[WIP] Dreamer - SNC Dream Chaser - Download Available!

[Voidryder]

Just wanted to say how much I enjoy this mod. Thanks.

[artwhaley]

Just wanted to say how much I enjoy this mod. Thanks.

Thank you all for the nice words and feedback! Yes, it carries 4 Kerbals. I'm not sure I followed when you asked about a 'kerbal module.' Do you mean the IVA? It's in the update I put up today.

I'm moving general discussion to a release thread, as I think it's far enough along! I'll keep this thread running for development discussion. PLEASE keep sending me any bugs or issues or confusing bits!

Art

[Ikaneko]

Artwhaley, you should probably update the title to say Released!!

That way, more people will click!

[Makako]

since last update, I can not open the doors or close them.

I do not work the nose.

any idea. (sorry for my English)

[artwhaley]

Hmmm. That's strange. It's still working right here... and I'm working from the release files. Did you delete the old version before installing the new one? I'd recommend that. And are you certain you're using the version with the cargo bay? There are now two versions of the body, one named Dreamer, and one named Dreamer with Bay... or something similar to that.

[hieywiey]

It looks purple for some reason, just the Dreamer itself and the nose cones, the gears look fine.

[artwhaley]

Just to keep you guys updated in this thread - There's a new release version on kerbalstuff that fixes some texture issues, improves atmospheric performance a bit, and includes the brand new IVA with all custom props.

IVA pics:

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I built the props pretty monolithically, but if anyone wants to reuse them, I can cut the pieces up pretty quickly.

[Creeperchair]

oh i hope i didn't offend you, i meant it to be friendly constructive criticism in the hopes that you can improve

but still keep up the great work

XKCD put the lable on the wrong side of the graph. Also, this is a nice mini-shuttle.

[FoxyFox]

Ok I installed the version off Kerbalstuff and I'm encountering a few glitches. Fresh install of 0.25 on a Mac.

First of all, all the doors are unclosable. Theres no way to close the nose nor the cargo bay. Also on launch, the camera begins to drift off and away from the Dreamer, as if the CM is WAY behind the craft...like, hundreds of meters away. The camera attempts to focus way off the craft.

Any idea whats going on? I also have Tweakscale, Kerbal Alarm Clock, Tantares, and Active Texture Management installed.

[artwhaley]

I DID have the camera fly away problem for an afternoon during development. I reinstalled ksp, downloaded all mods again, it kept happening. .. then it stopped. I never figured out what was causing it and couldn't recreate it. I'll ask around. You don't have RPM or FAR installed? If you don't have RPM, you might try deleting the props and spaces folders... as that eliminates half the potential causes. I'll let you know if I figure anything out. And please let me know if you figure out any clues.

Do you have the firespitter dll? I don't remember if I used fsanimate or the stock one for the doors. I'll check tonight. But the landing gear definitely requires the FS DLL. And I've never had trouble with the doors. If you solve any issues before I do, please let me know.

And there will be an update by tomorrow, so maybe that will improve something!

Edited November 30, 2014 by artwhaley

[artwhaley]

I WAS using Firespitter's animation module. I'll switch it to the stock animation module, though the wheels and airbrakes are still going to use FireSpitter... so it will remain a dependency for the foreseeable future. I'm sure I COULD force myself to convert the gear to the stock module... but when I first tried to learn I could get FireSpitter's gear module to work, but not the stock one... so I just moved on and used FS...

But I don't know that there's a stock way to make airbrakes, and so far these brakes are my solution to making a craft that has enough lift to fly in stock aero but can slow down enough with FAR installed to actually land.

So for the moment FireSpitter's DLL is going to remain required.

If it does turn out that you didn't have FS installed, and that's why you didn't have animation, please let me know... and let me know if that fixes your camera flyaway as well!

[artwhaley]

Update is posted. Please help me out by testing the FAR support and let me know what happens!

[Dr. Jet]

Tested with N.E.A.R.:

- Ascension stability (with included launcher) is OK. It's not amusingly good, but OK. With stock parts it's NOT stable even with 8 winglets at the bottom of the rocket.

BTW, your FAR/NEAR LKO launcher should have around 3600 dV, not 5000. Maybe worth concidering an MM patch.

- Atmospheric stability (without launcher) is very high. It's WEIRD to see that on a Spiral-alike "flying bast shoe"... However it's OK for me, as it dampens my piloting mistakes.

- Stable gliding at 80 m/s is just an overkill for such craft. You possibly should lower lift coefficient to something more realistic.

Resume: Weird but flyable.

About model itself:

- You really should use Mesh Collider (blue) for main body (+2-3 invisible primitives for green colliders) and cargo bay doors (no greens). Right now kerbals are falling through when trying to walk on top. Also unable to correctly surface-mount parts at some places.

