[1.8.x] Kerbal Foundries -- Continued - Tracks, Wheels, and Gear

[Shadowmage]

13 hours ago, AccidentalDisassembly said:

Also, had a question about wheel behavior. With stock wheels, when you place a bunch along the sides of a long rover, so long as you have your control point (a cockpit or whatever) oriented correctly, the wheels are automagically set up to turn in the opposite opposite of the wheels in back when you hit A or D.

I strongly dislike the stock auto-configuration.  It has mangled more rover setups than I care to count, and last I played with it, it worked terribly unless the control-point was setup in a specific orientation. 

I also dislike 'automagical' configuration of stuff in general.  So don't expect me to add anything like that.  If I did at all, it would be VAB/SPH orientation based rather than control point based, and it would only effect the initial configuration when the part was placed.  Still, a metric ton of coding work, for something that takes mere seconds to click the buttons to setup the wheels properly, so don't expect it anytime soon/if at all.

[Jimbodiah]

I can't find the recoloring button...  

[AccidentalDisassembly]

6 hours ago, Shadowmage said:

I strongly dislike the stock auto-configuration.  It has mangled more rover setups than I care to count, and last I played with it, it worked terribly unless the control-point was setup in a specific orientation. 

I also dislike 'automagical' configuration of stuff in general.  So don't expect me to add anything like that.  If I did at all, it would be VAB/SPH orientation based rather than control point based, and it would only effect the initial configuration when the part was placed.  Still, a metric ton of coding work, for something that takes mere seconds to click the buttons to setup the wheels properly, so don't expect it anytime soon/if at all.

OK cool, just checking. I can understand that; just wanted to make sure I was understanding what it was supposed to be doing, thanks!

[varsass]

On 06/03/2017 at 1:06 AM, Shadowmage said:

Skid is no longer super-sticky, and once again slides nicely.  Suspension rigging reworked so that it follows the terrain much better.  Steering sold separately.
 

 

Maybe it's a dumb question but .... Where can I buy some ?

Steering on skid is needed for my snowmobile trip to Vall.

[Shadowmage]

On 12/26/2017 at 5:17 AM, varsass said:

Maybe it's a dumb question but .... Where can I buy some ?

Steering on skid is needed for my snowmobile trip to Vall.

As with all the other KSP parts that say 'sold separately' in their description, no such accessories actually exist.  Its just gag text.

You can try some config editing, but I don't think that part was setup with transforms for actual steering.  Your best bet is likely just tons of reaction wheels.

[varsass]

3 hours ago, Shadowmage said:

As with all the other KSP parts that say 'sold separately' in their description, no such accessories actually exist.  Its just gag text.

You can try some config editing, but I don't think that part was setup with transforms for actual steering.  Your best bet is likely just tons of reaction wheels.

Skid used to be able to steer before the complete rewrite of wheel collider. If it's just a matter of config file I'll see what I can do, but if it needs more, it's more than I can do.

[Shadowmage]

1 hour ago, varsass said:

Skid used to be able to steer before the complete rewrite of wheel collider.

Interesting.  I haven't changed the model at all, so it 'might' still be doable. 

Although, I think it would be 'very bad' in function as you are going to have to rotate a mesh transform only, and you won't be able to rely on the built-in wheel-steering-angle stuff -- which will essentially 'drag' the front+rear wheel colliders whenever you turn, which is likely going to cause jittering.  (also, not sure if the steering module will work without also being linked to a wheel-collider and manipulating the wheel-steering-angle... been awhile since I've played with it -- it might require a new/custom steering module, or adjustments to the existing code to disable the wheel-collider-steering-angle interaction).

 

[Simog]

Hi at all.

I have a "problem" with spaceplane's landing gears. I use Deadly Reentry and these parts do not bear reentry and burn. Would it be possible to add an alternative version with a heat shield?
I tried to document myself if it were possible to do it via MM patch but I did not understand anything . If it's possible, there is someone who wants to tell me how to do it.

Many thanks

Edited December 29, 2017 by Simog

[Starwaster]

On 12/29/2017 at 5:26 AM, Simog said:

Hi at all.

I have a "problem" with spaceplane's landing gears. I use Deadly Reentry and these parts do not bear reentry and burn. Would it be possible to add an alternative version with a heat shield?
I tried to document myself if it were possible to do it via MM patch but I did not understand anything . If it's possible, there is someone who wants to tell me how to do it.

Many thanks

Hi Simog, if you provide a list of the part names I'll make sure they are added to the other space plane type parts that DRE supports.

[DirtyVenomSteam]

If you're taking suggestions, I have an idea for an adjustable Junkers 87-styled gear, as it'd make historically accurate recreations much easier (As well as make the much better looking) Here's an example image of the gear. Hopefully it's possible, I'd love to assist this mod in growing. Keep up the great work, thanks bunches for keeping this awesome mod going.

