Forcing DirectX11: 40% memory reduction!

[Captain Sierra]

Just switch to OGL for anything on Minmus. It's a pain, but I can't look at a jaggy mess constantly.

64 bit. At least until Unity 5 and DX11 (and a less buggy 64 bit), its a good way to pack on the mods without visual glitches.

[RainDreamer]

Confirm that dx11 gives me a massive RAM boost, trading for weird-looking UI and black lines in place of paints in editor. Hmm. On one hand, I like the nice memory space and not crashing. On the other hand, visual aesthetic is also important for me. Curses. Can't have the cake and eat it too huh.

[WuphonsReach]

Due to my addiction to various mods... I'm stuck using OpenGL mode on Windows 32bit until Unity fixes Windows 64bit.

(Been running OpenGL for a few weeks, performance is so-so, graphical issues are nil, but memory savings and no crashes is worth it.)

[Fleb]

No AA on OpenGL though right?

It worked on my AMD when I set it in Catalyst control center.

[linuxgurugamer]

I think that fixed it... but...

Has anyone else gotten this sort of thing? Happened on boot up and I'm not sure if it's because of my settings or if because of -force-d3d11.

http://i.imgur.com/7vm2th6.jpg

Are you trying to make a P-38?

[eddiew]

After testing on my setup, menu @ 1.9 with OpenGL became 2.4 with DX 11... And it crashed when exiting the game. Not sure if this is a Windows 7 issue, and maybe 8 handles it better?

For now I'll stick with OpenGL, even if it does shave off a few FPS, but it was worth a punt

[j-tk]

This is what kills me. I love KSP, but having a gaming machine with 24 gigs of ram, 4 SSD's, and a Gigabyte GTX 980 G1 that Boosts itself to 1701 on air in demanding games, the ram limits of the unity engine make me want to scream lol.

With that said, anyone here use GTX 670-980's on a Linux machine to bypass the RAM limit? If so, how do the cards hold up/how are the drivers, have an older 10k rpm Raptor HD I would mind using strictly for Linux/ksp.

Thanks!

[HafCoJoe]

Are you trying to make a P-38?

I have made a P-38 . I was using it as a test dummy. Here's the thread if you want it .

[Hannu]

X11 saves over a gigabyte and is much more stable against other than memory crashes too. On the other hand, there are graphics problems. Atmospheric effects turn the ship to magenta. There are bright green rectangles on the surface of Ike (and maybe on other bodies too, I just drove on Ike yesterday). Shadows is not drawn correct etc. I prefer technical performance over visual beauty, so X11 is my choice. Thanks for the tip.

[Jovzin]

Hello,

So my testing results:

DX9 with my sweetfx settings and KSP 32 bit - when I am in space center screen 2.9GB

Now:

Opengl and KSP 32 bit - when I am in space center screen 1.9 GB

Pros: Great savings

Cons: No shadows And for my gameplay I need them for landing on different moons and planets.

------

DirectX 11 and KSP 32 bit - when I am in sapce center screen 2.2 GB

Pros: Around 800MB memory savings

Cons: During reentry ship goes pink for some seconds. And mising those textures on the launch pad and in VAB and SPH. My minmus is looking good no missing textures on it.

Neutral: Can not use my SweetFX settings which should be working with DirectX11 according the sweetfx web page, and it looks like my UI is sharper.

-------

Now KSP 64bit and version 0.90 of KSP

I do not know what happend but I got a lot of random crashes. During loading, during building rocket in VAB, during flight. So right now KSP 64 Bit for Win is not for me right now but:

KSP 64 bit and previous version 0.25 of KSP - no bugs, no random crashes, no glitches , my sweetfx was working. I was playing whole day and not a single crash.

----------

So the result: I really do not know what they did with KSP 64bit in this new version 0.90 Cause my previous KSP 0.25 with 64 bit exe was working nice very nice.

I am sticking with DirectX11 for now. Hoping that Unity 5 will be here soon and Squad will move to Unity 5 soon.

Edited January 9, 2015 by Jovzin
typos

[helaeon]

After another play session it appears shadows are rendered funky in DX11 on my rig. May see if I can get AA to work in OpenGL by setting it in the control panel rather than trusting the game to do it.

[linuxgurugamer]

I have made a P-38 . I was using it as a test dummy. Here's the thread if you want it .

Very nice. The P-38 is one of my favorite planes, so I was excited to see it here.

thanks

[longbyte1]

Does the Unity player choose D3D9 by default on Windows?

