[1.4.x-1.8.x] Airplane Plus - R26.4 (Fixed issues/Github is up to date) (Dec 21, 2019)

[Rakete]

18 hours ago, Lisias said:

Nothing should be considered stable on a Beta release!

Right now, we are focused on making everything that is not working, woking again. Some new parts are being added too to sweet the pill in the mean time.

The rationale is to avoid opening more than one front on this fight - rebalancing things will break existing designs, and it's not wise to break user's toys.

But, yes, the rebalancing is on the backlog and since we are talking about it, what we're planning to do about it is to create new parts, while deprecating the old ones with the current values. Perhaps some selectable option to do the opposite (deprecate the new parts in favor of the old ones) for people that prefers the old settings - Squad demonstrated that we can have V2 parts around without breaking legacy and I think this is an example to be followed.

Humm… Now that I verbalised it, I realised that a side project for the Rebalancing is perfectly feasible...

Stay tuned, as soon as Real Life™ gives me a break, I will be back to you about the subject.

https://github.com/net-lisias-ksp/AirplanePlus/issues/5

Your hard work in your FREETIME is really apreciated. No need to hurry. Somehow I feel that I should wait to get into AP+ until things settle a bit, cause I kinda archive my most loved crafts and it would be sad, if they only worked with a specific beta release... so I will stay tuned and listen to the posts in this thread for the right point to get into this mod and start creating even more planes, whose parts are kinda stable in their properties then... no need to hurry. Just take your time. 

I really apreciate that you spend so much of your free time to make mods work (better). Thank you and the team so so much.

 

Since I did a lot of bugtesting & reporting for other mods, I will start with bugtesting here when things settle. But right now, i just take a break from bugreporting and just enjoy a little bit of actually playing KSP.  You know the issue well: Real Life, engineering job, and all the things that keep you away from booting up your gaming rig in the evening.

Edited June 27, 2022 by Rakete

[Demcrew]

On 6/26/2022 at 3:45 PM, Lisias said:

Right now, we are focused on making everything that is not working, woking again

OMG, Wokes are in space :p

just teasing you @Lisias

[Lisias]

5 hours ago, Demcrew said:

OMG, Wokes are in space :p

just teasing you @Lisias

Kraken are infesting my keyboard!!!!

[Lisias]

Dear Kerbonauts, 

we have a new BETA release for AirplanePlus.

https://github.com/net-lisias-ksp/AirplanePlus/releases

I had messed up the configuration files for the deployment scripts, and I let a rogue DLL pass trough.

On the bright side, you only need to delete the file GameData/AirplanePlus/Plugins/KSPe.Light.TweakScale.dll instead of downloading the new package, the only difference between this release and the last one is removing that rogue DLL and bumping the .version file. 

Removing this DLL is important, as a future release of TweakScale will end up being screwed by this rogue DLL.

Cheers.

 

[Lisias]

Hi!

This is a feedback post.

I'm doing some research about resurrecting the helicopter parts. This is where we are now: there's no way to do it properly.

Using the trick done on KAX is far from being really good - what was done was to replace the helicopter module from FireSpitter with a Stock Engine, virtually transforming the thing into a high altitude hovercraft. The engine doesn't induces torque, and it's virtually uncontrollable without heavy use of Stabilisers - and I mean the word heavy. The tail rotor became merely decorative, as it would screw up controllability without setting the engine to 0%.

But it is what can be done now with the PartModules we have at our hands.

Better solutions are possible, but not on the short term.

In anyone have any ideas, I'm listening.

[Caerfinon]

42 minutes ago, Lisias said:

But it is what can be done now with the PartModules we have at our hands

Well I like the KAX trick because those engines work with Throttle Controlled Avionics mod with is one of my favourite flight assist tools. So call me biased but that's  $ 0.02 adjusted for inflation.   

[DA299]

Hello Everyone,

I just wanted to ask, that why are the wheels of this mod not working at all?

[610yesnolovely]

On 8/9/2022 at 4:09 PM, Lisias said:

In anyone have any ideas, I'm listening.

When I first built helicopters I had no idea that KAX and AP had completely different ways of modelling the rotors - I suspect I tried using a KAX (or KRX?) set of blades, rather than AP (I wasn't using Janitors Closet at the time) and it was horrendously hard to make work well. Do. Not. Like. I also didn't have TCA at the time. And also I'd got reaction wheel nerfs, so adding stabalizers made absolutely no difference. Crash. Crash. Crash. I give up.

