Space Stations and lagg

[NikodemusDSD]

I am planing a big mission to Eve and Gilly. I want to use a transportation ship to transport 2 planet lander, 2 mun lander, 3 rover & 3 satelites to eve. To prepare this mission I have 2 space stations. Space station 1 is a refuel station where all lander and ships will be refueld before they travel to station 2. Station 2 is a space dock where alle parts will be refueld again and when the transport ship is in orbit they will be put on in there. But the more landers, rovers, satelites and supplyships I place at the spacedock, the bigger the lag gets and docking gets verry hard. My refuel tanker can make his 180 degree turn in 5 seconds, next to the space dock (within 2,2km range) he needs more than 30 seconds. Is there a chance that there will be a performance update some day? I already turned down the graphic settings to the minimum.

[MalfunctionM1Ke]

You might rather want to break your mission down to several smaller parts than to wait for a performance update because the physics-lag that you are experiencing with big Ships does not come from KSP but from the Unity-Engine which Squad has no developing power of.

Sorry to rain on your parade

[Alshain]

Is there a chance of a performance update someday? Yes there is a 100% chance of someday getting a performance update. Maxmaps confirmed this a few weeks ago in a live stream. However we don't know when and as MalfunctionM1Ke said, it's due to the wait for Unity 5 release and even Squad doesn't know when that will be. But Max did confirm they would put the U5 upgrade at top priority the moment it hits, which before that we didn't even know they would update to Unity 5 at all (though most of us suspected).

Your lag however plagues us all and there is nothing that can be done at the moment.

[NikodemusDSD]

In this case I keep my station in orbit and do not drag it into the sun

Thanks for the fast info.

[Guest]

Everyone has a part limit for their PC, sounds like you've hit yours. :-)

Unity 5 will very much help performance-wise but thats at least a couple months out.

[Stealth2668]

Will unity 5 have multi-core support? Seems like these days it should be mandatory since no one has single core pc's anymore.

[Francois424]

Wasn't there a mod that allowed to weld part together ? Like you could have any non-usable items count toward one piece. (say 2 orange tanks + 1 RCS tank + 2 Battery packs + one nosecone) could be wielded into ONE part ? I wonder if that mod is still updated and around.

if not, Squad needs to make one in stock Ksp =)

[Alshain]

Will unity 5 have multi-core support? Seems like these days it should be mandatory since no one has single core pc's anymore.

It will have Nvidia PhysX 3.3, multicore support, (better) 64-bit support, Global illumination in real time, light baking in real time, and a new audio mixer.

Wasn't there a mod that allowed to weld part together ? Like you could have any non-usable items count toward one piece. (say 2 orange tanks + 1 RCS tank + 2 Battery packs + one nosecone) could be wielded into ONE part ? I wonder if that mod is still updated and around.

if not, Squad needs to make one in stock Ksp =)

Yes and this isn't something that should be stock. It's a hack/work around to fix a problem that will be pretty much fixed by Unity 5 so it should stay a mod in my opinion.

Edited September 10, 2014 by Alshain

[cantab]

Yeah, space stations can cause part count issues.

One possible improvement can be to edit the save file and disable docking ports, turning them into permanent joins. Docked docking ports seem to particularly attract lag.

Otherwise, you just have to build with part count in mind.

[TimePeriod]

Reduce your number of parts.

[Franklin]

Unity 5 will very much help performance-wise but thats at least a couple months out.

Yeah. Beta release speculation is close, though. From the Unity forums:

[Francois424]

Much closer than I thought. Thanks for the Information.

[Hotblack Desiato]

as the others said: reduce part count.

I'd suggest take a look at ubiozurs part welding mod.

this way, you can weld structural parts together (for example long trusses with tanks and batteries), tanks and engines and so. this way, you can reduce the part count without losing abilities.

there are just a few rules:

1. never weld 2 parts with IVAs (for example 3 man capsule + hitchhiker). ksp can't handle that.

2. never weld something with 2 docking ports. again, ksp can't handle that.

3. never weld parts with rcs-ports (especially the omni directional ones). again, ksp can't handle that.

4. animated parts (rover wheels, solar panels, landing legs) should remain single parts.

5. try using parts with big contact nodes, that further improves the stability of the ship: for example those 2.5m SAS have small ones. but sandwiched in 2 4K-batteries, it can connect

6. and maybe the most important rule: weld parts inside a second savegame. part welding tends to "kill" the techtree, meaning, every single piece (not the nodes) has to be researched again (means: klick on it in the techtree and then OK).

for example, I once created a ion-engine module containing one 2.5m probe core with 8 micro girders, 80 xenon tanks, 8 ion engines and a beam. 100 parts to 1 part (3, if used with a front and rear docking port). with an additional battery and monoprop-tank, the part is even capable of flying around on its own.

