evilC

Hi, been playing with this mod a bunch, and I am experimenting with making a vtol go fast (Horizontally). I am experimenting with the idea of adding additional engines to the nose of the craft, such that when it is pitched forwards (Using the main engines primarily for speed), it can use the engine(s) on the nose for thrust. I can use TCA to do this manually by setting all engines to thrust only and nosing it down manually - like this, a test craft of mine can reach ~200m/s. In cruise mode, the craft will only do ~70m/s Picture of the craft, nose is to the right. In this pic, it was completely stable (it held course and maintained alt and attitude), I needed no control input. Is there any chance you could impart any gems of wisdom? Am I flogging a dead horse here?

Yeah, had a bunch of reports of issues with Win10, but mainly to do with it not being able to connect to vJoy. I still haven't installed it myself, and I just started a new job, so my time to investigate is very limited. Do you have AutoHotkey installed? If so, try running the following AHK script: 2Joy1:: soundbeep return This code should beep when you press button 1 on stick 2. If stick 2 is not connected, you can change the 2 to another number. To find out your stick IDs, you can use PJP's JoyIDs. If that works, then there is nothing inherently stopping UJR from working, it will be an issue with my code. If it doesn't, then there is a fundamental issue with AHK recognizing joystick input and will probably be an AHK issue.

Yeah, I have seen this reported before and it turned out to be that the vJoy registry keys were not getting created properly. I am aware of the vJoy site being down, I have a mirror of the download up here: http://evilc.com/files/ahk/vjoy/vJoy_205_200315.exe Try uninstalling vJoy and reinstalling.

I dunno if you remember, but I made a request for something similar a while back, but I think I explained myself rather badly. If I am reading the above right, you are thinking of allowing the user to configure some of the engines such that they generate thrust, whilst not generating any change in pitch / roll (Angular velocity). Surely, this would also be of use in solving the issue of jet engines on their own not being much use with TCA (Because they cannot change thrust quickly enough)? ie if you set your jet engines to this "Balance Only" mode, they would generate most of the force required to hover the craft (say 90%) and would not need to vary thrust levels so quickly. This could then be supplemented by some fast-reacting rocket engines to provide the other 10% of the lifting force, plus handle all of the steering forces. viola! most of the thrust handled by (cheap, weight-wise) jet engines which sit at a relatively constant thrust level, with some tiny rocket engines (or even vernor thrusters?) left to handle the small but quickly-changing thrust component. Apologies if I am totally gettting the wrong end of the stick (again).

Confirmed, I am no longer receiving the warning. The docking ports are still in Specialized Construction, but there is now a Jr docking port available in a lower tier as part of Miniaturization.

Is there a way of getting this to work in the meantime? I tried changing the KerbinSpaceStation.version file to read: "KSP_VERSION": { "MAJOR":1, "MINOR":0, "PATCH":0 }, "KSP_VERSION_MIN": { "MAJOR":1, "MINOR":0, "PATCH":0 }, "KSP_VERSION_MAX": { "MAJOR":1, "MINOR":0, "PATCH":0 } ... but it still complained that it needed 0.9 I dunno if the mod actually works, at what point do you get space station missions?

Also eagerly awaiting a version for 1.0, as even using just an XBOX pad, KSP forgets which stick ID is which between runs... Also, for those X-55 users left out in the cold, I may have a temporary workaround, but it does involve using virtual sticks. You can use my app UJR to combine both sticks into one virtual stick. Once you have it set up, I would recommend disconnecting both sticks before running KSP - that way, KSP only has one stick to choose from (The virtual stick) when it launches, and should stop KSP from "seeing" your physical sticks. If it does the old forget-which-stick-id buttons are mapped to, try using PJP's JoyID's util to swap the ID of the vJoy stick. Hope this helps until Taniwha can sort AFBW properly. If you need help with UJR, please post on my thread rather than spamming this thread with irrelevant info.

Any word on 1.0 compatibility? I find this mod indispensable - hopefully they will build it's functionality into KSP soon...

Is there any ETA on rotatron fixes? Specifically the creep bug and the current painful process of trying to set up 2 mirrored rotatrons (ie for VTOL engine rotation).