Whatever needs to be done to make helicopters so they work reasonably well and a bit easier, then do that. It'd be best if having the rotor lift part somewhere reasonably close horizontally to CoM and definitely above would give you a stable helicopter, and that there would be no rotational torque (ie. rear blades are merely for turning assistance).  That way anyone could build them.

Otherwise, if not possible, and it means going the KAX route,  such that helicopters require some other mod like TCA to work well, then that's okayish, just make it a recommended and include a prominent note in the AP post, and on the parts "NOTE: Kevin Kerman highly recommends Thrust Controlled Avionics to balance helicopters, as they are notorious for simply disintegrating on take off. Essentially our helicopter blades are like giant rotating fans that vector thrust in different directions. Rear vertical blades will be useful for turning though." That way heli-n00bs like myself won't waste a day trawling reddit and wondering why my helicopters are rubbish compared to everyone else.

I'm guessing a KAX style rotor is essentially an engine with good gimbal control so TCA can change the thrust vector to balance if CoL != CoM?

Note: In reality helicopter blades change the lift vector not by direct rotation of the blades and/or engine throttle, the cyclic and collective tilts a wash plate which changes the blade angles to change how much lift is generated as the blades rotate. Is flippin' complex stuff, as all sorts of stuff happens (eg. precession, forward velocity altering air speed so lift is uneven, imagine what happens when the retreating blade is the same speed as your forward velocity... oh dear... no lift on that side.. buh bye). I wouldn't simulate any of that, leave that to the flight sims and people who build helicopters out of BG parts :-D

Edited August 25, 2022 by 610yesnolovely

[Lisias]

14 hours ago, 610yesnolovely said:

When I first built helicopters I had no idea that KAX and AP had completely different ways of modelling the rotors - I suspect I tried using a KAX (or KRX?) set of blades, rather than AP (I wasn't using Janitors Closet at the time) and it was horrendously hard to make work well. Do. Not. Like. I also didn't have TCA at the time. And also I'd got reaction wheel nerfs, so adding stabalizers made absolutely no difference. Crash. Crash. Crash. I give up.

So did I. The KAX hack is… well, a hack - and I don't like it neither.

Things worked pretty good when Firespitter was well maintained. Originally, helicopter parts were implemented using Firespitter's PartModule made specifically for helicopters. But then FS was literally abandoned without a good replacement, and the less worst that it could be done was done on KAX.

 

14 hours ago, 610yesnolovely said:

Whatever needs to be done to make helicopters so they work reasonably well and a bit easier, then do that. It'd be best if having the rotor lift part somewhere reasonably close horizontally to CoM and definitely above would give you a stable helicopter, and that there would be no rotational torque (ie. rear blades are merely for turning assistance).  That way anyone could build them.

The way to do it on KAX is by setting the rear blades torque to zero. They are just for visuals nowadays - but you can (ab)use them on custom designs, being the reason I didn't nerfed it at once by removing the ModuleEngineFX from them.

I'm trying to simulation the main rotor's torque using Stock Modules, and so the rear blades would be useful again. The hard part is having time to tinker KAX on my scarce free-time…  

 

14 hours ago, 610yesnolovely said:

Otherwise, if not possible, and it means going the KAX route,  such that helicopters require some other mod like TCA to work well, then that's okayish, just make it a recommended and include a prominent note in the AP post, and on the parts "NOTE: Kevin Kerman highly recommends Thrust Controlled Avionics to balance helicopters, as they are notorious for simply disintegrating on take off. Essentially our helicopter blades are like giant rotating fans that vector thrust in different directions. Rear vertical blades will be useful for turning though." That way heli-n00bs like myself won't waste a day trawling reddit and wondering why my helicopters are rubbish compared to everyone else.

Good call. I would add it as a suggestion, however - you really don't need it.

It's laborious, but if you balance correctly the craft and cut the torque of the rear blades, the thing is flyable. Challenging flyable, but some people are here for the challenge. You can also add powefull wheel stabilisers to help to control the thing if it's too big and the engine's stabilizer is not enough.