[Motokid600]

After another play session it appears shadows are rendered funky in DX11 on my rig. May see if I can get AA to work in OpenGL by setting it in the control panel rather than trusting the game to do it.

Do you have Nvidia? Post if you have any success. I tried the AA overrides in the control panel in the past with no luck.

[Nitrous Oxide]

X11 saves over a gigabyte and is much more stable against other than memory crashes too. On the other hand, there are graphics problems. Atmospheric effects turn the ship to magenta. There are bright green rectangles on the surface of Ike (and maybe on other bodies too, I just drove on Ike yesterday). Shadows is not drawn correct etc. I prefer technical performance over visual beauty, so X11 is my choice. Thanks for the tip.

If you can get the -force-d3d11-no-singlethreaded parameter to work, those shader glitches are gone. However, for me, I had to lower textures to 1/2 to get it to load vs the regular -force-d3d11 command (using ATM of course).

Does the Unity player choose D3D9 by default on Windows?

Yup.

[longbyte1]

Can anyone confirm if -force-feature-level–10–1 or -force-feature-level–11–0 actually do anything?

[Jovzin]

Hmm I do not know but for me this command -force-d3d11-no-singlethreaded is not working. The game runs in directx 9 when I put this command -force-d3d11-no-singlethreaded. I do not know why crap

Edited January 10, 2015 by Jovzin
typos

[linuxgurugamer]

Hmm I do not know but for me this command -force-d3d11-no-singlethreaded is not working. The game runs in directx 9 when I put this command -force-d3d11-no-singlethreaded. I do not know why crap

You need spaces:

-force-d3d11 -no-singlethreaded

[Van Disaster]

Full list of unity commandline args, copy-paste from here.

http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/CommandLineArguments.html

[neamerjell]

My experience with Beta 0.90 has been that it ran okay at best, crashing at random times, always the "Access Violation" errors. Ugh! Please devs, why bother doing anything in 32 bit anymore? The last 32 bit only processor Intel produced was the Pentium 4 series... 11 years ago! It was also the last of the single core CPUs. All ranting aside, while searching for a solution to this problem, I happened to find this command line tweak, hack, whatever you want to call it:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Kerbal Space Program\KSP.exe" -force-opengl -popupwindow

I don't notice much in the way of memory usage, although it is a little less, but the game is way more stable. I run the aggressive active texture management and 44 other mods - including B9, KW Rocektry, Lack Luster Labs, and almost all of Umbra Space Industry's offerings (MKS, Karbonite, etc.), and it still crashes every once in a while, but with nowhere near the frequency as stock with no command line switches.

System Specs:

Motherboard: Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H

CPU: Intel Core i5 3570K, NOT overclocked

Memory: 8GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3

SSD: Samsung 840 EVO 250 GB << Game is installed here, also have a 1TB and 3TB Seagate HDD

GPU: Gigabyte Windforce GTX 670, if it is overclocked, its at whatever it was out of the box

Monitor: 40 inch Samsung LCD TV, HDMI input from computer

[magnemoe]

This work very well for me, Amd R9 200.

My game was almost unplayable and tend to get memory overrun all the time. now its only use 2.2 GB.

Only problem is the logo on a moded part has become transparent.

[Van Disaster]

Hm, well, Minmus surface shows up in the tracking station but not in the flight scene still - and the Kopernicus based extra planet mod I'm testing has something based on Minmus and *that* doesn't have a surface either. However it did lead me to think that perhaps we could just replace Minmus entirely with something else ( rescaled & retextured ) that's similar but visible... suggestions taken on the planetary body nearest to Minmus in shape & features, remembering we can resize things - but if you resized Eve to the size of Minmus it'd have lots of really tiny details.

Edited January 19, 2015 by Van Disaster

[HafCoJoe]

Is there a poll/survey of how well this works? I'm curious how much better this works than "-force-opengl" for everyone. I've had good results so far.

[helaeon]

@Motokid600 Yes, Nvidia one of the new GTX970s. No it didn't work. Not really. There is a little bit of smoothing but nowhere near the level that DirectX does.

[Kerbin Dallas Multipass]

Thought i'd leave this bit of data here:

Memory used (gb), measured in taskmanager and gpu-z. Loaded the same savegame and measured at the point where all the buildings are displayed.

ksp.exe:

ram: 2.59

gpu ram: 0.48

with forced d11:

ram: 1.92

gpu ram: 1.48

Interesting to see that the graphics card utilizes a whole gig more of its ram in dx11 mode.

My machine has 4gb ram and my gfx card has 2gb ram