Kerbin Side Remastered [1.0.1] [1.7.3]

[Eskandare]

On 5/21/2018 at 11:56 AM, AdmiralTigerclaw said:

 

I would assume it's because when you rescale kerbin up in size, the result is that the grid positions likewise spread out more.  Thus, the numbers for the positions may be the same, but the actual positions are farther apart.  So the bases start spreading out as well, breaking them.  And the only way to fix that is reworking the positions of all the parts.

Thus, yes, likely the same behavior.

 

Now, if anyone gets this one, Kudos.

 

Heh, Now all I need is a Conwing L-16 Seaplane (Basically the real world Fairchild C-82 transport). 

[Beetlecat]

I can't wait for the water landings/launches! (intentional ones, I mean...)

With a bunch of the KS sites shifting/changing/going away from previous "lore", I'm looking at revisiting a few mods that included KS(legacy) sites in their on-board nav, etc. Navutils, Nanogauges, and Kramax come to mind. Any others? It would be cool to pre-load the new locations once a site list is compiled.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

2 hours ago, Eskandare said:

Heh, Now all I need is a Conwing L-16 Seaplane (Basically the real world Fairchild C-82 transport). 

 

You mean like this?

 

 

I did that the same day I was working on L-OUIS.

I've actually made an L-16A2 Twin Turbo afterwards (Essentially, my idea of a vehicle upgrade).  Upsized the rear Vstabs for a little more control of sideslip.  Upgraded the engines to turboprops.  In my mind, the cabin has been pressurized.  It ups the speed and altitude of the aircraft significantly.  Mach 0.7 at 7 km with power and altitude leftover.

 

EDIT: Here, the L-16A2

 

I should also mention that Loui's is not a water spawn.  The spawn is up on the deck, but you can easily roll into the water and roll out of the water.  You just need to be a float plane, or a VTOL, or you're going absolutely nowhere.

 

 

EDIT: @Beetlecat 

I've got it in mind to create ILS approaches in NAVUtils for the airports I put up.  The big difference being that there is only one primary ILS per airport instead of for every which direction.  (NavUtils' list will get hueg already, don't need it hueger'.)

 

One thing I would like to do as well is create a series of target waypoints that are about 20 km out past the end of the runway for each ILS, 1000 meters above the runway level.  I'm talking with @MaxPeck in PM and he's informed me about some of the rules concerning the approaches in the real world.  I was thinking of doing the waypoints with Waypoint manager, but I don't think it has a way to sort and compress the waypoint tree for custom points.  That would result in both a huge waypoint list, and a lot of waypoint markers cluttering the map view.

And aside from being on the runway at KSC, it's REALLY hard to trig out a traffic waypoint using the Lat/Lon coordinates.  With KSC, I was able to just sit down on the runway theshold with an aircraft, right-triangle-trig the hypotinuse for the altitude and ground distance, and just move the Longitude by decimal numbers until I had the distance to the waypoint match the hypotinuse.  Not so easy if I have to tweak Lat AND Lon in unknown amounts for runways with non-cardinal headings. 

That being said, I'm also wondering about using NAVUtils for it.  The HSI markers are easy enough to work with, and I THINK (Without checking directly) I could make a waypoint and an HSI slope for each airport's ILS.

I just brought up NavUtils and saw that it only creates runway ILS approaches unless you have a target selected.  Waypoint manager creates a 'target' to use.

 

Again, the problem runs into having Santa's Naughty List in terms of length.  If Waypoint manager had a way to stick a waypoint into about three or four layers of folders, and the ability to go into them in tree format, that would be perfect for making a huge list of traffic waypoints.  Sort by Region, Airport Class, and pick the airport approach.

Edited May 24, 2018 by AdmiralTigerclaw

[MaxPeck]

49 minutes ago, AdmiralTigerclaw said:

Again, the problem runs into having Santa's Naughty List in terms of length.  If Waypoint manager had a way to stick a waypoint into about three or four layers of folders, and the ability to go into them in tree format, that would be perfect for making a huge list of traffic waypoints.  Sort by Region, Airport Class, and pick the airport approach.

