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

[Manul]

11 hours ago, Lisias said:

The current engines are way overpowered, a punny cesna engine is giving us as much power as the engine for an F-18

Oh, I found that engine. A 150kg turboprop with 6.5 tonnes of thrust   Rocket-high TWR that accidentally turns STOL planes into VTOL planes no matter the excessive weight issues. It's some mistake I guess because it has the same thrust as another tilt-rotor osprey-style engine that is also named Kitty. But all of them use the stock ModuleEnginesFX so it can be fixed without dealing with the Firespitter stuff.

[Lisias]

8 hours ago, Manul said:

Part named "cessnacockpit" from Airplane + has a MaxTemp of 1100K so it's not meant for space, but it's mass is the same as for stock cockpits: 1t. The same deal with 1.25m helicopter cockpits. I tried to make small planes and helicopters with this mod since ksp v 1.3, they appear to be much heavier than their real counterparts so I had to minimize the amount of fuel and other useful things onboard limiting their range and capabilities to flying around the KSC and practicing the VAB helipad landing. So there are two ways: rebalance every part or live with some OP engines and reduce their performance to non-cheaty levels by other means such as velocity curves.

Exactly my point.

 

8 hours ago, Manul said:

My Eve SSTO wouldn't agree with you... but it exploded.

Extraplanetary aircrafts doesnt' needs to be spacecrafts!  Check how NASA did with Ingenuity,

 

8 hours ago, Manul said:

Such things should be scaled by the scale of Kerbal technology compared to it's human counterparts (0.5-0.75x), not by the scale of Kerbin itself

Point taken. Something to consider about.

 

8 hours ago, Manul said:

Otherwise the Kerbal scale Cessna Caravan should have the 0.3  size of real one,  have a service ceiling of 2km and max speed of 30m/s . 

I think this argument doesn't proceed. I'm talking about performance, not size. Kerbals still have about 1 meter high, so shrinking things this way would make the part unsuitable for them (and, in fact, I think that some are). Kerbin is about a third of the size of Earth, but have the same atmosphere height and the same gravity. So the parts should, ideally, perform in a way that would impose similar challenges to the user as the equivalent reallife™ counterpart - reaching the same altitude, but with a proportional autonomy.

Again, what would be the point of having propelled engines if they would perform exactly as the jet ones?

 

8 hours ago, Manul said:

And it would be completely useless for upscaled homeworld (not to mention RSS)

RSS usually rebalance the parts for their needs. I don't see why I should balance parts to be used on RSS if they are meant to be use on Stock. 

But the upscaled words argument has merit - if the stock parts performs good on upscaled world, so A+ should do. The parts should fit the game.

 

8 hours ago, Manul said:

Kerbal-human scale works fine with jets (heavy cockpits are balanced with light engines), if you build a kerbalized strategic  bomber the size of a human jet fighter you get almost the same range and ordnance mass as the human fighter has (have to measure cargo capacity in ordnance because I don't know much supersonic cargo planes built by humans)

That's the whole point. Do the research again for propelled bombers and fighters on real world.

 

7 hours ago, Manul said:

Small propeller planes are mostly built because they are cute, not for cargolifting and endurance competitions. Early career exploration around KSC, some seaplane rescue missions, Island Airfield Airlines or flying under the RnD bridge are the major uses of small aviation.

So they are currently meant to be used on sandbox, not on career. Ideally, you should do your first steps on flying using propellers, and only later research jet engines. Our fist space artefacts were transported by propelled crafts, the jet engines came common use only after the space age had started.

And, as I said, things are esily patched. These are not mutually exclusive options.

 

7 hours ago, Manul said:

Speaking of endurance: when I needed to do polar science in early career I made it to the north pole and back in a Schwalbe-style jet with two F5 tiger engines from this mod and no early-career propeller plane could beat it's range. Sounds ridiculous but going full afterburner at the edge of service ceiling with constant stalls and engine flameouts appeared to be more efficient  than flying in a normal way.

This is due how KSP simulates the fuel consumption and engine performance over altitude. The model is simplified and tied to the air intake consumption only - by the way, is how the power curve over altitude is simulated, by reducing the volume of the air intaking from the intakes.

