[1.8.x] DMagic Orbital Science: New Science Parts [v1.4.3] [11/2/2019]

[Sandworm]

51 minutes ago, drhay53 said:

I'm fairly sure from the people that I've talked to (I have many collaborators at STSci) that at least some of the DoD telescopes are of the unfolding design. That doesn't mean they're as large as JWST, and certainly wouldn't need to be as they aren't trying to detect galaxies that are 12+ billion light years away

 

The size of the mirror is dictated by how much light you need to see the thing you are looking for.  That in turn is dictated by which frequencies are emitted by your target.  Galaxies cover a relatively broad-range, but I would not be surprised if DoD sats sometimes look at a very narrow range, requiring a larger reflector to gather the needed light.  Specifically, ballistic missile detectors might look for the unique UV light emitted by solid rocket boosters.  That in turn could define the chemicals used and therefore the missile type, and important fact to know before reacting to an unexpected launch.  A narrow frequency + very small target = big optics.

Edited May 20, 2016 by Sandworm

[drhay53]

4 minutes ago, Sandworm said:

The size of the mirror is dictated by how much light you need to see the thing you are looking for.  That in turn is dictated by which frequencies are emitted by your target.  Galaxies cover are relatively broad-range, but I would not be surprised if DoD sats sometimes look at a very narrow range, requiring a larger reflector to gather the needed light.  Specifically, ballistic missile detectors might look for the specific UV light emitted by solid rocket boosters.  A narrow frequency + very small target = big optics.

This is surely true; I haven't done a lot of thinking about what DoD telescopes would be looking for. However, they almost certainly wouldn't be turning a UV telescope in space down towards the earth. The Earth's atmosphere heavily absorbs UV light, which is why UV astronomy cannot be done from the ground. Still, your point is correct that if you're wanting to observe in a very narrow filter and yet still get high resolution imaging, you'd need a lot more light gathering power.

Edited May 20, 2016 by drhay53
your vs you're

[Sandworm]

2 minutes ago, drhay53 said:

This is surely true; I haven't done a lot of thinking about what DoD telescopes would be looking for. However, they almost certainly wouldn't be turning a UV telescope in space down towards the earth. The Earth's atmosphere heavily absorbs UV light, which is why UV astronomy cannot be done from the ground. Still, your point is correct that if you're wanting to observe in a very narrow filter and yet still get high resolution imaging, you'd need a lot more light gathering power.

Unless the target is something like a missile climbing out of that atmosphere.  Against the dark UV-absorbing background of the atmosphere, an SRB plume might stick out even if 90% of it's light is absorbed.

[drhay53]

1 minute ago, Sandworm said:

Unless the target is something like a missile climbing out of that atmosphere.  Against the dark UV-absorbing background of the atmosphere, an SRB plume might stick out even if 90% of it's light is absorbed.

Fair enough. I'm having a failure of imagination

[drhay53]

I mainly came to this thread to ask about compatibility with [x] science.

I've asked a couple of times in the [x] science thread what could be done to get the newest DMagic experiments (Bathymetry, SIGINT, and Recon) properly categorized by [x] science. Basically, the "end-game" of KSP for me is filling out the [x] science checklist, so it's really bothering me that the experiments are completely wrong in there.

I'm posting here because this thread is much more active than the [x] science thread; what needs to be done for DMagic's experiments to show up properly in [x] science? Is there anything that I can do to help, or, is there anyone interested in doing it? This'll be the last time I ask about it, as I've now asked twice in each thread, once before and after the most recent DMagic update.

[DMagic]

@drhay53 Outside of just manually handling each special case I'm not sure that there is anything that can be done to get something like Xscience to recognize the correct biome and situation values. It's not quite the same as something like Automated Science Sampler, which just has to figure out what the current situation and biome is.

[drhay53]

1 minute ago, DMagic said:

@drhay53 Outside of just manually handling each special case I'm not sure that there is anything that can be done to get something like Xscience to recognize the correct biome and situation values. It's not quite the same as something like Automated Science Sampler, which just has to figure out what the current situation and biome is.

