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[1.2 - 1.4] Real Scale Boosters, 0.16 (2018-03-12)


NecroBones

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I started reworking the STS ET a little bit, and had gotten as far as separating the nose, but I stopped. The nose as a separate piece doesn't really gain us anything. As long as the DIRECT-Jupiter adapter covers the nose, the additional part is only needed in that instance. So then the question becomes, should it be one adapter, and then separate decouplers and fairing bases, or should both of those simply contain their own adapters? If I build the cone-hiding adapter into both a decoupler and a fairing base, that also saves on parts and joints. Hmm.

 

1 hour ago, Felbourn said:

Oh by the way... the Atlas is missing a Forward Load Reactor?

I didn't see a point with the procedural fairings. If I go back and add clamshell fairings, that would be the time to do it I think.

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2 minutes ago, NecroBones said:

I didn't see a point with the procedural fairings. If I go back and add clamshell fairings, that would be the time to do it I think.

With you going for the whole semi-realistic launch vehicles thing, maybe you could add clamshell fairings for the launchers as well? Stock procedural fairings are bad, oh so very bad.

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4 minutes ago, NecroBones said:

I didn't see a point with the procedural fairings. If I go back and add clamshell fairings, that would be the time to do it I think.

Ah. Ok. I always re-mod mods to NOT use procedural fairings, including yours, and then I apply the Old School Fairings mod to use "real" fairings. Something bugs me about procedural. I don't mind procedural tanks and structure pieces, but procedural fairings bother me. There is a different mod that has a CFLR that I can probably hijack to hack into use with yours until you have one of your own. Thanks for this mod!

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36 minutes ago, liquidhype said:

With you going for the whole semi-realistic launch vehicles thing, maybe you could add clamshell fairings for the launchers as well? Stock procedural fairings are bad, oh so very bad.

 

31 minutes ago, Felbourn said:

Ah. Ok. I always re-mod mods to NOT use procedural fairings, including yours, and then I apply the Old School Fairings mod to use "real" fairings. Something bugs me about procedural. I don't mind procedural tanks and structure pieces, but procedural fairings bother me. There is a different mod that has a CFLR that I can probably hijack to hack into use with yours until you have one of your own. Thanks for this mod!

 

Yeah, I've always been cautious about going straight to realistic fairings just because the stock aero doesn't handle them properly. But since most people will probably use this pack with RO anyway, it's probably a good idea to go ahead and make them, at least for the rockets that actually have them (Atlas V, Delta IV, etc).

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6 minutes ago, NecroBones said:

stock aero doesn't handle [realistic fairings] properly

Yep, stock is terrible to hard fairings. That's why I was forced to write the Old School Fairings mod to make them perform properly again. If you want some CFGs added to my mod for any physical fairing bits you might have, let me know, though I have seen most modders are just adding patches to their own stuff instead, like just today I noticed InsaneDruid has OSF added to his Proton-M mod. Btw I also created a Filter CFG for your parts. It's just missing Icon artwork. I am a programmer, not an artist. :)

CATEGORY
{
	name = Real Scale Boosters
	icon = RSB_Category
	colour = #FFF0F0F0
	all = true
	
	FILTER
	{
		CHECK
		{
			type = folder
			value = RealScaleBoosters
		}
	}
	
	SUBCATEGORIES
	{
		list = 0,Pods
		list = 1,Fuel Tanks
		list = 2,Engines
		list = 3,Command and Control
		list = 4,Structural
		list = 5,Aerodynamics
		list = 6,Utility
		list = 7,Science
		list = 8,Undefined

		list = Ares
		list = Atlas
		list = Delta
		list = Saturn
	}
}

SUBCATEGORY
{
	name = Ares
	icon = RSB_Ares
	FILTER
	{
		CHECK
		{
			type = path
			value = RealScaleBoosters/Parts/Ares
		}
	}
}

