KSP 1.0 is Released!

Greetings, Kerbonauts!

This is a special one! After four and a half years in development, Kerbal Space Program 1.0 is now officially released!

Kerbal Space Program 1.0 is what we envisioned when development of the game started four years ago: we set out to make a game in which the player is given ultimate control over the exploration of space: from designing their rockets to launching and flying them to their destinations, in a universe that was modeled to be realistic, but at the same time still be fun to play in.

However, our 1.0 release is more than just a new version number. It’s also the biggest update to the game we’ve ever done, and contains many new and updated features, plus improvements to just about every game system, which we’re sure will appeal to both newcomers and seasoned veterans. These are the highlights:

Aerodynamics
The flight model has had a complete overhaul, meaning the lift is now calculated correctly to all lift-generating parts, which includes lifting bodies. The drag simulation has also been completely revised, and uses automatically pre-calculated data based on the each part’s geometry, to be finally applied based on not just the orientation of parts in flight, but also taking other parts into consideration. Stack mounted parts are now occluded from drag by neighboring parts, and lift induced drag is also properly simulated. Both the lift and drag are dependent on air density and the speed of sound, which are calculated from temperature and pressure. Be careful when flying aircraft in this new update: stalls are now properly simulated as well, and spontaneous craft disassembly during high-G maneuvers is now a very real thing.

Heating
A new heating simulation has been implemented together with the improved aerodynamics. Now, not only temperature but also energy flux is considered when making heat calculations, meaning radiative, conductive, and convective heating and cooling are all simulated and all parts have their individual thermal properties. Parts will emit a blackbody radiation glow if they get hot enough. Although part temperatures can now be affected by such things as being exposed to sunlight and hypersonic flight heating, they can be properly occluded from these effects as well. Atmospheric temperature (and density) takes into account latitude and the position of the Sun. Celestial bodies now accurately emit thermal radiation that makes nearby craft warmer. Finally, ablative heat shields (with a finite, editor-tweakable ablation material) have been added to protect the parts behind them from reentry heating.

Fairings
You can now add fairings to your rockets! Fairing construction starts with a base part which will allow you to procedurally create a fairing after you place it. The design of the fairing is left up to you: shape individual sections of fairing with an intuitive visual system which gives you total control over the shape of any fairing.

Once you've placed the fairings you can still edit your payload! Mousing over the fairing will make it transparent and will give you an exploded view, allow you to access anything that's inside. If you later want to edit a fairing, simply right-click the fairing base to modify it as needed.

Fairings will shield anything inside them from drag and heat, making them an ideal tool for making payloads survive even more aggressive aerodynamic stresses. Like cargo bays and service modules, they will also prevent wings from generating lift, as well as science experiments, solar panels and antennas from deploying, which means all these new parts should be a big part of your mission design.

Resource Mining
Mining for Resources is now a part of Kerbal Space Program: set out to find Ore, which can be found throughout the Solar system, including on asteroids. To do this you'll have access to several different scanners to map out and find the best places to mine, drills to extract it, specialised holding tanks to store it, and a processor / refinery unit to convert it into usable fuels. To help you find the Ore, new map overlays have been implemented on all celestial bodies, and new UI elements have been added to various pieces of equipment. Also, Kerbal engineers are particularly good at keeping those drills humming at peak efficiency.

As always, you can find the complete changelog here:

