[1.8x - 1.11x] Kerbal Weather Project (KWP) v1.0.0

[oliverstr]

Wow this mod is really cool! But does it stop functioning after 5 years in game time?

[Daniel Prates]

I am dying to try this, but first I would like to know if this is considered CPU-heavy. Did anyone try it yet? 

[Kerminator K-100]

2 hours ago, vardicd said:

I see this mod is listed as 1.8 to 1.11 compatible, but would the version of kerballoons linked above work in 1.10? I'd like to try this mod, and kerballoons but i'm still playing in the previous version, as there are several core mods I use that haven't been upgraded to 1.11 yet. 

Just tested it and it does

7 minutes ago, Daniel Prates said:

I am dying to try this, but first I would like to know if this is considered CPU-heavy. Did anyone try it yet? 

Yes. Extremely although it seems to be more heavy on the GPU. I went from roughly 50 - 60 FPS to 5 - 8 FPS.

Edited January 5, 2021 by Kerminator K-100

[StarExplorerAndromeda]

This is amazing! I would love to see this integrated with  EVE and other cloud mods where the clouds you see in the sky could produce rain, snow, hail, lightning, etc. 

[Kerminator K-100]

2 hours ago, vardicd said:

I see this mod is listed as 1.8 to 1.11 compatible, but would the version of kerballoons linked above work in 1.10? I'd like to try this mod, and kerballoons but i'm still playing in the previous version, as there are several core mods I use that haven't been upgraded to 1.11 yet. 

I think @cmet24 has actually taken over development. There is a new CKAN release and Spacedock has a new one. I think it would be backwards compatible.   https://spacedock.info/mod/2608/KerBalloons

[Daniel Prates]

1 hour ago, Kerminator K-100 said:

I went from roughly 50 - 60 FPS to 5 - 8 FPS.

Jeeez... that's prohibitive. 

[Stone Blue]

6 hours ago, Poodmund said:

This is one of the coolest KSP related things... I have ever seen. @cmet24 your site is amazing too.

I agree... @cmet24 any chance of converting it to a downloadable .pdf?

1 hour ago, Daniel Prates said:

Jeeez... that's prohibitive. 

Holy cow.... thats worse than Scatterer for me...and I cant even *run* Scatterer on a *stcok* install on my potato... 

Edited January 6, 2021 by Stone Blue

[cmet24]

@Snark: Started working on this mod back in March 2020 at the start of quarantine. I’ve been working on it every other weekend since.

@Kerminator K-100: the KWP GUI can be accessed anytime you are in flight on Kerbin or in orbit of Kerbin. So basically, any craft you build will “experience” weather, even Kerbal parachutes! I haven't tested the mod with Kerbalism so I'm unsure of its compatibility. The only conflicts I've discovered are with mods that also uses modularflightintegrator to override stock aerodynamics and thermodynamics. 

@WarriorSabe: The MPAS model used to simulate Kerbin’s weather for KWP is extremely complex and is primarily designed to run on supercomputers. That said, it can be run at coarse resolution on cheap clusters (@Shawn Kerman) like the one I built, for a little under the price of a mid-range MacBook pro. If there was sufficient interest in adding weather to a particular planet pack, I might consider running MPAS for a Kerbin-like planet with a different terrain/biome configuration. MPAS works well for Kerbin because Kerbin’s atmospheric constituents and sea level pressure are identical or similar to Earth’s.

There is a NASA model called ROCKE-3D that is capable of simulating atmospheres like those of Venus, Mars, and Titan (to some extent). I actually got the model running last Spring, but it would have required quite a bit of additional FORTRAN code to adapt it to Kerbin due to the presence of oceans. That said, perhaps in the future a model like ROCKE-3D could be used to create a climatology for Eve or Duna.  

The hardest part of KWP was getting wind to work with stock and figuring out how to shrink the 1TB of model data from MPAS simulations into a small enough dataset that would still provide enjoyable gameplay without straining memory and load times.