SUBCATEGORY
{
	name = Atlas
	icon = RSB_Atlas
	FILTER
	{
		CHECK
		{
			type = path
			value = RealScaleBoosters/Parts/Atlas
		}
	}
}

SUBCATEGORY
{
	name = Delta
	icon = RSB_Delta
	FILTER
	{
		CHECK
		{
			type = path
			value = RealScaleBoosters/Parts/Delta
		}
	}
}

SUBCATEGORY
{
	name = Saturn
	icon = RSB_Saturn
	FILTER
	{
		CHECK
		{
			type = path
			value = RealScaleBoosters/Parts/Saturn
		}
	}
}

 

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1 hour ago, liquidhype said:

With you going for the whole semi-realistic launch vehicles thing, maybe you could add clamshell fairings for the launchers as well? Stock procedural fairings are bad, oh so very bad.

True. Procedural fairings are by any means not realistic. IRL most launch providers only manufacture one or two different fairings, all based on a core design. Some companies such as SpaceX only have a single type of fairing, instead of building custom fairings, which can cost a lot more money. This is why DSCOVR, a refrigerator sized spacecraft, flew with a giant fairing. Having two-piece clamshell ogive fairings in this pack would make it much more realistic. 

@NecroBones When you are done with the current boosters, can you do a stockalike Falcon 9 as well?

Edited by Delta_8930
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20 minutes ago, Delta_8930 said:

True. Procedural fairings are by any means not realistic. IRL most launch providers only manufacture one or two different fairings, all based on a core design. Some companies such as SpaceX only have a single type of fairing, instead of building custom fairings, which can cost a lot more money. This is why DSCOVR, a refrigerator sized spacecraft, flew with a giant fairing. Having two-piece clamshell ogive fairings in this pack would make it much more realistic. 

Absolutely true. In real life the payload more or less gets built around the size of the fairing(s) and payload adapter(s) the chosen launch provider has to offer. The Delta IV family and Ariane 5 being the launch vehicles with the most fairings and payload adapters to chose from.

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4 hours ago, Felbourn said:

Yep, stock is terrible to hard fairings. That's why I was forced to write the Old School Fairings mod to make them perform properly again. If you want some CFGs added to my mod for any physical fairing bits you might have, let me know, though I have seen most modders are just adding patches to their own stuff instead, like just today I noticed InsaneDruid has OSF added to his Proton-M mod. Btw I also created a Filter CFG for your parts. It's just missing Icon artwork. I am a programmer, not an artist. :)

 

Awesome, thanks! Yeah, the custom filter/category is one of the things I want to work on next, so this is a great start. I'll take a look at OSF too.

 

As an aside, one of the things I want to experiment with is using small built-in thrusters to separate the fairings (kinda like with the new radial decoupler). I could see having a careful arrangement of them to open the fairings in a sensible way. I'm still thinking on it.

 

4 hours ago, Delta_8930 said:

@NecroBones When you are done with the current boosters, can you do a stockalike Falcon 9 as well?

 

Yeah the Falcon 9R (the reusable variant) is one that I'm very tempted to do. I was going to work on it right after the Saturns originally, but since there are several Falcon mods available already, I pushed it off. But it's still something I want to do.

 

I'm tempted to build the legs right into the first stage to keep the part count down, but I'm not 100% sure yet. One problem is that KSP legs are designed to function with a piston-suspension, where the piston is directly inline with the foot, not cantilevered like the SpaceX legs. However legs can still deploy without shock absorbers at all, by making it a simple animation with a hard collider. It makes it more important that the vehicle land softly since the legs won't dissipate any energy. But it would also avoid the terrible bouncy/bendy stuff that we see currently with the SpaceY leg systems, theoretically.

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9 hours ago, NecroBones said:

As an aside, one of the things I want to experiment with is using small built-in thrusters to separate the fairings (kinda like with the new radial decoupler). I could see having a careful arrangement of them to open the fairings in a sensible way. I'm still thinking on it.

@maccollo uses integrated  thrusters to separate the fairings on the Spice Launch System, perhaps he could help with that...?