I think Kramax Autopilot is what you actually want here.  It has the ability to create approaches (via a text file) and has an integrated HUD ILS that's not too bad.  You can switch it to NAV mode and leave the autopilot functions off and fly the approach by hand, or if like me you're tired of doing that, you can get lazy and let Jeb earn his pay once in a while.  One thing I like about Kramax is that you can work on the approaches without having to reload KSP - you can reload the waypoints database from inside the flight scene, one could say editing *on the fly*. (Thank you, I'll be here all week.  Be sure to tip your waitress!)  KRAMAX also lets you designate what kind of waypoint you're working with (IAF, FAF etc), and opens up the possibility of creating navaids and high altitude routes.

Note: I am not a paid spokesman for Kramax autopilot.  I just prefer it for aircraft flying.

Edited May 24, 2018 by MaxPeck

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

3 minutes ago, MaxPeck said:

I think Kramax Autopilot is what you actually want here.  It has the ability to create approaches (via a text file) and has an integrated HUD ILS that's not too bad.  You can switch it to NAV mode and leave the autopilot functions off and fly the approach by hand, or if like me you're tired of doing that, you can get lazy and let Jeb earn his pay once in a while.  One thing I like about Kramax is that you can work on the approaches without having to reload KSP - you can reload the waypoints database from inside the flight scene, one could say editing *on the fly*. (Thank you, I'll be here all week.  Be sure to tip your waitress!)  KRAMAX also lets you designate what kind of waypoint you're working with (IAF, FAF etc), and opens up the possibility of creating navaids and high altitude routes.

Note: I am not a paid spokesman for Kramax autopilot.  I just prefer it for aircraft flying.

 

I'll have to poke at that, then.  Right now I use Pilot Assistant as my autopilot, with NavUtils, Kerbal Konstructs' navigation aid, and Waypoint Manager as my nav aids. 

Does Kramax come backwards compatible for KSP1.2.2?  I can't go any further forward without breaking a mod stack the size of Texas.

 

 

EDIT: Also, I keep reading Kramax as "Crawmerax".

 

Edited May 24, 2018 by AdmiralTigerclaw

[MaxPeck]

19 minutes ago, AdmiralTigerclaw said:

Does Kramax come backwards compatible for KSP1.2.2?  I can't go any further forward without breaking a mod stack the size of Texas.

 Yeah. Look in the changelog on spacedock, I think they have versions going back to 1.2

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

6 hours ago, MaxPeck said:

 Yeah. Look in the changelog on spacedock, I think they have versions going back to 1.2

Cool, I'll poke at it.

 

Meantime, my note of the day is I'm starting on Mystic Lake International.

 

EDIT:

 

Fastest I've put an INTL airport together.  I tried something different this time, and just upsized the Observatory Base to size three, instead of trying to put a dozen of them together like puzzle pieces.  Saved me a LOT of work.

 

 

I need to get in and tweak the runways and taxiways a little more before I'm done with this one, though.  You can see the foreground of runway 16 at the taxiway has a height problem.  I just can't get them angled so that both ends are smooth with the runway, AND cross each other without one doing a fair impression of a highway overpass.

 

Anyway, this one's angled base on my best guess for where updrafts will draw the winds.  During the day, daytime heating will be causing an onshore breeze (shore is behind the camera in the image).  However, the valley between the mountains out to the horizon to the left will draw air in that direction.  Meanwhile, Mystic Lake (background, mid right), will act as a thermal dampener, ensuring that the surface winds prefer going towards the valley instead of straight inland.  Thus, Runway 10 is the primary.  Runway 16 in the foreground, faces directly to the lake and directly across the land mass to the ocean.   In the event of direct wind patterns from the ocean straight to the lake, or back the other way, this covers that alternate direction.