[boxman]

Will unity 5 have multi-core support? Seems like these days it should be mandatory since no one has single core pc's anymore.

It already has multicore support. The problem is that physics calculations are limited to one core. But yes unity 5 is supposed to support multi core also for physics.

[Guest]

Will unity 5 have multi-core support? Seems like these days it should be mandatory since no one has single core pc's anymore.

As much as i agree, Unity had far more pressing issues before.

[Sky_walker]

It already has multicore support. The problem is that physics calculations are limited to one core. But yes unity 5 is supposed to support multi core also for physics.

My 8 cores are burning with excitement.

[TimberWolffe]

I remember a thing in a youtube video that said if you add [space]-force-opengl then it opens in OpenGL if your graphics card supports it

for example, "KSP_x64.exe -force-opengl"

[boxman]

as the others said: reduce part count.

I'd suggest take a look at ubiozurs part welding mod.

I completely agree with this suggestion. If you use ubiozur right you can easily cut down heavily on part numbers.

It takes a while to figure out which parts can be welded without issues, but once you do it is really a gamechanging mod if you like to build big stuff.

[Commissioner Tadpole]

Seems like these days it should be mandatory since no one has single core pc's anymore.

The economically-challenged and those who have questionable computer knowledge(or are underaged and have parents like that) - or both - do have single-core PCs.

[skeevy]

The economically-challenged and those who have questionable computer knowledge(or are underaged and have parents like that) - or both - do have single-core PCs.

I hope you're not actually suggesting that people who are poor, dumb, and/or kids are why we can't have multicore support. Multicore has been a minimum requirement for games for years now, so KSP players wanting it aren't really asking for a far fetched feature. Hopefully Unity 5 will help those of us who don't have the best of gaming rigs.

[Guest]

I hope you're not actually suggesting that people who are poor, dumb, and/or kids are why we can't have multicore support. Multicore has been a minimum requirement for games for years now, so KSP players wanting it aren't really asking for a far fetched feature. Hopefully Unity 5 will help those of us who don't have the best of gaming rigs.

There are a few of the 'modern' AMD CPU's that are single-core that when overclocked can really easily run games like battlefield and so forth.

No one needs to preach the benefits of multi-threaddable applications, however we must think about the 'entire' userbase. Even a user with a non-hyperthreaded i3 (or even hyperthreaded) is going to be blown out of the water with Unity 5, and the devs have to somehow balance out performance a bit.

EDIT: Sorry, i feel i need to explain myself more - right now the gap between part limit isn't massive, most can handle 400, and a good chuck can easily handle 600 (cpu database ship is 600 parts), but it really falls off around 900. With Unity 5, we're going to see people getting big increases, but then people with much, much vastly improved counts - and that, i feel, can really split the community.

Edited September 13, 2014 by Linear

[skeevy]

There are a few of the 'modern' AMD CPU's that are single-core that when overclocked can really easily run games like battlefield and so forth.

No one needs to preach the benefits of multi-threaddable applications, however we must think about the 'entire' userbase. Even a user with a non-hyperthreaded i3 (or even hyperthreaded) is going to be blown out of the water with Unity 5, and the devs have to somehow balance out performance a bit.

EDIT: Sorry, i feel i need to explain myself more - right now the gap between part limit isn't massive, most can handle 400, and a good chuck can easily handle 600 (cpu database ship is 600 parts), but it really falls off around 900. With Unity 5, we're going to see people getting big increases, but then people with much, much vastly improved counts - and that, i feel, can really split the community.

My current PC doesn't have hyperthreading, but it does have 4 cores and it's from a 2008 Vista floor model; an Intel Q6600 overclocked from 2.4 to 2.7ghz...gets unstable past that and it's water cooled so it isn't temperature related...bad memory I reckon...anyhoo, it's my opinion that if Squad limits KSP in a way that makes it more compatible with single core systems, they're gonna be screwing over actual gamers with quality built rigs and it'll actually be bad for them in the long run -- by bad, I just mean that people with uber PC's will play KSP, get marginal performance, and give the game a bad review because other games on the same system run stellar, other people will see those bad reviews and skip KSP for some other game.

The community split is a factor for every PC game there is. Look as Skyrim. Seems like there are just as many mods to make it playable on older PCs as there are mods for enhanced graphics.