Also, you said you were having trouble with PF widening the fairing around an upper stage right? Did you try turning "auto shape" off? I've had problems like this before.

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21 minutes ago, KerbonautInTraining said:

@maccollo uses integrated  thrusters to separate the fairings on the Spice Launch System, perhaps he could help with that...?

Also, you said you were having trouble with PF widening the fairing around an upper stage right? Did you try turning "auto shape" off? I've had problems like this before.

I'll try the auto shape, thanks! :) The thrusters should be pretty straightforward, it'll just be a matter of aligning them for a good effect.

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54 minutes ago, KerbonautInTraining said:

@maccollo uses integrated  thrusters to separate the fairings on the Spice Launch System, perhaps he could help with that...?

Also, you said you were having trouble with PF widening the fairing around an upper stage right? Did you try turning "auto shape" off? I've had problems like this before.

 

32 minutes ago, NecroBones said:

I'll try the auto shape, thanks! :) The thrusters should be pretty straightforward, it'll just be a matter of aligning them for a good effect.

 

One thing I did want to look at on the Spice Launch System is what he did with the fairing base. It looks like the payload adapter has a procedural shroud on it, but also has the attachment nodes for the clamshell fairings. So I guess the expectation is to place the base, make a dummy fairing, right-click and delete that fairing, then add the fairing panels.

 

I'm trying to decide how I want to handle it. I thought about using separate fairing bases, but with the artwork shared. That does double up the menu items though. I also thought about auto-detecting if you have FAR or RO installed, and then modify the base to remove the proc fairing, and also enable selecting the clamshell panels from the menu. But that could also be confusing, or limit player options.

 

Right now I think I'm still leaning toward separate bases. Especially since there are probably some cases where a base doesn't need to exist at all for realistic fairings, if the panels just snap on to the upper stage directly.

 

The good news is I can work on the art assets for the fairing segments before knowing how I'll attach them. :)

 

5 minutes ago, Kartoffelkuchen said:

@NecroBones Move the thrusters slightly above the CoM of your fairing. It's enough if they do a very short impulse to split the fairings. Otherwise, you can also work with the ModuleFairingDecoupler from @Felbourn check out how I did that if you have interest.

Yeah, just above the CoM is probably the simplest. I was thinking of adding them at the forward tip (firing inward), and bottom rim (aimed downward), so that the fairings would move forward and out. It's probably not that necessary though, to get so complicated. ;)

 

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2 hours ago, KerbonautInTraining said:

Also, you said you were having trouble with PF widening the fairing around an upper stage right? Did you try turning "auto shape" off? I've had problems like this before.

Now that I'm looking, I don't see a setting for that. To be clear, I'm talking about the stock procedural fairings, not the Procedural Fairings mod.

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13 hours ago, NecroBones said:

To be clear, I'm talking about the stock procedural fairings, not the Procedural Fairings mod.

Oh... yeah that might be it.

I've found that putting an X meter part on an X meter fairing base can cause issues. I.e. putting a 2.5m nosecone on a 2.5m fairing base requires you to spread the bottom of the fairing. This can be remedied by offsetting the fairing base away from the payload, shaping the fairing, and getting rid of the offset.

I'm gonna look at the pics posted in the dev thread and make sure this is actually the problem.

Edit: Okay I completely forgot that this mod is actually up for download. I tried it and couldn't figure out a workaround for the fairing (not that I would before you would) Sorry about the wild goose chase

Edited by KerbonautInTraining
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All this talk about fairings - I've been using the Stock Clamshell Fairings mod for quite some time and am happy with it.  It doesn't look as slick as procedural fairings, but doesn't introduce any new parts.  I suspect it's pretty lightweight.  When used in combination with Claw's Stock bug fixes, you can also specify how many panels the fairing separates into (such as three panels, which I've found is less likely to get hung up on my payloads).

