Wind

[linuxgurugamer]

On 6/7/2022 at 6:29 PM, Vl3d said:

Fine, I'll settle for rain, snow, wind, clouds, storms with lightning and thunder, seasons, climates.

Wind, flooding and snow weight would impact buildings also.

But all this with classic water AND other materials like methane etc.

Should make for some very interesting planets.

 

See this:

On 6/7/2022 at 4:00 PM, linuxgurugamer said:

Do you have any idea what adding multiple simulations can do?  Sure, each type of sim may not have a large impact, but as you add more, it can get exponential in the impact

Anytime you add something like that, there will be significant overhead.  How much of course will depend on how complicated the simulation is.  And, if it gets simplified too much, you might as well not have it.

 

I'd suggest that you play Microsoft Flight Simulator, rather than KSP, if you want that level of realism.  

[Pthigrivi]

And also, devil's advocate, precise landing in atmo is pretty difficult as is. If there were just no wind effects on flight at all I'd be fine with that. 

[intelliCom]

On 6/7/2022 at 9:20 PM, linuxgurugamer said:

You do realize this is a game, not a complete, full blown simulation?

As I recall mentioning once before; KSP is a game first, simulator second. 

On 6/7/2022 at 8:59 PM, Vl3d said:

Materials density, viscosity and temperature -> ground / liquid / gas temperature transfer -> evaporation / condensation / sublimation -> rain and snow -> surface liquid flow -> atmospheric mass movement and interaction with terrain -> currents and turbulence -> wind -> clouds and storms -> seasons -> climates.

Wind, flooding and snow weight would impact buildings also.

I want all this.

Yeah, good luck simulating all of this with reasonable accuracy in real-time without an RTX 5090 TI and Intel i12 (spoiler: they don't exist, and you couldn't afford them if they existed anyway)

Edited June 10, 2022 by intelliCom

[The Aziz]

Well I mean... Complex weather simulations are a thing, however, their purpose is exactly to simulate weather, and calculations probably take some time. None of this is going to happen in real time and I'm not willing to accept longer loading times to see some semi realistic wind gusts. I've had my fair share of waiting in KSP1, thank you.

[Bej Kerman]

On 6/8/2022 at 10:37 PM, DeadJohn said:

I absolutely do not want wind gusts, terrain effects, and other weather variables.

What if other people do?

On 6/8/2022 at 10:37 PM, DeadJohn said:

It would clutter the GUI too much during launch.

Would a little wind direction arrow be that bad?

On 6/8/2022 at 10:37 PM, DeadJohn said:

It's a game.

No, it's a simulation with a game on top of it and having wind effects would go a long way to making routine rocket trajectories and aircraft physics not feel so sterile.

6 hours ago, The Aziz said:

Well I mean... Complex weather simulations are a thing, however, their purpose is exactly to simulate weather, and calculations probably take some time. None of this is going to happen in real time and I'm not willing to accept longer loading times to see some semi realistic wind gusts. I've had my fair share of waiting in KSP1, thank you.

A choice between "Wind and longer loading" and "no wind and faster loading" is a false dichotomy. Did you forget about how well KSP 2 will be optimized from KSP 1? No reason at all to bring KSP 1 up when KSP 2 is going to be built completely different.

[t_v]

15 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

On 6/8/2022 at 5:37 PM, DeadJohn said:

It's a game.

No, it's a simulation with a game on top of it and having wind effects would go a long way to making routine rocket trajectories and aircraft physics not feel so sterile.

Ok, on this I have to disagree, and admonish you for using this particular argument because in previous threads, you were adamant that a realistic feature should not be implemented if it did not fit gameplay.  KSP is a simulator in the same way that Goat Simulator is a simulator, because they are both games which use simulation (orbital mechanics, ragdoll mechanics, etc.) to enhance their gameplay. What’s worse, I agree that wind would benefit gameplay a lot, just do not use the argument that it is a simulator to justify that. @DeadJohn thinks that this feature would hurt gameplay, and included that remark so that people wouldn’t try justifying the feature by saying that it would be realistic. It also needs to be fun. 

That aside, I think that you wouldn’t even need a UI element to show wind direction. We have clouds already, and we’ve seen that they shift, why not tie that to wind direction? Lots of the visual system already lends itself towards having weather patterns, however simplistic, and I think it would go a long way towards enjoyment if you could catch a jet-stream and save some time flying around. 
 