[Simog]

6 hours ago, Starwaster said:

Hi Simog, if you provide a list of the part names I'll make sure they are added to the other space plane type parts that DRE supports.

Many Thanks.
These are the 4 Landing Gear names:
name = KF-ALG-Large
KF-ALG-Medium
KF-ALG-Small
KF-ALG-SmallSide

Edited January 4, 2018 by Simog

[TiktaalikDreaming]

3 hours ago, DirtyVenomSteam said:

If you're taking suggestions, I have an idea for an adjustable Junkers 87-styled gear, as it'd make historically accurate recreations much easier (As well as make the much better looking) Here's an example image of the gear. Hopefully it's possible, I'd love to assist this mod in growing. Keep up the great work, thanks bunches for keeping this awesome mod going.

They'll also be great for snazzy shopping carts. .

[Drew Kerman]

the KF Medium Track has a max load of 8. I'm using 4 of them and my 13t vehicle is having a jittery bounce fest out on the runway. I turned spring strength all the way up and damping all the way down and things are good, I can run about with wheel stress running around 0.8 max. I assumed the max load rating was per wheel but in that case I'm less than half max weight and seem to be pushing these treads pretty hard already. Is it right that 4 medium tracks should be able to handle a vehicle of up to 32t or should they not be used at all for a vehicle massing over 8t?

Also will the user docs get filled out soon or is there still a lot of flux in the usability?

[Shadowmage]

On 1/5/2018 at 8:03 PM, Drew Kerman said:

 I assumed the max load rating was per wheel but in that case I'm less than half max weight and seem to be pushing these treads pretty hard already. Is it right that 4 medium tracks should be able to handle a vehicle of up to 32t or should they not be used at all for a vehicle massing over 8t?

 

The 'max load' specified is the maximum it can support before incurring damage.  Obviously you will want your actual load to be far below this in order to accommodate any actual run-time stresses (suspension forces).  You generally want your static load to be ~50% or less of the max load, otherwise even small bumps/hills/etc can cause breakage.

For a vehicle massing 32t, using 4 wheels, you would want each wheel to have a 'max load' of (32 / 4) * 2 = 16 tons on each wheel.  With 100% equal mass distribution across the wheels, this should give you a nice ~50% load rating when resting on Kerbin/at 1g.

 

On 1/5/2018 at 8:03 PM, Drew Kerman said:

the KF Medium Track has a max load of 8. I'm using 4 of them and my 13t vehicle is having a jittery bounce fest out on the runway. I turned spring strength all the way up and damping all the way down and things are good,

What does the vessel hierarchy look like -- do you have those wheels mounted to nice solid fuselage parts, or are they mounted to some i-beams or something less massive?  (Unity joints are extremely touchy regarding the masses of the connected rigidbodies -- they should be within an order of magnitude of eachother at most, and far closer for best stability).

Generally any bouncing/jittering is caused by one thing -- Unity Joints and how they are used by KSP.  Most often it can be alleviated by proper craft design that keeps in mind the limitations of the Unity Joints --

Quote

Avoid large differences in the masses between Rigidbody components connected by Joints. It’s okay to have one Rigidbody with twice as much mass as another, but when one mass is ten times larger than the other, the simulation can become jittery.

https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/RagdollStability.html

 

On 1/5/2018 at 8:03 PM, Drew Kerman said:

Also will the user docs get filled out soon or is there still a lot of flux in the usability?

Its a wiki for a reason (hint -- so that anyone can update it...).  Source code is my documentation.

Edited January 9, 2018 by Shadowmage

[Drew Kerman]

4 hours ago, Shadowmage said:

The 'max load' specified is the maximum it can support before incurring damage.  Obviously you will want your actual load to be far below this in order to accommodate any actual run-time stresses (suspension forces).  You generally want your static load to be ~50% or less of the max load, otherwise even small bumps/hills/etc can cause breakage.

For a vehicle massing 32t, using 4 wheels, you would want each wheel to have a 'max load' of (32 / 4) * 2 = 16 tons on each wheel.  With 100% equal mass distribution across the wheels, this should give you a nice ~50% load rating when resting on Kerbin/at 1g.

Ok, thx

4 hours ago, Shadowmage said:

What does the vessel hierarchy look like -- do you have those wheels mounted to nice solid fuselage parts, or are they mounted to some i-beams or something less massive?  (Unity joints are extremely touchy regarding the masses of the connected rigidbodies -- they should be within an order of magnitude of eachother at most, and far closer for best stability).

They are surface attached to the body of the truck - each of those segments you see is a part weighing 0.8t

[Shadowmage]

18 hours ago, Drew Kerman said:

They are surface attached to the body of the truck - each of those segments you see is a part weighing 0.8t

How many parts are they away from the root part?  What is the mass of those parts compared to the mass of the root part/other parts on the craft?