So, in essence, the fuel consumption for flying 1 hour at 100% trust is the same as flying 2 hours at 50% trust, no matter the altitude. This model works fine for rocket engines, but poorly on jet engines - and terribly on piston engines.

 

6 hours ago, ColdJ said:

I have shown in the past that it it is possible to do reasonable propeller animations using just the stock modules and the right animation, set up with blender.

It's not a matter of being possible or not. It's a matter of hating this kind of animation.

I don't mind reworking the propellers to use stock animations, but I will not use them - I will keep the current animations as an option for people using Firespitter, as I do.

I don't mod things I don't use.

 

6 hours ago, Manul said:

But all of them use the stock ModuleEnginesFX so it can be fixed without dealing with the Firespitter stuff.

That's the point: I'm not using FS because I need, I'm using it because I like it. The code models engine power and propeller efficiency pretty nicely, it really makes difference between using a 3 bladed propeller and a 6 one.

Using a too much powered engine with 2 blades will not convert all the power into trust, you need more blades. But adding each blade adds a bit of drag (and some weight!) on the thing, so you need to balance - and this is what makes things interesting on a LEGO style gaming as KSP, you need to balance things in order to get what you want, it's the whole point of the game!!

Edited February 12, 2023 by Lisias
brute force post merging

[Manul]

39 minutes ago, Lisias said:

So, in essence, the fuel consumption for flying 1 hour at 100% trust is the same as flying 2 hours at 50% trust, no matter the altitude. This model works fine for rocket engines, but poorly on jet engines - and terribly on piston engines.

Yesss. The stock model assumes that fuel mixture and compression ratio are constant and the engine is equally efficient at all airspeeds. We have all these modern fuel injectors to deal with fuel mixture but not much can be done about compression, jets can go faster and use variable intake geometry (until the air gets hot and the efficiency drops due to lower temperature difference between intake and exhaust)

1 hour ago, Lisias said:

Using a too much powered engine with 2 blades will not convert all the power into trust, you need more blades. But adding each blade adds a bit of drag (and some weight!) on the thing, so you need to balance - and this is what makes things interesting on a LEGO style gaming as KSP, you need to balance things in order to get what you want, it's the whole point of the game!!

I accidentally turned some propellers into airbrakes  while trying to increase the thrust of BG props . Didn't do much experiments with FS configurable propellers but I guess it's nice to have all this customization without increasing partcount and poking the Kraken with all these separate blades flying around due to centrifugal forces.

 

1 hour ago, Lisias said:

Extraplanetary aircrafts doesnt' needs to be spacecrafts!  Check how NASA did with Ingenuity,

But some spacecrafts have to be aircrafts to do their job delivering extraplanetary aircrafts.

[Lisias]

1 hour ago, Manul said:

Yesss. The stock model assumes that fuel mixture and compression ratio are constant and the engine is equally efficient at all airspeeds. We have all these modern fuel injectors to deal with fuel mixture but not much can be done about compression, jets can go faster and use variable intake geometry (until the air gets hot and the efficiency drops due to lower temperature difference between intake and exhaust)

Yep. I would love to have such limitations on the game - even as an option. This would impose real challenging on airplane designs!

 

1 hour ago, Manul said:

I accidentally turned some propellers into airbrakes  while trying to increase the thrust of BG props . Didn't do much experiments with FS configurable propellers but I guess it's nice to have all this customization without increasing partcount and poking the Kraken with all these separate blades flying around due to centrifugal forces.

FS is, also, a very abstracted model, so not so realistic as it may sound - but it makes things more fun to cope with. And even by not being used on the procedurally generated blades for the thing, it can be "hacked" to be used on "hardcoded" engine meshes to match the actual number of blades on the thing. There's ModulePartVariant to switch meshes to models with 3 or 4 blades (more blades, better performance on high altitudes; less blades, better on lower altitudes).

