(WIP) RSS-Origin - Exclusive add-ons with hundreds of asteroids, comets, moons and overhauls for RSS
This mod is still work-in-progress, some features are still under construction. Me and my team are devoting every effort to improve it.
If you want to report bugs of my mod, or you have some ideas or questions about it, I have a discord channel in Kopernicus server: Kopernicus#charon-s-rss-origin, and a channel in FoxTech: FoxTech#origin-general. You can contact me in both channels.
!!!Please be sure to read "Installation Guide" before installation!!!
RSS-Origin is available on CKAN since 2024/07/31. It's recommended to install RSS-Origin using CKAN but reading "Installation Guide" is still required!
Like the title, this mod is basically an expansion for "Real Solar System", and currently it includes following parts:
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RSS-Origin CelestialsPack, the major part of this mod, which adds plenty of asteroids, asteroid moons, comets, moons of gas/ice giants, dwarf planets, dwarf planet moons, and interstellar objects into real solar system, currently 198 in total. (dozens more in the future)
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RSS-Origin RSSTexture&TopoRevamp, which overhauls some RSS celestials with more accurate, more realistic and higher res textures and topography, since some of original RSS textures are unrealistic in color, topo and other stuff.
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RSS-Origin JSUNrings, which adds accurate and realistic rings to the 4 gas giants in our solar system.
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RSS-Origin GalaxyTex, which replaces your skybox with a high-quality Milky Way background.
RSS-Origin CelestialsPack is originally made for playing in Principia. Many of its unique features can only be displayed in Principia, like irregular gravitational field of irregular "potatoes", binary/trinary systems, orbital mechanics of trojans and co-orbitals, small objects swinging by major planet changing its orbit, etc. So it is highly recommended to play the mod in Principia. You can play without Principia though, but I bet you won't get the best experience, especially when conducting interplanetary missions.
Me and my team are doing our best to ensure that every celestial body visited by spacecraft uses models and textures that are as close to reality as possible in the game, celestial bodies that have not been visited by spacecraft use their models and spectra based on reliable observations as much as possible. The physical characteristics of those completely unknown objects are reasonable artistic creations based solely on existing data.
Textures in this pack do not exceed 8k. Larger bodies uses 4k textures or lower, smaller bodies uses 2k or lower.
--- Again, Principia is highly recommended to play with ---
And please be sure to read "Installation Guide" before installation!
A brief view of current RSS-Origin's Solar System.
A brief view of current RSS-Origin's Gas&Ice Giants' Systems.
A list of exceptional celestials added in current release of RSS-Origin CelestialsPack. (standardized albedo) (not to scale)
And here is a list about all the celestials added and planning to add.
RSS-Origin RSSTexture&TopoRevamp is an overhaul to some of the RSS celestials. I've done a widely search for information and figure out some of the RSS celestials are using wrong and misaligned surface textures ,topograhy maps, false or enhanced color images. So this mod's purpose is to fix those issues, fixing texture alignment flip or rotation, and make them displayed in natural color. Different texture resolutions are provided (4k, 8k and 16k).
Don't forget to read "Installation Guide" before installation!
Note: The Jupiter texture above is derived from RSS-Reborn by @ballisticfox, kindly used with his permission. RSS-Reborn is basically a totally remake of RSS, with the highest quality texture, terrain and visual enhancement ever (64k Earth, Moon, Mars, etc.). See RSS-Reborn for more detail.
RSS-Origin GasGiantShapeCorrection is NOT included in current release.
RSS-Origin JSUNrings adds realistic rings to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune:
- Jupiter: Halo ring, Main ring, Amalthea gossamer ring, Thebe gossamer ring.
- Saturn: Main rings (A,B,C,D,F), G ring, E ring.
- Uranus: Narrow main rings (6, 5, 4, α, β, η, γ, δ, ε), Dusty rings (1986U2R/ζ, λ), Outer rings (ν, μ).
- Neptune: Galle ring, Le Verrier ring, Lassell ring, Adams ring and arcs.
Once again, don't forget to read "Installation Guide" before installation!
RSS-Origin GalaxyTex replaces your skybox with a fairly good Milky Way background in correct orientation. 4 resolutions are provided (8k, 16k, 32k, 64k). Source https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4851.
Here are some screenshots of GalaxyTex64k taken by Alice Christina. See Gallery for more.
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more celestials
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more keplerian average
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better terrain texture
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more parallax support
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...
