OHM Donamy and Thorton's ISS for Orbiter 2016

[fred18]

Hi, fantastic job! I have small question, you wrote on OH:



In my opinion the reason of low perfomance is number of modules (loaded C++ objects). Thorton in his addon merged many components to one DLL for later ISS. You decided for tens SC4 instances and I find it uses a lot of resources. I know that is a result of primary developers' strategies, but did you think about write some of own code? If I'd have some time I could even help you.

I would be in for this. There is the crazyness of 245 vessels in the scenario. I have a high end PC but with high graphics options I get 40 FPS against the 500/1000 I get normally!

I have to thank Zandy because I lost the track at some point and could not use the beauty of all the modules created for the ISS because I could not find the proper modules setup, this solves everything, thank you!

As Kubala suggested, if it's not hurting anyone I will try to merge everything into just a few vessels, basically merging all the SC3 vessels, leaving out CMG, spotlights and robotic arms. and see where I end up.

In the end, starting from here it would be possible to set just a sequence configuration parameter to get the ISS configuration:
configuration = 0 just zarya mesh is loaded etc...
Also PMI should be set accordingly for the various configurations...

Anway, as said, if I'm not offending anyone I will try to make a big vessel with all the meshes and options. If that will be an issue for creators I will just keep it on my pc and not distribute it to anyone

---------- Post added at 18:26 ---------- Previous post was at 06:28 ----------

I have made a series of tests and it seems that the big impact on the FPS is due to the superheavy graphic load of so many meshes together.

I grouped all the SC3 meshes in one vessel (around 200 meshes) and I got a similar drop in FPS that I have with the splitted vessels. I will keep on working on this because anyway I couldn't get my head around the configuration with 245 vessels, so i will see if I can anyway make a unique vessel for most of the meshes, at least for those who are just meshes.

I am curious to know if I merge all the meshes the performance would improve. :hmm: I think just a little since the vertex's number will remain the same...

 

[Zandy12]

I think it's a great idea to minimize the presence of spacecraft3 into just one vessel. It will make it tremendously easier to include the ISS into other scenario files as well. Unfortunately, my coding experience with the Orbiter interface is not advance at the moment. I don't have many ideas for optimizing the ISS other than just making the file smaller. I have to really thank ThBaron here because he helped alot in correcting the ISS to its current state and deleting several unnecessary lines. If fred18 can succeed into combining all meshes into one that will work in helping the framerates tremendously imo.

 

[Donamy]

The problem with merging all the vessels, you eliminate the option of moving, or adding certain payloads. Some could be, but some should not. IMHO

 

[fred18]

The problem with merging all the vessels, you eliminate the option of moving, or adding certain payloads. Some could be, but some should not. IMHO

Sure, but also for sure not all the 245 vessels are needed to be separated. If experts and authors like you can point which would be nice to keep separate it would be super! :thumbup:

 

[Wolf]

I would be in for this. There is the crazyness of 245 vessels in the scenario. I have a high end PC but with high graphics options I get 40 FPS against the 500/1000 I get normally!

I have to thank Zandy because I lost the track at some point and could not use the beauty of all the modules created for the ISS because I could not find the proper modules setup, this solves everything, thank you!

As Kubala suggested, if it's not hurting anyone I will try to merge everything into just a few vessels, basically merging all the SC3 vessels, leaving out CMG, spotlights and robotic arms. and see where I end up.

In the end, starting from here it would be possible to set just a sequence configuration parameter to get the ISS configuration:
configuration = 0 just zarya mesh is loaded etc...
Also PMI should be set accordingly for the various configurations...

Anway, as said, if I'm not offending anyone I will try to make a big vessel with all the meshes and options. If that will be an issue for creators I will just keep it on my pc and not distribute it to anyone

---------- Post added at 18:26 ---------- Previous post was at 06:28 ----------

I have made a series of tests and it seems that the big impact on the FPS is due to the superheavy graphic load of so many meshes together.

I grouped all the SC3 meshes in one vessel (around 200 meshes) and I got a similar drop in FPS that I have with the splitted vessels. I will keep on working on this because anyway I couldn't get my head around the configuration with 245 vessels, so i will see if I can anyway make a unique vessel for most of the meshes, at least for those who are just meshes.

I am curious to know if I merge all the meshes the performance would improve. :hmm: I think just a little since the vertex's number will remain the same...

I have a very old machine and still I can run the ISS at 30/40 FPS. I am surprised you get the same performance with your high end PC.
Can you confirm you run the scenario with D3D9?

 

[fred18]

I have a very old machine and still I can run the ISS at 30/40 FPS. I am surprised you get the same performance with your high end PC.
Can you confirm you run the scenario with D3D9?

