Duna terrain features (cliffs/ravines)

[allmhuran]

I need your help people.

For a video I want to do I need to find some terrain on Duna. Specifically, I am looking for a steep cliff (preferably steep enough that it looks rocky instead of having the normal sand texture) next to some flat ground. A ravine (cliffs on both sides) would be even better, but is not strictly necessary. If, in anyone's travels, they have come across such a place, let me know! I have been trying to find such a place using kerbalmaps but the resolution just isn't quite high enough, and of course if it were much higher I'd have to spend days scouring the map anyway.

On a tangential note, I think it would be nice to have more severe terrain features in general on most planets. Only kerbin has really sharp features, mostly around the rivers and inlets, and even those aren't super sharp - most of them are several hundred meters across!

Edited January 27, 2016 by allmhuran

[Rocket In My Pocket]

As I understand it sharper or more defined terrain structures would require more polygons, at the moment they just "deform" one large sphere to produce the planets terrain. Which is why there are no overhangs or caves or such. (That's an over simplified explanation but you get the idea.)

That said, why don't you just turn infinite fuel on, fly up to Duna and look around a bit? Do some orbits on 4x speed at low altitude maybe?

Best of luck!

[allmhuran]

The topology is done via heightmaps, yeah. But there's no reason why you couldn't layer on higher resolution heightmaps at specific co-ordinates in order to produce smaller, sharper features. I think it would go a long way towards making the planets seem less sterile if there were significant terrain formations to explore. Not caves, that would require a wholly different technique. But ravines, crevasses, etc would be possible.

I have indeed been flying around using kerbalmaps as a guide for good places to look, but as you can imagine it takes a really long time, and if you're going too fast (or if the sun happens to be at the wrong point in the sky) you can't really see the detail.

Edited January 27, 2016 by allmhuran

[Stocchinet]

Look at the south pole, if i remember well in the very middle of it there are some sharp mountains, i once sent a probe to it 

Edited January 27, 2016 by Stocchinet
typo

[allmhuran]

I really want to use Duna because of the red background, it's a recognizable aspect of what it is I'm trying to recreate. But I'll take better terrain over better colour. Actually, the terrain I really need would be excessively lumpy, I might even have to use KSC itself to get the claustrophobic feel of the original.

[Stocchinet]

Look at this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tp6yj2k0Fpc around 5:20 the guy lands on some sort of valley, maybe it's what you are searching for

[allmhuran]

That's certainly much better than anything I've found, thanks!

Edit: Damn, that is old, much more interesting Duna. It seems some update has smoothed it out significantly. The large valley is still there with the same overall shape, but all of the interesting edges have disappeared. Why Squad, why!? You made Duna smooth and boring!

I think I'll just use KSC unless I can find something in the mountains right next to it, those are the bumpiest bits of terrain I know of.

Edited January 27, 2016 by allmhuran

[Foxster]

Moho is your place for really rough terrain. 

[MatttheCzar]

The Mün has some quite stunning canyons and craters.

[allmhuran]

I'm pretty familiar with most of the Mun, but I haven't spent much time on Moho, I'll take a look-see, cheers.

[Dafni]

My new favorite place for some nice vacuum surface flying and exploring is Tylo. Probably the body with the most geography (in some areas), beside kerbin.

[Fearless Son]

3 hours ago, allmhuran said:

The topology is done via heightmaps, yeah. But there's no reason why you couldn't layer on higher resolution heightmaps at specific co-ordinates in order to produce smaller, sharper features. I think it would go a long way towards making the planets seem less sterile if there were significant terrain formations to explore. Not caves, that would require a wholly different technique. But ravines, crevasses, etc would be possible.

Most "open world" style games tend to use height maps for their terrain deformation.  Even those with really steep cliffs and crags, or even overhangs, achieve this by cramming distinct geometry models onto existent sharp differences in the height map.  This typically requires a lot of manual placement on the part of the developers, baking into the wider geometry to pre-calculate most of it, and a higher rendering and LOD cost on the part of the user.  

Which means we are not likely to see much of it in KSP.  