And lastly, before people wonder about the computational impact of a weather system, @Nazalassa’s system can be run as a low-resolution shader, putting less load on the system than the reflection of the light from one celestial body off of the ship.

[Bej Kerman]

5 minutes ago, t_v said:

Ok, on this I have to disagree, and admonish you for using this particular argument because in previous threads, you were adamant that a realistic feature should not be implemented if it did not fit gameplay.

When?

[DeadJohn]

26 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

On 6/8/2022 at 5:37 PM, DeadJohn said:

I absolutely do not want wind gusts, terrain effects, and other weather variables.

What if other people do?

On 6/8/2022 at 5:37 PM, DeadJohn said:

It would clutter the GUI too much during launch.

Would a little wind direction arrow be that bad?

If other people want something they can  write about it like you did

You may have missed some of what I said, though. I started with "Adding wind would be okay, as an option." That part could be shown with a simple direction arrow that changes size/shape/color with the wind speed.

However, adding gusts and terrain effects makes a simple arrow insufficient. Winds might be calm on the ground yet strong above local mountains. That's why I think the GUI would become cluttered by a "wind simulator". Players would want to see wind direction, speed, turbulence on the launch pad, as well as seeing all of that predicted at altitude to know whether it's safe to launch. That is too much info IMO.

[t_v]

1 hour ago, Bej Kerman said:

When?

This, for one example. The point being, it doesn't matter whether a feature or non-feature is realistic or not. At its core, KSP's design will be based on whether it promotes good gameplay (gameplay over graphics was your main line in that thread) and not whether it is realistic or not. It is fine to want this feature, but remember, it does not have to be realistic. Ideally, the devs implement realistic features that also aid gameplay, but I would be dismayed if they did not include any quality of life features that are unrealistic simply because they were unrealistic. 

34 minutes ago, DeadJohn said:

However, adding gusts and terrain effects makes a simple arrow insufficient. Winds might be calm on the ground yet strong above local mountains. That's why I think the GUI would become cluttered by a "wind simulator". Players would want to see wind direction, speed, turbulence on the launch pad, as well as seeing all of that predicted at altitude to know whether it's safe to launch. That is too much info IMO.

That sounds like too much to me as well, but luckily nothing here is concrete. I think that having slowly changing wind speed and direction would be helpful, such that during an ascent, you wouldn't suddenly be constantly in changing conditions. But of course, as you move around the planet in the atmosphere, you could easily experience different wind speeds and directions. As for higher winds in higher parts of the atmosphere, those are problematic for players who really want to get absolutely perfect ascents, but unless there is a hurricane only 10 degrees away from the launchpad, I don't think that wind would pose much of a danger to launching. In the end, I'd be happy as long as there are some situations in which wind plays a significant factor in moving through the atmosphere

[Bej Kerman]

3 hours ago, t_v said:

but remember, it does not have to be realistic

There's a great big blinding difference between how realistic the graphics are and how realistic the gameplay is. Wind is a challenge that can be overcome with practice. Pitch blackness between the stars is just a hinderance that makes the player resort to spamming lights (which, let's face it, is hardly a realistic solution). Don't think you were admonishing me for a good reason; you missed the big difference in context between posts.

Edited June 10, 2022 by Bej Kerman

[t_v]

1 hour ago, Bej Kerman said:

There's a great big blinding difference between how realistic the graphics are and how realistic the gameplay is. Wind is a challenge that can be overcome with practice. Pitch blackness between the stars is just a hinderance that makes the player resort to spamming lights (which, let's face it, is hardly a realistic solution). Don't think you were admonishing me for a good reason; you missed the big difference in context between posts.

Wind is just a hindrance that makes the player resort to a host of annoying solutions instead of being able to do a clean gravity turn. Pitch blackness between the stars is a challenge that can be overcome by clever planning. If I can reverse your argument and it still makes sense, then there isn’t enough of a difference. 

[t_v]

To be more direct, I’m asking to turn the conversation away from realism, because ultimately, while I am certain the devs will mostly implement realistic things, the gameplay takes priority over realism. I’m sorry if I made it personal to you.  You made a good point that since wind is realistic, there is no impediment to adding it to the game (unlike magic drives or hollow planets with black holes in the middle), but talking about it being realistic as a reason to include that feature will lead nowhere, as we have seen in that thread I mentioned. 
 