@FreeThinker: I need to work on a wiki for the climate/weather API. As you can see from my limited post history, I’m fairly new to KSP modding. So, if you are aware of any good examples of mod API’s or have any suggestions on how to better design one that’d be great!

@Clamp-o-Tron: Especially at the Woomerang Launch Site. Some strong mid-latitude cyclones sweep across that peninsula from time to time producing hurricane force winds at the launch site (when point weather data is used).

@oliverstr: the climatology repeats daily (as its an hourly climatology - weather data averaged each hour). Weather data at fixed launch sites will repeat every five years (or every year) depending on whether you've installed the KWP or (KWP-Lite).

@Daniel Prates and @Stone Blue I've created a "lite", pared down, version of KWP that is significantly smaller in size (13 MB) than the full version (84 MB).  I'm not sure if the lite version will significantly improve your performance, but it should hopefully constrain storage and memory usage. I've tested the mod on a desktop and a cheap laptop with Intel HD Graphics. My laptop struggles to run stock KSP with decent framerates (@1080p), so adding KWP has little impact on performance overall for me.

@Stone BlueI'll be organizing much of the content of the website in a power-point (for an upcoming presentation next month). I might convert that presentation into a PDF.

Edited January 6, 2021 by cmet24

[WarriorSabe]

13 hours ago, Kerminator K-100 said:

Also will this work with Kerbalism?

I don't see why not. Nothiing one really uses is affected by the other; the only issue I can think of that might happen is pressure/temperature readouts being somewhat inaccurate

 

3 hours ago, cmet24 said:

That said, it can be run at coarse resolution on cheap clusters

Just how many dollars is cheap here? Your rig looked pretty beefy.

3 hours ago, cmet24 said:

If there was sufficient interest in adding weather to a particular planet pack, I might consider running MPAS for a Kerbin-like planet with a different terrain/biome configuration.

While I don't play it personally, a lot of people play Beyond Home, and so I anticipate that there will be a lot of requests for Rhode.

A way for creators with beefy computers to create their own patches for KWP would also be cool, but I'm not really all that sure how feasible it would be for you to make a data converter or whatever for the public to use coupled with a way to efficeintly externally inject models to the mod; might not be an efficient use of your time (maybe unless you get a lot of requests for models by people who have a rig capable of doing it themselves).

[cmet24]

1 hour ago, WarriorSabe said:

Just how many dollars is cheap here? Your rig looked pretty beefy.

@WarriorSabe Honestly, Its cheaper than it looks . My setup is pretty similar to this build from polyfractal. The total cost of my 2-node cluster was around $550 USD per node, making it a little cheaper than a macbook pro. Most of the components were second-hand and purchased through Ebay. I built the server around three years ago, before the cryptocurrency boom, so I'm not sure what the going price for an open compute setup would be today. 

1 hour ago, WarriorSabe said:

A way for creators with beefy computers to create their own patches for KWP would also be cool, but I'm not really all that sure how feasible it would be for you to make a data converter or whatever for the public to use coupled with a way to efficeintly externally inject models to the mod; might not be an efficient use of your time (maybe unless you get a lot of requests for models by people who have a rig capable of doing it themselves).

You bring up an excellent point. Making KWP more modular would be a great way to democratize it. At present KWP reads binary files containing multi-dimensional arrays of climate and weather data. These binary files are created from NetCDF files. In the future, I plan on producing a GitHub repository containing python jupyter-notebooks demonstrating how to read and analyze Kerbin weather and climate data. Other creators could then use Python or their preferred language to create 3-D weather datasets in NetCDF format which could be written to binary files readable by KWP.  

Regarding Beyond Home, if I read the config file correct, Rhode has 0.78x Kerbin gravity and a rotation rate of ~13 hrs. It would be interesting to see how a reduction in gravitational acceleration and rotation rate would affect climate simulations. Kaspi and Showman (2015) suggest that decreasing gravitational acceleration and slowing the rotation rate would tend to weaken the general circulation of the atmosphere and produce a smaller equator-to-pole temperature gradient.

