Linx
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Upcoming Improvements - Ambient Occlusion and Terrain Texture Overhaul
🕑 Added 2024-09-21 16:47:15 +0000 UTCHi all!
Coming in the next release is the addition of terrain Ambient Occlusion and with it, the overhaul of all of the planet textures.
The texture overhaul was at its beginning in Release 1 but is now almost complete, bringing with it some well needed quality improvements - In this post I'll share some of the new planets I'm most pleased with. I've gone a step further and made some (potentially polarising!) changes to some planets from orbit to make their far away appearance match the terrain up close.
Ambient Occlusion
For those of you that play with boosted ambient light, you may have noticed that the terrain at night lacks detail and mostly appears like a flat surface. With ambient occlusion, expect night-time to look much better with minimal performance impact. This can be disabled in the GUI.
Ambient Occlusion at Bop - Left: AO Off. Right: AO On
Ice Improvements
With the addition of Deferred comes the capability of utilising Unity's Standard PBR lighting pass to have proper environment reflections. Parallax utilises the Specular-Glossiness PBR workflow which allows the easy modelling of icy surfaces:
Ice at Vall, with Advanced Blending enabled and Tessellation Range set to 3000
Glass/Ice at Minmus
Ice showing terrain reflections at Minmus' Flats
Other planet texture improvements
Moho
I wanted to lean into the hexagonal metal pieces lying around on Moho's surface and represent it in the terrain itself while also enhancing the look of the planet's jagged cliffs. I kept the effect fairly subtle, hinting at the prescence of larger metallic formations beneath its rocky surface.
The surface of Moho
Ike
For Ike I wanted to more accurately convey a dusty surface. Previously it looked like a weird mix between dust and rock that didn't quite look right - its displacement maps were also severely crunched by compression from years back when I was more careless with the textures. I experimented with smooth marble-like cliffs to make the moon a bit more unique - let me know what you think!
The surface of Ike
Pol
Pol's a difficult mould-ball to work with. It has a lot going on in its colours - oranges, reds, yellows and greens across its surface. And since there's a lot going on with its colours I decided a lot should go on with its materials now that Parallax is capable of properly reproducing them. Pol's lowlands are icy, its midlands are clay and its highlands are dusty/rocky. Its cliffs are metallic and reflect a lot of light, with a golden appearance. It's too much to show off each material in a dev post that aims to show off more than just Pol, so I'll let you guys explore for yourselves when these changes are available!
Orbit Texture Changes
Vanilla KSP doesn't represent icy surfaces particularly well on the various planet surfaces (although, Vall is as close as we get to that and it's not too bad). I wanted to properly convey ice on a few of the moons but realised I would need to make changes to the orbit textures as well.
I get a lot of requests from planet modders asking if I could also improve the shaders of the planets from the map view and high orbit which is something I've looked into previously and, due to popular demand, will be doing so again in the near future. This means that eventually I'll need to remaster the planets from afar and so I've started some of the retextures already.
Some of these changes may be polarising - such as Minmus' flats being ice rather than a minty dust - of which I've taken inspiration from KSP2 which models the planets as such. Feedback is absolutely welcome (and encouraged!) so please do let me know your feelings and whether these changes sit right for you or not.
Minmus
Everyone argues over whether Minmus is icy, glassy, or dusty. Parallax will lean towards an icy/glassy appearance as that's the direction Intercept took Minmus in KSP2. If it's too much of a change and I receive enough requests, I'll provide an optional set of textures that make it dusty (similarly to the lifeless Eve patch).
Minmus from orbit, showing off its icy flats
Note that the look of the ice will improve once I've replaced the Vanilla shaders with my own, but this will come after Release 2
Pol
Pol is a mighty difficult moon to texture. What is Pol? What the hell is it made out of? People argue about Minmus and whatever substance it is but Pol is even more of an enigma. So, with this in mind, please understand I have done my very best to stay true to the Vanilla vision for this moon and merely improve upon a very very difficult starting point!
Pol from orbit
Final Words
These are just some of the texture improvements coming! All planets will receive support for Ambient Occlusion. For the planet modders among you, Release 2 will not break existing Parallax Continued configs - ambient occlusion defaults to Off on planets that don't support it. Laythe won't be getting any changes as its textures are still very solid today, but it will receive support for ambient occlusion.
I aim to have Release 2 ready in the following couple of weeks, depending on my IRL workload. I can't wait to share it! Until then, I'll toil away on the remaining planets (5 to go).
o/
Comments
yellowface
hey man, do you know why the ingame parallax continued settings dont save? any help is greatly appreciated, love the stuff you do btw!