Edited May 24, 2018 by AdmiralTigerclaw

[Bottle Rocketeer 500]

@AdmiralTigerclaw How did you find such a flat piece of land?

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

3 hours ago, Bottle Rocketeer 500 said:

@AdmiralTigerclaw How did you find such a flat piece of land?

I'm not finding then, I'm making them.

 

Terrain Decals.  They're one of the tabs in Kerbal Konstructs.  You add a new one, set the radius to a little over half of what you need for a runway length, move it where you want, set its height, and set the height map to one of the available options.  The terrain decal creates a custom terrain map (or 'decal') that overwrites the terrain it's on.  Though, after you place it and get what you want, you need to pop back to the space center and then back again.  KK doesn't like to work right after editing it.

 

The 'Volcano' in the Loui's picture is also a terrain decal.

 

I've been naming the terrain decals coder-friendly names of the airport complexes.  Like KK_badlands, or KK_cottonmouth, and storing them in the folder the airport statics go in.

 

 

To be fair, before I stumbled into them poking at the KK editor, I wasn't going to launch into this project.  But the moment I started going 'what does this even do?', and saw it create a flat terrain feature of arbitrary size, I grinned and realized where those flat areas the other bases had came from.  Kojave Sands, for example, is sitting on an absolutely huge decal.

[Bottle Rocketeer 500]

@AdmiralTigerclaw Thanks for the info. I will use that for X-KJMK, but may I ask what decal is used for the flat terrain?

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

30 minutes ago, Bottle Rocketeer 500 said:

@AdmiralTigerclaw Thanks for the info. I will use that for X-KJMK, but may I ask what decal is used for the flat terrain?

Okay:  So, instructions.  Follow these, and it will flow into your becoming your answer.

0: Get into the flight scene and put yourself near where you want to deploy the terrain decal.  You MUST be in the flight scene.

1: Open Kerbal Konstructs.

2: Select the Terrain Decals tab.  The Decal tab shows you a list of active decals on Kerbin, not a list of available decals.  An actual list, of every decal created for other bases.  If you note the names, it's all of @Eskandare 's bases.  Do not mess with these decals in any way, move on to instruction 3.

3: In the lower left corner of the KK window, you'll see a button for creating a new decal.  Click it. Immediately, the decal editor will pop up.  At the top of the decal editor, it will be named something along the lines of KK_terraindecal_blablablah.  Rename the decal at once so you don't forget later.  I suggest naming it KK_JMKinternational or something along those lines so that it has a unique name that goes with the airport.  The file that gets created later will go into the same folder as the statics.

4:  Next, in the flight scene itself, you will see a NSEW designator pop up centered on your craft.  It's a visual marker as to how wide your decal is, where it's centered, and how high the top of it is.

5: In the editor, you will see a radius value.  It's in meters, and it's RADIUS, not diameter.  So a radius of 1000 will create a decal that's 2 km across.  Your visual marker will reflect these changes immediately by having the lines become longer.  But it won't rotate if you change its heading.  Not that changing that setting really matters.

6: In the editor, you will see the standard options for moving the decal marker around N, E, S, and W.  Adjust those until the center of the decal is where you want it to form.    You also have absolute height modifiers, get those more or less in line with the local terrain if you want it to look as natural as possible.  It is entirely possible to create a plateau if you so desire.  Recall: the Loui's "Volcano".

TWO WARNINGS: 

a: The decal marker does not drag the camera along with it.  You'll have to play musical camera to keep in position, but precision won't be a problem at this point.

b: Don't have your aircraft in the same place as the decal when you save and render the decal.  It'll instantly wreck your vehicle, even with anti-destruction cheats turned on.  That'll force some awkward adjustments to fix it.

