Devnote Tuesday: Fuel Flow

[StrandedonEarth]

1 hour ago, NathanKell said:

If you increase the priority of, say, the lower tanks in all stacks, they will drain before the upper tanks. Finally, if you increase priority of the core tanks above the boosters' priority the Mainsail will drain from them first.

It sounds like we get to set the priority of each tank ourselves! That is just awesome!

[Superfluous J]

15 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

It sounds like we get to set the priority of each tank ourselves! That is just awesome!

Yes I like the idea of setting the tank priority backwards from what it is now in early career, to keep the rocket front-heavy on ascent.

[monstah]

14 hours ago, taniwha said:

In KSP, you may have noticed that, depending on the circumstances) the intercept markers move very little but the target position markers move a lot as you burn: this is because the intercept marker is dictated by geometry but the target position marker is dictated by time (ie, when your vessel gets to that intercept marker).

When I read te answer to my own question I thought "The hell, we won't have intercepts??", but then the answer to the last question was exactly what I wanted to know, thanks!

[Curveball Anders]

On 2016-07-27 at 11:59 AM, taniwha said:

Due to the periodic nature of orbits, a closest approach always has a corresponding furthest separation. Of course, open trajectories (hyperbolas) will break this rule as at least one furthest separation will be missing due to it being out past infinity.

[first image] Two fairly similar orbits: 1.0 (semi latus rectum), 0.6 (eccentricity) for one, 0.45, 0.8 for the second. The orbits are coplanar with a bit of argument of periapsis for the second to get the cluster of intercepts.

Four closest approaches and four farthest separations (note, that's local to the approach/separation, not global to the orbits). That little cluster of three points in the lower left is actually two closest approaches (actually, intersections: you don't get any closer, ever) with a furthest separation in between the two. You then get one more furthest separation in the upper left. And that's just for the connections that do not cross an orbit. You then have another 4 connections crisscrossing the orbits: two closest approaches and two furthest separations.

The octahedrons mark the points on one orbit while the cubes mark the corresponding points on the second (target) orbit. The lines help keep track of which point is which. Yes, in total, there are 16 points, but as the points on the two orbits are logically connected, I count the two physical points as one logical point (thus 8).

[second image] 1.0, 0.4 for the first orbit, 1.0, 0.98 for the second (very large) orbit. Think low Kerbin orbit vs  Minmus transfer orbit. Perspective makes it look reasonable. The first is rotated 254 degrees, the second is inclined 60 degrees to the first with an argument of periapsis of 160. It's a test case that caused my algorithm some problems until I gave up trying to pre-filter the orbit-crossing intercepts: it could not see that intercept with the nearly vertical line (upper middle).

I hope that helps a bit.

Reading and trying to parse Taniwha's text gives me a blistering headache due to an overload of math.

But I'm glad that he's on our side, I hope.

[RenatsMC]

Hype for v1.2

[Northstar1989]

Optimization.  Awesome!  Hopefully all this means KSP will become playable again on my craptop from a performance standpoint come the next update!  Maybe I can even complete that long-delayed YouTube video of a Duna mission...

Edited August 5, 2016 by Northstar1989