What I really liked on FS was making believe the space race had begun before the WW2 - so, what kind of carrying vehicles we would had? How would be launching a primitive rocket from a primitive airplane carrier? I spent weeks avoiding upgrading parts and facilites, trying to do the most I can with the current restrictions - as launching a kerballed mission to a fly-by over the poles on a suborbital trajectory from a biplane (as I could not steer the rocket from the launchpad yet), and still be able to recover and reuse most of the parts (and with primitive SAS). Months of fun and amusement, it was one of my best savegames to date.

And, damnit, it's fun to fly biplanes.

Spoiler

http://ksp.lisias.net/screenshots/2020/03/12_Firespitter-on-KSP191/0007#main-img

 

1 hour ago, Manul said:

But some spacecrafts have to be aircrafts to do their job delivering extraplanetary aircrafts.

These ones are not going to use propellers!

Edited February 12, 2023 by Lisias
Brute force post merging.

[Rakete]

Are only the propeller engines using Firespitter? Or is it also used for other parts?

I currently consider installing AP+ only with the the jet engines i am interested in (and of course the fuselages), without the propengines. Would dropping those prop-engines be enough to be able to drop firespitter, or are other parts also using this module (yes, i had really bad issues with firespitter in the past and really don't want it back at the moment [or at least until it is put into a good state by a professional like Lisias] )? Or will doors, ramps etc also not work anymore in case they also use animations by firespitter?

 

@Lisias

Edited February 19, 2023 by Rakete

[Manul]

4 hours ago, Rakete said:

Would dropping those prop-engines be enough to be able to drop firespitter, or are other parts also using this module (yes, i had really bad issues with firespitter in the past and really don't want it back at the moment

Some parts use Firespitter for switching their subtypes. And you will loose all helicopter rotors.  I see no sense in getting rid from firespitter because the majority of aircraft and marine related mods use it for spinning parts.

[Rakete]

6 hours ago, Manul said:

Some parts use Firespitter for switching their subtypes. And you will loose all helicopter rotors.  I see no sense in getting rid from firespitter because the majority of aircraft and marine related mods use it for spinning parts.

Yes, but in the past I really had issues with firespitter. It caused bugs all over KSP for me, incompatibility issues and made the whole game crash for me - on my very PC. It would be a different story, if Firespitter would have evolved since then. But as far as I saw, it didn't see any maintainance for years on this plugin, no service by the original creators and no official adoption. In fact, i don't even know, where to get the latest half-way-stable version of it.

I would give it a try, if it would be adopted by some experienced modder (like Lisias or Linuxgurugamer or angel-125 or the one who does the USI mods (don't remember his name)  and brought up to the current state of KSP - the latest release a found was 7.1 for KSP 1.0 packaged in some other mod...  eeehh... outdated I would assume. But right know: Firespitter - not again, not if not more... stable. 

Used for switching subtypes?! Why? B9PS is in most cases the way to do so. 

 

Edited February 19, 2023 by Rakete

[Manul]

2 hours ago, Rakete said:

or the one who does the USI mods (don't remember his name)

Here is an updated version from @RoverDude https://github.com/snjo/Firespitter/releases

[Lisias]

11 hours ago, Rakete said:

Are only the propeller engines using Firespitter? Or is it also used for other parts?

Other FS PartModules are also used. Most of them can be replaced, of course, but since some of them are still really needed, there was no ral point on switching some of them if you are not going to switch all of them.

Until now. Or soon™ - frankly, every I sit down to work on AP+ (or something fun as expanding the TweakScale Companion), some astral conjunction happens somewhere in the Universe, triggering an avalanche of bug reports that ended up eating most of my free time. 

 

12 hours ago, Rakete said:

I currently consider installing AP+ only with the the jet engines i am interested in (and of course the fuselages), without the propengines.

I understand, and I agree. I have this concerning on KAX - avoiding cluttering it with things that would not "fit" the add'ons' "spirit".

Of course, I will not do it - what would be the point at this time? - but I think that AP+ should be a "Franchise", with some "sub-modules" adding related  parts into the mix. AP+ "Cold War Civil Aviation", "WW2 Military Aviation", "Jet Engine Dawn", etc. I once waved some contributions to KAX once because I didn't thought it would fit on it (it's essentially Pre WW1 era, and post WW2 era aviation parts - how a Boeing fuselage would fit on it?).

