Enable Collision on Terrain Scatter

[Andrew Hansen]

So, terrain scatter has been around for dozens of updates (I think), and it still says "WIP." I suspect that's probably because it doesn't have collision. So this suggestion is simple (and yes, I know it's been suggested before, but the last thread was about a year old): Allow stuff to crash into terrain scatter.

The first thing people are going to say is, "The performance hit would be terrible!" But I think the terrain scatter only has to have collision in a 300 meter radius around the rocket (the same radius that full physics extends to for inactive rockets).

I think that the benefit would be huge for adding that. Suddenly driving in a rover would become way more fun and exciting by having to avoid rocks and/or trees. Landing would become more challenging, as you'd have to find a place without ground scatter beneath you. And another thing that would have to change is that ground scatter would need to become permanent, so that once it was generated, it would stay in the same place (otherwise people's save's could get ruined by having ground scatter spawn within a craft).

To avoid taking up too much memory, there could be a criteria for having terrain scatter be permanent (obviously memorizing the position of terrain scatter on every inch of every planet would be insane). That criteria would be if the scatter is 300 meters or less to a ship that is landed on the terrain. If that ship leaves the ground, the scatter no longer has to be permanent.

But maybe I've missed some important reason why ground scatter would be ridiculously hard or impossible to implement. If so, please speak up.

Anyway, the way I look at it now is a little bit of coding for a huge amount of added fun.

Edited August 28, 2014 by Andrew Hansen

[juanml82]

We'd probably need a way to tell, from orbit, which places have ground scatter and which do not, or which have a lot and which have too few. Imagine you finally made it to Vall, and you have to keep quicksaving/quickloading because you keep hitting random rocks - and it would be worse on bodies with atmosphere, where parachutes kill your horizontal velocity and landing accuracy is harder.

And the same for landing airplanes - you're coming in a highly inclined orbit, you are not going to hit the runway at all. You can't land in a mountain, you need to be very careful with rolling terrain, you can't land in a forest, landing on water is complicated, where can you land?

[Stargate525]

We'd probably need a way to tell, from orbit, which places have ground scatter and which do not, or which have a lot and which have too few. Imagine you finally made it to Vall, and you have to keep quicksaving/quickloading because you keep hitting random rocks - and it would be worse on bodies with atmosphere, where parachutes kill your horizontal velocity and landing accuracy is harder.

And the same for landing airplanes - you're coming in a highly inclined orbit, you are not going to hit the runway at all. You can't land in a mountain, you need to be very careful with rolling terrain, you can't land in a forest, landing on water is complicated, where can you land?

Boy, that sounds almost like what a real agency might have to deal with...

It gives you an incentive to build actual rugged landers, that could deal with some smaller ground scatter. The real Apollo 11 spent almost all of their spare descent fuel budget on trying to find a smooth landing site. As for planes... Well, you're complaining that what is essentially an emergency landing might be difficult... Can't say I sympathize with your viewpoint.

I agree with the OP. Having such large objects being incorporeal simply smacks of an incomplete, amateur game.

[peadar1987]

You could have the terrain scatter generated from a seed, so the items always end up being in the same place?

[SelectHalfling0]

peadar brings up a good point. Then the collision boxes good be drawn (albeit this would take ALOT of time on squad's part).

[juanml82]

Boy, that sounds almost like what a real agency might have to deal with...

It gives you an incentive to build actual rugged landers, that could deal with some smaller ground scatter. The real Apollo 11 spent almost all of their spare descent fuel budget on trying to find a smooth landing site. As for planes... Well, you're complaining that what is essentially an emergency landing might be difficult... Can't say I sympathize with your viewpoint.

I agree with the OP. Having such large objects being incorporeal simply smacks of an incomplete, amateur game.

Airplanes doing emergency landings have airfields around though (as well as a proper aerodynamic environment where they can maneuver more easily).

Basically, the idea is: where can I land? Here, here and there. And just maybe, over there but you have to be careful.

[vexx32]

The terrain scatter is an old feature that was introduced in incomplete form. It's still a placeholder. I'm sure it won't be too long before they decide to go over that code again. I think one of the main concerns is that collisions require a collision mesh, and the sheer number of objects usually dotting the landscape could cause a performance issue if they all had their own mesh.

It will probably be addressed soon enough, but it looks like the next update or two is focusing on having a working implementation of Career mode.

