On Fairing Parts [Includes Poll]

[Speeding Mullet]

Disclaimer - I searched links to common suggestions, and title searched the forum back 1 year and couldn't find anything to say that this one had been beaten to death previously.  It probably has to be honest as I'm quite surprised nothing came up in a search.

Note - This is not a thread to discuss fairings themselves, but specifically the fairing part, or what forms the "base plate" part.  Please feel free to discuss, but try and steer away from "boo spaghetti" or "down with orange banding" if possible .  Without further ado:

 

 

FAIRING PARTS

 

SUMMARY

The small and medium fairing parts are too thick.  I can deal with the thickness of the 3.75m plate as it at least looks like its in proportion, and I can forgive the 2.5m in certain applications such as inter-stages, but the 1.25m plate just feels too ungainly.  Aesthetically I'm disappointed when I have to use it, particularly on fairing enclosed probes (see right hand fairing in picture).

 

PROPOSAL

I'd like to see the fairing parts themselves overhauled to a much more athletic profile.

 

SM

[CastleKSide]

I totally agree with the proposal. The fairing parts have always seemed to have been hasty last minute stand-ins in terms of astetics

[passinglurker]

Yes these parts often find their way into space planes so they should be made flush with their diameters 

[swjr-swis]

7 hours ago, Speeding Mullet said:

The small and medium fairing parts are too thick.  I can deal with the thickness of the 3.75m plate as it at least looks like its in proportion, and I can forgive the 2.5m in certain applications such as inter-stages, but the 1.25m plate just feels too ungainly.  Aesthetically I'm disappointed when I have to use it, particularly on fairing enclosed probes (see right hand fairing in picture).

Agreed. If there is a way to make the medium and especially the small fairing base a good bit thinner, I would be all for it.

 

Possible explanation, and a suggestion if this is the case:

I think the main problem blocking this is that parts that are much wider than high/long cause problems for the Unity engine joint system (or at least at one point that was the explanation of why the 3.5m decoupler needed to be made 'physicsless'). As it is, the joint at the bottom of fairings with a relatively heavy payload inside them has a tendency to break during physics load; this might become worse if the base is made thinner.

I have a suggestion though, if that problem is still in effect and preventing the fairing base from being made thinner: visually 'hollow' out the base piece (making it like a bowl of sorts) and adapt it so everything up to the very bottom of it is counted as shielded by the fairing when closed. That way the 'technical thickness' of the base plate can be left at whatever size it needs to mitigate the Unity issue, but it doesn't feel as much wasted as we get to fill the space with payload/parts.

 

While we're on the subject: please please add a 0.625m fairing... even if it requires the ungainly thick base plate (hopefully adapted as I suggest above).

Edited April 28, 2017 by swjr-swis

[swjr-swis]

15 minutes ago, passinglurker said:

Yes these parts often find their way into space planes so they should be made flush with their diameters

I don't think this is what @Speeding Mullet means with 'thickness': it's not about the diameter, it's about the distance between top and bottom of the base plate.

The base plate being marginally wider than their cross-section profile doesn't bug me nearly as much, it still maintains a very acceptably flush aspect. In fact, not being completely flush is helpful for mitigating the weak joint problem sometimes, since it allows external struts to reinforce the joint, whereas if it were fully flush it would make it very hard to keep struts connected (struts that seem to connect ok at first, but end up disconnected or pointing 'into the void' when reconnecting a section or reverting an edit).

Edited April 28, 2017 by swjr-swis

[regex]

Yeah, these parts are unsightly, even on rockets. resizing the model to be, say, one third as thick would look much better.

[tater]

Like all the rocket parts, there needs to be less of a transition between parts. rockets all look exactly like they are built of discrete cylinders, spaceplane look like they are a single fuselage, with only panel lines.

[AlamoVampire]

Ill just say it the stock fairings as ive said about them since day one shouldnt be in the game. They should have then and its MY opinion they should now dump the unwieldy, non user-friendly, non procedural stuff they have now and just make Procedural Fairings stock.

That action would solve the thickness issue, make fairings on space planes blend in seamlessly and so much more. Imho ofc

 

Edited April 28, 2017 by AlamoVampire

[CastleKSide]

Maybe what the fairings need is nothe a new model, but a new texture

[StupidAndy]

I don't care about the base part, but the texture on the procedural part is just ugly according to me

[AlamoVampire]

Nothing procedural about stock fairings. Nothing easy or cogent atleast

[qzgy]

I have to agree that the actual plate sizes are way too big on the 1.25 m size. On smaller rockets, it looks ridiculous cause it can take 10 to 20% of the upper stage. The banding is ok on smaller craft where there is only one or two stripes, but it gets repetitive on some really big fairings. I think one of the problems of KSP parts is proportions. I find that often its so much harder to build on a small scale since most of the parts are built for larger scales. On small scale detail work, you often see people using odd parts such as parachutes or solar panels since non of the other parts are suitable for that kind of detail work. Wings are my main problem. On a big 747 or so, or even a mk2 scale craft, it works fine, but if you want to make a tiny plane like Cupcake's stuff, you have to get really inventive. On the other hand, the solar panels are the opposite. The gigantor panels are reasonable for large stations and so on, but not really on smaller SSTO's, but the small retractable panels look too small to actually be useful, even if the mechanics are fine.

