Kerbal Space Program Update 1.5 Grand Discussion thread

[FeofileGrotter]

I think this update is too small to refresh the game and lose mods.

[TeslaPenguin1]

4 minutes ago, FeofileGrotter said:

I think this update is too small to refresh the game and lose mods.

I agree. Also, all the bugs...

Definitely not updating.

[FrostedShoe]

So... aerodynamics. Problems and solutions

Firstly, all my spaceplanes yaw all over the place down the runway, turning off engine gimbal helped

Second, My planes wont leave the runway.  I fixed that by setting the authority of the canards to 150! Can't believed they didn't stall but ok...

Third, my standard Mk 2 plane couldn't get above 4000m or 300m/s on it's normal climb. I solved that by climbing at a shallower angle.

After relearning how to fly my planes I'm pleased to report they all have similar if not better performance. My Mk 3 test plane that couldn't fly before because it didn't have enough wing now gets to orbit fully loaded with more fuel than it's modified (extra wings) sibling.

Some of this feels like a deliberate tweak and some of it feels like a bug. However relearning how to fly has given me something to do and it's not broken so much nothing works.

I also managed to get my planes in the air by adjusting the drag in the cheat menu so I have to option of flying my old planes still too.

As I work out more solutions I will post them here (assuming more come to me)

Edited October 17, 2018 by FrostedShoe

[NHunter]

My experiment with my workhorse OPT spaceplane showed a tiny drop in dv (enough that I can chalk it up to being a little out of shape after flying nothing but conventional rockets for the last week). I haven't noticed any really serious problems with "new" aerodynamics yet.

What I did notice problems with is map view. For whatever reason trying to switch to it from craft view causes the application to stop responding to ~15-20 seconds every single time. This doesn't happen when switching away from the map view, for whatever reason.

[kojot]

15 hours ago, KevinJohn3D said:

Finally someone else with the same problem!!

I've got a ship with 4 Nervs and 4.1k in DV according to KER and as soon as I make a maneuver it says it will take 10 minutes... even if it is only for a couple m/s.

I notice that your ship also is exclusively LF (as is normal for Nervs). I'm wondering if the burn time is calculating DV using LF + Ox? So it would think it couldn't do the maneuver even though it can? I dunno, just a thought. It's frustrating though.

Edit:

Tested it by added some rocket fuel and plopping my ship into orbit with debug menu. Now the burn time says 3 seconds but it's still red text and won't update when I alter the maneuver. So something is wrong with Nirv dv calculation I guess.

Same here.

[Devoblue]

The body lift on tanks has completely disappeared too.  It's not just space plane parts.  A 1m rocket that I used to be able to glide back to launch pad and steer (slightly, but enough) by tilting now makes no changes to its trajectory.  I can turn it sideways and it slows down to 60 m/s, but this makes no change to where it was going to land.  It lands where the boost back burn leaves it.

There was no mention of this in the changelog.  I can only assume it was not intentional.

Otherwise great update, but sticking with 1.4.5 now until this is fixed or I redesign my rockets to use the stock gridfins

[Maple Kerman]

cool

Edited September 24, 2020 by Maple Kerman

[Snark]

7 hours ago, FeofileGrotter said:

I think this update is too small to refresh the game and lose mods.

"Lose mods" how, exactly?  Do you have specific mods that you're concerned about that you know will be broken by KSP 1.5?

The smaller the update, the less of the game's guts it touches, and the less likely it is to break mods.

For example, I've got about a dozen of my own mods that I'm currently maintaining, and most of them were completely unaffected by the 1.5 update and work just fine-- not even a recompile needed.  The only ones that I needed to update were the ones that specifically work with stuff that 1.5 changed-- for example, BetterBurnTime is all about the burn time indicator on the navball, and KSP 1.5 overhauled that, so naturally that needed an update to keep up.

Of course, there are a few mods out there, like Kopernicus, that are explicitly locked to a particular version so there will be a bit of a hiatus there until they're updated.  But my experience has been that for most KSP updates, the vast majority of mods are pretty much unaffected and can continue being used as-is.

(Of course, if there's some particular mod that you critically depend on and that's broken, then it doesn't matter if there are a thousand other mods out there that aren't.    Just checking to make sure you're not just assuming they're broken.)

[Tyko]

7 minutes ago, Snark said:

"Lose mods" how, exactly?  Do you have specific mods that you're concerned about that you know will be broken by KSP 1.5?

The smaller the update, the less of the game's guts it touches, and the less likely it is to break mods.

