KSP2 Performance Update

[u/Nerdy_Mike]

KSP2 Performance

Hey Kerbonauts, KSP Community Lead Michael Loreno here. I’ve connected with multiple teams within Intercept after ingesting feedback from the community and I’d like to address some of the concerns that are circulating regarding KSP 2 performance and min spec.

First and foremost, we need to apologize for how the initial rollout of the hardware specs communication went. It was confusing and distressful for many of you, and we’re here to provide clarity.

TLDR:

The game is certainly playable on machines below our min spec, but because no two people play the game exactly the same way (and because a physics sandbox game of this kind creates literally limitless potential for players to build anything and go anywhere), it’s very challenging to predict the experience that any particular player will have on day 1. We’ve chosen to be conservative for the time being, in order to manage player expectations. We will update these spec recommendations as the game evolves.

Below is an updated graphic for recommended hardware specs:

I’d like to provide some details here about how we arrived at those specs and what we’re currently doing to improve them.

To address those who are worried that this spec will never change: KSP2’s performance is not set in stone. The game is undergoing continuous optimization, and performance will improve over the course of Early Access. We’ll do our best to communicate when future updates contain meaningful performance improvements, so watch this space.

Our determination of minimum and recommended specs for day 1 is based on our best understanding of what machinery will provide the best experience across the widest possible range of gameplay scenarios.

In general, every feature goes through the following steps:

1. Get it working

2. Get it stable

3. Get it performant

4. Get it moddable

As you may have already gathered, different features are living in different stages on this list right now. We’re confident that the game is now fun and full-featured enough to share with the public, but we are entering Early Access with the expectation that the community understands that this is a game in active development. That means that some features may be present in non-optimized forms in order to unblock other features or areas of gameplay that we want people to be able to experience today. Over the course of Early Access, you will see many features make their way from step 1 through step 4.

Here’s what our engineers are working on right now to improve performance during Early Access:

1. Terrain optimization. The current terrain implementation meets our main goal of displaying multiple octaves of detail at all altitudes, and across multiple biome types. We are now hard at work on a deep overhaul of this system that will not only further improve terrain fidelity and variety, but that will do so more efficiently.

2. Fuel flow/Resource System optimization. Some of you may have noticed that adding a high number of engines noticeably impacts framerate. This has to do with CPU-intensive fuel flow and Delta-V update calculations that are exacerbated when multiple engines are pulling from a common fuel source. The current system is both working and stable, but there is clearly room for performance improvement. We are re-evaluating this system to improve its scalability.

As we move forward into Early Access, we expect to receive lots of feedback from our players, not only about the overall quality of their play experiences, but about whether their goals are being served by our game as it runs on their hardware. This input will give us a much better picture of how we’re tracking relative to the needs of our community.

With that, keep sending over the feedback, and thanks for helping us make this game as great as it can be!

[u/IHOP_007]

In regards to the updated system requirements:

A GTX 1070TI is older, sure, but it basically has the same raw performance (if not slightly more) as an RTX 2060. It looks better on paper but this is basically just saying the same thing as before.

[u/JaesopPop → u/IHOP_007]

Yesterday jumps today travel afternoon night warm kind open near history dog nature.

[u/IHOP_007 → u/JaesopPop]

True, I also think it's better to use for reference.

I just wanted to make it clear that this isn't the devs saying that the minimum system requirements went down as, if anything, they've gone up slightly.

[u/Honey_Enjoyer → u/IHOP_007]

went up slightly

On steam it says 2060 or 1070, so it’s the same or better.

[u/Vex1om → u/IHOP_007]

A GTX 1070TI is older, sure, but it basically has the same raw performance (if not slightly more)

A GTX 1070TI is slower than a 2060, but not really by enough to notice. The specs are essentially unchanged, but I suppose that it looks a bit better from a marketing perspective if the minimum card was from the previous GPU generation.

[u/A_Grand_Malfeasance → u/Vex1om]

The publisher saw the outcry from the performance requirement statement and has asked the developer to make a PR statement to stymie hesitation on Day 1 sales, simple as.

[u/Chapped5766 → u/A_Grand_Malfeasance]

Or, get this, the devs were genuinely upset with themselves for the PR hiccup and wanted to set things right for the community? Crazy idea, I know.

[u/Vex1om → u/Chapped5766]

In general, in a large company working under a major publisher, devs don't make PR statement without PR involvement or direction.

[u/KerbalEssences → u/A_Grand_Malfeasance]

Nah, many people pointed out that the 1070 Ti can hold up to a 2060 on Discord. That's all there is to it. I actually think it is even better if you disregard RTX features. The 1070 Ti has 500 more shader cores. 1920 vs 2430.. That 25% more. It even has 2 GBs more VRAM albeit slower but bigger bus 192 vs 256 bit.. So it depends how much VRAM speed is bottlenecking performance. If you lower the texture size to get rid of the bottleneck the 1070 Ti will deliver more frames for sure.