=================================== v1.00.0 ============================================================* New:Editor:- New Engineer's Report Toolbar App, provides warnings and advice during construction, notifying players of possible design issues with their ships.- Added 'Cross-Section Profile' Filter to Parts List.- Added Thumbnail images for Craft files in both Launch Dialog and Craft Browser screens.- Added 'Merge' button to Load dialog, allowing ships to be loaded without replacing the current one- Added confirmation dialogs when overwriting a save, launching or leaving editor without saving.Aerodynamics:- Complete overhaul of the flight model.- Lift is now correctly calculated and applied for all lift-generating parts.- Drag is now pre-calculated automatically based on part geometry, and applied based on part orientation in flight.- Both lift and drag are dependant on density and the speed of sound; both properly calculated from temperature and pressure.- Stack-mounted parts can occlude each other for drag calculations.- Lift-Induced drag now properly simulated.- Stalls are now properly simulated.- A new body-lift system meaning parts can induce lift even if they are not designed to do so.Heat Simulation:- Completely revised part heating model, energy flux is considered, not merely temperature.- All game temperatures changed from ‘Kervin’ to proper Kelvin.- Radiative, conductive, and convective heating and cooling are simulated.- Parts can have individual radiative, conductive, and convective properties.- All parts now emit a blackbody radiation glow if they get hot enough.- Conduction between attached parts is more accurately modelled.- Parts can occlude other parts from being exposed to sunlight, celestial body albedo/radiation and supersonic flow.- Reentry/hypersonic flight heating is now simulated.- Added difficulty Setting to scale aerodynamic heating.- Atmospheric temperature, and thus density, takes latitude and sun position into account.- Celestial bodies accurately emit thermal radiation making nearby craft warmer.- Service modules, fairings and cargo bays can be used to protect parts inside from heat.- Heat shields provide (finite) ablation-based protection for parts behind them.Parts:- New procedural Fairings added, in 3 sizes- New Heat Shields added, in 3 sizes- Service Bay parts added in 1.25m and 2.5m sizes- Several new Landing Gear parts added, in many sizes.- Many New large airliner and shuttle style wing sections added.- Large wing sections have internal fuel tanks.- All old spaceplane parts overhauled with a more up-to-date style.- Old Avionics Nose Cone overhauled and repurposed as a standalone, non-autonomous SAS module.- New atmosphere scanner part added.- New Inline Xenon Tank part added.- New RT-5 'Flea' Solid Rocket Booster added.- New Fuel Cell parts added (small and large), convert LiquidFuel and Oxidizer into Electricity when turned on.- New models for Circular and Ram air intake parts.- New models for Engine Nacelle parts.- Several new nose cones and tail sections.- New Airbrake part. - New module for Airbrake parts, responds to Brakes input and can also be used as pitch/yaw actuator.Internal Spaces:- Added new IVA space for the Mk1 Inline cockpit- Added new IVA space for the Science Lab- Added new IVA space for Mk3 Shuttle Cockpit- Added new IVA space for Mk3 Passenger Cabin- Added new IVA space for Mk2 Passenger CabinResources:- Added 'Ore' resource, which can be mined across the Solar System- New drill part added- Ore container tanks added- ISRU Ore processor unit added, converts Ore into Liquid Fuel, Oxidizer or MonoProp- Three new Ore scanner parts added- Added new MapView overlays displaying Ore density for all Celestial Bodies.- Support for moddability of resources added (including atmospheric and oceanic)- New Difficulty Setting to scale resource abundance (both stock and modded).- Asteroids can also be mined for Ore.- Engineer Kerbals are able to ‘overdrive’ drilling equipment for increased yield (and less safety).Kerbals:- Female Kerbals added, with new randomly-generated female names - Valentina Kerman (Pilot) added to initial Crew Roster- Kerbals are now able to clamber onto ledges within reach, because their jobs weren’t dangerous enough already.- Kerbals can now climb out of ladders onto ledges.- Tourist Kerbals added. They have zero skills, are unable to control vessels, and are required to keep their heads inside the vessel at all times.- Kerbals now cost increasingly larger amounts of Funds to hire in Career Games.R&D:- R&D Tech Tree completely revised. Several new nodes added; many, many parts reassigned for a better progression.- Kerbal Scientists are now able to restore inoperable experiment modules.- The Science Lab has been retooled to run long-term research on experiment data, providing much higher amounts of science over time.Graphics:- New Smoke effects added to Launchpads- New Surface Effects added whenever rocket engines fire near terrain- New Water Effect added whenever rocket engine fire near water- Revised all part shaders for improved rendering of lighting effects and shadows.- Main Flight UI can now be made transparent.Career:- Added new Tourism contracts and tourist kerbals.- Added ISRU resource extraction contracts.- Added Grand Tour contracts.- Replaced Rescue contracts with Recovery contracts, which can ask the player to recover a part, a kerbal, or both, and can spawn on the surface of planets, with “props” nearby.- Added two 'immediate' Strategies to convert existing Reputation and Science into Funds.- World First contract line now extends all the way out to Eeloo, and is dependent on player progression.- Record contracts are now always active, and will complete in order even over the course of a single mission.Tutorials:- All tutorials revised and rewritten to explain most game features.- Expanded Flight Basics Tutorial to cover the essentials of launching into orbit.- Added new Return from Mun tutorial.- Added new Science and R&D Tutorial.- Added new Docking tutorial.Flight:- 'Warp To' action added to orbit context menu. Allows warping to a specific spot along your trajectory.- 'Warp to next morning' button added to KSC toolbar.- Asteroids can now be found orbiting near Dres.