 

7: Near the bottom of the editor, you will see a dropdown button called height map.  There are a dozen or so options that create a general surface shape for the decal.  Some of them are flat, some of them are not a good idea to use for an airport.   You may switch between them all you want until you find what you like.  Right below the dropdown is a field for smoothing the decal into the terrain.  Default is a value of something like 0.125.   The higher this value becomes, the more 'natural' the decal blends into the terrain, but at the expense of making the flat area on the top of the decal into gentle slope, making it harder to level the airport on it.  The lower the value becomes, the more SHARP the edge of the decal becomes.  A value of zero, thus, creates perfect cliffs.

8: Color map is only useful in special occaisions, ignore it.  It has a smooth field as well, equally ignorable.  Again, used on the Loui's "Volcano".

9:  A few radio buttons at the bottom are also available.  Cullback looks like it takes portions of terrain along the edge, and chops their shapes into the decal, making it possible to create a terrain decal that has a ragged cliff edge the follows a ridge line.  Experiment at your own leisure.  I'm not exactly sure what the other two are actually doing, but I have them on, and I don't see anything of concern.

10: When you are done setting the parameters you want, the 'save and apply changes' button is what you want to press.  The game will freeze up while it does its thing, and then the altered terrain will pop into existence.  Again, make sure the aircraft you are using for the scene is outside the range of the decal, or the decal will just pop into existence on top of it and murderize it.  ALSO, altering the decal, or creating a decal, will mess up any statics you are working on, forcing you to realign them.  This is mainly because the statics try to auto-level with the terrain, and that includes the terrain decals.  Convenient, but also annoying if it's not perfect.

11: When you have the decal the way you want, DO NOT attempt to edit any statics right away.  Instead, return to the space center, and then go to the tracking station and re-start flying your vehicle.  I don't know why, but once you actively play with the decals (at least in my version of KK), attempting to edit or spawn statics doesn't play nice.  The statics editor doesn't want to appear, and things act stupid.  Changing scenes and coming back fixes that.

 

Edited May 24, 2018 by AdmiralTigerclaw

[Kardea]

On 5/23/2018 at 8:35 PM, AdmiralTigerclaw said:

 

You mean like this?

 

 

I did that the same day I was working on L-OUIS.

I've actually made an L-16A2 Twin Turbo afterwards (Essentially, my idea of a vehicle upgrade).  Upsized the rear Vstabs for a little more control of sideslip.  Upgraded the engines to turboprops.  In my mind, the cabin has been pressurized.  It ups the speed and altitude of the aircraft significantly.  Mach 0.7 at 7 km with power and altitude leftover. 

 

EDIT: Here, the L-16A2

 

I should also mention that Loui's is not a water spawn.  The spawn is up on the deck, but you can easily roll into the water and roll out of the water.  You just need to be a float plane, or a VTOL, or you're going absolutely nowhere.

 

 

EDIT: @Beetlecat 

I've got it in mind to create ILS approaches in NAVUtils for the airports I put up.  The big difference being that there is only one primary ILS per airport instead of for every which direction.  (NavUtils' list will get hueg already, don't need it hueger'.)

 

One thing I would like to do as well is create a series of target waypoints that are about 20 km out past the end of the runway for each ILS, 1000 meters above the runway level.  I'm talking with @MaxPeck in PM and he's informed me about some of the rules concerning the approaches in the real world.  I was thinking of doing the waypoints with Waypoint manager, but I don't think it has a way to sort and compress the waypoint tree for custom points.  That would result in both a huge waypoint list, and a lot of waypoint markers cluttering the map view.

And aside from being on the runway at KSC, it's REALLY hard to trig out a traffic waypoint using the Lat/Lon coordinates.  With KSC, I was able to just sit down on the runway theshold with an aircraft, right-triangle-trig the hypotinuse for the altitude and ground distance, and just move the Longitude by decimal numbers until I had the distance to the waypoint match the hypotinuse.  Not so easy if I have to tweak Lat AND Lon in unknown amounts for runways with non-cardinal headings. 

