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RealChute is a complete rework of the stock parachute module to fix a few of its inconveniences and get more realistic results out of parachutes! Issues that do not follow the bug reporting format will be ignored. NO LOGS, NO SUPPORT. Download - GitHub Special thanks to @Starwaster for the KSP 1.4 compatibility update! ModuleManager patch files included in the download. Issues that do not follow the bug reporting format will be ignored. NO LOGS, NO SUPPORT. NOTICE: I'm no longer developing this version, no new features are going in, only compatibility updates will be pushed out. I'm also not officially supporting this mod anymore, but plenty of people can help you, and I may pop in once in a while. My focus is on RealChute 2, which is coming Soon™ Features: Gradual deployment: Chutes gradually deploy, increasing realism and decreasing deployment shock. New Deployment Conditions: Chutes deploy in conditions ranging from Eve's crushing clouds to Duna's silken veil. Parachutes deploy either according to atmospheric density or altitude and will not deploy when not intended to; e.g. in space or on the pad. Autocuts can be set for a certain altitude per chute to cut some chutes while other deploy! Parachutes on Ground: Parachutes will not autocut upon nearly stopping mid-air or touching the ground, enabling drag chutes for planes! Parachutes Return to Staging: Parachutes can be restaged again and again without restrictions! Drag Chute: Drag chutes deploy at low altitude to slow landing airplanes. Full Customization: Parachutes' values can be edited, and modders can add the plugin to their packs. Combo Chute: Deploys a drogue and next a main chute. Custom parts: sumghai gave this pack its own parts! Vessel Hangs from Chute: Even nose chutes! Editor window: Edit parachutes from the editor for any shape, size, or characteristics! Presets: Quickly edit parachutes by saving configurations into presets and loading them quickly later! Thanks to Duxwing for rewriting this part Video by 7499275 showcasing the mod Changelog Documentation And now finally, if you want to donate a little something to support for all the coffee and the nights I spent on this, you are very welcome, and it would make my day my year. FAQ (if you ask a question that is here, I'm not answering you.): Q: How/Where do I edit and customize parachutes? A: In the action groups panel. Click on the said panel like you wanted to edit action groups, then click on the parachute you want to edit. A window with all the editing options will appear. for this specific parachute. Don't forget to press apply before leaving. Q: This panel is too complicated, isn't there a simpler way to do this? A: If you don't want to use the editor panel, you really don't have to. There is a preset system that allows you to select the parachute's type (main, droge, drag, or combo), it's size (0.625m - 2.5m for cones/stacks, small - large for radials), and apply it to your current chute. You don't even have to complicate your life. Q: When I'm pressing apply, it's telling me that the craft is too heavy for the parachute. What do I do? A: Make sure the the only parts attached to the craft when you press apply are the parts that you want to land. Detach your launcher or any other fluff before pressing apply. The parachute is calculated with the weight of all the parts currently attached to the craft. You can also toggle dry/wet mass in the editor to help, but it defaults at dry. Q: What is this "parachutes used" field in the editor window? A: This is the amount of parachutes deployed at the same time to land your parachute. This option will spread the load of your craft throughout all the parachutes used, effectively lowering the size of each. Be careful: a triple canopy is only a visual effect, it's only one chute. Stach chutes, on the other side, are two chutes (one comes out on each side). This is why this field does not say parts; a part can have multiple chutes on it (like the stacks and the combos). This is why a cone chute with a triple canopy would put one in parachutes used, and a stack chute would put two. Four radial chutes in symmetry would use four. Basically, you just put in the amount of individual active chutes at the same time, regardless of what the canopies look like. Q: Why can't I access the parachute editor when starting career? When does it come available? A: The parachute editor comes with the action groups panel. As long as the most basic action groups are unavailable, the panel is unavailable. In a normal stock game, the basic action groups become available with the first VAB and SPH upgrades. Q: I used to be able to resize parachutes with the right click menu, but those options aren't