But why is it so laggy?

[Rymarre]

Really...I have a p good computer, nothing special, but I still meet the recommended settings, and this won't go above 20 fps. It's not like this game is rendering a lot or even has really pretty graphics.

[Supermarine]

It should not be laggy unless you tax it with lots of mods. What are your specs?

[Rymarre]

Originally posted by Supermarine:

It should not be laggy unless you tax it with lots of mods. What are your specs?

Windows 7 64-bit
Processor: AMD A10-5750M APU (4 CPUS) ~2.5GHz
16 GB RAM
Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 8650G
Yes, it is a laptop. No, it is not old. Yes, I DO meet recommended specs.
I also have no mods.

[Kevin]

Physics takes a much higher toll on your pc than graphics do with KSP. The physics calculations are done only by your CPU, and is therefore the most likely bottleneck for your FPS problems. The only way to reduce this problem is by using less parts in your designs. For me, FPS starts to drop significantly if I go over 250+ parts. Find your pc's limit, and stay below it. There's nothing else you can do about it.

(Actually, there's a mod that can weld multiple parts together into one larger combined part. This reduces part count, and thus increases FPS because physics calculations are easier for your CPU. However, I have no personal experience with this mod. I wouldn't even know it's name. )

[Crum]

Is it definitely using the AMD card and not the integrated?

[Rymarre]

Originally posted by Crum:

Is it definitely using the AMD card and not the integrated?

I'm not sure, how do I check?

[Gigory Chadbert]

Tao, part of your problem is that your CPU is 2.5GHz. KSP currently only uses 1 core of your CPU to run itself and the physics model. I run an i5 2500K @ 4.6GHz and can still get lag from large orbital stations. Reducing part count will help as others have mentioned. If you are using the Scatterer mod turning that off will also help significantly.

[Crum]

Originally posted by Tao:

Originally posted by Crum:

Is it definitely using the AMD card and not the integrated?

I'm not sure, how do I check?

Well I'm new to Windows PC's but on mine I go in to the Nvidia driver settings 3D managment. There I can see/manually select which card is used for which program. I'm pretty sure AMD is the same.

edit : I think it's the AMD Catalyst Control

[Rymarre]

Originally posted by Faptech:

Tao, part of your problem is that your CPU is 2.5GHz. KSP currently only uses 1 core of your CPU to run itself and the physics model. I run an i5 2500K @ 4.6GHz and can still get lag from large orbital stations. Reducing part count will help as others have mentioned. If you are using the Scatterer mod turning that off will also help significantly.

You'd think they'd note that somewhere. Oh well, guess I'll get used to the permanent 20 fps.

[Kevin]

Originally posted by Tao:

Originally posted by Faptech:

Tao, part of your problem is that your CPU is 2.5GHz. KSP currently only uses 1 core of your CPU to run itself and the physics model. I run an i5 2500K @ 4.6GHz and can still get lag from large orbital stations. Reducing part count will help as others have mentioned. If you are using the Scatterer mod turning that off will also help significantly.

You'd think they'd note that somewhere. Oh well, guess I'll get used to the permanent 20 fps.

I don't think that's nessesary, you have three options:
-Upgrade or overclock your CPU.
-Reduce your part count, by simplifying designs, or using a welding mod.
-Decrease your max physics delta setting. (Nobody's mentioned it yet) If you slide your max physics delta setting all the way to the right, (I believe the setting is then 0.03 seconds) your FPS will go up. This is because the game will then slow down real time in order to do the physics calculations. The game will then appear to run in slow motion, while having a high FPS.

[DutchGamer78]

Originally posted by Tao:

Originally posted by Faptech:

Tao, part of your problem is that your CPU is 2.5GHz. KSP currently only uses 1 core of your CPU to run itself and the physics model. I run an i5 2500K @ 4.6GHz and can still get lag from large orbital stations. Reducing part count will help as others have mentioned. If you are using the Scatterer mod turning that off will also help significantly.

You'd think they'd note that somewhere. Oh well, guess I'll get used to the permanent 20 fps.

It should be fixed with the big unity update v1.1 in 2016.


-Decrease your max physics delta setting. (Nobody's mentioned it yet) If you slide your max physics delta setting all the way to the right, (I believe the setting is then 0.03 seconds) your FPS will go up. This is because the game will then slow down real time in order to do the physics calculations. The game will then appear to run in slow motion, while having a high FPS. [/quote]


I m going to try this on my backup old laptop, runs KSP poor now. Thank you!

[Rymarre]

Originally posted by Kevin:

Originally posted by Tao:

You'd think they'd note that somewhere. Oh well, guess I'll get used to the permanent 20 fps.

I don't think that's nessesary, you have three options:
-Upgrade or overclock your CPU.
-Reduce your part count, by simplifying designs, or using a welding mod.
-Decrease your max physics delta setting. (Nobody's mentioned it yet) If you slide your max physics delta setting all the way to the right, (I believe the setting is then 0.03 seconds) your FPS will go up. This is because the game will then slow down real time in order to do the physics calculations. The game will then appear to run in slow motion, while having a high FPS.

Seeing as I'm on a laptop, I don't think overclocking my CPU is a possibility. Or is it? I have no clue. So I'll mess with the max physics delta thing. Even though I really hate games that run in slow motion.

[Gigory Chadbert]

Originally posted by Tao:

Originally posted by Kevin:

I don't think that's nessesary, you have three options:
-Upgrade or overclock your CPU.
-Reduce your part count, by simplifying designs, or using a welding mod.
-Decrease your max physics delta setting. (Nobody's mentioned it yet) If you slide your max physics delta setting all the way to the right, (I believe the setting is then 0.03 seconds) your FPS will go up. This is because the game will then slow down real time in order to do the physics calculations. The game will then appear to run in slow motion, while having a high FPS.

Seeing as I'm on a laptop, I don't think overclocking my CPU is a possibility. Or is it? I have no clue. So I'll mess with the max physics delta thing. Even though I really hate games that run in slow motion.

If you aren't sure you probably shouldn't. You won't be able to increase the cooling since it's a laptop without your system sounding like what you're currently trying to put into orbit.

[Gamer]

I've got a desktop, though its about 4 years old, and the only times i get lag is when i launch with a whole bunch of thrusters in the booster stage. Maybe it's because of big spacecraft designs or lots of thrusters? i don't know.

[dunbaratu]

If possible, try to achieve the same effect with fewer numbers of bigger engines instead of larger numbers of weaker engines. For CPU load purposes, one central 400-kilonewton engine is way better than, say, 4 x 100kilonewton engines arranged radially. The physics calculations the base game does to work out the effect of applying a push to the vessel at a location can get expensive, especially with a lot of parts. It's not just that there's lots of parts, but lots of engines means calculating the effect of the thrust across all those parts many times over. Each engine is going "okay, I'm pushing on this fuel tank this much" and then that fuel tank goes "okay well, I'm pushing up on this next fuel tank by this much" and then that fuel tank goes "okay well I'm pushing up against the side of this central fuel tank by this much, and it's an offcenter push so remember to calculate the torque effect that has based on my lever arm disance from the center of mass..." and so on.

Most video games save a lot of CPU expense by treating the entire pushed object (i.e. your ship) as if it was one solid rigid object. KSP needs to work out the interactions between parts (to see what explodes, for example) and in a sense there is no such thing as "the ship". It's just doing a sort of finite element analysis on the fly, with parts pushing on parts pushing on parts. The ship is just the pile of parts to load/unload as a set. For the most part most of the physics calculations ignore the "ship" abstraction and just looks at every individual part independantly.