[monophonic]

3 hours ago, allmhuran said:

That's certainly much better than anything I've found, thanks!

Edit: Damn, that is old, much more interesting Duna. It seems some update has smoothed it out significantly. The large valley is still there with the same overall shape, but all of the interesting edges have disappeared. Why Squad, why!? You made Duna smooth and boring!

I think I'll just use KSC unless I can find something in the mountains right next to it, those are the bumpiest bits of terrain I know of.

What is your terrain detail setting at? IIRC the default setting is not the highest, but the highest would have the roughest features.

[zilfondel]

4 hours ago, Stocchinet said:

Look at this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tp6yj2k0Fpc around 5:20 the guy lands on some sort of valley, maybe it's what you are searching for

Thats a really great video, one of the more ambitious exploration missions I've seen done in KSP.  Also, one hell of a steep mountain!

2 hours ago, Fearless Son said:

Most "open world" style games tend to use height maps for their terrain deformation.  Even those with really steep cliffs and crags, or even overhangs, achieve this by cramming distinct geometry models onto existent sharp differences in the height map.  This typically requires a lot of manual placement on the part of the developers, baking into the wider geometry to pre-calculate most of it, and a higher rendering and LOD cost on the part of the user.  

Which means we are not likely to see much of it in KSP.  

Actually, Squad should really move to procedural terrain, like they already are doing on the Mun.  That way you can cram almost limitless amount of geometrical information into the game.  I believe they are already doing that in Elite Dangerous.

[moogoob]

1 hour ago, zilfondel said:

Thats a really great video, one of the more ambitious exploration missions I've seen done in KSP.  Also, one hell of a steep mountain!

Actually, Squad should really move to procedural terrain, like they already are doing on the Mun.  That way you can cram almost limitless amount of geometrical information into the game.  I believe they are already doing that in Elite Dangerous.

And in Space Engine. Would love it when/if the other planets get the Mun's style of procedural crater system. Adds a lot to the place, and makes rovers neat as there are actually things to look at and photograph.

It CAN make landings harder, though. I'd aim for the centre of the craters if I felt I could drive out of them without flipping my rovers.

(if you can't tell, I'm in a bit of a rover binge.)

[Fearless Son]

1 hour ago, moogoob said:

It CAN make landings harder, though. I'd aim for the centre of the craters if I felt I could drive out of them without flipping my rovers.

I recommend disabling any onboard rotational torque for your rovers (reaction wheels, command units, etc.) while driving.  I would also recommend installing an RCS system aboard with some monopropellant nozzles that direct force downward.  You can enable them when you need to accelerate (like up a steep hill where you cannot get traction of when you are trying to use brakes to arrest a slide down a slope) to help it keep a good "grip" on the ground.  

[allmhuran]

3 hours ago, monophonic said:

What is your terrain detail setting at? IIRC the default setting is not the highest, but the highest would have the roughest features.

Everything is at full. This definitely looks like a signficant art-pass kind of change. Have a look at Duna in map view a few seconds earlier in the video and compare with now.

[Snark]

Dres has a pretty dramatic canyon in it with steep cliff sides.

[Guest]

Just now, Snark said:

Dres has a pretty dramatic canyon in it with steep cliff sides.

Dres is much better than Duna.

[allmhuran]

Yeah, but that canyon is almost 600m across and 1000m deep (or was it the other way around...) ! I just jumped over it with my motorcycle and you can see that the terrain isn't exactly "sharp". If I was running the mech along the bottom of the canyon you couldn't, say, have it "hug the canyon wall", because the scale of the canyon wall is so enormous compared to the mech, there would be no edge to hug.

Edited January 28, 2016 by allmhuran

[moogoob]

16 hours ago, Fearless Son said:

I recommend disabling any onboard rotational torque for your rovers (reaction wheels, command units, etc.) while driving.  I would also recommend installing an RCS system aboard with some monopropellant nozzles that direct force downward.  You can enable them when you need to accelerate (like up a steep hill where you cannot get traction of when you are trying to use brakes to arrest a slide down a slope) to help it keep a good "grip" on the ground.  