Brian Watson
That said, what you've done with Parallax is very impressive! If I can't get it to work on my Mac M3 Max natively, I'll probably install Windows on Parallels to support Parallax.
Brian Watson
Have you looked at https://moltengl.com/products/ as an OpenGL-to-Metal adapter? It looks like they currently support OpenGL ES 2.0, which might be a bit old for what you're doing.
Carter
Will Parallax Continued work on a mid-tier laptop?
Arya Bekal
I have a question, For parallax continued, do I have to upgrade to your membership or can I download the zip file from the code in github? https://github.com/Gameslinx/Parallax-Continued?tab=readme-ov-file.?
Linx
Around April 2025, or if the roadmap (in my about section) is completed before then
Lucas Forsberg
When do you think that Parallax Continued will go out of Early access? I'm thinking about if it's worth to just buy this version early or if I should wait.
Linx
It's related to Deferred, it's fixed in Parallax Continued - it shouldn't be an issue in old parallax, but if it is, it won't be fixed since I don't support it anymore
Lucas Forsberg
I’ve also noticed a giant square on the celestial body when using 2.0.7 and above when tesselation is turned on. Will this be fixed?
Lucas Forsberg
Hell YEAH!!
Thony Vasquez
Hi, check how the compatibility with KSRSS is now, it is no longer necessary to install "ParalaxContinued-KSRSS-SDI" but I get this message when loading the start menu in KSP: "Previous parallax settings detected! The game has been updated and exported They will not work. Useful Activate manually" If there is any step or instruction, any configuration file that I should move for optimal compatibility, please help me
Thony Vasquez
Hi, check how the KSRSS compatibility is now. It is no longer necessary to install "ParalaxContinued-KSRSS-SDI" but I get this message when loading the start menu in KSP "Previous parallax settings detected! The game has been updated and exported. They will not work. Useful Activate manually"
Linx
Upgrading to a newer version of OpenGL on MacOS looks to be extremely difficult if not downright impossible. The best bet is running Metal (a different graphics API) but I don't believe KSP runs / was ever built for Metal, since it didn't exist at the time. Parallax is fundamentally built on Compute Shaders and thus recent versions of DirectX and OpenGL - that's not to say that a version of the mod without them is impossible, but it would run awfully. So I'm afraid MacOS support looks extremely difficult to achieve on both my end and for the end user.
MickyMike
Will the new Parallax support macOS? Or is there an alternate way to install parallax on macOS (or somehow install the proper version of openGL)? I really want to have parallax for my ksp on macOS, and I will be so grateful if you reply.
Linx
It does indeed!
Lucas Forsberg
So that means Parallax textures in map view?
Derrick Ferguson
in my opinion, i dont like how smooth and dusty everything is, is there any way to make the planets less like dust and more like rock on my save?
SD42
I wasent reffing to thr rescale distance that it changes. I was refering to the bodie being somewhat blury in orbit. So exzactly waht you are already doing so 4k will still be better. In todays modern age 8k would be more ideal. :)
Linx
Orbit textures will be 4k. I believe stock KSP uses 2k. But what's more important is the distance at which the orbit textures change to reveal the surface, which I don't think Rescale pushes outwards (so you can get very very close to the planet while still seeing a blurry orbit tex) Not really a Parallax issue to solve, as it's caused by Rescale :)
SD42
Awesome! If your going to change the Orbital Textures can set the standard of them looking good at 2.5X scale so they dont get blury since that is becoming more and more popular of a scale to use?
Ivan Minnelli
Incredible work! Truly looks far better than KSP 2
TheMainMan
I second this, each planet should feel different and have its own unique features. I'm so glad high orbit textures will finally make it to Parallax!
Riley Heflin
Great update, and I am SO glad to hear that orbit/map view textures are finally being addressed. I can't tell you how often I feel frustrated when IVA-ing in high orbit over a moon and see a low-quality blob of clay out of the window. KSP2 really nailed the consistent high fidelity of bodies regardless of the distance they are viewed from, so I look forward to KSP catching up. On that note, I 100% agree with the Minmus decision. Love it, love it. Parallax helps bring out the creative and unique features of each body when the player is on the surface and I hope that these surface details can be evident from the orbit textures too. It's important to me to that these unique details are embraced to make missions to each body feel different. Really excited that we have PBR tools to help with this too, so yeah, I encourage you to go all-out with icy moons, colors, and other materials!
