[1.9-1.10] Hangar

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Something to look into. I built a probe lander with a heat shield from procedural parts for a Duna deployment. The probe fit an inline hangar bay's volume just fine. However, with the heat shield adjusted to keep all extraneous parts in its shadow, it was a touch wider than the bay dimensions. It still allowed me to place it into the Hangar, and it REALLY didn't like it when I attempted deployment. Upon deployment, it wobbled violently in place due to the overlapped collision meshes until it smashed itself free, damaging the probe critically. (Lost a landing strut, transmitter, solar panel equipment, three of its four batteries, and most of its instrumentation.)

Also, some suggestions now that I've actually managed to get some play out of the hangars.

1: Deployment force option. Give the option to launch a vessel at 0.1 m/s second from the hangar. Seems kind of silly not to have a basic 'kick out' function, forcing you to either place RCS thrusters you'd use for all of a second, or gently rotating a probe to push off the walls.

2: Cosmetic redesign on the Inline Hangar parts. It looks odd with the aft part of the hangar tapering into the connection for a smaller cylinder when it's meant to be snapped to the end of a rocket part of equal size.

[allista]

Something to look into. I built a probe lander with a heat shield from procedural parts for a Duna deployment. The probe fit an inline hangar bay's volume just fine. However, with the heat shield adjusted to keep all extraneous parts in its shadow, it was a touch wider than the bay dimensions. It still allowed me to place it into the Hangar, and it REALLY didn't like it when I attempted deployment. Upon deployment, it wobbled violently in place due to the overlapped collision meshes until it smashed itself free, damaging the probe critically. (Lost a landing strut, transmitter, solar panel equipment, three of its four batteries, and most of its instrumentation.)

Also, some suggestions now that I've actually managed to get some play out of the hangars.

1: Deployment force option. Give the option to launch a vessel at 0.1 m/s second from the hangar. Seems kind of silly not to have a basic 'kick out' function, forcing you to either place RCS thrusters you'd use for all of a second, or gently rotating a probe to push off the walls.

2: Cosmetic redesign on the Inline Hangar parts. It looks odd with the aft part of the hangar tapering into the connection for a smaller cylinder when it's meant to be snapped to the end of a rocket part of equal size.

0. It would help greatly if you provide the .craft file of the probe with the shield, and of the carrier as well maybe.

1. I was thinking about it myself. Made an issue and will implement it.

2. Well... inline hangars were meant to be snapped to the end of rocked part of the smaller size than they are. Small Inline -- size1; Habitable Inline -- size2. Not size2 and size3.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Here's a rar containing the three craft I've worked a hangar with.

http://www./download/akcpeajrvhjouod/HangarModCraftCheck.rar

Duna I is the main ship with the hangar. IkeCicle is a small ike probe I had no issues with, but I'm including for completion's sake. The offending probe was Duna Probe.

If you happen to have all the mods used in the craft, you'll see how I built it and why I think how I do about point 2.

I don't expect you to have them all though. But in the off chance you do, well, there you go.

[bonesbro]

I turned the greens to grays and the oranges to light grays. They still don't look quite like stock because the materials don't match but they're kind of similar and don't look nearly as out of place. Just extract into the models folder in your hanger directory: https://www.dropbox.com/s/p6icbv4s9th1qck/HangerDesaturated.zip?dl=0

[allista]

Here's a rar containing the three craft I've worked a hangar with.

http://www./download/akcpeajrvhjouod/HangarModCraftCheck.rar

Duna I is the main ship with the hangar. IkeCicle is a small ike probe I had no issues with, but I'm including for completion's sake. The offending probe was Duna Probe.

If you happen to have all the mods used in the craft, you'll see how I built it and why I think how I do about point 2.

I don't expect you to have them all though. But in the off chance you do, well, there you go.

Thanks a lot! Maybe you could list the mods you used in construction, so I could install them to see?

- - - Updated - - -

I turned the greens to grays and the oranges to light grays. They still don't look quite like stock because the materials don't match but they're kind of similar and don't look nearly as out of place. Just extract into the models folder in your hanger directory: https://www.dropbox.com/s/p6icbv4s9th1qck/HangerDesaturated.zip?dl=0

Perfect! Thank you so much!