Sorry everyone else for temporarily disrupting this thread, but I didn’t want it to devolve. One more thing I will add that contributes to the discussion is that wind conditions across multiple planets could differ greatly - offering a new aspect to discover about planets that will render them unique. I would love to look at Merbel’s super-flat oceans, which don’t have much wind on them. (Ok, that doesn’t necessarily mean that wind needs to be simulated in that case, but in any case, different wind conditions could bring a lot of variety to the game)

What do you think? Does wind add enough variation to make it a worthwhile addition?

[Vl3d]

On 6/9/2022 at 3:36 PM, linuxgurugamer said:

Anytime you add something like that, there will be significant overhead.  How much of course will depend on how complicated the simulation is.  And, if it gets simplified too much, you might as well not have it.

I don't agree with the last statement. Simulations can be simple, efficient and game-enhancing.

Temperature, atmospheric pressure, biomes, terrain friction - these exist in KSP1 and make the game more interesting.

Rain, snow, clouds - can be visual effects without physics

Wind, storms with lightning and thunder - visuals + simple localized vector fields interacting with the drag physics. EMP effects should be added to the game.

Seasons, climates - calculated with astronomic values, mostly visual and have probability to trigger localized events.

Wind, flooding and snow weight would impact buildings also - it was confirmed that buildings are rigid body arrays, it's just an extension of the weight + drag physics.

I would also hope for destructible terrain, solar wind and radiation.

As a last thought - I think players should not be so quick to judge what is possible to implement and what is not. That decision is up to the devs. We're just talking about the possibility of having cool features.

Edited June 10, 2022 by Vl3d

[linuxgurugamer]

16 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

I don't agree with the last statement. Simulations can be simple, efficient and game-enhancing.

We can agree to disagree.  I base my statements on more than 40 years of software development, which includes nearly 8 years of modding KSP. 

Respectfully, what are you basing your statements on?

17 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

Temperature, atmospheric pressure, biomes, terrain friction - these exist in KSP1 and make the game more interesting.

True, but now you are changing what you said previously:

Quote

Fine, I'll settle for rain, snow, wind, clouds, storms with lightning and thunder, seasons, climates.

Wind, flooding and snow weight would impact buildings also.

But all this with classic water AND other materials like methane etc.

Should make for some very interesting planets.

 

19 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

Wind, storms with lightning and thunder - visuals + simple localized vector fields interacting with the drag physics. EMP effects should be added to the game.

A visual is not a simulation, it's just graphics.  Even so, your statement about "simple localized vector fields" is fraught with peril, there is so much which can go wrong when you start implementing something like that.

20 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

Seasons, climates - calculated with astronomic values, mostly visual and have probability to trigger localized events

Ummm, localized events?  This is yet another new thing, and opens up Pandora's box

21 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

Wind, flooding and snow weight would impact buildings also - it was confirmed that buildings are rigid body arrays, it's just an extension of the weight + drag physics.

and your point is?  Frankly, this is totally (IMHO) unnecessary.  We don't build the buildings, they already exist.  And if you look at the Kennedy Space Center as an example, the VAB has stood for more than 50 years, with minimal damage from weather.  Why waste time implementing something that rarely, if ever, happens?

22 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

I would also hope for destructible terrain, solar wind and radiation.

Your wish list is growing again.  Destructible terrain can be a huge impact on performance for very little ROI.  Solar wind would best be left to a mod, and what would you have radiation do?  I'd also suggest that radiation be left to a mod

[t_v]

13 minutes ago, linuxgurugamer said:

38 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

Wind, flooding and snow weight would impact buildings also - it was confirmed that buildings are rigid body arrays, it's just an extension of the weight + drag physics.

and your point is?  Frankly, this is totally (IMHO) unnecessary.  We don't build the buildings, they already exist.  And if you look at the Kennedy Space Center as an example, the VAB has stood for more than 50 years, with minimal damage from weather.  Why waste time implementing something that rarely, if ever, happens?