Already do the first, sometimes do the second but I've found that for many designs you need a lot of RCS thrusters (and monopropellant) to un-flip a rover that's gone upside-down, which would be my biggest use for them. High-speed roving control would be my second.

As to grip etc. A. I'm hoping Squad's put some attention on wheels re: 1.1 as their physics are kind of funny right now and B. I tend to drive slowly. Euro Truck Simulator 2 (which has been eating into my KSP playing time) has taught me patience - better to get there safely, sanely and in one piece than to risk flipping your truck on a highway interchange and losing the whole mission's profits.

Of course, if you WANT to race on the moon, that's fine too. I'd give that one some bigger engines though. At that point, wheels are only holding it back.

[Fearless Son]

4 hours ago, moogoob said:

As to grip etc. A. I'm hoping Squad's put some attention on wheels re: 1.1 as their physics are kind of funny right now and B. I tend to drive slowly. Euro Truck Simulator 2 (which has been eating into my KSP playing time) has taught me patience - better to get there safely, sanely and in one piece than to risk flipping your truck on a highway interchange and losing the whole mission's profits.

According to the last Devnote Tuesday, they are.  Particularly, the lateral friction of the tires was spectacularly too high, causing vehicles to flip when doing all but the slightest turns at anything above a modest speed.  They are adjusting this to make a well-balanced rover more likely to "spin out" then it will to flip over.  They are also having the wheels scale their torque downward proportionately to their local gravity, so they will be a bit easier to control the speed of when off-Kerbin (instead of spinning their wheels too fast for no motive gain.)  

[katateochi]

On 27/01/2016 at 3:50 PM, Stocchinet said:

Look at this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tp6yj2k0Fpc around 5:20 the guy lands on some sort of valley, maybe it's what you are searching for

 a guy did land in a valley, but a planet has changed since then. a guy misses those interesting places (sorry, been watching GOT recently, can't stop talking like jaqen h'ghar) 

On 27/01/2016 at 4:08 PM, allmhuran said:

That's certainly much better than anything I've found, thanks!

Edit: Damn, that is old, much more interesting Duna. It seems some update has smoothed it out significantly. The large valley is still there with the same overall shape, but all of the interesting edges have disappeared. Why Squad, why!? You made Duna smooth and boring!

I think I'll just use KSC unless I can find something in the mountains right next to it, those are the bumpiest bits of terrain I know of.

That was back in 0.19 (I think, maybe 0.18) and since then Duna has been worked over by a steamroller and isn't half as interesting as it used to be.  There was also a ridge/mountain-range that was really interesting and fun to try and rover about on.  It's a Great pity that they changed that (and what was the gain in that change anyway?)

[maceemiller]

19 minutes ago, katateochi said:

 a guy did land in a valley, but a planet has changed since then. a guy misses those interesting places (sorry, been watching GOT recently, can't stop talking like jaqen h'ghar) 

That was back in 0.19 (I think, maybe 0.18) and since then Duna has been worked over by a steamroller and isn't half as interesting as it used to be.  There was also a ridge/mountain-range that was really interesting and fun to try and rover about on.  It's a Great pity that they changed that (and what was the gain in that change anyway?)

I whole heartedly agree. Moons, planets and asteroids or whatever else there is to discover in KSP now and in the future should be scary. Look at the probe that landed on the comet (forgive me for not remembering their names, ive drunk too much liquid fuel). It was hampered by a shadow, caused by a part of it being on a different plane, ie a rise in terrain.

I personally think that landing on any body should make you think about your spot to the point where 2 degrees prograde could mean a landing "next" to a cliff or "1 landing leg over the cliff with no idea whether to EVA or not cause your craft may fall" kinda thing.

Maybe im just rambling but that would make landings, for me anyway, more to worry about than just a slope.

[LordKael]

36 minutes ago, maceemiller said:

Maybe im just rambling but that would make landings, for me anyway, more to worry about than just a slope.

I've landed close to a hundred times across over half the bodies in the game, and I've only once ran into an issue of landing on the edge of a terrain feature. Any time the landing fails, it is because of slope. I wholeheartedly agree