That being said, I'm also wondering about using NAVUtils for it.  The HSI markers are easy enough to work with, and I THINK (Without checking directly) I could make a waypoint and an HSI slope for each airport's ILS.

I just brought up NavUtils and saw that it only creates runway ILS approaches unless you have a target selected.  Waypoint manager creates a 'target' to use.

 

Again, the problem runs into having Santa's Naughty List in terms of length.  If Waypoint manager had a way to stick a waypoint into about three or four layers of folders, and the ability to go into them in tree format, that would be perfect for making a huge list of traffic waypoints.  Sort by Region, Airport Class, and pick the airport approach.

Hey, Tigerclaw... I don't suppose you'd mind posting a Craft file and a list of the part mods you used for that, would 'ya? I've been getting into building aircraft lately and want to know where those wing pieces are coming from (as well as a few other parts you're using). I'm tired of building functional Cessna/Learjet/C-130/etc wings out of angled SSTO pieces that don't ever capture the right shape...

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

3 hours ago, Kardea said:

Hey, Tigerclaw... I don't suppose you'd mind posting a Craft file and a list of the part mods you used for that, would 'ya? I've been getting into building aircraft lately and want to know where those wing pieces are coming from (as well as a few other parts you're using). I'm tired of building functional Cessna/Learjet/C-130/etc wings out of angled SSTO pieces that don't ever capture the right shape...

I'm not going to post a craft file.  I'm so custom-modified I couldn't rightly list everything that goes into what I have, and I'm using KSP 1.2.2.   But I can point you at a list of things to look up.

 

For the wings, I use B9 Procedural wings.  There are two types of procedural wings floating around the KSP mods, but you need to specifically find the B9 variant.  Regular procedural wings have no real interface.

I also support the wings using FAR.

Next, I use procedural parts for all cylinder, cone, and smooth cone shapes.  In the L-16s above, that's the engine cowling that extends back into the tail booms, and the shaft for the  outrigger float pontoons.

Utilizing Real Fuels along side Proc. Parts can make me use them as fuel tanks.  I'm not sure if the wings need real fuels as well, but they have wing tank functionality that is extremely useful and dynamic with their size.

 

I'm not entirely sure of which mod the surface tail extender comes with, but that's what I made the tail booms themselves out of.  (I flipped them around and turned them upside down so their flat surface was facing up.)  The STE has a size and aspect tweak that allows me to make it fat and long, or fat and short, or even tiny, which makes it perfect as a wing end-cap.

But you'll definitely want Kerbal Aircraft Expansion, and Airplane Plus.

For wheels and gear, check Kerbal Foundries.

 

For engines, check into AJE or Advanced Jet Engine.  That'll get you things like accurate turboprops and jet behavior.  Remember to do a version check for everything you grab and pull it from the githubs instead of spacedock.

For cockpits and cargo bays/ramps... uh...  Phantom Works.  Check anything that comments on SSTO or mk whatever parts extras.

 

Not sure which mod gave it to me, but the antennae on the cockpit are called kommutronski.  I use them for aircraft antennae since they're swept.  There used to be a mod back in the day that was one part, and it was the 'shark fin' antenna.  But that's been buried a long time.  I miss it.

 

 

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Today I made Cape Hook Global (X-KCHG).  It's on the southern land hook just south of where Kerbin City sits.  I saw the approach lights that approximate KC INTL's airport location and kept well across the bay to satisfy that potential issue.

 

 

I already have the top-down stored for @MaxPeck.

[MaxPeck]

22 hours ago, AdmiralTigerclaw said:

 

I already have the top-down stored for @MaxPeck

Thanks!  I haven’t forgotten you. 

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Okay, so I've got a Bifrost International almost completed, but I want some input from you guys on stuff for the future.

 

1: Airports already open, or closed?  From one perspective, it is a game progress feature to open the airports as you go along.  But from a realism standpoint, the space program isn't going to own all these airports.  I'm open to opinions on this matter.  I could even say the airports can be open, but not the two spaceports.