[allista]

I turned the greens to grays and the oranges to light grays. They still don't look quite like stock because the materials don't match but they're kind of similar and don't look nearly as out of place. Just extract into the models folder in your hanger directory: https://www.dropbox.com/s/p6icbv4s9th1qck/HangerDesaturated.zip?dl=0

Added the link to your texture pack to the main post.

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

Thanks a lot! Maybe you could list the mods you used in construction, so I could install them to see?

@_@

Please... Please no. I have MORE mods than I can keep track of. I'm not even sure what went into it besides the obvious like KW rocketry, NOVA Punch, Procedural Fairings, Real Fuels Procedural parts... ayayay... Once they're installed, I tend not to track them.

[allista]

Something to look into. I built a probe lander with a heat shield from procedural parts for a Duna deployment. The probe fit an inline hangar bay's volume just fine. However, with the heat shield adjusted to keep all extraneous parts in its shadow, it was a touch wider than the bay dimensions. It still allowed me to place it into the Hangar, and it REALLY didn't like it when I attempted deployment. Upon deployment, it wobbled violently in place due to the overlapped collision meshes until it smashed itself free, damaging the probe critically. (Lost a landing strut, transmitter, solar panel equipment, three of its four batteries, and most of its instrumentation.)

The "good" news: I think I know the reason for this behavior. When a hangar looks at vessel's dimensions it uses bounds of internal space and checks if every part of the vessel is strictly inside these bounds. This effectively means that whatever the shape of the internal space is, for the hangar it's just a box. Then it's pure geometry: if you inscribe a circle (heatshield in your case) into a square (bounding XZ plane) it would be larger than any finite inscribed polygon (hexagonal internal space of inline hangars). So the hangar lets you store the heatshield that fits inside the bounds, but not inside the walls of internal colliders.

The bad news: I don't know what to do with this, except to make all internal spaces to be boxes, like in ground hangars. In Unity colliders do not have means to check if some point is inside or outside of them, they just detect collisions with other colliders. And to perform an actual collision detection for every collider of every part of the vessel just to check if it fits... it seems too much of a price computationally. But maybe that's what has to be done after all. Need to think about this.

[Stage]

Any chance we could get a hangar in the style of the B9 HX fuslage sytem? (btw, pre-release to test it is here)

[allista]

Any chance we could get a hangar in the style of the B9 HX fuslage sytem? (btw, pre-release to test it is here)

Well, if you make a model for it, I'll plug it in, no problem. I'm not a great modeller as clearly may be seen by the models of hangars. In fact they are my first models ever.

For a hangar module to work a model should have:

• an animation of opening door(s)
  
• a hangar space -- hollow mesh without a renderer which is enclosed by colliders. But see the previous post for caveats.
  
• a launch transform -- an empty which local transform is used to orient and position a launched vessel. Note, that I use position of geometric center of a vessel, not CoM. So the launch transform is better be just in the middle of the hangar space.
  

[AdmiralTigerclaw]

The "good" news: I think I know the reason for this behavior. When a hangar looks at vessel's dimensions it uses bounds of internal space and checks if every part of the vessel is strictly inside these bounds. This effectively means that whatever the shape of the internal space is, for the hangar it's just a box. Then it's pure geometry: if you inscribe a circle (heatshield in your case) into a square (bounding XZ plane) it would be larger than any finite inscribed polygon (hexagonal internal space of inline hangars). So the hangar lets you store the heatshield that fits inside the bounds, but not inside the walls of internal colliders.

The bad news: I don't know what to do with this, except to make all internal spaces to be boxes, like in ground hangars. In Unity colliders do not have means to check if some point is inside or outside of them, they just detect collisions with other colliders. And to perform an actual collision detection for every collider of every part of the vessel just to check if it fits... it seems too much of a price computationally. But maybe that's what has to be done after all. Need to think about this.

You could make the physical spaces of the hangars slightly larger than the dimensions as they are claimed.

IE: If a space's bounding dimensions claim 1.5 meters, make the physical space of the model 1.6 meters. And then you just alter the programming slightly to keep it within' 'fluff'.

That is to say, if the bay cannot fit something when it physically looks like it can, and the player wants to call BS on it, it could say: 'Insufficient vehicle clearance for SAFE deployment/recovery.

