Kerbal Space Program 2’s system requirements are as harsh as they look

rockpapershotgun.com:

I know we’ve been bleating on about PC system requirements lately, but the spec demands of Kerbal Space Program 2 also demand a special, visibly uncomfortable mention. This game, fresh into early access and the sequel to one that needed a mere 512GB of VRAM, lists the formidable RTX 3080 among its recommended hardware. That’s a £600-plus graphics card, and for the bare minimum of Low quality at 1080p? That’ll be either a GTX 1070 Ti or a Radeon RX 5600 XT.

Consternation at the star-high starting specs prompted Private Division community lead Michael Loreno to pen a forum post explaining the requirements, suggesting they were subject to change as further optimisations are added and that "the game is certainly playable on machines below our min spec." Sadly, I’ve been finding that several of the most-used GPUs among Steam users – including the immensely popular GTX 1060 – are likely to face serious performance woes in KSP2’s current state.

Starting with the GTX 1070, barely half a step down from the minimum spec’s Nvidia suggestion, Kerbal Space Program 2 sat at a comfortable 60fps in the rocket building workshop – albeit only at 1080p, using the lowest possible settings and forgoing anti-aliasing. This immediately plummeted to about 20fps out on the launchpad, and during my (admittedly shitty) rocket’s ascent, it dropped as low as 16fps. Breaching the clouds and looking out into deep space allowed the framerate to shoot all the back up and more, even surpassing 100fps, but then it would drop straight back down to around 20fps whenever the Earth stand-in Kerbin was onscreen.

The GTX 1060 didn’t even get the privilege of that triple-digit high. This hovered around the low fifties inside Vehicle Assembly, but