 

2: @Eskandare  I never got an answer as to whether or not you'd like your bases included in my base information chart.  If the bases are intended to be hidden, this information chart gives their locations away without remorse. 

 

3: Further, I'm going to need to figure out how you'd like to integrate it with KSR officially.  Would you like to include it in the package at the end of work?  Or separate?  It's your assets, but I've been putting a huge amount of time into this.

 

EDIT: And now I have some... creatively used assets to create something...

 

 

 

Just play this in the background.

 

I'd like it to be functional, but I'm not sure which would be better.  Having it using the KK working kerbals, or having you actually purchase a supply to fly back to base with.

 

Edited May 31, 2018 by AdmiralTigerclaw

[aeroeng14]

On ‎5‎/‎30‎/‎2018 at 7:57 PM, AdmiralTigerclaw said:

Okay, so I've got a Bifrost International almost completed, but I want some input from you guys on stuff for the future.

1: Airports already open, or closed?  From one perspective, it is a game progress feature to open the airports as you go along....

I, personally, would like to have just a handful of airports open initially. Maybe one international and a smaller airport open in each continent or region so I can hop around early to mid game. I agree about the progression aspect, but we can do that with late game funds as long as there are exploration "staging posts" available for Kerbin from the get go. Keep the spaceports closed.

By the way, thanks for putting these airports together! I can't wait to add them and they go a long ways to making Kerbin feel alive.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

I didn't take a picture of Bifrost to make a fancy postcard image with, but I took one of tonight's work:

 

Welcome to BottomsUp International.

 

 

I wanted to put it up on that hill to the left at first.  The plateau-like spot is begging for an airfield with a view.  Unfortunately, the airport is too large.  So I'll see about poking at putting something nifty there later.

 

 

I'm hoping, at some point, someone will do some contract packs similar to Kerbinside GAP.  It'll be awesome.

Edited June 1, 2018 by AdmiralTigerclaw

[Eskandare]

@AdmiralTigerclaw Yes please add my bases to your index. The hidden ones were meant to be hidden for the sake of discovery. As @taniwha says, KSP needs a bit more discovery. Ones that aren't supposed to be hidden are Round Range, Kojave Sands and if I remember right Kamberwick Green

Also I'll be adding a Kandenberg near the big crater.

Edited June 2, 2018 by Eskandare

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

5 hours ago, Eskandare said:

@AdmiralTigerclaw Yes please add my bases to your index. The hidden ones were meant to be hidden for the sake of discovery. As @taniwha says, KSP needs a bit more discovery. Ones that aren't supposed to be hidden are Round Range, Kojave Sands and if I remember right Kamberwick Green

Also I'll be adding a Kandenberg near the big crater.

 

PM me the coordinates where you plan to put that new base as soon as you can.  I've got a local airport planned for a spot near the crater, but I need to make sure I don't set it right on top of your new one.

[Eskandare]

2 minutes ago, AdmiralTigerclaw said:

 

PM me the coordinates where you plan to put that new base as soon as you can.  I've got a local airport planned for a spot near the crater, but I need to make sure I don't set it right on top of your new one.

The new base is going to be on the 90 degree latitude mark just south of the crater and near the shore.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

15 minutes ago, Eskandare said:

The new base is going to be on the 90 degree latitude mark just south of the crater and near the shore.

 

90 degrees latitude is the north pole.

[Eskandare]

47 minutes ago, AdmiralTigerclaw said:

 

90 degrees latitude is the north pole.

oops longitude, along the equator.

Edited June 2, 2018 by Eskandare

[Drew Kerman]

2 hours ago, Eskandare said:

oops longitude, along the equator.

180° longitude is where the crater is at

Edited June 2, 2018 by Drew Kerman

[Vonnmillard]

Can we have a North Pole Base?