[allista]

You could make the physical spaces of the hangars slightly larger than the dimensions as they are claimed.

IE: If a space's bounding dimensions claim 1.5 meters, make the physical space of the model 1.6 meters. And then you just alter the programming slightly to keep it within' 'fluff'.

That won't solve the problem in general, because it's not marginal but geometric. Your probe stuck not because it was a little bigger, but because it intersected with some of the colliders. With four out of six, to be exact. So the only solution (without rewriting the check itself) is to make the bounding box to fit the real space. But that would decrease the space available for vessels by 2-3 times (square inscribed into a polygon).

That is to say, if the bay cannot fit something when it physically looks like it can, and the player wants to call BS on it, it could say: 'Insufficient vehicle clearance for SAFE deployment/recovery.

Good one! I'll definitely use it.

[M4ck]

Right now it looks pretty fugly, but it is a really great idea keep up the good work

[passinglurker]

Are there plans to some day be able to build ships inside hangars? either through the mods own mechanics or through integration with EPL or some other mod that lets you stick bits of ship together away from the KSC?

[bonesbro]

Well, if you make a model for it, I'll plug it in, no problem. I'm not a great modeller as clearly may be seen by the models of hangars. In fact they are my first models ever.

For a hangar module to work a model should have:

• an animation of opening door(s)
  
• a hangar space -- hollow mesh without a renderer which is enclosed by colliders. But see the previous post for caveats.
  
• a launch transform -- an empty which local transform is used to orient and position a launched vessel. Note, that I use position of geometric center of a vessel, not CoM. So the launch transform is better be just in the middle of the hangar space.
  

Is the door really required? If not, it seems like you could just use MM to add the necessary modules to one of the HX hollow parts. You would get the awkward behavior of newly-launched ships just appearing out of thin air, but if a player doesn't like that they don't have to use em.

[Nori]

Well, if you make a model for it, I'll plug it in, no problem. I'm not a great modeller as clearly may be seen by the models of hangars. In fact they are my first models ever.

For a hangar module to work a model should have:

• an animation of opening door(s)
  
• a hangar space -- hollow mesh without a renderer which is enclosed by colliders. But see the previous post for caveats.
  
• a launch transform -- an empty which local transform is used to orient and position a launched vessel. Note, that I use position of geometric center of a vessel, not CoM. So the launch transform is better be just in the middle of the hangar space.
  

I actually think the models are pretty good, especially if these are your first. I only really take issue with the colors since they clash with other parts. Gonna try the grey one that was made.

[PaladinVito]

On the whole, an inspired idea. Honestly, seriously good work. Like you said, the models need a little work, but aesthetics are easy to fix; mechanics are the hard part. That being said, is there a particular reason the RCS thruster looks super cel shaded? Honestly, mine looks like it was pulled straight from Jet Set. In the mean-time, I think I'll try those grey textures.

EDIT: Here's a screenshot of what I mean. Also, the flag texture seems to be a bit wonky with flags that involve transparency, as you can tell from the flag on the Spaceport compared to the flag on the wall.

As you can see, the RCS thruster looks particularly out of place.

Edited August 28, 2014 by PaladinVito

[allista]

Are there plans to some day be able to build ships inside hangars? either through the mods own mechanics or through integration with EPL or some other mod that lets you stick bits of ship together away from the KSC?

I don't see the need for this, as it is just the functionality ExLP provides. The Hangar is about storing ships, not building them. If you want an enclosed wharf instead of a launchpad you should probably write to taniwa instead. But understand that such wharf will have to check ship's geometry before the build, and that's not an easy task.

[allista]

On the whole, an inspired idea. Honestly, seriously good work. Like you said, the models need a little work, but aesthetics are easy to fix; mechanics are the hard part. That being said, is there a particular reason the RCS thruster looks super cel shaded? Honestly, mine looks like it was pulled straight from Jet Set. In the mean-time, I think I'll try those grey textures.

EDIT: Here's a screenshot of what I mean. Also, the flag texture seems to be a bit wonky with flags that involve transparency, as you can tell from the flag on the Spaceport compared to the flag on the wall.

As you can see, the RCS thruster looks particularly out of place.

Hmm... the last time I've checked the thrusters they were shaded normally, just like the Spaceport on your picture. Unfortunately I will be able to check this only after September 11 when I return home.

