your latest gpu driver. If those don't help, I'm not sure what will. Intel integrated graphics kind of suck and, if you can get one, a $100 AMD or nVidia will be much better. I'm playing with a $128 AMD R7 260X and I'm stuck with a CPU bottleneck now which means every component needs updated because 2.8ghz is the fastest stock frequency for my motherboard's cpu socket (which costs more than the 220 watt AMD FX...).

[Veelay]

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/SearchResult.aspx?lang=&ProductID=3712&ProdId=3712

Either the first (32bit) or second (64bit) will be your latest gpu driver. If those don't help, I'm not sure what will. Intel integrated graphics kind of suck and, if you can get one, a $100 AMD or nVidia will be much better. I'm playing with a $128 AMD R7 260X and I'm stuck with a CPU bottleneck now which means every component needs updated because 2.8ghz is the fastest stock frequency for my motherboard's cpu socket (which costs more than the 220 watt AMD FX...).

Alas, I'm on a laptop, and my little HD 4000 beats out every low-end dedicated mobile card on the market already. My drivers are already up to date, which is disappointing, since this thing has handled every modern game I've thrown at it so far with shockingly good results. My FPS on the linux version is absolute garbage as well, due to hardware incompatibility it seems, so I'm kind of out of options I suppose.

[damerell]

For some reason, forcing OpenGL causes KSP to white screen for me.

I get the same result; screen goes pure white, KSP.exe keeps running but nothing ever happens. The ordinary module-loading bar appears for a second or so beforehand. Radeon HD 6670. (I realise there are many more details I could provide, and I will on request, but this may be a known problem with an easy fix...)

[xtoro]

I get the same result; screen goes pure white, KSP.exe keeps running but nothing ever happens. The ordinary module-loading bar appears for a second or so beforehand. Radeon HD 6670. (I realise there are many more details I could provide, and I will on request, but this may be a known problem with an easy fix...)

Try going into the catalyst control center and look for your graphics options. Uncheck anything that says "let application decide" and turn all the sliders all the way down for anti-aliasing etc...

[Ph34rb0t]

Memory usage after KSP start: 1.8 GB

Memory usage after a few hours: 2.2 GB

Haven't noticed much, if any decrease in performance.

(i7 4670K 3.9GHz, GTX570)

I sometimes see a bit of terrain flickering and z-fighting from higher up, but this could very well be due to a visual mod.

All in all, OpenGL seems to be a viable alternative for those not running Linux. Or those dual-booting Windows x64 and Linux x64.

[damerell]

Try going into the catalyst control center and look for your graphics options. Uncheck anything that says "let application decide" and turn all the sliders all the way down for anti-aliasing etc...

Done. Outcome unchanged.

[skeevy]

Done. Outcome unchanged.

You could try updating to the latest 14.9 drivers if you're on Linux or Windows 7/8. I checked and your card is supported with the 14.9 AMD driver. From what I've read, the white screen is caused when the drivers crash, but it could also be an old, faulty, or underpowered power supply (yours is a 60 or 70w card, so not as likey).

Another thing you can try is going into the Control Panel and changing your power settings. Set everything to performance/always on and make sure the turn off the monitor option is disabled. I had to do that to get my R7 to play BF4 for more than 10 minutes at a time. You could also use the MSI Afterburner to monitor your card's temperatures and ensure your not overheating it (or OC your GPU); temperature should be in the 30-60C range, maybe more if your playing an intensive game, shouldn't be 90 or higher...reminds me that I need to set an OC for my card when running under Linux...

With AMD GPU's, you're better off using the drivers provided on amd.com than what your card's manufacturer provides or your system update might suggest that you use. My card shipped with a bad driver and the one provided by Windows and with most Linux distros is usually a version or two behind, so I download my drivers from AMD and my games are better because of it.

I haven't had good luck on Windows with my AMD R7 260x and using OpenGL. Works just fine with Linux, but Windows and KSP 23.5 didn't like running OGL on my system. I don't think I've actually tried OGL with 0.24+ on Windows. I switched to playing KSP on Linux exclusively around the 0.24.1 release...won't ever go back to Windows KSP because, IMHO, modded KSP on Windows sucks, x32 and x64, and won't be worth really using until it has proper x64 support.

[Sakata]

One thing that you're missing in your survey that might matter to someone hoping to get performance out of the game -- what graphics card they have. OpenGL renders different on different hardware. For instance, ATI's OpenGL support frankly blows while nVidia's is generally really good, while their D3D support is often better than nVidia's -- but some cards tend to perform better than others even in the same 'class'.

[Jofe]

I get the same result; screen goes pure white, KSP.exe keeps running but nothing ever happens. The ordinary module-loading bar appears for a second or so beforehand. Radeon HD 6670. (I realise there are many more details I could provide, and I will on request, but this may be a known problem with an easy fix...)

Was having the same results with a Radeon HD 5770. Updating the drivers fixed, apparently since still behaved a little weird while loading. Have some anomalies though, fullscreen isn't working I still get the game in a window.

However right of the bat (just having started the game) I went down from 2.5GB of ram to 1.7GB. Been getting ram related crashed lately so will update later if I managed to avoid them with this method.

[xtoro]

Was having the same results with a Radeon HD 5770. Updating the drivers fixed, apparently since still behaved a little weird while loading. Have some anomalies though, fullscreen isn't working I still get the game in a window.

http://i.imgur.com/99VOc5Cl.png

However right of the bat (just having started the game) I went down from 2.5GB of ram to 1.7GB. Been getting ram related crashed lately so will update later if I managed to avoid them with this method.

If you look into your settings.cfg file does it say "fullscreen=true"?

[Jofe]

If you look into your settings.cfg file does it say "fullscreen=true"?

Yes, yes it does. On another note using Alt+Enter actually switches to fullscreen, however whenever I use Alt+Tab it goes back to a window.

Ran into another thing. When I rocket is going through 9 to 13km approximately my fps are tanking very hard. Usually I would lose a little during this same space but with OpenGL the drop is big.

Edited October 6, 2014 by Jofe