But, again, nothing of it (even TCA) cames close to the playability of the Firespitter PartModules.

Letting FS to rot was one of the worst mistakes of this Scene.

 

14 hours ago, 610yesnolovely said:

I'm guessing a KAX style rotor is essentially an engine with good gimbal control so TCA can change the thrust vector to balance if CoL != CoM?

And a Wheel Stabiliser to make the damned thing minimally controllable.

I'm starting to conclude that the gimbaling is the problem by the way - we should use gimbal to compensate the CoM, and use the embedded stabiliser for pitch, roll and raw. The gimbal's Module was not meant to react fast enough to be useful on rovercrafts and helicopters as you already realised.

 

14 hours ago, 610yesnolovely said:

Note: In reality helicopter blades change the lift vector not by direct rotation of the blades and/or engine throttle, the cyclic and collective tilts a wash plate which changes the blade angles to change how much lift is generated as the blades rotate. Is flippin' complex stuff, as all sorts of stuff happens (eg. precession, forward velocity altering air speed so lift is uneven, imagine what happens when the retreating blade is the same speed as your forward velocity... oh dear... no lift on that side.. buh bye). I wouldn't simulate any of that, leave that to the flight sims and people who build helicopters out of BG parts :-D

And this is how FireSpitter did the work on the Golden Times! I found even animations to reflect the pitch on the blades' meshes!  (unsure if FS used it - the whole thing gets blurred as the engine reaches operational RPM).

Additionally, FS had its own "TCA" specialised to helicopters. It was really the better experience for people willing to build helicopters that fly like helicopters but are not all that hard as hardcore simulators. You have the best of both worlds - a reasonable decent helicopter simulator and niceties to make it easier for the casual gamer.

 

20 hours ago, DA299 said:

I just wanted to ask, that why are the wheels of this mod not working at all?

Same thing - they were built on the FireSpitter era - and once FS ceased to be well maintained, these wheels didn't coped too well with the new Stock modules.

It's exactly what I'm working right now (as scarce time allows) - but on KAX first, as that thing has only one wheel, makes things easier to prototype and check. Trying stunts on AirplanePlus can be problematic...

Edited August 26, 2022 by Lisias
(sigh). tyops.

[darthvader15001]

how do I get only the airliner parts?

[Caerfinon]

33 minutes ago, darthvader15001 said:

how do I get only the airliner parts?

1. You can use a  mod like The Janitor's Closet to prune the parts you don't want to load from a specific  mod
2. Of you can just delete this folder \GameData\AirplanePlus\Parts\Wheel  (Note it will come back on reinstall or upgrade of the mod) 

[linuxgurugamer]

7 minutes ago, Caerfinon said:

1. You can use a  mod like The Janitor's Closet to prune the parts you don't want to load from a specific  mod
2. Of you can just delete this folder \GameData\AirplanePlus\Parts\Wheel  (Note it will come back on reinstall or upgrade of the mod) 

Janitor's Closet is smart enough to re-prune parts which were pruned after the mod is updated.

[darthvader15001]

3 hours ago, Caerfinon said:

You can use a  mod like The Janitor's Closet to prune the parts you don't want to load from a specific  mod

I am aware of this.

3 hours ago, Caerfinon said:

Of you can just delete this folder \GameData\AirplanePlus\Parts\Wheel  (Note it will come back on reinstall or upgrade of the mod)

And then the other parts are just the airliner parts?

[Caerfinon]

26 minutes ago, darthvader15001 said:

And then the other parts are just the airliner parts?

yes.  

[kelvin312]

On 8/25/2022 at 3:11 PM, DA299 said:

Hello Everyone,

I just wanted to ask, that why are the wheels of this mod not working at all?

I've found that changing the values for the springRatio and damperRatio in the cfg part files to the wheels fixed the issue- for the KS-16 Slant Landing gear I had it set to 60ish spring and 14 damper respectively, and it worked nicely again. I'm pretty sure the default values for the gears are way too small.  

[Drag0nD3str0yer]

On 8/26/2022 at 10:57 PM, kelvin312 said:

I've found that changing the values for the springRatio and damperRatio in the cfg part files to the wheels fixed the issue- for the KS-16 Slant Landing gear I had it set to 60ish spring and 14 damper respectively, and it worked nicely again. I'm pretty sure the default values for the gears are way too small.  