For example, I've got about a dozen of my own mods that I'm currently maintaining, and most of them were completely unaffected by the 1.5 update and work just fine-- not even a recompile needed.  The only ones that I needed to update were the ones that specifically work with stuff that 1.5 changed-- for example, BetterBurnTime is all about the burn time indicator on the navball, and KSP 1.5 overhauled that, so naturally that needed an update to keep up.

Of course, there are a few mods out there, like Kopernicus, that are explicitly locked to a particular version so there will be a bit of a hiatus there until they're updated.  But my experience has been that for most KSP updates, the vast majority of mods are pretty much unaffected and can continue being used as-is.

(Of course, if there's some particular mod that you critically depend on and that's broken, then it doesn't matter if there are a thousand other mods out there that aren't.    Just checking to make sure you're not just assuming they're broken.)

Kopernicus was updated yesterday...

 

[klesh]

That new MKI Command Pod is missing its internal clickable window view; when the MH pods and the MK1-2 overhaul was released they suffered the same problems.

[juanml82]

Why should the new stock dV calculator be running every frame? If a ship hasn't fired it's engines, it's rcs, hasn't broken something, isn't drilling, hasn't docked or hasn't dipped into an atmosphere, it's dV will remain the same. The only exception I can think about are mods like those which add liquid hydrogen and a boil-off mechanic, but in that case, it should be up to the mods to require the game to update the dV readout.

It sounds inefficient.

[Serenity]

2 hours ago, juanml82 said:

Why should the new stock dV calculator be running every frame? If a ship hasn't fired it's engines, it's rcs, hasn't broken something, isn't drilling, hasn't docked or hasn't dipped into an atmosphere, it's dV will remain the same. The only exception I can think about are mods like those which add liquid hydrogen and a boil-off mechanic, but in that case, it should be up to the mods to require the game to update the dV readout.

It sounds inefficient.

You might have answered your own question there.Its obvious that most of these new features/expansion are added as patches and not core changing additions.

Meaning its easier/faster to have it run every frame than take the effort to dig deep and add the conditions you mentioned to work the right way.

Anyways its just a wild guess.

Edited October 18, 2018 by Boyster

[JPLRepo]

3 hours ago, juanml82 said:

Why should the new stock dV calculator be running every frame? If a ship hasn't fired it's engines, it's rcs, hasn't broken something, isn't drilling, hasn't docked or hasn't dipped into an atmosphere, it's dV will remain the same. The only exception I can think about are mods like those which add liquid hydrogen and a boil-off mechanic, but in that case, it should be up to the mods to require the game to update the dV readout.

It sounds inefficient.

It doesn't.

[AlamoVampire]

I have been absent from ksp for over a year and was wondering if Squad has ever flipped the code to on for the Reentry plasma effects that have been a dormant set of code for a very long time. I know of the mod for it and used to use it and will again if needs be. Feel free to relocate this query if I missed proper placement, it just felt like here was a reasonable spot. op 0103 10/18/18

[RealKerbal3x]

19 minutes ago, AlamoVampire said:

I have been absent from ksp for over a year and was wondering if Squad has ever flipped the code to on for the Reentry plasma effects that have been a dormant set of code for a very long time. I know of the mod for it and used to use it and will again if needs be. Feel free to relocate this query if I missed proper placement, it just felt like here was a reasonable spot. op 0103 10/18/18

Re-entry plasma has been in the game for a long time. The animation was added in 0.19 and the actual heat simulation was added in 1.0.

Unless you mean something else. In that case I don’t know.

But welcome back!

[AlamoVampire]

35 minutes ago, RealKerbal3x said:

Re-entry plasma has been in the game for a long time. The animation was added in 0.19 and the actual heat simulation was added in 1.0.

Unless you mean something else. In that case I don’t know.

But welcome back!

Thanks for the Welcome Back! Allow me to clarify, I refer to extended plasma trails behind objects on reentry. My understanding of the Reentry Particle Effects mod that I used a year or so ago is that it activated code already in game. You know the plume of smoke that you have as you launch? My understanding is that plume is similar to the plasma trails but those trails are longer and well orange and firy lol. Id share a picture but im not at my pc. The logic back then for not having it enabled as more than just around say your command pod was something about 32 bit and unity limits at the time, but even before I left we had 64 bit support, unity 5 iTHINK, and I think we have an even newer Unity now. Thus my curiosity to know if proper plasma trails were turned on now. I hope I clarified better but fear I was too rambling. op 0213 10/18/18

[Orc]

Hi all, 

 

Forgive me if this is a stupid question BUT:

I did the upgrade from 1.4.x to 1.5 earlier this morning. Unfortunately I'm at work so I can't actually run the upgrade. The new 1.5 KSP folder comes to about 2.2GB, whereas the 1.4.x folder weighed in at around 3.5GB. Is this right? Or did something go wrong? Or do I need to copy the 1.5 folder over the the existing 1.4.x folder (incremental upgrade - I think its called). Or does this vast difference in size reflect the fact that 32bit has been dropped?