Since this is the major part of the mod, we will give you a detailed guide and note, and we hope that you can patiently read it through
Since this mod adds 198 extra celestial bodies to your game by default, along with 33 celestial bodies from RSS, for a total of 231, this will cause your game to lag during acceleration and slow scene switching. Given this situation, the folder structure of this mod is: each celestial or celestial system is placed in a separate folder, and you can add or remove celestial folders according to your own needs to ensure the smoothness of your gameplay.
We strongly do not recommend installing all celestials at once. (except for viewing scenery or searching for your target(s))
It is highly recommended not to install all celestials while you are ready to conduct interplanetary missions! We suggest retaining only the celestial(s) required for the mission and removing the remainings.
Go to RSSOrigin in gamedata, search for celestial folders you need or don't need. Move the unwanted celestial folders out of GameData. (! Please remember the location of the celestial folder before moving it out! If you forget, you can go to check "List of added celestials" for the location of the celestial folder) If you need a certain celestial or celestial system, you can place it back in the corresponding position within GameData/RSSOrigin.
If you want to install small moons in the rings of gas/ice giants and also want to add rings to gas/ice giants, it is recommended to use "RSS-Origin JSUNrings". This ring pack is matched with RSS-Origin, and the positions of the small moons and rings are adjusted according to reality. If this ring pack is not used, the small moons may drift elsewhere, which will look weird at least visually - they may get out of the gap which they should be in, for example.
You can choose orbit line color and whether to use astrological symbols or not in GameData/RSSOrigin/RSSOriginSettings.cfg
Statement: The orbital data, physical data, appearance, etc. of celestial bodies are not guaranteed to be completely consistent with reality.
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- Objects with smaller radii (<409m) may have rendering bugs. When viewed from a distance, the overall display will be black. When approaching, the texture will probably flicker, but it does not affect landing. Once approached, it will return to normal.
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- After installing a large number of celestials with Principia, when the Plotting Frame Selection interface is fully expanded, the game will become extremely laggy. Reducing the number of expanded celestials or closing the interface can solve this problem.
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- After installing a large number of celestials without Principia, when you go to map view, the game will become laggy due to too much orbit lines rendered.
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- The limitation of Principia, which is only constant angular frequency per object is possible, results in some moons that are tidally locked with planets being unable to effectively maintain tidal locking. After warping for a period of time, the moons will deviate from the correct orientation, which cannot be solved at present.
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- There may be some bugs for unknown reasons when attempting to transfer between some small asteroids and their moons (passing through SOI). Switching to the tracking station and then switch back to the vessel can solve this problem.
A quick summarize for several common questions and mistakes in installing and playing RSS-Origin: (subject to change)
(1) For the capability of RSS-Origin and RSS-Reborn:
- a. RSS-Origin CelestialsPack is fully compatible with RSS-Reborn.
- b. RSS-Origin JSUNrings is compatible with current verison of RSS-Reborn. Ballisticfox will probably merge and modify the rings from RSS-Origin to RSS-Reborn later but I'm not sure as yet.
- c. RSS-Origin GalaxyTex is compatible with RSS-Reborn.
- d. RSS-Origin RSSTexture&TopoRevamp is mostly compatible with RSS-Reborn. But, same as RSS-Origin JSUNrings, Fox will probably merge some better textures from RSS-Origin to RSS-Reborn later.
(2) For using RSS-Origin CelestialsPack with Principia:
- a. Whether to use Principia or not mainly depends on personal preference. Principia makes irregular gravitational field possible, along with more accurate orbital mechanics and axial tilt. If you think those features aren't necessary to you, just ignore Principia.
- b. Due to the limitation of Principia itself, you can add new celestials before you start a new save, and you can remove any number of them before you start a new save, but you cannot add/remove celestials to your old saves.
(3) For using RSS-Origin CelestialsPack without Principia:
- a. You can add/remove any number of new celestials at any time to any of your old saves or new saves.
(4) For general gameplay of RSS-Origin
- a. The game starts at 1951-01-01, so if you want to focus the two interstellar objects, you may need to warp to at least 50 years later in the game.
- b. You can change the types of orbit color and celestial icon in GameData/RSSOrigin/RSSOriginSettings.cfg according to your own favor.
(5) For other compatibilities
- a. RSS-Origin CelestialsPack is compatible with KSRSS (KSRSS-Reborn).
- b. RSS-Origin CelestialsPack is compatible with Kcalbeloh.
- Real Solar System and all dependencies of it (of course).
- Niako's Kopernicus Utilities (Smoother Heightmaps). This mod is bundled in RSS-Origin.CelestialsPack.Core.zip so you needn't to download it seperately.