there anymore. What happened to them? A: The right click resizing menu is a helping too with the previous questions. While the action groups menu is unavailable, you can resize parachutes with the right click menu. When they are, resizing now happens in the action groups menu. This only happens in career mode, so in science and sandbox, you would always go to the action groups window. Q: Why does the Engineer's Report say there are no chutes on the craft when I clearly put some? A: The Engineer's Report looks for stock chutes. I haven't implemented a check for RealChute yet. Be patient. Q: Does this work on Windows 64bit builds of KSP? A: As of KSP 1.1, yes. However, this is absolutely not something that is sure never to change. If the Winx64 builds of the game return to being unstable, buggy messes, you bet that the lock will absolutely return, and I reserve the right to bring it back at any moment I see fit, and at my discretion, and mine only. But, with the current look of things, I do not anticipate the need to do this in any foreseeable future. You have, however, been warned. Q: Do the parachutes hold on at 4x physical time warp? A: Depending on how fast you are coming down and which chute you are using, yes. Most often they will hold on just fine, but I really can't guarantee they will. However be careful, the chutes fully deployed added to high physical timewarp values can lead to bad stuff, you've been warned. Q: Is this FAR compatible? A: FAR has it's own built-in implementation of RealChute, added by me, providing basic RealChute-esque behaviour, minus all the fluff. If you want the in game editor and all the additional features RealChute provides, install this, it'll override the version built into far. Q: Can you make a ModuleManager file for *insert mod here*? A: I currently don't have much time to work on configs for mods, but if you make one and are 100% sure it works, send it to me, I'll see about including it. Q: I'm trying to add a secondary parachute to a part but it's not working! A: It's not working because you can't add a secondary parachute to any part. It needs a second parachute transform, a second set of parachute animations, etc. A modeller needs to make a part that has two parachute to allow it. Q: What is your favourite pie flavour? A: I love cherry and blueberry pie tbh. Special thanks to UbioZur, r4m0n, Sarbian, Cilph, sirkut, taniwha, NathanKell, ferram4, toadicus and the rest of #kspmodders for helping this mod happen The cut and repack sounds were graciously given by ymir9, big thanks to him! Very special thanks to @sumghai for those awesome parts, as well as the logos, icons, and flags!! GitHub repository (source) License: You are free to copy, fork, and modify RealChute as you see fit. However, redistribution is only permitted for unmodified versions of RealChute, and under attribution clause. If you want to distribute a modified version of RealChute, be it code, textures, configs, or any other asset and piece of work, you must get my explicit permission on the matter through a private channel, and must also distribute it through the attribution clause, and must make it clear to anyone using your modification of my work that they must report any problem related to this usage to you, and not to me. This clause expires if I happen to be inactive (no connection) for a period of 90 days on the official KSP forums. In that case, the license reverts back to CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 INTL.

Hello everyone. I've been a big fan of the RealChute mod for a long time, and I consider it one of the absolutely essential mods to have on any of my KSP installs. One thing has always bothered me slightly, however, and that is that, specially when paired with DeadlyReentry, even the Kevlar drogue parachutes with very light loading will instantly fail above a certain altitude (above 10-15km~) on reentry, but the idea, and even technology, of "parachutes" rated for reentry does exist, as do flexible(~) materials stronger and/or more heat-resistant than Kevlar. For example: Silica can be processed and woven into fabrics rated for 1800°F (980°C), for example. Carbon fiber being woven into fabrics is already a thing too. And apparently carbon tensile strength actually peaks at 1500-2000 °C with 5,650 MPa/820,000 psi, and carbon fibers heated in the range of 2500-3000 °C exhibit a modulus of elasticity of 531 GPa, or 77,000,000 psi (!!!). (for comparison, Kevlar fibers only have 3,620 MPa, 525,380 psi) Oh yea, and last but not least, chutes could be made of multiple layers and/of composite materials. So yea, in my humble opinion, Kevlar might still come with an anchor tattoo, but it should very much NOT be the strongest material available! Our dreams of