 

Any wisdom would be welcome.

 

Thank you all, especially the KSP developers for making such a TOTALLY AWESOME, MINDBLOWING GAME!

 

Regards

Orc

 

P.S.: Forgot to mention, if it makes a difference, Steam version of KSP, Windows OS.

Edited October 18, 2018 by Orc
Forgot something that might be important!

[AVaughan]

@Orc The old 32 bit KSP_Data directory was 1.55 Gb, so dropping 32bit support saves a lot of space.  2.2 GB sounds is about right.  

[Deddly]

@AlamoVampire I remember that mod and the discussion about it. If I remember correctly, it wasn't as simple as we thought to just add it to the stock game as is. I myself installed the mod on your recommendation, and it did look great on capsules, but I didn't keep the mod for very long because it would do the same thing for fast-moving planes that were flying high in the atmosphere, which looked really odd. So if that feature is to be added to stock, it will need quite a bit of tweaking for it to look right for all users. I would like to see that, though.

 

And welcome back

[Edit] Oh yes, and to answer your question, it hasn't been added yet as far as I have observed. 

Edited October 18, 2018 by Deddly

[AlamoVampire]

@Deddly well that stinks that that visual is still inoperable as a stock feature. I hope that it becomes stock someday soon. But you are right that it would need tweaks, chief among which imho would be a toggle to turn on or off at player discretion. Oh and silly question the dlc is on Steam? op 0440 10/18/18

[AlamoVampire]

Oh thx Deddly

[juanml82]

9 hours ago, JPLRepo said:

It doesn't.

Huh... you do realize that's not exactly convincing, right?

One of the gripes I've always had with this game is how easily it turns into Kerbal Slideshow Program. Back when contracts were first introduced (and IIRC it still required Final Frontier to get base building contracts), I'd happily challenge myself to land and enlarge bases in Minmus flats, and the performance would steadily decrease: I would have a single ship (a base) with over 100 total parts, plenty of docking ports (because I only recently read that open docking ports contribute to degrading performance), sitting in a 0° degree slope, doing absolutely nothing other than picking electricity from the solar panels and the game would become unplayable because every frame, it would check every single part for every single physics calculation as if something had happened during the new frame, even though the base was as static as it can get.

If it was Skyrim, it would be as if the moment it loads the introductory scene at Helgen, it also loads every single texture in the game into the system ram and then every single object at Helgen is checked every frame to verify if it had been impacted by a sword or arrow... even though the  sequence is scripted and the player character can't even interact with the scenery. Would Skyrim be playable had it been developed that way?

And now that a much needed feature is finally added, it adds to the bloat.

Edited October 18, 2018 by juanml82

[Shadowmage]

29 minutes ago, juanml82 said:

as if something had happened during the new frame, even though the base was as static as it can get.

That particular behavior is actually determined by Unity, and entirely out of SQUADs control.  More specifically, Unity does not allow for specifying local varying gravity as would be needed by KSP (e.g. two probes within the same physics bubble will have slightly different gravity directions), so KSP has to apply gravity forces 'manually'. AFAIK, if a rigidbody (such as used in every Part in KSP) is being subject to an external force, the physics simulation will not let them 'rest'.  Normally if a rigidbody is being effected only by gravity, but not moving (i.e. was landed), it will be put into a 'rest' state and physics calculations suspended until there is new external interaction (be it from collision, engaging an engine, whatever).

TLDR:  Unity physics simulation is not robust enough to handle KSP's physics requirements in an optimal fashion.

Just thought I would clear up a few things regarding Unity and physics...

[rudi1291]

Not sure if it was mentioned before... but whats with the lighting in the menu scene? It looks like there are two light sources

[UomoCapra]

On 10/15/2018 at 4:26 PM, cameronrichards56 said:

So I have a question will this update roll out Xbox and PS4 because I do not remember the last time i heard either of those versions got an update

We are currently working on KSP Enhanced Edition on both PS4 and XB1. We will give you more details in an upcoming Newsletter