Personally, I can't get any more than about 250-300 parts in orbit at a time else the game is unplayable. My system, while nothing great, can play games like BF4 and Skyrim on high and ultra, with graphics packs, mods, ENB, & SweetFX while pulling 30-60 fps in 1080p (capped @ 60fps most games) with smooth gameplay. KSP only runs smooth up until I hit the 100 part mark and becomes unplayable in the 250-300 part range running with low settings, same resolution (playing on a 42" LCD TV). Please don't take that as complaining because I expected as much going in (read plenty of reviews, searched these forums for issues people had, and said "I can accept that"), but I'd just like to be able to take full advantage of my crap hardware because the same crap hardware plays other games just fine. Not everybody is like us and will deal with the engine limitations. KSP is my favorite game right now, even with all the downsides and krakens.

[email protected] (quad core)

8GB ddr2 ram

2TB WD HDD

2 290GB WD HDD's (holds the OS's; 283 recognized)

1 250GB ?? External HDD

AMD R7 260x 2GB GDDR5

Can't Remember 700watt PS (bought for my old pc, threw it in the "new")

Windows 8.1 x64

Funtoo Linux Current x64 (in the middle of installing, was Debian Unstable until yesterday)

Like I said, not the best of gaming PC's, but it does the job for most games. With better multi-core support, KSP would be a lot more playable for me. I know a lot of that is Unity's fault, especially the physics calculations, so hopefully Unity 5 will make KSP run better on my system.

For the curious, Linux usually plays smoother but doesn't jive as nicely with mods so I normally stick to Windows x64 version....it works just fine for me with minimal bugs...better than Windows 32 actually. Also, most of the above came out of a garbage can. Found an old PC in the can at work, took it home, and it booted up to Vista (nothing of real interest on the HDD...), threw $300 towards a motherboard, ram, GPU, and watercooling and it works just fine. Threw in my 2TB drive, my non-stock power supply, and it runs like a dream. Not the best, but better than my old dual core AMD system. That's also why I took a bit of offense to the poor people excuse above...I'm poor and I have a decent rig...granted it was a chop shop from dumpster diving and used parts from eBay (sans GPU, bought it brand new for $120 during a Christmas sale)...but financially challenged people (and even kids) have ways of obtaining decent enough PC's to warrant multi-core support. That doesn't apply to dumb people...they're screwed regardless

[Stealth2668]

The economically-challenged and those who have questionable computer knowledge(or are underaged and have parents like that) - or both - do have single-core PCs.

People under those circumstances wouldn't be playing games then. Even so, they would be the vast minority.

[Rithsom]

My current PC doesn't have hyperthreading, but it does have 4 cores and it's from a 2008 Vista floor model; an Intel Q6600 overclocked from 2.4 to 2.7ghz...gets unstable past that and it's water cooled so it isn't temperature related...bad memory I reckon...anyhoo, it's my opinion that if Squad limits KSP in a way that makes it more compatible with single core systems, they're gonna be screwing over actual gamers with quality built rigs and it'll actually be bad for them in the long run -- by bad, I just mean that people with uber PC's will play KSP, get marginal performance, and give the game a bad review because other games on the same system run stellar, other people will see those bad reviews and skip KSP for some other game.

The community split is a factor for every PC game there is. Look as Skyrim. Seems like there are just as many mods to make it playable on older PCs as there are mods for enhanced graphics.

Personally, I can't get any more than about 250-300 parts in orbit at a time else the game is unplayable. My system, while nothing great, can play games like BF4 and Skyrim on high and ultra, with graphics packs, mods, ENB, & SweetFX while pulling 30-60 fps in 1080p (capped @ 60fps most games) with smooth gameplay. KSP only runs smooth up until I hit the 100 part mark and becomes unplayable in the 250-300 part range running with low settings, same resolution (playing on a 42" LCD TV). Please don't take that as complaining because I expected as much going in (read plenty of reviews, searched these forums for issues people had, and said "I can accept that"), but I'd just like to be able to take full advantage of my crap hardware because the same crap hardware plays other games just fine. Not everybody is like us and will deal with the engine limitations. KSP is my favorite game right now, even with all the downsides and krakens.

My computer is just the same. BF3 runs at a smooth 60 fps even with the highest graphics setting, but KSP runs at about 15 fps if I have over 300 parts on my ship...

[Xaiier]

I wanted to pop in here before too much misinformation got spread around.

First off, no computer sold in the last 10 years has less than 2 cores. Single core machines are extinct. There is no reason to consider them in this discussion.

Second off, the Unity engine already does multithreading for a lot of stuff, the problem is that physics isn't multithreaded.

On to the physics. The main problem is the lack of a cylinder collider in Unity, forcing them to use mesh colliders. The lack of a cylinder collider is due to the high mathematical complexity of doing cylinder collisions. With U5, the PhysX is being upgraded to v3.3, which has more support for physics multithreading, however I have heard that situations like KSP, where the calculations are a series of linked objects, cannot be multithreaded. I haven't been able to find any definitive verification of that though. Whatever it may be, I wouldn't advise getting your hopes up about what is possible until we have better info.