Edited by Norcalplanner
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A couple questions:

A. Will the Atlas fairings be customizable like normal KSP fairings, or limited to the real standardized sizes?

B (Wishlist Request). Energia- you're working on DIRECT architecture. Perhaps the Soviet equivalent too?

C (Wishlist Request) PSLV and GSLV- the Indians actually have really rather interesting vehicles. The core of the first stage is one of the largest solid motors currently built, and they have plenty of their own, indigenous architecture. I've also not seen any KSP mods which include PS/GSLV replicas. 

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14 hours ago, Norcalplanner said:

All this talk about fairings - I've been using the Stock Clamshell Fairings mod for quite some time and am happy with it.  It doesn't look as slick as procedural fairings, but doesn't introduce any new parts.  I suspect it's pretty lightweight.  When used in combination with Claw's Stock bug fixes, you can also specify how many panels the fairing separates into (such as three panels, which I've found is less likely to get hung up on my payloads).

 

14 minutes ago, Jodo42 said:

A couple questions:

A. Will the Atlas fairings be customizable like normal KSP fairings, or limited to the real standardized sizes?

B (Wishlist Request). Energia- you're working on DIRECT architecture. Perhaps the Soviet equivalent too?

C (Wishlist Request) PSLV and GSLV- the Indians actually have really rather interesting vehicles. The core of the first stage is one of the largest solid motors currently built, and they have plenty of their own, indigenous architecture. I've also not seen any KSP mods which include PS/GSLV replicas. 

 

Basically I'm aiming for the best of both worlds with the fairings. The stock procedural fairings will still be an option (along with whatever functionality can be modified with other plugins), and the clamshells come in fixed sizes. Right now I have all six of the standard Atlas V fairing sizes built, just not the forward load reactor to go with it (yet), but that part should be relatively simple.

 

Yeah, I'll add the Energia to the list. I'll have to look into the PSLV/GSLV rockets since I don't know much about them yet. A lot of it will come down to whether I can get decent numbers for things like size dimensions, thrust, dry mass, propellant mass, ISP, and so on (the usual set of data).

------

Fairing ejection test on the pad, just to see if they decoupled properly. I did some high altitude tests too but didn't take screenshots.

 

KSP%202016-01-29%2016-04-03-72.jpg

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A question regarding the RL10A-4-1 engine: are you planning to model the short extension like you did with the RL10-B-2 for the Delta or this is it's final form?

Edit: forgot that the newer versions use the RL10-C-1 with a non - extendable B cone...disregard the above :P.

Edited by Phineas Freak
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2 hours ago, Phineas Freak said:

A question regarding the RL10A-4-1 engine: are you planning to model the short extension like you did with the RL10-B-2 for the Delta or this is it's final form?

Edit: forgot that the newer versions use the RL10-C-1 with a non - extendable B cone...disregard the above :P.

True. It just depends on which version is being depicted I guess. I have them named RL10A-4-2, using the stats I could find, but I could reconfigure them as RL10C-1. It just trades a tiny amount of ISP for thrust, and weighs a little more. Or just make both. Or something. I have no idea at this point. ;)

 

So confusing. :)

 

 

 

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I also have the CFLR added for the 500-series.

 

Here's a question, I'm not sure if anyone will know an answer for. Right now I have the fairings all using the radial decoupler staging icon:

       stagingIcon = DECOUPLER_HOR

Does anyone know if there's a value I can use here to use the actual fairing icon instead? (because of course the stock fairings don't specify it).

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4 hours ago, Phineas Freak said:

You mean the staging icon that the stock procedural fairings use, right? If so, then define the icon as "FUEL_TANK" (yep, i am serious).

Hah, wonderful. It works, thanks! But yeah, I guess they just recycled the icon or something. And here I thought the "F" on it meant "fairing" rather than "fuel"... silly me. :)
 

--

 

Some Delta IV fairing goodness:

KSP%202016-01-30%2019-40-34-36.jpg

KSP%202016-01-30%2019-45-04-46.jpg

 

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