Sure, only D3D9 around here :thumbup:

BTW my specs are:
Intel i7-6800k 3.4GHz
RAM 64.0 GB
Windows 10
GeForce GTX 1080
Primary hard disk: Samsung 960 PRO SSD 1 TB
Secondary hard disk: Samsung 850 PRO SSD 1 TB

---------- Post added at 21:22 ---------- Previous post was at 21:16 ----------

anyway you made me curious, and I turned off self shadows from D3D9 options, and the FPS immediately bounced to 150

 

[Donamy]

I only made the parts as per mission. Things were added and moved more than I could keep track of. But if someone wants to look into it, someone involved with L2 maybe, would have more knowledge. Kyle might be the one to ask.

 

[jarmonik]

Sure, but also for sure not all the 245 vessels are needed to be separated. If experts and authors like you can point which would be nice to keep separate it would be super! :thumbup:

245 vessels may sound a lot but infact 245 game world objects is not exactly very much. It could be ten times higher and still manageable from a graphics point of view. It's pretty easy for a graphics engine to combine or group objects efficiently in a runtime. Splitting/clipping a large mesh into a smaller part for rendering is a headache.

I have been playing around with an idea of creating a vessel editor. D3D9Client's stock mesh editor is insufficient for the current needs and requires an update. It wouldn't be difficult to add same vessel editing capabilities. No work has been done yet, other that laying some ground infastructure like OrbiterGUI and Configuration file I/O interface.

---------- Post added at 00:24 ---------- Previous post was at 00:13 ----------

anyway you made me curious, and I turned off self shadows from D3D9 options, and the FPS immediately bounced to 150

Pixel shading is a major bottle neck, any kind of heavier shading is slow. Based on my understanding the problem is too much too small triangles and the hardware can't share the workload efficiently. Pixel shaders are operating in 2 by 2 squares, so, if you have only one pixel to shade in a triangle then only one shader of that 2 by 2 square is working and three other are idling.


Solution to that would be a LOD control to reduce a small triangles.

 

[Donamy]

The one thing I learned very early on in modeling, was to make low poly meshes. So the ISS meshes aren't that bad, triangle wise.

 

[Zandy12]

Just updated the package. Again many thanks to ThBaron for his help. This update now includes experimental scenarios that could possibly make the ISS more usable on lower-end computers (I just deleted some lines in the code). From this point forward I won't be working on the add-on anymore due to work and school schedule conflicts and also credential issues. My hope is that one of you guys can take over the project and make it more optimized, better, and easier for people to use. I will still be on the forums. Again thank you to everyone for helping to support and being involved with this project. Starting with the authors of the original add-ons.

 

[barrygolden]

anybody have a clue how to unzip this and install it 7 zip doesn't seem to work and opening it and dragging and dropping seem a bit much

 

[Zandy12]

WinRAR works fine although it should work with 7-zip also. I wouldn't recommend installing the package by just dragging files it would take forever. "Orbiter Addons Manager" by Abdullah Radwan makes the process so much easier.

 

[francisdrake]

Zandy, thank you for compiling the whole beautiful ISS into one single addon!

I always shied away from installing multiple addons just to have a modern ISS, but this one-stop-shop makes it easy now. With only spacecraft3 and genericvessel activated it ran right away from the start (well, after some loading time).

I will probably use it for some 'scenic flights' and screenshots only, but the level of detail and the quality of the models are really amazing. So the thanks include the original developers of all these modules.

Just for information: I get 22 fps on a notebook's integrated Intel 520 graphics chip, with D3D9 client. This seems very acceptable for such a big and detailed model.

 

[Zandy12]

Just updated the package. Small changes to the README file have been made and I configured better-looking night-lighting for ISS. You can turn the spotlights off by pressing B or change their intensity with J/K. To change the direction of the lighting you have to steer the stanchions or cameras (near the JEM) using spacecraft3 animation keys. LEFT SHIFT + SPACE to open up the animation menu, LEFT SHIFT + NUMPAD 4 or LEFT SHIFT + NUMPAD 6 to toggle commands, and LEFT SHIFT + NUMPAD 2 or LEFT SHIFT + NUMPAD 8 to move that part. Again a big thanks to Donamy for his help and for this amazing add-on he created along with the other original authors.

 

[Interceptor]

Hey Zandy12,did you include all of Donamys,and hutchinson's extra addons,or do you need to download them seperately?BTW thanks for putting this together.

 

[Zandy12]

Yes ive included all the hutchinson66 add-ons I could find in the orbithangar. They are inside the file. However, they aren't currently in the scenarios because the goal was to have a more current ISS in the scenarios and not just a combination of everything. The instructions and documentation for hutchinson66's add-ons are in the doc file if you want to include them

 

[richfororbit]

I was thinking, this is in the realm of scifi, couldn't this addon or may be the existing space station be configured into a space craft with some propulsion? The ability to do low orbit or high orbit maneuvers around the Earth, the current station can't do that alone.

Even more far fetch, may be some actual engine capability? Where ya going ISS commander! :hmm: The ability to get to the Moon. Sounds nuts!

 

[Donamy]

If you cut-out reality, why not ?

 

[richfororbit]

As ignorant as I am on anything to do with space flight hardware, I guess the idea of a station with propulsion would be quite unrealistic if not very expensive.

 

[kuddel]

...and I wouldn't call it a station anymore, more a mobileion