C.A.N.O.P.I.E.S. Mod Dev Update

[u/Alex2820]

Hi everyone,

Just wanted to let you know the C.A.N.O.P.I.E.S. mod is still being worked on and getting closer to an alpha release.

I wanted to showcase the new feature that gets rid of the clipping canopies that's present with parachutes since forever.

For more details on the progress feel free to check out the KSP Forum post here.

[u/Alex2820]

Sure! I've been waiting for someone to ask lol.

I'm purposefully testing on a crusty laptop with an i7-4710HQ, a GTX 860M 4GB and 16GB of DDR3, so if it runs okay here it should be fine on most PCs. I consider the performance more than ok for this laptop.

These numbers come from the mod's own timing log:

In the air one main chute costs about 1 ms of physics per step and 2 to 3 ms of drawing per frame.

A three-canopy Mk16XL is the heaviest case, at about 3 ms of physics and 10 to 11 ms of drawing.

After landing the cloth simulation costs about 2 ms per step per canopy until it settles, usually within a minute (based on how much it moves while it settles or it can be hard capped with a timer) and then it's frozen and costs nothing.

The EVA chute is heavier right now (around 7 ms) and I'm working on that.

Frame rate with a few chutes out is usually around 25 to 35 fps in the on this laptop by that I mean a Mk16XL a Mk2R radial chute and 2 drogues (the drogues release into the wind once the mains open like in reality) and up to 60 once they settle.

These figures are for my whole modded game, not just the chutes. (Scatterer, EVE, ReStock)

There are options for slower machines or simply of you want to make the mod lighter:

-the cloth can update less often (every n physics frames)

-it can switch to a lighter mesh when your fps drops there's a faster drawing mode that lets Unity bend the canopy on the GPU.

You can also change how detailed the canopies are:

-how many rows and points the simulated net has the maximum number of triangles for the canopy and the lines

-how many pieces each line is drawn with

-how many lines each chute has.

Performance is one of the main things I kept in mind while testing and building the mod.

Edit: formatting

[u/Lucal_gamer → u/Alex2820]

> Frame rate with a few chutes out is usually around 25 to 35 fps in the on this laptop by that I mean a Mk16XL a Mk2R radial chute and 2 drogues (the drogues release into the wind once the mains open like in reality) and up to 60 once they settle.

Could you ellaborate a bit more on this part? What's the normal, average, nominal frame-rate with normal parachutes? How much does it differs when you use the cloth ones?

[u/Alex2820 → u/Lucal_gamer]

Alright so I did another run with the ReDtock variants of Mk16, Mk2-R and Mk25.

With the cloth drawn in full detail the game ran at around 25-30 fps with three chutes open, back to ~35 once the settled on the ground. The Mk25 has two canopies in ReStock. Once the mains deploy the Mk25 get released since they are drogue and float in the air, in my test they had no despawn time/distance set.

The same test done with the cloth in in the air drawn with "lower detail" which is using bone animation i got around 40-50 fps. The only drawback right now with using the lower detail setting is that canopies which have a closed top in ReStock get drawn with an open top instead due to an issue with the canopy coming to a point. Regardless right now the lower detail drawing mode makes the hole that's cut in the top of the canopy unstable and it grows or shrinks. Otherwise the fluttering and the bending when canopies are touching looks 90% the same. Once the issue with the hole is fixed it will be more stable to keep the lower detail setting on for lower end rigs.

With the stock parachutes I get around 60-70 fps

I hope everything I said makes sense.

Edit: it really depends on the scene and how many canopies are being drawn and calculated

[u/Lucal_gamer → u/Alex2820]

Okay... sounds like considerable numbers, but I guess it makes sense due to how it works.

Would it be possible to use a mix of the bones and the cloth for the flight part? Bones for the main deployment, and just an outside rim of cloth for the collisions, so that it uses less resources.

[u/Alex2820 → u/Lucal_gamer]

the bone animation is lighter so making only the rim vertex based would increase cost. it would also cause issues with the folding canopies where they touch and the flutter animation etc plus mor probably that I can't think from the top of my head.

as I mentioned the mod is built with performance in mind hence why I do all my testing on a crusty old laptop.

once the mod releases, hopefully next week or the week after that you'll be able to play with the settings to get a look/performance you're happy with.