It's still an idea I'm toying with, but how to implement it without disrupting the Scene? I don't think the cost/benefit of doing it now would be positive.

 

12 hours ago, Rakete said:

(yes, i had really bad issues with firespitter in the past and really don't want it back at the moment [or at least until it is put into a good state by a professional like Lisias] )? Or will doors, ramps etc also not work anymore in case they also use animations by firespitter?

I'm toying with the possibility of fixing Firespitter. I already had fixed some things on it on a personal fork, but gave up on pushing them into the mainstream as things are never merged. I don't want to rant publicly about, but FS is fixable. There's absolutely nothing preventing it from bring fully compatible (with all the original parts) into modern KSP. I decline to further comment about.

That said, almost everything on FS is replaceable. What doesn't means it will got better with it - sometimes, you will get a worst experience by switching off from it.

 

7 hours ago, Manul said:

Some parts use Firespitter for switching their subtypes. And you will loose all helicopter rotors.  I see no sense in getting rid from firespitter because the majority of aircraft and marine related mods use it for spinning parts.

Yes! I replaced some FS modules from KAX on the helo parts, and let me tell you - I hated the result. Fixing Firespitter is the way to go, in a way or another - it's the reason I decided to work on it extra-officially.

I think it's wiser to decline on further commenting about.

 

2 hours ago, Rakete said:

Used for switching subtypes?! Why? B9PS is in most cases the way to do so. 

Because not so many people really like to use B9PS (they love the parts using ot, and tolerate B9PS due them), and even fewer authors like to support it. Believe me on this one - B9PS is a nice idea, but far from being convenient to support and frankly way overbloated. Kraken knows how many man-months it took me to support this thing on TweakScale - and I still get problems nowadays due something misusing it now and then.

I don't oppose people using B9PS if people it, but I don't plan to do the job myself - I will assist anyone willing to do it, though, as long this dude maintains the patches themselves.

[Rakete]

58 minutes ago, Lisias said:

I'm toying with the possibility of fixing Firespitter. I already had fixed some things on it on a personal fork, but gave up on pushing them into the mainstream as things are never merged. I don't want to rant publicly about, but FS is fixable. There's absolutely nothing preventing it from bring fully compatible (with all the original parts) into modern KSP. I decline to further comment abou

I may give it another try, when FS is fixed and does not break my remaining heavily modded install. I am a little bit frustrated, that so many aviation mods seem to use FS, that appeared to be broken as far as i tried. I may want to use those airplane parts mods and the fuselages/cockpits and stuff... but getting back FS in the last-known-state (last know to me) is no option in order to keep my annoyance level low. 

So if you want to make it work properly without killing other mods and crashing ksp - I wish you all the best and hope it won't rise you annoyance level to atmosphere's edge while fixing it.  I highly appreciate those efforts, because I know, all of this happens in someone's free time. Thanks for it !

For my gameplay i am mainly interested in cockpits, fuselages, wings... and some jet engines, because my gameplay focus is fast modern age planes, which are not the typical propeller use case.

Edited February 19, 2023 by Rakete

[Manul]

8 hours ago, Rakete said:

when FS is fixed and does not break my remaining heavily modded install

If you aren't using Principia, the latest version of Firespitter updated to KSP 1.11 should work just fine.  You need only Plugin and Resources folders if you don't need parts. Helicopter rotors autorotating in a vacuum is definitely not a gamebraking problem. Some functions FS originally used to have, had been disabled during updates but it's not a problem if you don't try to use original firespitter parts in all their glory. "All their glory" includes VTOL manager, procedural engines, custom landing gear and interactive cockpits, all these things might not work as they used to.

Edited February 20, 2023 by Manul

[Rakete]

4 hours ago, Manul said:

"All their glory" includes VTOL manager, procedural engines, custom landing gear and interactive cockpits, all these things might not work as they used to.

In fact in my last tries (2 or 3 years ago) it broke my ksp complete with total game crashes and also interfered with other mods (can't rememer exactly anymore). That's why i dropped it completely. 