[Andrew Hansen]

We'd probably need a way to tell, from orbit, which places have ground scatter and which do not, or which have a lot and which have too few.

I don't see why you should, seeing as ground scatter is mostly evenly placed all over the landscape (besides Kerbin, where you have different types of scatter). Also, when you begin your deorbit burn, you don't have a perfect idea of where you going to land - it's only when you're a few meters above the surface that you fine-tune your landing zone.

Imagine you finally made it to Vall, and you have to keep quicksaving/quickloading because you keep hitting random rocks - and it would be worse on bodies with atmosphere, where parachutes kill your horizontal velocity and landing accuracy is harder.

Yes, I can see how atmospheric landings could be more difficult, but as Stargate525 said, this will just encourage you to make more rugged landers and have more skill when landing.

And the same for landing airplanes - you're coming in a highly inclined orbit, you are not going to hit the runway at all. You can't land in a mountain, you need to be very careful with rolling terrain, you can't land in a forest, landing on water is complicated, where can you land?

Depending on the plane's landing speed, you may or may not be able to land in a forest. It's actually easy to find areas of clear land in a forest even with terrain scatter at 100%. And places like deserts are excellent landing zones. Again, this just pushes you to use more skill and create planes that can handle more rugged terrain. Remember, you can always disable ground scatter (in fact, as of now, you have manually enable it from the settings menu.

You could have the terrain scatter generated from a seed, so the items always end up being in the same place?

That is an excellent idea!

The terrain scatter is an old feature that was introduced in incomplete form. It's still a placeholder. I'm sure it won't be too long before they decide to go over that code again. I think one of the main concerns is that collisions require a collision mesh, and the sheer number of objects usually dotting the landscape could cause a performance issue if they all had their own mesh.

It will probably be addressed soon enough, but it looks like the next update or two is focusing on having a working implementation of Career mode.

So, about the collision meshes - how about having the collision meshes themselves spawn at a much closer range to the active vessel, while still having the scatter visible from further away?

Anyway, that last sentence is pretty encouraging. I sure Squad gets around to finishing up ground scatter soon. Again, I'm under the impression that it wouldn't take a lot of work to do (but I'm not a modder, so I have no clue about what things might be involved).

Edited August 28, 2014 by Andrew Hansen

[Whirligig Girl]

I'm pretty sure this is the secret feature that hasn't been made into a mod.

[Andrew Hansen]

I'm pretty sure this is the secret feature that hasn't been made into a mod.

Oooh, now that's an idea! An idea I absolutely love.

[Andrew Hansen]

I just thought of another great idea - what if you could take surface samples from rocks with your Kerbals. Now that would add a lot to gameplay - flying around a big Mun rock and taking samples from it is a lot more interesting than taking a sample from just any old boring terrain.

[peadar1987]

I just thought of another great idea - what if you could take surface samples from rocks with your Kerbals. Now that would add a lot to gameplay - flying around a big Mun rock and taking samples from it is a lot more interesting than taking a sample from just any old boring terrain.

*ahem* ...

forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/92188-Interact-with-terrain-scatters-%28for-SCIENCE%21%29

Great minds and all that...

Edited August 29, 2014 by peadar1987

[Andrew Hansen]

*ahem* ...

forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/92188-Interact-with-terrain-scatters-%28for-SCIENCE%21%29

Great minds and all that...

Haha, this is hilarious - I now remember previously having seen your thread, and so I suspect that the idea subconsciously came from you. Yes, an excellent idea indeed.

[peadar1987]

Haha, this is hilarious - I now remember previously having seen your thread, and so I suspect that the idea subconsciously came from you. Yes, an excellent idea indeed.

I really, really wish I was able to make mods, this would be first on my list (Final Frontier was first, but then I found out somebody had already made it)

[Camacha]

A related question: is it possible to modify the scatter meshes?

[Vaporo]

A related question: is it possible to modify the scatter meshes?

Maybe. KittopiaTech just added a rudimentary terrain scatter importer, so it might be possible.

Every update I hope that they will work on ground scatter. I think that the feature has a lot of potential. Plus it has a few bugs:

[amankd]

with the fixed sea physics i really want to implement underwater terrain scatter with seaweed or somthing, any idea how this could be achived?

 

[pandaman]

I tried with the terrain scatter on for a while, but found it a bit irritating that there was no collision mesh, so with the current system  I don't really see the point of having it turned on as it spoils the experience a bit, as much as I like the idea of having it.   Clouds, as purely visual scatter, I see differently, as you tend not to flatten your nose if you walk into a cloud.