I will look into this more soon, cause if it can actually be fixed that easily, it would be significantly less of a headache to fix for the rest of the landing gear

[DA299]

On 8/27/2022 at 7:57 AM, kelvin312 said:

I've found that changing the values for the springRatio and damperRatio in the cfg part files to the wheels fixed the issue- for the KS-16 Slant Landing gear I had it set to 60ish spring and 14 damper respectively, and it worked nicely again. I'm pretty sure the default values for the gears are way too small.  

Ok well that's great. Just to clarify, you have to edit them in-game or the .txt files before loading?

[kelvin312]

On 8/31/2022 at 3:32 PM, DA299 said:

Ok well that's great. Just to clarify, you have to edit them in-game or the .txt files before loading?

.txt files before loading.

[Manul]

On 8/26/2022 at 1:29 AM, Lisias said:

Things worked pretty good when Firespitter was well maintained. Originally, helicopter parts were implemented using Firespitter's PartModule made specifically for helicopters. But then FS was literally abandoned without a good replacement, and the less worst that it could be done was done on KAX.

 

What exactly is wrong with Firespitter? Version 7.17 seems to work well in KSP v12.3  Sometimes rotors begin to spin in a vacuum for no reason but it's not a big deal.

On 8/25/2022 at 5:11 PM, DA299 said:

Hello Everyone,

I just wanted to ask, that why are the wheels of this mod not working at all?

They became jumpy-wobbly after KSP v1.4 update so they had been broken for years compared to their behavior in 1.3 when I first started to use this mod. And I didn't notice that jumpy-wobbly syndrome got worse for the past few KSP updates. Of course you need to manually readjust steering, friction and brakes settings as with stock landing gear in 1.12 because all landing gear has default 50% brakes settings and is slippery as hell by default.

Edited September 5, 2022 by Manul

[Lisias]

10 hours ago, Manul said:

What exactly is wrong with Firespitter? Version 7.17 seems to work well in KSP v12.3  Sometimes rotors begin to spin in a vacuum for no reason but it's not a big deal.

From parts being removed instead of being fixed (what's laborious but doable), to PartModule that ceased to work, you name it.

7.17 limits itself to do not blow up on 1.12.3, but the usual maintenance done as the years passed trough was to deactivate code instead of updating it - as the shaders.

[doxid310]

Hello, I am currently experiencing an issue regarding the FMeshSwitcher on all the parts that have this feature. I am currently using the latest version of FAR Continued along with the latest version of AP from @Lisias github page.
It seems that all the meshes are bulked upon one another to the point of z-fighting, and the next/previous buttons do not appear in the editor menu.
In the screenshot I've tested it with some mk3s0 parts and a wing connector.

[doxid310]

18 minutes ago, doxid310 said:

Hello, I am currently experiencing an issue regarding the FMeshSwitcher on all the parts that have this feature. I am currently using the latest version of FAR Continued along with the latest version of AP from @Lisias github page.
It seems that all the meshes are bulked upon one another to the point of z-fighting, and the next/previous buttons do not appear in the editor menu.
In the screenshot I've tested it with some mk3s0 parts and a wing connector.

Sorry for the bother, I figured it out rather quickly.
I had an old version of Firespitter installed.
For those having the same issue, update Firespitter to the latest version.

[Grenartia]

On 7/2/2022 at 11:34 AM, Lisias said:

 

Dear Kerbonauts, 

we have a new BETA release for AirplanePlus.

https://github.com/net-lisias-ksp/AirplanePlus/releases

 

Any word on CKAN availability?

 

[Lisias]

11 minutes ago, Grenartia said:

Any word on CKAN availability?

Distributin betas on CKAN is hardly a good idea!

There were some changes on the road map that need to be implemented first, anyway.

[Grenartia]

6 hours ago, Lisias said:

Distributin betas on CKAN is hardly a good idea!

There were some changes on the road map that need to be implemented first, anyway.

Fair enough. I'll wait until it hits CKAN, then. 

I know manual installation is technically possible (and I know how to do it), but I once manually installed some mods on a copy of the game that I had CKAN'd mods on, and it got so borked that I had to delete that copy of the game entirely and start over, and that's scared me away from repeating that mistake ever again.