Edited January 6, 2021 by cmet24

[FreeThinker]

7 hours ago, cmet24 said:

@FreeThinker: I need to work on a wiki for the climate/weather API. As you can see from my limited post history, I’m fairly new to KSP modding. So, if you are aware of any good examples of mod API’s or have any suggestions on how to better design one that’d be great!

I think it should be sufficient if you could simply expose a public static class with a few simple methods that would  return  a basic double given a specific longitude and latitude . For me in particular I'm intrested in getting the current temperature , overcast percentage and air moisture .

This would allow me to replace my current simplistic sinus weater model which affect the amount of beamed power reaching space or surface.

Edited January 6, 2021 by FreeThinker

[linuxgurugamer]

19 hours ago, cmet24 said:

Required Mods

• Toolbar Controller
• ModularFlightIntegrator

ToolbarController depends on ClickThroughBlocker, you should add that as a dependency 

[linuxgurugamer]

Just an FYI to all, I had been working on KerBalloons for the past month, and released it last night.  My version of KerBalloons does work in 1.10, it's what I was using to test

The two mods are somewhat incompatible, in that the parts are duplicated, the directory is duplicated, 

My version removes 47 models from the mod (all the balloons) and has only a single part, which can be configured for any of the balloon types. This reduces the part count in the editor, and IMHO is more flexible;  when I first tested this, the 48 balloon parts was confusing and took time to find the right one.  Anyway, if you want to try mine, the beta is here (I don't expect any problems, but you never know)

 

[Drew Kerman]

No, seriously my heart skipped a beat when I saw this thread. This is exactly what I've always expected a weather mod to be - someone actually interested in climatology (likely from an educational perspective as you are as well) running an external simulation that feeds data into the game. Magnifico, amazing to finally see it come to be. I need a moment here...

phew...

22 hours ago, cmet24 said:

KWP is compatible with the aerodynamics overhaul: Ferram Aerospace Research (FAR). Note that since FAR overrides KSP's thermodynamic system, pressure and temperature data from KWP will not affect flight dynamics when FAR is installed. Note that FAR may not be compatible with the latest version of KSP.

what's not clear tho is if this is just the current state or a permanent conflict. Have you spoken to @dkavolis, the current FAR maintainer at all? Can FAR be modified to accept the values of KWP or does it somehow rely too heavily on the values it uses?

I'm also pinging @Arrowstar to make him aware of this, since his Launch Vehicle Designer models atmospheric pressure and temperature that would be affected by this mod

I look forward very much to testing this out, and seeing how close or far I've been in my own very very general & basic modeling of Kerbin's weather for my KSA roleplay the past 4 years. Hoping I don't have to make too many obvious retcons my use of weather has become more of a story aspect tho - I create weather events to delay launches I need more time to prepare, for example. I've never felt comfortable causing launch delays solely due to weather I've been forced to "make up" on my own. Having the game tell me conditions are not good for launch will add a nice new aspect to dealing with missions I've been missing for years

[Arrowstar]

3 minutes ago, Drew Kerman said:

I'm also pinging @Arrowstar to make him aware of this, since his Launch Vehicle Designer models atmospheric pressure and temperature that would be affected by this mod

You're going to make me rewrite the KSPTOT atmosphere models again, aren't you?

[Drew Kerman]

12 minutes ago, Arrowstar said:

You're going to make me rewrite the KSPTOT atmosphere models again, aren't you?

maaaaaaaaaayyyybeee?

actually tho it may just be good enough to provide a new dialog in LVD that lets you set custom weather parameters to override anything it may have imported from the game. That way users can be in charge of gathering their own weather data, as they should using this mod, and inputting likely weather information for launch day based on those observations when planning their mission.

actually that may be a cool extension to this mod by the author or someone using the API for a companion mod - after a certain length of making observations the mod can start to provide forecasts, the quality of which improve over time the more measurements are taken on  a regular basis with balloons, or done from orbit. Since the simulation has already been determined, creating the forecasts is really just looking ahead in the data and making slight modifications to make them less accurate at the beginning

Edited January 6, 2021 by Drew Kerman

[wallum61]

This is certainly an incredible feat of science in the public! I wish you luck at you AMS conference!
Regarding the ~220 mods you tested with; is there a list such that we can ensured drag-the-files compatibility? 