- Engine thrust now varies according to Isp and throttle setting, instead of the other way around.Controls:- Completely revised Input Mapping system. - Flight input bindings is now much more straightforward and more flexible as well.- Duplicate control bindings for Docking/Staging modes now replaced by a much more robust system based on secondary key bindings.- Joystick Axes are now consistently enumerated and persist across sessions.- Up to 10 joysticks with 20 axes each now supported.- Added secondary channels for Axis Bindings.Cameras:- New 'Chase' Camera mode added, old mode now called 'Locked'.- Added Camera wobble/vibration effects during flight (engine vibration, explosions, ground roll, G-force, and many more)- TrackIR support added to all game views (toggleable independently in game settings). (FreeTrack also reported to work)- Added FOV control to main flight camera. (Hold ModKey and zoom)* Bug Fixes and Tweaks:Editor:- Fixed several issues with editor attachments, attachment node orientation and symmetry.- Shift+Clicking a 'frozen' part in the editor will detach it from its parent.- Fixed several bugs with cloned parts and persistence.- The editor no longer requires a full scene reload to load new craft files.UI:- The KnowledgeBase panel for Vessels now shows 'Max Accel' and 'Estimated burn time to 0m/s' (as shown on navball) fields.- Several part context menu actions now properly apply to symmetry counterparts automatically.- Added new custom cursors.Simulation:- Fixed 'infiniglide' bug.- Switching SOIs no longer causes the next orbit to change at high time warp rates.- Added a warp speed limit when approaching an SOI transition.- Kerbal EVAs should no longer fly off when disembarking in space.- SAS now disengages autopilot modes automatically (and falls back to stability assist) in cases where the target vectors would change very rapidly.- Parachute deployment should no longer cause vessel disassembly at high physics warp rates.- Deployed parachute sway now actually has an effect on the vessel.Parts:- LV-N “Nerv” Engine now runs solely on Liquid Fuel and has no gimbal.- OSCAR-B tank can now be surface attached- Air-breathing engines now drain fuel evenly from all tanks in a vessel.- Fixed radial decouplers not applying ejection forces correctly.- Parachutes no longer cause massive G spikes when opening.- Control Surfaces can now be deployed as flaps, controllable via context menus and Action Groups.- Stats of Antennas revised for a proper progression with the more advanced models.- Added nicknames to all engine parts.- Revised and balanced part costs.- Balanced fuel amounts for Mk2 and Mk3 tanks.- Balanced engines (Isp/thrust/mass) in line with the new aerodynamics.- Added fuel gauge to LV-1 “Ant” engine.- Materials Bay now faces away from the part it’s radially attached to.- RoveMate rover body is now a probe body as well.- The unshrouded solar panels are now non-retractable.- Balanced probes electric charge usage, mass and crash tolerance.- Lowered crash tolerance of the Structural Pylon to 70 from 999!- All parts given ‘bulkhead profile’ tags in cfg files. Profile tags inferred automatically for parts missing this field.- Cargo bays now properly detect enclosed parts, and can be grouped to make larger bays.- Experiment Modules, Solar Panels, Antennas and such will not deploy while stowed inside a fairing or cargo bay.- RCS thrusters will not function if stowed inside a closed cargo area (or fairing).- Lifting surfaces will not generate lift if stowed inside a closed cargo area (or fairing).Audio:- Much improved flight ambience sounds for Kerbin and other bodies with atmospheres- Added new sound effect when pulling high G forces.- Eliminated audible gaps on several looping clips.Effects:- Improved sound/particle effects for all Air-Breathing engines- Splashdown effects no longer spawn underwater.General:- All part textures converted to DDS format, load times are now 3x faster.- Fixed a serious persistence bug which prevented Scenario/Training saves from updating scenario modules properly.- Fixed persistence bugs which caused state data from Upgradeable Facilities to carry over to other saves.- Fixed an issue which caused Kerbals to not be generated randomly enough, which led to slowdowns with larger Crew Rosters.- Fixed issues with the terrain during scene switching making scene load times faster.- Fixed terrain scatter generation which was causing memory leaks.- ‘Elon Kerman’ added to name pool.- Crew name generator can now output 10,000+ female names - Fixed an issue with markers in the KSC scene potentially causing the game to lock up.- Restructured GameData folder, integrated the NASA folder into the Squad one.- Valentina Kerman added to Main Menu’s Space scene. Gameplay:- All contracts other than World Firsts or Records are halted until the player reaches space.- Prevent “stacking” of various contract types.- Resource parts added into satellite, station, and outpost contracts.- Prose of contracts involving kerbals re-evaluated with gender appropriate text.- All contracts in career given balanced income for all three currencies.- Science and reputation no longer scale with the celestial body of a contract, and are handed out more conservatively in general.- All strategies in career given equivalent exchange rates.- Aggressive Negotiations strategy given a discount on building repair/upgrade.- Recovery Transponder strategy now lowers maximum recovery rate, while raising minimum recovery rate.- Facility upgrade costs re-evaluated, lowered by about a quarter overall.- Kerbals now properly receive experience for suborbital flights.- Part Test contracts now request much saner flight parameters.- Survey contracts choose much saner locations to survey.- Sensor Experiment Modules are now able to perform experiments in all situations.Debugging/Modding:- The R&D Tech tree is now defined in a cfg-file. - The cfg file for the Tech Tree is defined separately for each save.- GameVariables methods are now all virtual and can be overwritten by mods.- Added a new set of debug tools to tweak Physics parameters.- Added a new set of debug tools to tweak R&D tech tree nodes and part assignments.

There is a lot more we could talk about, but we’ll let you discover that on your own!

The update is now available on the KSP Store, Steam and GOG.

We hope you will enjoy Kerbal Space Program 1.0 as much as we enjoyed making it.

Happy Launchings!

Cheers