AutomatedScienceSampler works fine on these experiments, but the checklist is great for planning missions and it's really a 'completion' list for me. I have a hard time figuring it out from the stock science archives. Generally I'm just using your contracts, and keeping track of which ones I've done already (i.e. orbital recon of Ike, etc.), and not doing them again if they show up. But eventually I plan to stop doing contracts and just explore and fill out the science myself.

[x] science claims to handle custom biomes gracefully, so I would think that it's actually a bug somewhere, unless you're doing something especially weird in orbital science. Hopefully the author of [x] science will have more people ask about it and will want to figure it out. I'm not in a place right now where I have time to learn modding myself in order to fix it, though that's what I'd really prefer to do.

[DMagic]

I think that might be referring to Custom Biomes^tm, as in, the mod custom biomes, or Kopernicus, which both just add standard biomes.

When science experiments use biomes they just append a biome name to the end of the science result id, there is nothing specifying that the tag has to be a proper biome name. So when my experiments use non-standard biomes, what they are really doing is just appending whatever tag I want at the end of the science id. The underwater and recon experiments work like this, but so do all of the asteroid results and anomaly scanner.

So the only real way to handle those is to manually tell XScience which tags I'm using.

[BadManiac]

This mod just keeps getting better and better. It's in my absolute top "should have been stock" mods that I simply can't play without. Thank you DMagic for making it and thanks for continuously adding more awesomesauce to it!

[drhay53]

@Z-Key Aerospace Understandably doesn't want to hard-code in support for all science mods, so it seems like I'm stuck on this, unless I'm able to put together an environment where I can change the code and try to get it working myself. Coding experience but no modding or game development experience, and with a 2 month old at home and lots of work piling up, it doesn't seem likely at the moment. Most of my free time I want to spend playing KSP

More than likely what I'll end up doing is trying to get [x] science to ignore the experiments that don't work and just do the contracts associated with them once when they come up; there's plenty of science to be had with the experiments that work in [x] science and as long as my checklist doesn't have items that can't possibly be completed then I'll probably be happy. Maybe

[drhay53]

3 hours ago, DMagic said:

I think that might be referring to Custom Biomes^tm, as in, the mod custom biomes, or Kopernicus, which both just add standard biomes.

When science experiments use biomes they just append a biome name to the end of the science result id, there is nothing specifying that the tag has to be a proper biome name. So when my experiments use non-standard biomes, what they are really doing is just appending whatever tag I want at the end of the science id. The underwater and recon experiments work like this, but so do all of the asteroid results and anomaly scanner.

So the only real way to handle those is to manually tell XScience which tags I'm using.

This is probably an oversimplification, as I'm trying to read both codes without really being able to test them (which is difficult for me); but why can't any addon get everything they need from say experimentSituations and ScienceExperiment attributes?

[DMagic]

In other news; here are five new pages for the KSPedia entry, they go over some of the non-standard experiments, Universal Storage parts and interaction with other mods:

 

@drhay53 XScience, or anything else that looks at biomes and science situations just reads the standard data. Each planet has a biome map which you can get the list of biomes from.

Orbital Science ignores that for some experiments, instead looking at something else (depth underwater, latitude, some internal asteroid composition properties, etc...) to decide what tag to append to the end of the science subject id. There isn't really any good way to build a list of all possible "biomes" of this type without just manually adding them. If you want to know the current biome tag for a specific part, at a specific location, that's easy, but trying to find all possible tags at any time is not so easy.

Edited May 20, 2016 by DMagic

[Z-Key Aerospace]

At the moment my UI describes the current Body+Biome+Situation and displays the appropriate science.

When you move from one situation to another it updates to the new situation and displays the appropriate experiments.

Having the list of experiments change within the current situation eg "Splashed as Kerbin's Water" is going to require a fairly major shift in the way [x] Science! works.  Apart from anything else are you

• Splashed as Kerbin's Water - Surface
• Splashed as Kerbin's Water - Submerged Shallow
• Splashed as Kerbin's Water - Submerged Deep

Not only do I not know the depth at the moment but I guess nothing is going to tell me which means I need to work it out every frame so I can pop the screen when it changes.  I'd have to display the situation to the user and fiddle the science list for the experiments that need the depth.  Sorry but it ain't gonna happen at the moment.

