Scatters

The Scatters node in the LandControl PQSMod defines one or more detail meshes that may be scattered across the planet's terrain as little props. The LandClasses provided by LandControl determines which scatters may spawn where. They can have various configurable features added via the Components subnode.

Subnodes

Material { }
Components { } (Also known as ModularScatter)

Example

cfg

LandControl
{
  Scatters
  {
    Value
    {
      materialType = DiffuseWrapped
      mesh = BUILTIN/boulder
      castShadows = True
      densityFactor = 1
      maxCache = 512
      maxCacheDelta = 32
      maxLevelOffset = 0
      maxScale = 1.5
      minScale = 0.25
      maxScatter = 30
      maxSpeed = 1000
      recieveShadows = True
      name = BrownRock
      allowedBiomes = Arid,Desert
      lethalRadius = 5
      seed = 345234534
      verticalOffset = 0
      delete = False
      Material
      {
        ...
      }
      Components
      {
        ...
      }
    }
  }
}

Parameters

In keeping with the format of other LandControl pages, we shall divide the parameters into sections and discuss them one at a time.

Appearance Control: these parameters control the appearance of the terrain scatter, regardless of where they appear.
Distribution Control: these parameters control the distribution (IE placement) of terrain scatters.
Caching Control: these parameters control the behavior of the caching strategy that KSP uses to try and increase performance.
Kopernicus Parameters: these are parameters that are not in the game by default, but which were added by Kopernicus as part of the ModularScatter extension.

Appearance Control

These are all the settings that control the appearance of terrain scatters. Most of these parameters are self-evident but the material is more complex. Just know that you can either target a built-in material through the materialType property by setting it to the name of the material you want, or you can set the material property to target a given built-in shader. The number of options does not change. For the sake of simplicity, using materialType is advisable. Avoid using both simultaneously; only use one of the two.

Property	Format	Description
materialType	ScatterMaterialType	The type of the material of the scatter. Valid options can be found on the ScatterMaterialType page.
material	BUILTIN	Stock material to use instead of specifying a materialType and Material { }. Avoid using this! Will not work in conjunction with the materialType and Material { }.
mesh	File Path	The path to an .obj file that contains the scatter's mesh. This can also be a built-in mesh.
castShadows	Boolean	Whether the scatter should cast shadows.
receiveShadows	Boolean	Whether the scatter should receive shadows - i.e., have shadows casted upon it.
maxScale	Decimal	The scatter model(s) will be scaled by a random multipler choosen between `minScale` and `maxScale`.
minScale	Decimal	The scatter model(s) will be scaled by a random multipler choosen between `minScale` and `maxScale`.
verticalOffset	Decimal	Vertical offset added to placed scatters. Use this to move them up or down along the radial.

Distribution Control

These parameters offer some control over how and where terrain scatters are distributed. To gain a full understanding, it is necessary to discuss the apparent quirks of terrain scatters.

Scatter density

The amount of individual scatters per quad is determined as follows :
baseAmount = maxScatter * densityFactor * (density defined in the LandClass)

Then if useBetterDensity is enabled, the average amount will be :
averageAmount = baseAmount * spawnChance

Furthermore, maxScatter seems to act like some kind of limiter to terrain scatter density. The exact behavior is unclear. The main takeaway is that increasing it, increases the number of scatters.

Scatter Filtering

There are two parameters that actually control where and when terrain scatters may spawn. The first is maxSpeed. This parameter is rather buggy but the intended behavior seems to be that it prevents a scatter from appearing unless the speed (in m/s) of the craft or camera is lower than the given value.

The other parameter is maxLevelOffset and this is a bit more complex. Recall that planets in KSP are just patchworks of 2D grids that have their vertices displaced to the surface of a sphere. The closer a tile is to the camera, the more detailed it is. This is an important optimization because it greatly reduces the render cost of distant tiles without significant loss of quality. After all, distant tiles typically take up less screen space and as such their features may be less pronounced. As an added benefit, the GPU strongly dislikes triangles that are approaching pixel scale. Keeping these triangles larger therefore has a secondary benefit to the rendering performance.