Hmm, I really don't understand then. Lets throw out 3 dimensions and just work with 2 - X and Z. You have a plane style vtol (nose points X+) craft with one engine of equal strength pointing downwards (D), rearwards ® and forwards (F). To keep this simple, each engine has no vectoring. The craft is at a 80deg angle (10 deg from engine R and 80deg from engine D) and is moving directly towards the ground (No horiz motion). In the current version your code is able to work out to pitch the craft -80deg to align engine D with the momentum vector and thrust. How come it could not work out that engine R could also be used, if instead it rotated 10deg the other direction? Seeing as 10 > 80, and both engines are identical, it should pick engine R. Similarly, if the code is (as it seems to be) able to separate out two different sets of momentum vectors (towards the ground and horizontal motion), why can it not do the above for each element of the momentum? ie imagine the same craft was hovering (no vertical momentum), at 0 deg (Engine D pointing towards ground and thrusting to counteract gravity), could it not work out that the horizontal movement vector is in line with engine F and it can use F to kill horiz vel, while still using engine D to kill vert vel?

I did some more playing last night and had some real fun trying to make a harrier jump jet. The harrier design is interesting because it uses one powerplant for hovering and forward flight - in the actual plane, it does this by vectoring the thrust using nozzles, I elected to emulate this by mounting engines centrally and using IR rotatrons to rotate them mid flight. The craft was well balanced, and I had a bunch of reaction wheels, so it was hard to tell how well TCA coped, but it was certainly suprisingly effecticve - you could angle the engines at 45deg and pick up horiz speed until the wings took over - VTOL / STVL was definitely possible. I tried similar ideas using older versions of TCA and it did not go so well, so I certainly think there is much promise in the new version. One thing that irks me though is that it seems that none of KSP's jets can change thrust levels fast enough to be of much use with multi-point VTOLs. This would be something which I would love to see in TCA - the ability to split the thrust between multiple engine types. If you could have jets or rotors providing a constant 90% of the thrust required to hover, then use rocket engines to supplement and provide attitude control, that would be really cool.

Hi Allista, Maybe I should clarify my desires for "engines all over". Imagine a plane style harrier jump jet with a downward facing engine that has a vectoring angle of 45 degrees. You are coming in to land but the place you wish to land (mountainous) has an inclination of, lets say for arguments sake, 50deg. You cannot touch all legs down at a flat angle, because if you pitch to 50deg, the engine cannot vector straight down. But what if you add another engine at a 45deg offset to the first, such that if the first cannot vector enough to point straight down, the second can. That way, you could land at a 50deg angle without translating. Similarly, with kill horiz velocity, if you want to kill forward velocity, and there is an engine pointing in that direction, it does not use it (sensibly). ie in an ideal situation, it would normally not be firing at all, but when you want to kill horiz vel, it fires enough to kill the horiz vel, then cuts. Now AFAIK this is basically possible at the moment, but it seems that at no point does engine 1 cut out completely and engine 2 take over. ie with this craft You cannot kill horiz vel without pitching up, and you cannot pitch up without inducing horiz vel. I dunno, maybe I am asking for the program to work a slightly different way. What would be cool would be a mode whereby it only tries to thrust to counteract vertical velocity. Then, if you enable "kill horiz" mode, it *also* tries to kill horiz vel. The current pitch of your craft should be irrelevant - it should only use the engines it needs to to counteract the velocity component(s) you asked it to counteract. Does that make sense?

So glad development has resumed on this mod... A few observations: If you have engines all over your craft with TCA enabled, engines which are not required still thrust. For example, if I have engines pointing up, they still fire, when they are not needed. I had hoped you could maybe hover at any angle given sufficient thrusters, but apparently not Also, I am not sure what the deal is with "Kill Horiz Vel", I have seen it cut engines out completely when it achieves a stop, but even then it doesn't seem very effective. Again, I had hoped that if you placed thrusters appropriately, killing horiz vel would be easy. I think this mod needs some kind of system to designate engines to be 100% under the control of TCA. If you could have TCA hijack only the VTOL engines, and leave the throttle free for "normal" use, that would be great. I did some tests with flipping control angle (ie from SPH style horizontal to VAB style vertical) mid-flight and it seemed to cope well. Finally, it does not seem to work with Vernor engines. any hope of that happening?

KSP's joystick support is AWFUL, so I would not base ANY assumptions on behavior you see in KSP. Download DIView from here and check which stick is sending what: http://www.leobodnar.com/files/DIView.zip Chances are that the stick and throttle appear under windows as two devices. KSP has no concept of Joystick 1 / Joystick 2 when it comes to buttons, so stick 1 button 1 is just the same to KSP as stick 2 button 1. You probably want to use AFBW to sort your stick issues under KSP.

Hi, could you please add the ability to target planetary bodies? I am having terrible problems at the moment with the game not wanting to select Duna. - - - Updated - - - H,, I think I am actually getting this bug in KSP So I think your existing system of focus view, then click on planet to select is probably fine. Unless you could potentially allow people to work around this bug (ie maybe normal KSP UI cant select the planet due to bug, but your code could).