 

[Doghead13]

On 20/05/2016 at 9:50 PM, Z-Key Aerospace said:

Not only do I not know the depth at the moment but I guess nothing is going to tell me which means I need to work it out every frame so I can pop the screen when it changes.  I'd have to display the situation to the user and fiddle the science list for the experiments that need the depth.  Sorry but it ain't gonna happen at the moment.

Can't you check altitude? Situation 'splashed' + altitude 0 = surface, then as the altitude goes into the negative you're submerged?

(Guessing: couldn't program my way out of a wet paper bag, but pretty sure altitude is important to a lot of science stuff)

[DMagic]

@Doghead13 You could, but that still wouldn't be accurate, there are further complications beyond a simple altitude check. But the real point is that you would have to constantly check this (or at least constantly when splashed down or landed), whereas the standard science situations trigger an event whenever they are changed; stock KSP does all of the constant checking for us. 

And really, for the bathymetry experiment, you are talking about six possible data sets for stock KSP planets. I don't think it's worth the trouble regardless of how complex it would be.

Also, @Z-Key Aerospace it's no longer necessary to check the sitMask and bioMask fields for my experiments anymore. All of the experiments have their proper values set in the regular Experiment Definition nodes. Those two values are now only used internally when I want different behavior.

Edited May 23, 2016 by DMagic

[drhay53]

I don't really care that much about the bathymetry, I was thinking more of the satellites with the hemisphere situations that all show up in my [x] science 'space near <body>" checklists. Those really annoy me because they cannot be checked off in [x] science.

[DMagic]

The full KSPedia entry:

For some reason I was thinking this would be relatively short, maybe five or six pages, instead it came out at 19 pages...

[drhay53]

As you know from my previous discussion, those tables in the KSPedia entry are really useful for me. Thanks!

[kcs123]

Maybe to add smal bit of info how small change in dV can influence coverage (previous orbit/ new orbit). In other words, how player can adjust orbit to scan planet faster, to map planet in least amount of orbit as possible.

Not a big deal for me, but can be valuable info for new players. Other than that, KSPedia entry is nice touch to already great mod.

[DMagic]

@kcs123 Do you mean for SCANsat? Like this:

[drhay53]

Huh, I never actually understood what those tick marks meant. Cool.

[kcs123]

1 hour ago, DMagic said:

@kcs123 Do you mean for SCANsat? Like this:

Yes, that one. I didn't noticed this in previous album. That was one of biggest issue to learn when I was started to use SCANsat mod. Glad to see that is included in KSPedia.

[Bishop149]

Couple of things

1) Trying to work out the seismic hammer experiment. So I deploy at least two pods then use the hammer. Do I have to do anything to the pods before or after decoupling them? When attached they have a 'toggle pod' option, when detached they have an 'arm pod' option. Do I need to do either of these before using the hammer?

2) I've noticed the universal storage 2hot / presmat unit doesn't seem to hold its open / shut state. It always seems to want to appear open. Sometimes I toggle it and it instantly changes its appearance to closed, before running through the opening animation. I suspect that the animation state and toggle state become disconnected with the former defaulting to open on scene load.

[the1visionary]

I really don't know if this is the right place to ask or not but I am anyways and ask for forgiveness if wrong.  DMagic's Orbital Science mod mission to long- term orbit will reset the day count for a mission if the game is saved and reloaded without completing the mission before the game is closed.  This problem has persisted for me since 1.0.4 so I would think that it would have been fixed by now.  I have about 20+ mods running and this is my only problem so I can't say it is a fault of DMagic.  Please advise.

 

Viz

[Gryphon]

19 hours ago, the1visionary said:

DMagic's Orbital Science mod mission to long- term orbit will reset the day count for a mission if the game is saved and reloaded without completing the mission before the game is closed.  This problem has persisted for me since 1.0.4 so I would think that it would have been fixed by now.  I have about 20+ mods running and this is my only problem so I can't say it is a fault of DMagic.  Please advise.

I'm not sure what to suggest to fix your issue, but I'm currently in progress on a DMagic 60-day mission, and it has continued to progress through multiple saves and loads. Only 41 more days!