[Speeding Mullet]

Interesting to see the voting so far.  Obviously a majority for those on the side of thinning down the part at this point, and some good points made.

On 4/29/2017 at 1:21 AM, swjr-swis said:

please please add a 0.625m fairing

Definitely agree with this, it would mean you could make decent looking probes with the 1.25m heatshield as well.  You are correct, I was talking in main about the thickness rather than the diameter of the part, but I could definitely see a case for making it flush as well.

 

On 4/29/2017 at 2:30 AM, AlamoVampire said:

That action would solve the thickness issue, make fairings on space planes blend in seamlessly and so much more. Imho ofc

Thanks for bringing your humble opinion to the thread!  I used to use procedural fairings, then when stock fairings came a long I sort of got used to using them and now I can't remember how procedural fairings used to do things (better probably).  Did you have an option for procedural fairings doing anything but building a big bulb around your part (picture from the Procedural Fairings OP to illustrate below)?  I know you could inter-stage very nicely with them, but I'm not sure about building probe bodies etc.

The only thing I actually like about stock fairings is the ability to shape their profile by yourself.  Everything else is pretty lack luster and even that isn't great...

 

On 4/29/2017 at 2:33 AM, CastleKSide said:

Maybe what the fairings need is nothe a new model, but a new texture

They need a new model to make the profile thinner, but the texture of the base part (as well as the fairing) is mind-bendingly awful too.

 

15 hours ago, qzgy said:

I have to agree that the actual plate sizes are way too big on the 1.25 m size. On smaller rockets, it looks ridiculous cause it can take 10 to 20% of the upper stage. The banding is ok on smaller craft where there is only one or two stripes, but it gets repetitive on some really big fairings. I think one of the problems of KSP parts is proportions. I find that often its so much harder to build on a small scale since most of the parts are built for larger scales. On small scale detail work, you often see people using odd parts such as parachutes or solar panels since non of the other parts are suitable for that kind of detail work. Wings are my main problem. On a big 747 or so, or even a mk2 scale craft, it works fine, but if you want to make a tiny plane like Cupcake's stuff, you have to get really inventive. On the other hand, the solar panels are the opposite. The gigantor panels are reasonable for large stations and so on, but not really on smaller SSTO's, but the small retractable panels look too small to actually be useful, even if the mechanics are fine.

Good point on the small rockets, it does look silly in almost every application at that scale, and a lot of the parts are designed for larger applications.  Building on a small scale is as fine an art as building on a giant scale in KSP.

 

Great discussion so far, although I don't think we've heard form the "leave them be" camp yet.  I guess one argument against it is it would be potentially craft destroying for people updating.

SM

[qzgy]

One arguement for leaving them be is in-game usability. If the plates were smaller, it might be harder to click on them....

Edited April 29, 2017 by qzgy

[swjr-swis]

46 minutes ago, qzgy said:

One arguement for leaving them be is in-game usability. If the plates were smaller, it might be harder to click on them....

True, but there are plenty of small and thin parts we manage to click and place just fine (TR-XL separator, TR-2C/V, radial decouplers, small hardpoint, struts and fuel lines, etc). This could be further mitigated by removing the fairing shell animation effect in the editor (exploding the fairing segments when the cursor gets near) and just leaving the transparency effect - with the shell staying in place, the entire shell could potentially be made clickable.

The exploding/expanding animation is pretty eyecandy but not very practical, and frankly the niftiness of the effect has long subsided for me and now it is just a nuisance (it can randomly be in the way of attaching parts or struts because the expansion of shell segments is very hard to control and is never quite identical on all sides of the fairing), aside from being one of the factors causing high CPU/GPU usage in the editor.

[Alshain]

2 hours ago, Speeding Mullet said:

Thanks for bringing your humble opinion to the thread!  I used to use procedural fairings, then when stock fairings came a long I sort of got used to using them and now I can't remember how procedural fairings used to do things (better probably).  Did you have an option for procedural fairings doing anything but building a big bulb around your part (picture from the Procedural Fairings OP to illustrate below)?  I know you could inter-stage very nicely with them, but I'm not sure about building probe bodies etc.

You can make ProcFairings look almost any way you want. It's just done with sliders on the tweakable menu instead of "drawing" them like the stock system.  It looks a lot more like a fairing than stock though.  In addition to smoothing better, the shell covers the base.

Real fairings do have an external base, but it's nothing like the stock ones either.

Edited April 30, 2017 by Alshain

[Speeding Mullet]

13 minutes ago, Alshain said:

You can make ProcFairings look almost any way you want. It's just done with sliders on the tweakable menu instead of "drawing" them like the stock system.  It looks a lot more like a fairing than stock though.

Agreed, and I've just found an old screenshot of where I was clearly using PF to form probe shells, which is exactly what I was thinking PF couldn't do.  In fact it can:

 

Jeez, I forgot how versatile it is...

SM

EDIT - I forgot it also hides the fairing part within the fairing, which looks so much nicer.

Edited April 30, 2017 by Speeding Mullet

[Kerbal-Willie]

Yes I would love a thinner version. Like the TR-XL separator,  even if it comes with disadvantages.