whats wrong with 1.1.3 exactly?

[nascarlaser1]

Hi guys!

I keep hearing complaints about how 1.1.3 is unusable due to some wheel bug, but I cannot find any videos or pictures of it. Can someone explain to me what the bug is, and is it worth going to 1.1.3 or staying with 1.0.0. I use the windows version straight from the website.

[Sharpy]

1.1.3 is completely usable. There are some annoying bugs - in particular landing gear, wheels and landing legs tend to misbehave really badly, but outside of these the game is more stable than ever, especially if you use the 64-bit version (32 tends to run out of RAM and crash on screen changes (KSC facilities, launch), nothing scary though as persistent.sfs is saved, and you can restart from the point where the game had crashed.)

Specifically:

- landing legs sometimes jump; when touched by kerbal like to explode or send the kerbal flying.

- landing gear likes to make the airplane jump

- powered wheels enter 'blocked' state wherever anything gets nearby, also jump under heavy load.

There are some workarounds for some of these (tuning parameters of landing gear, giving powered wheels a lot of "breathing room"), and the rest is mitigated by "just don't do it" - there are many, many parts that make very fine landing legs.

 

...at least that's the situation for PC. The console versions are crap like they always were.

Edited August 30, 2016 by Sharpy

[Alshain]

There are several issues with 1.1.3.  Some people are still experiencing crashing issues. The landing legs explode if hit too hard by an EVA kerbal, a bug that was supposed to be fixed but the fix was bugged.  They also have a tendency to slide down hills (admittedly I'm not sure if that one was fixed or not).  The plane wheels do not drive straight down the runway, they veer off rather quickly making landing an incredible chore (take off is a little easier if your plane is capable of a 45m/s lift off).  The rover wheels blow up at rather low speeds rather than simply breaking, so the repair mechanic is gone, leaving engineers even more useless than they were before.

Overall between the wheels, legs, and gear, that leaves your space program VERY limited.  Your choice is to either use workarounds, like girders for landing legs or just limit yourself to space stations cutting out much of the game.  I stayed with 1.0 for a long while, but now I'm just not playing KSP at all because my existing 1.0.5 career has very little left to keep me interested and I don't want to start a new career on it before 1.2, especially since all the new mods I would want have updated to the inferior 1.1 version.

Edited August 30, 2016 by Alshain

[nascarlaser1]

4 minutes ago, Alshain said:

There are several issues with 1.1.3.  Some people are still experiencing crashing issues. The landing legs explode if hit too hard by an EVA kerbal, a bug that was supposed to be fixed but the fix was bugged.  They also have a tendency to slide down hills (admittedly I'm not sure if that one was fixed or not).  The plane wheels do not drive straight down the runway, they veer off rather quickly making landing an incredible chore (take off is a little easier if your plane is capable of a 45m/s lift off).  The rover wheels blow up at rather low speeds rather than simply breaking, so the repair mechanic is gone, leaving engineers even more useless than they were before.

Overall between the wheels, legs, and gear, that leaves your space program VERY limited.  Your choice is to either use workarounds, like girders for landing legs or just limit yourself to space stations cutting out much of the game.  I stayed with 1.0 for a long while, but now I'm just not playing KSP at all because my existing 1.0.5 career has very little left to keep me interested and I don't want to start a new career on it before 1.2, especially since all the new mods I would want have updated to the inferior 1.1 version.

If I were to update from 1.0, which version is the best.

[OhioBob]

7 minutes ago, Sharpy said:

especially if you use the 64-bit version...

I'm using Launcher.exe to start my game and I'm getting the 64-bit version.  Do you know how to make it give me the 32-bit version?

[Alshain]

2 minutes ago, nascarlaser1 said:

If I were to update from 1.0, which version is the best.

If you still haven't gone to 1.1.3, then don't.  1.2 isn't going to be long now.  1.0.5 works but if you are still on 1.0, I would even say that you might as well wait rather than begin a new game on that.  post 1.0 will change the aerodynamics a bit, so existing craft may break.