I think in this case @Vl3d means colony buildings, which, depending on how poorly you do your architecture, could be very vulnerable to sideways forces or in the case of snow, heavier than normal downwards force. In a previous thread, there was a lot of contention over making this fair, which for me boiled down to showing people a preview of extreme conditions to identify failure points, with a toggle able overlay showing "structural integrity." Thinking back on this, it could also be applied to spacecraft design, sort of like how center of lift is shown, you could also change the angle that you define the wind as coming from and see the "lift" vector change. Not commenting on the intensity of the simulation because that really depends on specific implementation and how many systems are included, but I think from the player perspective this could work. 

[The Aziz]

Once upon a time there was an agreement among most of the community that no random events should be ever added (unless as a mod). Wind, snow, lightning, are all that. You could shove them on a shelf right next to part failures, micrometeorites, solar flares.
All possible mishaps were to be entirely player's fault.

1 hour ago, t_v said:

depending on how poorly you do your architecture, could be very vulnerable to sideways forces

Unless your building is a stick held in the ground with a needle, I wouldn't worry about wind. There's much higher chance that it'll collapse under its own weight (but see below) than that it'll fall over due to some really strong breeze.

1 hour ago, t_v said:

in the case of snow, heavier than normal downwards force.

We'll most likely won't have much control over how dense or strong the scaffolding under a colony is going to be. Besides, it's normal to build something capable of supporting its own weight and then some more. Bit of frozen water won't make a difference, it's not a quickly built exhibition hall or something, it's your only mean of survival on an alien planet.  Plus, in one case, your only mean of leaving said planet - and you're going to put a rocket on top of it. Of course it has to support it. The only way it can collapse is when you really build something crazy and physically unstable (like idk, a looong runway hanging off a huge cliff).

[Bej Kerman]

3 hours ago, t_v said:

Wind is just a hindrance that makes the player resort to a host of annoying solutions instead of being able to do a clean gravity turn. Pitch blackness between the stars is a challenge that can be overcome by clever planning. If I can reverse your argument and it still makes sense, then there isn’t enough of a difference. 

Except your argument doesn't make sense. Pitch blackness is needless visual realism (key word: visual, distinct from actual gameplay realism) that leads to unrealistic solutions I.E. light spamming. Practice doesn't give you laser vision. Practice does let you fly better in windy conditions which is realistic in terms of gameplay and "I want to do a gravity turn" is no excuse when the obvious solution is to practice with navigating hard conditions, as you did when learning to do gravity turns in the first place. Pilots do need to navigate windy conditions, but don't need things on the exterior of the jet to be lit up to interface with its mechanisms, which is why vessels should just be lit up anyway seeing as Jebediah on the inside should not need a light attached to the exterior in order to activate a thermometer. Ambient lighting is only a reflection in gameplay of the fact that astronauts don't need arbitrary lighting on the exterior of the craft in order to interface with various systems. If Jeb wants to activate a thermometer on the hull, he does so without ever seeing the exterior. The player has ambient lighting to show that Jeb really doesn't care how black it is outside.

TL;DR: Turns out "reversing the argument" does not make a good argument in of itself. Again, lighting is completely different from actual gameplay, and the sterile windless plains of Kerbin make for boring flights and landings. Having to deal with wind during booster landing would make things more interesting than just hovering at 50% throttle until the landing legs touch something - a hovering vessel with its thrusters fine tuned to perfect 1TWR should not just hover stationary as if in a vacuum.

[t_v]

1 hour ago, The Aziz said:

Unless your building is a stick held in the ground with a needle, I wouldn't worry about wind. There's much higher chance that it'll collapse under its own weight (but see below) than that it'll fall over due to some really strong breeze.

It’s very true that the weight of snow would barely compare to the weight of metal and it would take really bad construction to make a hurricane topple a metal structure affixed to the ground, but I was pointing out the merits of the idea in those edge cases. For example, in the trailer, there is a pier held up by super long, thin pillars with no horizontal supports, which would fall down in very high winds. That sort of stuff. Overall, the only thing I’d really like to see is wind on ships and planes, because that would make the most difference to gameplay; having it act on colonies would just let you find out your colony has fallen off camera. 

[DeadJohn]

Some of the ideas being tossed around are far too detailed. Remember that KSP parts are somewhat abstracted as "engines" and "cockpits" and "tanks". We don't have to specify fuel pumps for engines, don't have to design ergonomic seating within the cockpit, nor inspect tank welds before use. The rest of the game world should follow a similar model.

