MOARdV

I'll second using MechJeb to provide estimates for aerobraking. No sense making wild guesses if you don't have to (unless you want to, of course).

If the bottom end is wider, maybe multiple separatrons, positioned near the bottom of the stage (close to center of mass on the spent stage), blasting outwards to help the decoupler push the stages away. I did that before I started using Perfectrons aimed to apply braking thrust to the stages. It also helps with that annoying flip that sometimes happens separating an upper stage from a lower stage.

Pretty much. If the current asset loader system automatically converts each image to a DXT format (which is what it looks like), you're going to have artifacts on your icons. If the old method still works, you might want to do that for the UI icons. I don't know if devs look at threads like this, but if they do: I'd suggest "small" textures (say, 64x64 or smaller) be stored as uncompressed RGBA32 format, instead of DXT compressed. If the texture is that small, you gain very little by compressing it, and, if it's a UI component like these are, the quality loss is substantial, and the memory cost is pretty small: RGBA32 64x64 textures use 16k, while DXT5 64x64 uses 4k (or 5k for a full mipchain) for the same data.

I ran img_iconPauseEffect_100.png through Microsoft's texconv utility to convert it to DXT5 (BC3_UNORM) and back to PNG, and the results are pretty close to identical to what Trigger Au sees (I don't have a drop box to post the image, or I'd include it). It's an artifact of DXT5 texture compression.

My first impression is that it's a quantization artifact, possibly caused by converting the RGBA32 image to a DXT5 compressed format. DXT5 doesn't handle continuous tones, nor sharp edge transitions, particularly well, and its artifacts tend to show up in 4x4 grids, since that's what it uses for quantization. It might be with the new asset loader, Squad is loading the image and handing it to Unity to convert to a compressed format. That could also explain some of the higher memory usage that's been reported, if there's a memory leak in there. As for getting around it, that I don't know. I've never used Unity.

On the next update, are you going to take advantage of the new model / texture management features in KSP? I went through locally and reduced the models / textures / configs to 8 files (one model, one part.cfg, and six textures). No sense loading six identical models if you don't have to. I'll be happy to supply the cfg file and instructions on how to do it.

That would be awesome ... although I'll still keep the part around for looks, since my son objected to when I had part-free chattering by editing some of the command modules configs in 0.19.

Yes, but with a caveat. There are three cases to consider: If a part you want to get rid of is a unique part, like the B9 Aero_Airbrake_Surface, you can delete the part by deleting the directory, with no side-effects. If the part is a cloned part, like the B9 S2 Fuel Tank, you can delete the .cfg for it and it will go away. You can also delete any override textures it uses, as long as those textures aren't in use by any other parts you want to keep. If the part is the parent of clone parts, like the S2 Fuselage Section 2m, you can delete the cfg file safely. However, if you want to use any of the other clone parts, you can't delete the mesh, and you can't delete the texture if it's used by other parts you want. It's pretty much something you'll have to decide on a case-by-case basis/

The parts I condensed are: KWDecoupler, KWExpandedFairingBase, KWExpandedFairingCone (1 & 2m), KWExpandedFairingWall (1&2m), KWFairingBase, KWFairingCone (1&2m), KWFairingWall (1&2m), KWNoseCone, and KWRCSfuel. Some of the other parts might be combinable, but those are the only ones I changed (since they're the ones I use most from this set).

Yeah, I've trimmed a lot of parts. I mostly use it for the Maverick-V engine and the fairings. If the fuel tanks had simple endcaps instead of detailed interiors, I'd use them, too. All of the 1.25m and 2.5m fairing parts and their bases in that pack can be cloned off of one another, reducing the model and texture count by half, so that's what I've done.

Mine is a pretty high end system with an NVIDIA GTX670. So, it's not a difference in texture management in the drivers (probably). Although maybe the problem is that I've got things dialed to max in the game (graphics quality settings)? I'll go check that.

Ditto here. I had a *small* artefacts file - to the tune of 40 or 50 lines (only Kerbin and Mun represented). It's not game lag that's the problem - I am hitting address space exhaustion, and repeated experiments show that the x4 build of ISA MapSat is the straw that breaks the app for me. KhaosCorp, I do not have as many mods as you have listed, but all of the major mods I have *are* on your list, I think (Kethane, LLL, B9 aerospace, Chatter, Kerbal Alarm Clock, KW with some local texture/mesh cloning tweaks, Protractor; I have a few other mods that are strictly parts, as well). Out of curiosity, what sort of video card do you have?

