Devnote Tuesday: A change of pace

[Raptor9]

I hope the wheels have more tweakable values, like suspension stiffness or allowable extend length, allowable rotation angle and rotation rate.  I think it would help controllability a lot if the player would have more control on how fast the wheels can turn instead of instant left or right (kinda hoping for the same tweakables for flight control surfaces too).  Not sure if that is a thing or not.

Edited January 26, 2016 by Raptor9

[John FX]

1 hour ago, SQUAD said:

Felipe wants to let players override this system, which could lead to a lot of fun.

I can think of another system where, if it could be overridden, would lead to the game being more fun. That being `engine cannot be activated while stowed`...

Well, another devnote on the way to 1.1

I wonder how many more there will be. This one was rather light on new stuff and QA reports so it feels closer.

[StrandedonEarth]

59 minutes ago, Alshain said:

So the problem is going to be worse?  I'm confused by this statement.

Currently, once it starts to skitter sideways it flips instantly. With the new system it should drift unless/until the lateral friction is too great, only then will it roll. Like in RL, a car will s drift across ice, dirt or grass (low friction) until it hits dry pavement (high friction), when it rolls.

The new wheels sound so nice. I second (third?) the call for tweakable suspensions, perhaps even adjustable ride height. Minmus lowrider!

Edited January 26, 2016 by StrandedonEarth

[Antipodes]

1 hour ago, SQUAD said:

the ‘old’ wheels had an impossibly high lateral friction value, which caused takeoffs to be jittery if the wheels were ever so slightly misaligned

Hopefully this means that aircraft with tricycle landing gear will be able to land at higher speeds without having to be perfectly aligned to their direction of motion. Up until now I have found the even the slightest deviation from a straight-on approach would mean turning your high-speed jet into a tumbling fireball of Jeb-ness. 

[Alshain]

14 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

Currently, once it starts to skitter sideways it flips instantly. With the new system it should drift unless/until the lateral friction is too great, only then will it roll. Like in RL, a car will s drift across ice, dirt or grass (low friction) until it hits dry pavement (high friction), when it rolls.

The new wheels sound so nice. I second (third?) the call for tweakable suspensions, perhaps even adjustable ride height. Minmus lowrider!

Oh, well if they had said 'drift' I would have got it right away.

[Redneck]

glad to hear the news of the Unity AssetBundles loading on the fly like that. That will be a time saver. I to also wonder how the animations will be handled. Will we still be able to import animations from blender or will animations have to be done in Unity? Will Multiple animations on single part be native? Has anything changed with the colliders?

EDIT: As I am googling I also see that asset Bundles can be FTP Push to Github is possible also

Edited January 27, 2016 by Redneck

[LaytheDragon]

51 minutes ago, NBZ said:

Feel better. Stick to turkey next time.

Being cannibalistic shall help greatly in shielding Dr. Turkey from fowl illnesses.

I agree that a video of the new wheels in action would be nice, though this devnote is littered with more important potential images to release. How about an image on the antenna relay interface?

As usual, a great devnote, though lacking in visuals.

[Tasmanian]

3 hours ago, SQUAD said:

wheel friction seemed far too low in low-gravity environments

You should take in account the nature of the surface the wheels are riding. The friction force should not linearly depend on downforce.

There is much stuff happening on contact surface depending on surface and tyre type. Spiked wheels, for example, insert their spikes into the surface, acting like gears and providing good grip, which does not change much with force. Treaded tyres have non-linear dependency on soft surfaces. Even narrow slick tyres can dig into a soft surface, providing great increase in lateral grip.

Edited January 27, 2016 by Tasmanian

[Hotaru]

2 hours ago, SQUAD said:

We never quite discovered the root cause of the issue, but Felipe devised a plan (a very cunning plan) and simply corrected the phantom torque with an equal and opposite torque. Newton would be proud. The wheels now stay in place, which means that vehicles continue to not move as they should.

Now I'm worried. This sounds very much like the sort of "fix" that will be unreliable and easily broken by mods. I hope this is only a temporary fix of an isolated case, and not standard procedure for fixing bugs. Otherwise I'm concerned we could be in for a severely glitchy experience when 1.1 finally comes out, especially once we start trying to mod it.

Everything else sounds brilliant though. Having driven rovers around Minmus and the Mun (and being a fan of driving sim games in general), I'm seriously looking forward to having sensible wheel physics. Playing with the new and improved wheels on all the different planets should be a lot of fun.