Similarly, there isn't much need for terrain scatters on tiles that are far away from the camera. The render cost is typically not worth the insignificant change in visual quality. To this end, LandControl only places terrain scatters on planet tiles that have a high enough detail level. Specifically, LandControl looks for the smallest value of maxLevelOffset and adds it to the maxLevel parameter of the base PQS settings. This, then, forms the minimum level of subdivision for scatters to spawn.

Leaving this at 0 means that scatters only appear on the highest level of subdivision, meaning the tiles that are closest to the camera. Increasing it may cause a terrain scatter to never be applicable for display, whilst decreasing it below zero may cause scatters to appear from a greater distance but at a cost to performance. Remember that LandControl will look for the smallest value assigned to maxLevelOffset across all terrain scatters that are defined in the mod. Setting the value lower will always result in a bit of additional processing overhead for planet tiles that suddenly become applicable for terrain scatters.

Property	Format	Description
name	Text	The name of the scatter. This is the name you refer to from LandClasses to allow this scatter to spawn within that LandClass.
seed	Integer	The random seed for scatter distribution.
densityFactor	Decimal	A [0,1] base factor applied to `maxScatter`. Usually you want this set to 1 and just change `maxScatter`.
maxLevelOffset	Integer	By default, LandControl will only place scatters on tiles that are at the maximum level(s) of subdivision. This value is an offset to that level of subdivision: -1 means that the scatters should start appearing exactly one subdivision level sooner.
maxScatter	Integer	The base amount of scatter objects per quad. Actual amount depends on `densityFactor`, the `density` defined in the `LandClasses` node and `spawnChance` if `useBetterDensity` is true.
maxSpeed	Decimal	Scatter quads won't be created/rendered if the active vessel speed (in m/s) is higher than this value. Due to a stock bug, this is unreliable and quads might still appear anyway.

Caching Control

By default, KSP tries to optimize the terrain scatters. It does so by trying to cache and merge terrain scatters. These parameters let you control this caching behavior, although the default settings should work fine in most cases.

Property	Format	Description
maxCache	Integer	Maximum amount of active scatter quads. Leaving this to the default value (512) should be always fine.
maxCacheDelta	Integer	How many quads are added to the cache when it isn't large enough to hold all active scatter quads. `maxCache` must be a multiple of this value. Default value (64) should be fine.

Kopernicus Parameters

The built-in terrain scatters are rather limited in their scope. As such, Kopernicus replaces the built-in terrain scatters with an extended framework that offers various new features. Some of these are built into these new terrain scatters without having to use components.

Property	Format	Description
allowedBiomes	Text	A comma delimited string of permitted scatter biome names. No spaces between entries. If set, then this terrain scatter can only spawn on terrain that belongs to the given biome(s).
lethalRadius	Decimal	The closest a Kerbal on EVA can get to this scatter without being killed, in meters. Set to 0 (the default) to disable.
lethalRadiusMsg	Text	A message to be displayed in a dialog box when a Kerbal is killed by `lethalRadius`. Leave empty to disable.
lethalRadiusWarnMsg	Text	A message to be displayed in a dialog box when a Kerbal comes within 2x `lethalRadius` to alert the player. Leave empty to disable.
Meshes	List of File Paths	Optionally, a list of meshes from which Kopernicus will randomly pick. Inside this node, there can be keys named anything, and the value should be the file path to the .obj file. This serves as a replacement for the regular `mesh` property, in case you have multiple variants of the same terrain scatter. Note that these will use the same material.
useBetterDensity	Boolean	Set this to true to enable randomization of the amount of scatter objects per quad.
spawnChance	Decimal	Requires `useBetterDensity` to be true. [0, 1] probability of each scatter object spawning.
ignoreDensityGameSetting	Boolean	If set to true, the KSP main menu settings scatter density % will be ignored.
instancing	Boolean	Enables or disables object instancing support on the scatter's generated material. This lets Unity render identical meshes that use identical material instances within a single draw call.
rotation	2 Decimals	To add some visual variety, terrain scatters are randomly rotated along their local up axis. This parameter lets you control the minimum and maximum angle (in degrees), if you so wish. By default, full 360 degree rotation is set.

Scatters ​

Subnodes ​

Example ​

Parameters ​

Appearance Control ​

Distribution Control ​

Scatter density ​

Scatter Filtering ​

Caching Control ​

Kopernicus Parameters ​