I have *finally* been able to get the dev build working ... sort of. I hacked more parts I don't use, and I was able to launch satellites to generate maps. However, I have to exit the game and restart it if I want to launch a second satellite, otherwise I get the hang on the launch pad. This mod uses a tremendous amount of memory - I loaded a small ship that had a MapSat GPS on it, and I alt-tabbed out to the task manager, and memory usage for KSP was pegged around 3.5 gigabytes. I exited the game, restarted it, and loaded a different space ship that had no Mapsat parts, and memory usage was several hundred megabytes lower (below 3 gig). I don't know exactly how the maps are managed by this mod, but I get the impression that it's loading every single map at once, instead of managing them as on-demand resources. Considering that each map is 8MB, and there are two maps per planet, and something like 14 planets to map, I think maybe the "load them all at once" strategy needs to be rethought, if that is indeed what is happening. Alternatively, please give us a way to dial the map size down to 1024 x 512 by editing a config file or something. I'd rather have a quarter resolution map than have to keep cutting out other mods just to use the maps.

It's even easier than that. You only need one part.cfg, with multiple entries in it. That's what I did to consolidate all of the fairings, decouplers, nose cones, and RCS fuel tanks in my local copy of KW - I have one KWFairingBase.cfg, with each size's cfg file copied into it.

Awesome update to this mod. I did have an observation - While I was looking through the KSP.log, I notice an error "Load(Model): Texture B9_Aerospace/Parts/Aero_Intake_Ramp/model001 not found!" when loading Aero_Intake_Ramp/Mount. I've got the r3.0c release, and there isn't a model001 in that directory. I see the part in the VAB, and it isn't missing any textures, AFAICT.

The last game I spent way too many hours playing (Civ 4) had both of these features. The alarm clock is especially useful when you get sucked in to the "wait, one more thing" flow. (Wait, let me launch the lander pod. Wait, let me dock it with the mother ship. Wait, the launch window opens in 20 minutes. Wait, I need to remember the mid-course correction. Wait, ... ) Not that anything like that ever happens to me, mind you.

I would like to know this as well. I've used the previous MapSat for months, but I have yet to get a ship on the Launchpad to work with this version. It hangs with one CPU core maxed out for minutes. I haven't waited 25 minutes myself, but over 5 minutes on several occasions.

Any possibility of the Large Structural Corridor having a door added to the exterior, so it can function like an up-sized Hitchhiker cabin? I don't care that much about an IVA, but being able to use that as a larger crew's quarters would be handy.

Nice! I guess my space program will need to hold off a little bit longer, so they can get proper mission flags on their ships.

Finally, flag decals! The decals that are applied to the part persist, even when you change flags at the space center, like you would expect. I agree with Scottiths that the large flags don't work well on rounded hulls - they would look good attached to square or triangular girders on a big space station. A couple of little adjustments would make these better, I think: Instead of separate normal and reversed flag parts, have one two-sided flag for each size. This would especially help if the flag isn't flush against something solid, since right now it's invisible from the back. If you are able to do that, we'd also need a way to determine the orientation of the flag, since the game doesn't apply the decal in the VAB (which is a pity). Can you color the left and top edges of the flag part without that color bleeding over onto the decal, maybe? Regardless, at least now it's possible to put mission flags on the ships.

Those look terrific. The clustered spherical fuel tanks are something I've wanted for a while now, purely for aesthetic reasons. Can't wait!

Or have the "cable bundle" be the first ship's node, and a Kerbal carries a connector over to the other ship, like you do currently with the winch. But the bundle would have no retraction force, unless disconnected and used to retract the cable.

A request I'd like to throw in: Can it be possible to have the mapping dish's tracking capability switched off when it's not actively mapping? I had a few occasions when I would dock a ship carrying the mapping dish to a second ship, and phantom physics forces would cause one of two effects: the whole thing started spinning erratically, or the end of the craft that had the satellite dish started rotating through itself (ignoring collisions).

I saw the same thing. I thought it was just me. I waited 5 minutes for the launch pad to finish coming up, and it didn't. KSP was frozen with 100% CPU core utilization. It happened repeatedly, so I reverted to the old version.

It works for me, other than the texture missing. But I fixed that by renaming the "Textures" directory in the part's directory to "textures".