 

[Vl3d]

Except for @t_v @Bej Kerman previous posts keep pointing out what "we can't have". I don't like this attitude.

I just ask that you imagine how cool weather effects on planets would be and how much more interesting, beautiful and educational they would make the game.

If not simulated, at least make them visual.

Edited June 11, 2022 by Vl3d

[intelliCom]

21 minutes ago, Vl3d said:

Except for @t_v @Bej Kerman previous posts keep pointing out what "we can't have". I don't like this attitude.

I just ask that you imagine how cool weather effects on planets would be and how much more interesting, beautiful and educational they would make the game.

If not simulated, at least make them visual.

"Visual" in what way? Attempting to visualise realistic wind would still take a lot of processing power, and if they're invisible it doesn't even matter.
I agree that representing some aspects of real physics is nice on paper.

Say you wanted to put a colony on a (theoretically) windy planet like Eve. Building structures that have to deal with wind would be a good way to make things more challenging. But that brings us back full circle, OP's original idea. Simulating proper wind is unnecessary, but a simple, random force applied across game objects alongside the standard gravity should do the trick, just like @Smart Boy said at the start. Think of "wind simulation" in golf games. No fluid dynamics, no influence of temperature, just a singular, linear force that acts upon the ball alongside the stronger, more consistent gravity.

Making wind simulation realistic would be more "educational" for people studying the science of weather. But people playing KSP aren't playing it because they like weather science. Most of them are playing it because they like space exploration. The rest is probably fans of engineering, people who like to make replicas of real-world aircraft, etc.

No advanced realistic simulations. Just really simple smoke and mirrors like video games have always done things.

Edited June 11, 2022 by intelliCom

[Vl3d]

I agree @intelliCom

[Bej Kerman]

5 hours ago, intelliCom said:

"Visual" in what way? Attempting to visualise realistic wind would still take a lot of processing power, and if they're invisible it doesn't even matter.
I agree that representing some aspects of real physics is nice on paper.

Say you wanted to put a colony on a (theoretically) windy planet like Eve. Building structures that have to deal with wind would be a good way to make things more challenging. But that brings us back full circle, OP's original idea. Simulating proper wind is unnecessary, but a simple, random force applied across game objects alongside the standard gravity should do the trick, just like @Smart Boy said at the start. Think of "wind simulation" in golf games. No fluid dynamics, no influence of temperature, just a singular, linear force that acts upon the ball alongside the stronger, more consistent gravity.

Making wind simulation realistic would be more "educational" for people studying the science of weather. But people playing KSP aren't playing it because they like weather science. Most of them are playing it because they like space exploration. The rest is probably fans of engineering, people who like to make replicas of real-world aircraft, etc.

No advanced realistic simulations. Just really simple smoke and mirrors like video games have always done things.

Yep. Wind and weather are important aspects of spaceflight and should be treated as another challenge like structural integrity and heat, but don't need too much detail. I do think that just a single mildly random force may be too simple for aircraft, even if sufficient for rockets.

[pandaman]

I'm not against an abstracted 'simulation' of wind etc.  as long as it seems logical and  believable and not just random.  I think it could add an interesting dynamic.

But there would also need to be some 'tools' to assist the player such as...

HUD indicator of wind speed and direction relative to ship.

Deployable 'Weather Stations' that  can broadcast wind data at that location. 

If practical, ambient visual clues such as waves and vegetation blowing about.

[intelliCom]

32 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

Yep. Wind and weather are important aspects of spaceflight and should be treated as another challenge like structural integrity and heat, but don't need too much detail. I do think that just a single mildly random force may be too simple for aircraft, even if sufficient for rockets.

Perhaps it works in "zones", like large chunks of area that have one global wind direction each that gradually changes in strength and direction over time? That way, wind patterns and cyclones can exist, but with huge amounts of approximation that don't sacrifice too much realism. Also has the advantage of applying wind forces to objects not "in focus" (who tend to ignore atmospheres, though drag would also have to be approximated, perhaps by spending a few seconds of extra loading time to derive values for each stage? That way, the object can have an approximate terminal velocity to slow down, even in the Tracking Station.)