[NoMrBond]

2 hours ago, SQUAD said:

corrected the phantom torque with an equal and opposite torque

The last 'buried in the physics system' bug took three days and eventually necessitated HarvesteR recreating a slice of KSP as a new project to troubleshoot, it must be very frustrating to have an error be calculable (the negative to zero out force) but not traceable because Unity hasn't implemented the debug connectivity.

Hopefully this doesn't similarly require Harv to recreate the VPP system somewhere else using the PhysX 3.3 SDK just to be able to trace the error using the PVD tools (or maybe it does, and that would take an unacceptable amount of time).

I'm pretty sure this is the fix of last resort given the lengths gone to on other bugs

[Hotblack Desiato]

2 hours ago, SQUAD said:

With an internal deadline behind us we’re winding down a little, allowing everyone to feel a bit more human again.

 

Quote

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.

Douglas Adams

 

[Fulbert]

3 hours ago, YargJay9991 said:

Looking forward to the new wheels! Will the aircraft landing gear be able to turn? It would be nice if they did. It would make taxiing much easier!

But the landing gear is already steerable in KSP. At least the small one. You might have to unlock the steering in the drop-menu though.
 

[Captain Sierra]

3 hours ago, SQUAD said:

Joe (Dr Turkey) sends his regards, some bad chicken has thoroughly ruined his day so he was unable to contribute to this week’s devnotes.

Can confirm turkey and chicken don't mix well.

[lukethecoder64]

Quote

(You can drift now!)

Can't wait to see people drifting donuts on gilly.

[Captain Sierra]

1 hour ago, Tasmanian said:

You should take in account the nature of the surface the wheels are riding. The friction force should not linearly depend on force.

There is much stuff happening on contact surface depending on surface and tyre type. Spiked wheels, for example, insert their spikes into the surface, acting like gears and providing good grip, which does not change much with force. Treaded tyres have non-linear dependency on soft surfaces. Even narrow slick tyres can dig into a soft surface, providing great increase in lateral grip.

THis requires KSP to model surface hardness. While something I would full well support, its probably asking too much for 1.1 given how much is already coming. But yes Squad, you should do this.

[federicoaa]

Are there any pics of the aeroGUI?

Or it's just the arrows pointing from the rocket that tell you velocity, drag, and lift?

Edited January 27, 2016 by federicoaa

[Crzyrndm]

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/105524-105-aerogui-v30-14-nov/

[Talavar]

"The wheels now stay in place, which means that vehicles continue to not move as they should."

They continue to not move as they should?!!! That doesn't sound good!!! .... Best left-out comma ever. lol

[Superfluous J]

1 hour ago, Captain Sierra said:

Can confirm turkey and chicken don't mix well.

At least not without that essential duck layer between them.

[Francois424]

I took my vacation too soon. 1.1 is close but still not here, nor is it in testing by Youtubers yet.   But glad things are moving along fine.

Very hyped about new ways rovers will roll, keeping my fingers crossed for throttling the wheel's speed and not have to smash down "W" for 10 hours straight. 
I hope the changes help stability instead of hurting it; as many bodies are already hard to drive on without getting destroyed every 5min.

I really cannot wait for 1.1 tho, I don't want to invest in a new career game, but getting tired of sandbox, and I really could use the 64bits right about now anyways, haha.
Keep up the good work.

 

[fchurca]

Am I really going the first to say "Duna Donuts"?

 

[CaribouGone]

2 hours ago, Captain Sierra said:

THis requires KSP to model surface hardness. 

Not necessarily. Coefficients of Friction already exist in the wheel modules (or somewhere, seeing as parts eventually stop moving on the surface). All a plugin (or bit of stock code) would have to do is change these values dynamically, based on some approximation of terrain, namely Biomes.

[pslytely psycho]

8 hours ago, SQUAD said:

The new PartTools uses Unity AssetBundles rather than .mu files and will therefore allow every standard Unity object to be included in mods. Hopefully this will lead to new and interesting mods after the release of 1.1.

So, in other words, sometime after 1.1 is realeased, my GameData file is going to weigh in at about a terabyte......

[maceemiller]

9 hours ago, Alshain said:

So the problem is going to be worse?  I'm confused by this statement.

I wondered the same thing  new wheels ssound good though.

Edited January 27, 2016 by maceemiller

[White Owl]

I love AeroGUI. It is a simply fantastic tool for displaying critical information about atmospheric flight. Great news to see it expanded and added to stock!