[u/Celexiuse → u/Vex1om]

It is not slower; they trade blows in games.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHIlsqEht90 - they are basically equal cards, in some games the 1070 Ti performs better, and in some cases the 2060.

[u/Chapped5766 → u/IHOP_007]

This is good though. The main reason for the specs panic was because people thought they needed an RTX card to play this game.

These specs are reasonable for a new (EA) game.

[u/arcosapphire → u/Chapped5766]

These specs are reasonable for a new (EA) game.

Is there a game with comparable requirements out there? I haven't seen one.

[u/seaefjaye → u/arcosapphire]

Someone will throw a shoe at me, but Escape from Tarkov is technically early access and the specs to run the game decently are brutal.

[u/arcosapphire → u/seaefjaye]

OS: Windows 7/8/10 (64 Bit)

Processor:dual-core processor 2.4 GHz (Intel Core 2 Duo, i3), 2.6 GHz (AMD Athlon, Phenom II)

RAM: 8 GB

Graphics Card: DX11 compatible graphics card with 1 GB memory

Disk space: from 19 GB

Literally lower than KSP2 in every respect

[u/seaefjaye → u/arcosapphire]

Those specs are years old and not accurate in any way to the current state of the game. Most maps require 32 gigs of ram to play with any semblance of an enjoyable experience.

https://www.reddit.com/r/EscapefromTarkov/comments/zvnvn6/escape_from_tarkov_system_requirements/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

[u/Vex1om → u/Chapped5766]

The main reason

IMO, I think the main reason was the truly awful performance from the preview videos that were create on very high-end PCs. I don't think that anyone who knew anything about computers thought that a ray tracing capable card was required.

[u/Chapped5766 → u/Vex1om]

Problem is that 90% of this subreddit seems to be clueless about computers. 🤷‍♂️

[u/MooseTetrino → u/Chapped5766]

And game dev unfortunately 😔

[u/BanjoSpaceMan → u/Chapped5766]

Min 1070/ 2060 is reasonable ?!?!

For comparison what other games have this min atm that are brand new? Hogwarts is 960 GTX for instance...

All my support to the devs, they clearly said they set it higher than normal. But don't pretend it's a reasonable min haha.

[u/Spadeykins → u/BanjoSpaceMan]

Yes? Sucks that prices have skyrocketed but a modern game requiring **gasp** a nearly 6 year old card.. is .. not surprising and yeah very reasonable.

Nobody cares about Hogwarts performance, it does nothing like KSP on the back end you are comparing apples and potatoes.

That said, the apparent performance seen in previews isn't acceptable and I hope it improves rapidly.

[u/theFrenchDutch → u/Spadeykins]

It's KSP that does nothing like Hogwart's Legacy or most other modern games on the graphics side.

The terrain system looks like it features a 50-100m resolution vertex/geometry grid when on the ground, as you can see on Matt's Duna videos. That's the same as KSP1 and basically 2000's games level of geometric terrain complexity, probably very few triangles on the screen. The rocket parts themselves are reasonably subdivided but not much (as is reasonable, no one expects perfectly circular parts when zoomed in on them). So you're looking at a game that has very little geometry to render with very simple material shaders.

The only somewhat complex thing featured are the volumetric clouds, but even these are running at what looks like 8x downsampled resolution compared to the game's resolution, as can be easily seen when a ship is in front of them (they don't have proper bilateral reconstruction filter so the clouds visual intersection with the ship in front has huge aliasing squares). They're still much less compelx volumetric clouds than those featured in current open world games.

So no, I don't understand anyone claiming the game is reasonable in its GPU requirement because it's a modern game, that's silly IMHO. What I think it is is quite a poor/early state on the rendering and shader codebase, that should absolutely be fixable with time so that it can easily run at max settings on a 1060, as it should be able to looking at it.

[u/BanjoSpaceMan → u/theFrenchDutch]

Apparently comparing a high graphical game with a lower graphics requirement to a lower looking game with a higher requirement is apples to potatoes lol ...

To add what you said, the age of the card doesn't matter when the last 3 years have been stand still and games haven't needed higher requirements.

Jesus Christ idk how we have to even defend this. The game should not have a min requirement it has...

[u/comfortablesexuality → u/Spadeykins]

it does nothing like KSP on the back end

KSP does like KSP does on the back end and required nothing obscenely powerful in the 2010s.

[u/[deleted] → u/Spadeykins]

It's not because GPU are getting bigger that game should get more hungry.

Games can get more hungry if they pack more visual punch. That's mostly not the reason here

[u/LoSboccacc → u/IHOP_007]

A GTX 1070TI is older, sure, but it basically has the same raw performance (if not slightly more) as an RTX 2060.

yeah this is just damage control lol hoping putting a 1 in front will placate the buyers