[nascarlaser1]

Just now, Alshain said:

If you still haven't gone to 1.1.3, then don't.  1.2 isn't going to be long now.  1.0.5 works but if you are still on 1.0, I would even say that you might as well wait rather than begin a new game on that.  post 1.0 will change the aerodynamics a bit, so existing craft may break.

ok. I'm asking because I wanted to try out  1 or 2 mods, then I found out there are none for 1.0 since 1.0 only lasted 1 day apparently.

[pincushionman]

What it boils down to is in the particular version of Unity upon which KSP 1.1 is built, the implementation of PhysX wheels is flawed (and KSP is not the only game affected). All the 1.1.X patches have mucked around with settings to alleviate the problems, but can't resolve the root cause without a newer Unity minor update and wheel middleware package (which is coming in 1.2).

A screenshot probably won't tell you much, but this leads to landing legs being unable to keep landed craft from sliding on an incline, or causing airplanes to spin out on takeoff or landing. And it's extremely sensitive to exact configuration of parts as to whether it happens or not. Some people have worked it out in their designs, others have a great deal of trouble. I myself recently turned an otherwise well-behaved airplane into a steaming pile of brokenness by changing from one engine on top to to two on the sides.

If you're happy still using 1.0, at this point there's no harm in sitting back and waiting for 1.2 to drop. Better yet, though, you can download the current version and keep the 1.0 and 1.1 installs separate; then you can try out the new version without fear of losing the good 1.0 install you already have.

[Ruedii]

The issues are actually upstream on Unity.  If you read the Unity forums there are a lot of complaints about this revision of Unity, particularly the wheel module that is used by the KSP Landing gear and rover wheels.

The problems are already fixed upstream in PhysX (where the originate from) and it's just a matter of Unity updating their version of the PhysX library.  This is already done in the beta release branch of Unity.

KSP 1.2 is presumed to have this fixed version of Unity3D.

However, if you read the devblogs you will see KSP 1.2 contains a LOT of other fixes, and it will take a while.

It looks like we will have to be patient.

[Red Iron Crown]

1.1.3 is playable for many people, I'm one of them. You have to be a bit careful with wheel placement for rovers and such, and landing gear for planes can sometimes require some manual tweaking of the parameters. I've been fortunate enough not to have been bitten by problems with landing legs.

My suggestion would be to give it a try and see how you find it.

[Sharpy]

6 hours ago, Ruedii said:

It looks like we will have to be patient.

I prefer to be creative instead

Maybe because I'm not focusing on airplanes, these bugs didn't hit me as hard. It's difficult to replace airplane wheels with anything else for airplanes. But for the rest...

1) Rover Wheels aren't THAT broken. I made good 100km in my mun rovers, on ruggedized wheels, going often 40m/s at 2x phys-wrap. But the rovers were very light comparing to the wheels. Still... jittery and wobbly, they can still support a good load. (this trick required disabling autostrut though).

2) Landing legs were *always* crap. I'm actually happy currently that I'm no longer tempted to use them (and curse myself when they inevitably fail), but instead I exercise creativity. Structural pylons (discarded after launch.) Cargo bays.  Airbrakes. Cargo ramps. A probe heading currently for Duna will land on antennas. "Jumper Lab" on Minmus lies straight on the ground with its MK3 hull and enough RCS and reaction wheels to set it upright for launch. I really, really don't care about landing legs not working.

Keep your 1.0, but really don't skip 1.1.3 because of some crappy parts missing. It has some awesome features - new very good parts, new tweaks of old parts (you can thrust-limit RCS, or make it react to throttle!) and is generally pretty stable outside of these bugs. Well, unless you're an avid airplane maker, unable to enjoy the game by other means. Even then you *can* get it working if you use the tweaks and understand how autostrut works.

Edited August 30, 2016 by Sharpy

[Ruedii]

Rover wheels work very well.  Make sure to turn off the rear steering on some rovers and you are good.   They are actually better than the old ones.  However, they do still need work, most of which is dependent on that PhysX version upgrade I mentioned.

It is the airplane landing gear that is troublesome.   The biggest problem is the friction behavior causing the plane to turn or spin-out.  I prefer to just turn off steering and friction during take-off and landing and make them behave like skids.

As of landing legs, they work quite well.  I haven't run into problems with them.  On some craft you may want to retract them after landing if you have issues with them, and you should design your craft accordingly.

Edited August 31, 2016 by Ruedii