[ballisticfox0]

Hello,

I'm very interested in this mod and what it will mean log term for the KSP modding community, specifically the planet modding/Kopernicus community. I was wondering if you are planning to have multi-planet support (different models for Eve, Duna, Laythe, etc) and/or custom planet support with easy to add models for modded planets in the future. This could really diversify planets.

Also do you have any experience in ROCKE-3D? If so can you help me create some models for a couple planets from the Galaxies Unbound mod?

Edited January 6, 2021 by ballisticfox0

[goldenpeach]

First of all, welcome to the forum!

 

This is, without doubt, a very good mod and bring a lot of interesting challenges and goals to the stock game.

 

When looking at the mod's GUI in flight, I noticed there was two "modes": climatology and weather. It looks like switching from one mode to another results in different weather conditions as well as a significant performance difference - the weather mode being heavier on the CPU.

 

What's the difference between those two modes?

[cmet24]

7 hours ago, linuxgurugamer said:

Just an FYI to all, I had been working on KerBalloons for the past month, and released it last night.  My version of KerBalloons does work in 1.10, it's what I was using to test

The two mods are somewhat incompatible, in that the parts are duplicated, the directory is duplicated, 

My version removes 47 models from the mod (all the balloons) and has only a single part, which can be configured for any of the balloon types. This reduces the part count in the editor, and IMHO is more flexible;  when I first tested this, the 48 balloon parts was confusing and took time to find the right one.  Anyway, if you want to try mine, the beta is here (I don't expect any problems, but you never know)

 

As a newbie, I didn't do my homework to ensure KerBalloons was no longer being maintained. That's completely my fault and I apologize for the duplicate mod release. I've updated my original post for KerBalloons, as well as all references to KerBalloons on KWP pages to point towards @linuxgurugamer update of KerBalloons. His work is a significant improvement over previous iterations of the mod and should be the go to release for users looking to add balloons to KSP. 

Also, thank you for pointing out the missing dependency! I've since added Click Through Blocker to the list of required mods.

Edited January 6, 2021 by cmet24

[BigFatStupidHead]

This mod sounds extremely exciting, and I look forward to its further development! I have wanted realistic ANY weather patterns to exist in KSP for the longest time, and so thank you for bringing it to us!

[Z3R0_0NL1N3]

This is an awesome new addition!

I wonder if it would be possible to make it work with one of the visual mods that adds clouds.

By the way, though, you should add the forum page link to SpaceDock

[Shawn Kerman]

I can't seem to compile  ROCKE-3D because it requires linux (or MacOS with a specific program) according to this document. https://simplex.giss.nasa.gov/gcm/doc/UserGuide/System_requirements.html or MPAS do to the large amount of C libraries it requires, is their a compiled version of MPAS somewhere that you know about?

Edited January 7, 2021 by Shawn Kerman
Changed MPAS query

[linuxgurugamer]

5 hours ago, cmet24 said:

As a newbie, I didn't do my homework to ensure KerBalloons was no longer being maintained. That's completely my fault and I apologize for the duplicate mod release. I've updated my original post for KerBalloons, as well as all references to KerBalloons on KWP pages to point towards @linuxgurugamer update of KerBalloons. His work is a significant improvement over previous iterations of the mod and should be the go to release for users looking to add balloons to KSP. 

Also, thank you for pointing out the missing dependency! I've since added Click Through Blocker to the list of required mods.

No problem, the work you are doing with the weather is amazing.

How much impact is there on the cpu?

[Shawn Kerman]

I do not know if the mod is more pc intensive, but I do know I don't drop frames with it installed. Here's me in game with no fps drop, and what ksp is currently taking. I have max graphics settings on btw.

Edited January 7, 2021 by Shawn Kerman
Added settings info.