conquering and settling the whole of the Kerbol system and beyond should not be limited by a lackluster set of parachute materials! HOWEVER! I am not a material engineer. I'm not anywhere close to any scientific fields. In fact I even suck at math. So! Community! I need your help(s) to research and understand this stuff so I can implement these RealChute Material Extensions! (pah-dum-tss) Ways you can help me help you get some of that juicy juicy material booty: Research: Find viable parachute materials! As close as possible to the fabric of that material that can be found or somewhat reliably assumed/extrapolated/calculated with some accuracy, find: areaDensity dragCoefficient areaCost maxTemp specificHeat emissivity Speaking of that, I have no idea what the 'specificHeat' and 'emissivity' parameters are in the existing materials. Explanations welcome! (And again, sorry, outside of the everyday basics, I'm not a thermodynamics-savvy guy) What is thermodynamics? And will it scream if I poke it with a stick? What is material science (specially this tensile strength stuff that seems really important for parachutes)? And will it end the kuniverse through a big rip? Testing: For whatever materials that are currently included in the mod as fully implemented or WIP, play around and if you find issues of any kind, tell me! For suggestions of balance or realism, it's important that you justify the reasons for the suggestion, either with good arguments or with verifiable data. Preferably verifiable data. Materials implemented thus far: Fully implemented: None. WIP: Carbon Fabric. areaDensity: Unknown - Currently approximated to 0.000072 by guesswork (same as RC's Kevlar). dragCoefficient: Unknown - Currently approximated to 1.25 by guesswork (same as RC's Kevlar). areaCost: Unknown - Currently approximated to 0.16 by guesswork (2 times the cost of RC's Kevlar). maxTemp: Semi-unknown - Currently approximated to 2273.15 K (2,000 C) based on temperatures from the wiki page on Carbon Fibers. specificHeat: 795.492 - Based on specifications of commercial products. emissivity: Unknown - Currently approximated to 0.5 by guesswork (rounded number close to the same as RC's Kevlar). Silica Fabric. areaDensity: Unknown - Currently approximated to 0.000072 by guesswork (same as RC's Kevlar). dragCoefficient: Unknown - Currently approximated to 1.25 by guesswork (same as RC's Kevlar). areaCost: Unknown - Currently approximated to 0.12 by guesswork (1.5 times the cost of RC's Kevlar). maxTemp: Semi-unknown - Currently approximated to 1273.15 K (1,000 C) based on specifications of commercial products; specially heat-resistant curtains/blankets for welding. specificHeat: Semi-unknown - Currently approximated to 1420 based on guesswork (same as RC's Kevlar) emissivity: Unknown - Currently approximated to 0.5 by guesswork (rounded number close to the same as RC's Kevlar) Download: SpaceDock NOTICE: I've changed the mod folder name (and the mod name in general) as of today (Version 0.1.2). This was done to remove the 'AlmightyR_' prefix from the name, since apparently that is not supported by ModuleManager and would need the underscore to be replaced by a '?' for user/sub-mod patches. As well as to improve grouping with the parent mod in searches and lists and stuff like that. If you have installed versions previous to 0.1.2, DELETE THE OLD MOD FOLDER ("AlmightyR_MaterialExtensionsForRealChute") before installing this version. License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Summary: You are free to: Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material Under the following terms: Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. NonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes. ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original. No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

I am using the latest version of ksp, but the realchute mod is "incompatible", and it seems to take all the parachutes away. is there a new version or do I just have to uninstall it?

as you can see, I'm descending, and the chutes open upside down. When they fully deploy it looks like this. Does anyone know how to fix this? What file to tweak in GameData?

Why is it that when realchute is installed, with FAR, all parachutes that would usually be MM patched (i assume) into realchutes, because FAR comes packaged with realchute lite, but with Realchute (not lite) installed, the parts without realchute configs no longer get patched to be realchutes. any help? ex: the big radial parachutes, from the lithobraking exploration mod, i assume, or maybe it was the spaceY mod, with only FAR installed, the parachutes become realchutes, but with FAR AND realchute, they turn back into normal, stock parachutes.