(In case you are new to KSP, dependencies of RSS are: Module Manager, Kopernicus, RSS-Textures, KSP Community Fixes)
Highly recommend:
Recommend:
Incompatibles: Other expansion packs for RSS.
Option #1: Using CKAN.
Option #2: Manually install
- Go to the release page of this repository, download "RSS-Origin CelestialsPack Core.zip".
- Go to the release page of this repository, choose the celestial(s) you desired, download it.
- Unzip "RSS-Origin CelestialsPack Core.zip". Put the folder "RSSOrigin" and "000_NiakoUtils" into your Gamedata.
- Unzip the celestial pack(s).zip. Put the folder(s) "RSSOrigin" into your Gamedata.
- If you are playing without Principia, launch your game and continue your saves.
- If you are playing with Principia, launch your game and create a new save to play. (Don't open your old saves, or your game will crash or your save will be broken!)
If you can run RSS (or RSS+Principia) on your device, you can run this mod. But notice, more celestials added to your game means better device you should have.
Don't open your old saves after installing RSS-Origin RSSTexture&TopoRevamp if you're playing with Principia! The previous statement is false if you aren't using Principia.
This mod is compatible with Real Solar System, RSS-Reborn and KSRSS (KSRSS-Reborn). So the dependency is RSS, or RSS-Reborn, or KSRSS (KSRSS-Reborn).
Incompatibles: It is partially compatible with RSS-Rebron. Higher quality textures of Phobos, Ceres and Vesta from RSS-Reborn will overwrite the RSS-Origin's.
Option #1: Using CKAN
Option #2: Manually install
- Go to the release page of this repository, download "RSS-Origin RSSTexture&TopoRevamp Configs.zip".
- Go to the release page of this repository, choose a resolution you desired, download it.
- Unzip "RSS-Origin RSSTexture&TopoRevamp Configs.zip"，put the folder "RSSOrigin" into your Gamedata.
- Unzip "RSS-Origin RSSTexture&TopoRevamp Textures(xx)k.zip"，put the folder "RSSOrigin" into your Gamedata.
- Launch your game.
It is the same as RSS-Textures.
Dependency: Real Solar System
Recommend: If you want realistic ring shadow, Scatterer is needed.
Incompatibles: RSS-Origin JSUNrings should has the ability to overwrite other ring configs in most cases. If it doesn't, feel free to contact me.
Option #1: Using CKAN
Option #2: Manually install
- Go to the release page of this repository, download "RSS-Origin JSUNrings.zip".
- Unzip "RSS-Origin JSUNrings.zip"，put the folder "RSSOrigin" into your Gamedata.
- Launch your game. Go to check if there're faint rings around Uranus. If yes, then you have installed the mod successfully.
Why only Saturn's rings can be seen? In order to restore the true appearance of the rings as much as possible, I selected the parameters on Wikipedia. I chose the standard optical depth of each part of the ring and converted them to opacity as the transparency of the ring textures. Although opacity and transparency are not exactly the same parameter (one representing optics and the other representing computer graphics), the results look very similar to the real situation. So from the perspective of back scattered view, if the exposure is not increased using TUFX or KS3P, the rings of Jupiter and Neptune are completely invisible, and only the ε ring of Uranus can be seen in the distance. If you are careful enough, you can see Uranus' other 9 thin main rings in backscattered view. Of course, the higher the exposure, the easier it is to see. All rings are visible in forward scattered view (backlit/through sunlight).
Dependency: Only TextureReplacer is needed
Incompatibles: RSS-Origin GalaxyTex should has the ability to overwrite other skybox configs in most cases. If it doesn't, feel free to contact me.
Option #1: Using CKAN
Option #2: Manually install
- Go to the release page of this repository, choose a resolution you desired, download "RSS-Origin GalaxyTex(xx)k.zip".
- Unzip "RSS-Origin GalaxyTex(xx)k.zip"，put the folder "RSSOrigin" into your Gamedata.
- Launch your game.
himīśā
Kerbinator Fras
NewoEther
Proxima-b
Special Contributors: (Ranked in alphabetical order without distinction of the extent of contribution)
Alice Christina
ballisticfox
caps lock
KEKKJ
Lekword
猫猫是我心头好
R-T-B
游荡云雀
YWMKerman
All members mentioned above
All members of closed-beta team
All members who have provided suggestions and comments on this mod
All members who have made noteworthy contributions to this mod but are not listed above
For more information about credits, contributions and acknowledgements, see CREDIT.md