Am I guessing correctly: a flag decal should use the translucent shader to render such a flag? I haven't found any documentation on flag decals, so it was (as it often is with KSP) a reverse engineering...

EDIT: added an issue about the flag

Edited August 28, 2014 by allista

[allista]

Is the door really required? If not, it seems like you could just use MM to add the necessary modules to one of the HX hollow parts. You would get the awkward behavior of newly-launched ships just appearing out of thin air, but if a player doesn't like that they don't have to use em.

No, the door is not really required. But the hangar space and launch position are. Without them there will be a (big) chance that launched ships will intersect with the walls of a hangar and explode.

[allista]

I actually think the models are pretty good, especially if these are your first. I only really take issue with the colors since they clash with other parts. Gonna try the grey one that was made.

Thanks ='=

Maybe I'll swap texture sets in the end, making the gray one the default.

[passinglurker]

I don't see the need for this, as it is just the functionality ExLP provides. The Hangar is about storing ships, not building them. If you want an enclosed wharf instead of a launchpad you should probably write to taniwa instead. But understand that such wharf will have to check ship's geometry before the build, and that's not an easy task.

Well you are the one with the coding powers here so you should spend your time and effort how you like and its understandably more efficient not to reinvent the wheel, but if checking a ships geometry is hard and your mod already does it wouldn't hangars doubling as launchpads be something that is simpler to implement from your end? I probably shouldn't be making these assumptions actually I can't read code.

Anyway I think its good to have options it helps insure the community doesn't lose something if a certain mod's dev disappears (*points to KAS and treeloader and their functionality as examples of endangered mods that do things other people rely on*) I'm not saying hangars should go through all the trouble of implementing mining smelting fabricating and recycling to the extent ExLP does though like I said its inefficient to reinvent the wheel. What about just implementing recycling by allowing you to assemble different ships by disassembling the ships you have stored in a hangar and reusing their parts? It would come in handy for breathing new life into space debris or for glueing two halves of a ship back together because you accidentally staged the decoupler, and what better place would there be to take a ship under a wrench and rearrange its parts than in a hangar?(as opposed to grinding it down into metal shavings and reforging the whole thing from scratch like what you would have to do in ExLP)

[bonesbro]

No, the door is not really required. But the hangar space and launch position are. Without them there will be a (big) chance that launched ships will intersect with the walls of a hangar and explode.

Hmm - those, at least, sound like things that can be added with an MM patch. Maybe if I get some time this weekend I might see if I can turn one of the huge new B9 HX parts into a hangar...

[allista]

Well you are the one with the coding powers here so you should spend your time and effort how you like and its understandably more efficient not to reinvent the wheel, but if checking a ships geometry is hard and your mod already does it wouldn't hangars doubling as launchpads be something that is simpler to implement from your end? I probably shouldn't be making these assumptions actually I can't read code.

Anyway I think its good to have options it helps insure the community doesn't lose something if a certain mod's dev disappears (*points to KAS and treeloader and their functionality as examples of endangered mods that do things other people rely on*) I'm not saying hangars should go through all the trouble of implementing mining smelting fabricating and recycling to the extent ExLP does though like I said its inefficient to reinvent the wheel. What about just implementing recycling by allowing you to assemble different ships by disassembling the ships you have stored in a hangar and reusing their parts? It would come in handy for breathing new life into space debris or for glueing two halves of a ship back together because you accidentally staged the decoupler, and what better place would there be to take a ship under a wrench and rearrange its parts than in a hangar?(as opposed to grinding it down into metal shavings and reforging the whole thing from scratch like what you would have to do in ExLP)

I'll think about it all. It does sound interesting. But there are other things to consider: smaller mode with less functionality is easier to maintain and thus it'll live longer; not all people like ExLP functionality, considering it a little cheating, so it's good to have it in a separate mode; etc.

[allista]

Hmm - those, at least, sound like things that can be added with an MM patch. Maybe if I get some time this weekend I might see if I can turn one of the huge new B9 HX parts into a hangar...

Unfortunately, you can't add meshes and transforms to a model with MM. And while I can add the option to define hangar space in .cfg file with two vectors, defining a transform is much less intuitive. But that's doable too.