Smooth Portraits

The crew's portraits at the bottom right of the flight screen, drawn as often as the game itself.

The game lets each portrait's camera take a picture only seven to ten times a second, however fast the game runs, which is why the faces jerk. This mod has the pictures taken as often as the screen is redrawn, up to a limit you set. Nothing about a picture is changed: each is taken by the game's own code with the same camera at the same size.

For Kerbal Space Program 1.12.x. Needs Keystone, which comes in the download.

Install

Copy the Keystone and SmoothPortraits folders from the download into your KSP GameData. It is on as installed.

Settings

In the Keystone window (the keystone button on the game's toolbar, or Option-K on a Mac, Alt-K elsewhere). Drag a slider, or type a number into the box beside it.

• Smooth portraits (on): off, the game draws the portraits itself again.
• At most (60 a second): the most pictures each portrait gets in a second.
• Share of a frame (3 %): the most of each frame's time the portraits may take.
• Kerbals outside too (on): off leaves the portraits of kerbals outside the ship to the game.

Good to know

• What it costs: about 0.2 ms a frame for one portrait at 60 pictures a second (1.5% at 80 frames a second), and never more than the share you set: where that does not pay for every portrait in every frame, the portraits take turns.

Where it works

• Mac: made and tried here.
• Windows: tried on Windows 11 (KSP 1.12.5): one portrait at 60 pictures a second, 0.13 ms a frame, by the mod's own report on its page.
• Linux: never run. It is plain C# with no shader or library of its own.

More: how it works, what it costs, as measured, limits, building it yourself.

Source, and more

github.com/IshiakiZ/ksp-smooth-portraits: the source, the wiki with the long description, and where to report a fault. Licence: MIT.