And I don't need and want all "their glory" and more toolbar-stuff. No vtol-manager needed. All this clutters up ksp more and more. Just want nice fuselages, cockpits and wings. No new mechanisms, toolbarbuttons and stuff needed and wanted. Just want working plane parts . #No offence!  

Edited February 20, 2023 by Rakete

[Manul]

38 minutes ago, Rakete said:

it broke my ksp complete with total game crashes and also interfered with other mods (can't rememer exactly anymore)

I guess, you tried pre 1.8 version of Firespitter with KSP v1.8+ and MechJeb. There was an issue with MJ+FS compatibility after the 1.8 Great Mod Massacre.

18 hours ago, Rakete said:

the latest release a found was 7.1 for KSP 1.0 packaged in some other mod..

That was a really bad idea. There were at least 16 updates since that version Where did you get this old stuff? The version 7.17 works just fine with all mods that need just to make things spin. The extra things like VTOL manager aren't used by the majority of mods anyway, the VTOL manager appears in the PAW only if the part has a corresponding PartModule

Edited February 20, 2023 by Manul

[Lisias]

1 hour ago, Manul said:

I guess, you tried pre 1.8 version of Firespitter with KSP v1.8+ and MechJeb. There was an issue with MJ+FS compatibility after the 1.8 Great Mod Massacre.

This one I gave a close look. It was a Unity issue.

FS was relying on a call from Unity 2017 that got removed on Unity 2019, and then the DLL failed to be loaded - triggering the infamous Assembly Loader/Resolver on KSP.

This was fixed on the next FS release, but MJ2 retained a code yelling anything going wrong on FS as FS not being compatible with KSP - even when something else screws up the Assembly Loader/Resolver and FS ends up being hit by the splash damage.

[Rutabaga22]

What is the Mk2/object 1.44 cockpit based on?

[Lisias]

1 hour ago, Rutabaga22 said:

What is the Mk2/object 1.44 cockpit based on?

Given the uncommon nomenclature, it's surely based on a Soviet/Russia aircraft.

I'm reasonably confident it's related to Mig 1.44:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan_Project_1.44

[Rutabaga22]

24 minutes ago, Lisias said:

Given the uncommon nomenclature, it's surely based on a Soviet/Russia aircraft.

I'm reasonably confident it's related to Mig 1.44:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan_Project_1.44

That's exactly what it is! Thank you.

[Brainpop14]

Is this still stable in 1.12.5?

[Zmeya]

On 6/3/2023 at 11:38 AM, Brainpop14 said:

Is this still stable in 1.12.5?

I use it in 1.12.5, so yes

[kerbmario]

is it still alive? If yes, could a Tu-160 and/or a Sukhoi T-100 cockpit?

[Richmountain112]

Does this work with 1.12.3?

[linuxgurugamer]

On 6/12/2023 at 12:15 PM, Richmountain112 said:

Does this work with 1.12.3?

If you looked just 2 posts above your post, you would see your answer

[Kerbal410]

I'm trying to make a new .cfg for a part (herc main gear for mk3/size 3) and all I need now is to make a new icon for it in the @thumbs folder (at least I thought I did, part showed up even without the icon). issue is, I can't seem to find the _icon for it, all there is is the icon for the herc's nose gear.

EDIT: never mind. just need to find a good rescale factor now.

Edited June 23, 2023 by Kerbal410

[linuxgurugamer]

On 6/23/2023 at 1:11 PM, Kerbal410 said:

I'm trying to make a new .cfg for a part (herc main gear for mk3/size 3) and all I need now is to make a new icon for it in the @thumbs folder (at least I thought I did, part showed up even without the icon). issue is, I can't seem to find the _icon for it, all there is is the icon for the herc's nose gear.

EDIT: never mind. just need to find a good rescale factor now.

Game makes the thumbnail automatically

[Kerbal410]

oh. well, in that case, what would you recommend for the rescale factor? nothing I change it to looks right, and I don't use tweakscale.

Edited June 26, 2023 by Kerbal410