 

For every part away from root that the wheels are attached the changes for jittering increases; to the point that if you are 4-5+ parts away from root it is almost guaranteed to have jitter (every joint increases the instability of the simulation).

The only real 'solution' to this is to attach the wheels to the root part (or one part away), and then use the offset tool to push the wheels into their final position.

(yeah, I really wish that I didn't have to post workarounds like this for stuff that Unity needs to simply fix in their physics handling)

[Drew Kerman]

2 hours ago, Shadowmage said:

The only real 'solution' to this is to attach the wheels to the root part (or one part away), and then use the offset tool to push the wheels into their final position.

got it, right now the cab is the root. I can make one of the truck body segments a root part I think, so I could build out in both directions from the middle and attach the wheels to the middle root part then translate them away.

I'll add this exchange to the Wiki later today

[Shadowmage]

8 minutes ago, Drew Kerman said:

I'll add this exchange to the Wiki later today

No rush (and thanks ).

Please let me know if the wiki won't let you do edits -- I'm not exactly sure how the permissions are set up on it at the moment.

Edited January 10, 2018 by Shadowmage

[Drew Kerman]

5 hours ago, Shadowmage said:

Please let me know if the wiki won't let you do edits

Yea it's not set to public access, just collaborators only - you'll find the option on the first page of your Project Options as the second checkbox, under the Wiki enable option

[Shadowmage]

16 hours ago, Drew Kerman said:

Yea it's not set to public access, just collaborators only - you'll find the option on the first page of your Project Options as the second checkbox, under the Wiki enable option

Sorry about that, should be fixed and publicly editable now.

[Drew Kerman]

5 hours ago, Shadowmage said:

Sorry about that, should be fixed and publicly editable now.

No it's not - but then I think we're also not talking about the same wiki, I just realized. I was looking at the KSP Wheel wiki, specifically to modify this page. The Foundries wiki seems more like a brochure for the mod while KSP Wheel wiki is the actual manual - especially given it's linked to in the Foundries wiki home page

[Drew Kerman]

Is there any setting similar to the Friction slider on stock wheels? I ask because for stock wheels I had a problem with alignment where at around 30m/s or so my plane would start to turn off to the left and eventually spin out. I'm seeing the same thing with Foundries' KSPWheel patch to stock parts but not quite as bad - I can barely hang on with my rudders and sort of drift sideways until there's enough lift to ease up on the wheels at around 45-50m/s (takeoff speed is 70m/s). If I revert the part to stock and completely disable wheel friction the aircraft just rolls straight as an arrow until takeoff speed is achieved.

I'll take tips too on placing wheels on straight but I did try pretty damn hard to make sure these suckers were straight this time (small gear bay)

[0111narwhalz]

If you switch to the rotation gizmo and enable angle snap in the absolute coordinate space, then just touch the gizmo, the part should snap into perfect alignment.

[Shadowmage]

14 hours ago, Drew Kerman said:

No it's not - but then I think we're also not talking about the same wiki, I just realized. I was looking at the KSP Wheel wiki, specifically to modify this page. The Foundries wiki seems more like a brochure for the mod while KSP Wheel wiki is the actual manual - especially given it's linked to in the Foundries wiki home page

Noted, and updated / made public (yeah, I had opened up the KerbalFoundries one).

8 hours ago, Drew Kerman said:

Is there any setting similar to the Friction slider on stock wheels?

Nope, messing with friction will fubar the simulation stability faster than anything else (at least any attempts to increase it will).

8 hours ago, Drew Kerman said:

I ask because for stock wheels I had a problem with alignment where at around 30m/s or so my plane would start to turn off to the left and eventually spin out.

Can't say as I've had any problems using KF / ALG parts on my aircraft.  Even the bloated rover-carrying cargo plane that was grossly overloaded and didn't take off until 90m/s, still tracked straight down the runway (it took most of the runway... but it went straight).

But I haven't done extensive testing on the KF-converted stock parts.  Could be the part itself has some transforms slightly misaligned.  Or could still be a previously undiscovered bug in the physics.

If you can narrow down where the problem is, please file an issue ticket and I will gladly investigate.

[Drew Kerman]

7 hours ago, 0111narwhalz said:

If you switch to the rotation gizmo and enable angle snap in the absolute coordinate space, then just touch the gizmo, the part should snap into perfect alignment.

Yup, pretty sure I did that but I will try it again because I honestly can't remember if I did

4 minutes ago, Shadowmage said:

If you can narrow down where the problem is, please file an issue ticket and I will gladly investigate.

If the above fails, it's def the small retractable gear and I'll make an issue for it