I think whatever solution gets I implemented eventually it needs to be persistent for each save once generated, otherwise you could scout out a safe landing spot only to discover that the forest decided to 'go for a walk' like in Lord of the Rings and wreck your plans, or trash your base.  Maybe a system on similar lines to resources could be used where the locations and concentrations are generated differently for each save.

I'm not sure what the best solution is, it may be necessary to just integrate it into the terrain, but that would mean much more complex ground detail.

[Claw]

This thread is a bit old, but the recent request is on topic.

4 hours ago, amankd said:

with the fixed sea physics i really want to implement underwater terrain scatter with seaweed or somthing, any idea how this could be achived?

I'm sure it could be achieved, though the scatter bits of KSP are hard to poke at with add-ons. Hopefully after 1.1 hits, and we see how much of a performance improvement there is, maybe they will start working on environmentals.

As for the discussion about collision detection, there absolutely would be a performance hit. But if 1.1 hits and multithreading and all the other goodness works, then some of that stuff could be offloaded away from the physics threading. And the performance loss wouldn't be noticeable compared to "today's standard."

[322997am]

The collision mesh for scatter wold be nice. But imagin how annoying landing a plane on the grassland will be. You touchdown you activate full reverse thrust deploy airbrakes and you slams the ground brakes and then you fly into a tree and die. Ah f9 for the tenth time. I would think that if this gets added it will be rage.

[pandaman]

1 hour ago, 322997am said:

The collision mesh for scatter wold be nice. But imagin how annoying landing a plane on the grassland will be. You touchdown you activate full reverse thrust deploy airbrakes and you slams the ground brakes and then you fly into a tree and die. Ah f9 for the tenth time. I would think that if this gets added it will be rage.

Annoying yes, but realistic 

[juanml82]

1 hour ago, 322997am said:

The collision mesh for scatter wold be nice. But imagin how annoying landing a plane on the grassland will be. You touchdown you activate full reverse thrust deploy airbrakes and you slams the ground brakes and then you fly into a tree and die. Ah f9 for the tenth time. I would think that if this gets added it will be rage.

Which is why this also needs an interface like Trajectories, pinpointing to the approximate landing location, with a map view which tells how much scatter is in the area and what's the risk of crashing into them. Also, better rover wheels and brakes (coming up with 1.1).

 

With the current GUI, this is the kind of realism request which doesn't feature the kind of helpers real pilots and astronauts have. After all, the Shuttle had an abort airfield in Spain, planes have plenty of runways to divert for emergency landings and NASA (and I guess China now) have ways to aim their landers to a general area.

[TheCanadianVendingMachine]

I really want this feature for one reason - Apollo 11 type situations. Imagine landing, then seeing a rock so you have to move a bit

[r4pt0r]

On 8/28/2014 4:29:43, vexx32 said:

The terrain scatter is an old feature that was introduced in incomplete form. It's still a placeholder. I'm sure it won't be too long before they decide to go over that code again. I think one of the main concerns is that collisions require a collision mesh, and the sheer number of objects usually dotting the landscape could cause a performance issue if they all had their own mesh.

It will probably be addressed soon enough, but it looks like the next update or two is focusing on having a working implementation of Career mode.

[deadhorse] Lol thats impossible, we are in version 1.0, there cant be any placeholders in an already released game. [/deadhorse]



Seriously though, I too would like to see physical terrain scatter. It might even help stop my tiny Pol landers when they tip over and slide 1000 meters down an incline 
Hopefully there is some way to do it without it being a resource drain.



I've always wondered, when you look at the scatter, the game has to render its polygons just like any other part or surface. why would making them immobile and solid be such a drain when they are being rendered anyway? With how many polygons are on screen when you are near all the KSC buidlings, I would think that rendering the nearest 100 terrain scatters would be easier than rendering the entire KSC when you are on the launch pad.


and to Vexx, is the shape of the various scatters not already a mesh, just a non-physical one? can it not be enabled on the wire-frame the texture is rigged onto?

I'm almost certainly over simplifying it, but it seems like the scatter is already there, it just has some sort of noclip mode enabled so things go through them...


Enlighten me please.

Edited December 5, 2015 by r4pt0r

[pincushionman]

I thought that not only was scatter not collision…able, it also wasn't persistent. If this is still true, it needs to be made so prior to collision being added.