- Rear landing gears - wheelColliders could use some non-zero suspension distance.

- Wings control surfaces seem to be not animated. It's not an issue, as mod is still WiP, but nevertheless...

- FS module for landing gears is overkill. For such simple stiff non-steerable things stock module is all you really need.

- Main body of cargo-bayed Dreamer have a transparent hole at front. It's clearly visible in VAB and when using docking nosecone. Maybe some normals were accidently inverted?

- Air brakes have spoilers AG commands though they don't react to brake button or work as spoilers. When assigned to AG as "Toggle Air Brake" they work fine.

About IVA:

- AWESOME! Best shuttle/spaceplane cockpit i've seen yet. Beautiful and with (almost) full MJ integration.

- Bottom (landing aid) camera is looking rearwards and upside-down.

- First pilot (Jeb) seat should be left one (near the camera screens), not right one.

Edited January 1, 2015 by Dr. Jet

[artwhaley]

Dr. Jet- that is a fantastic review! Thank you for taking the time to give all of that feedback!

Your aerodynamic notes are all well founded... The lift settings are ENTIRELY too high across the board. But I got tired of people complaining about being unable to fly it... and reporting that like it was a bug. Vertical launch, horizontal recovery, space planes are VERY hard to fly... you carry the bare minimum amount of wing to get you into a survivable landing, because you have to lift that wing all the way to space and back. I originally had it tuned in a way I liked much better, and it didn't require airbrakes to reenter or land... but it DID take some time to learn how to get through the transitions from orbit to hypersonic, and then from hypersonic to subsonic without losing control... I put up videos and tutorials showing how I flew a perfect reentry straight to the runway... but I've sort of learned that most players of KSP want to be able to fly without reading the instructions or practicing anything... So I retuned it and now it's pretty much impossible to crash the spaceplane, and if you get down within sight of the right continent you should be able to put it on the runway. It's not how I WANTED it to fly, but it seems to be the way most players do... so I caved instead of constantly reminding people that only the world's best pilots get to be astronauts... so 'requires some skill' isn't a bug when it comes to space ships. The ridiculously stable flight is the cause of the ridiculously unstable launch. There's so much lift on top of that rocket that it's essentially impossible to design an aerodynamically stable launch vehicle - so I increased the gimbal range of the engines to almost hacky levels to allow active course correction to keep the nose in front of the tail. All of that said - some day I probably will spend a few hours trying to tune a better compromise for the aerodynamic properties... that will probably happen whenever Squad gets around to the new stock aerodynamics engine... then I'll do the final tuning to get cfg parameters that work well for stock and FAR for a final release.

Very good idea on a mm config for FAR to change the available fuel. I've tried to leave the two launcher components flexible enough that people can turn the fuel up and down to do their own mission planning, but it is nice if they start out with the right fuel levels for a typical launch.

There is a mesh collider on the forward body and wings... but it's based on the model before the surface was subdivided, and it's definitely closer to the finished shape some places... and further away in others. The back is just a crummy capsule collider. Generating good collider meshes is one of the the 'yeah, it was good enough to move on to the next thing during testing, but needs to be revisited' list. The shape has enough reverse curves that it's not going to be easy to generate good convex colliders for all of it, but it does need to happen.

I hate landing gear. I hate it, hate it, hate it. I used toe FS module because I got it to work one day when I was frustrated with an inability to figure out what I was doing wrong with the stock module. If I ever get the aerodynamics tuned so most people don't need the airbrakes, I'll revisit the landing gear to try to clear the FS dependency completely. I'm also tired of people reporting 'bugs' caused by not having firespitter installed... and in general I try to avoid dependencies whenever possible. So this is a goal. But I hate landing gear. If you missed that part earlier.

You're right - I do have some flipped normals up front. Interesting. I have screenshots that show it correct not that long ago... so I don't know what I was doing that I could have accidentally screwed this up. lol. I'll get that for the next release. I like easy fixes!

Hmmm. I'll look at the FS documentation to see if I need to add or delete something to either make the spoilers work... or not show up as an available command.

That's a good point on the bottom camera... I hadn't really thought of it as a landing aid.... I thought of it as more useful to check gear deployment and to watch for ceramic tile damage during launch... but if I mounted it (or another camera) facing forward it would be really useful doing those nose-high approaches!

Thanks again for taking the time to really put it through it's paces! I've slowed down on development of this... As there hasn't been a ton of interest... which I get because it's a complete spaceplane without all that many configurable options... which doesn't really fit into the 'ducktape a bunch of crap together and see what happens' philosophy of the game. But I do want to get it to a finished state before I set it aside, because I do think an affordable and simple solution to rescue, small part test, and crew supply missions is useful for some styles of game play.

Art

[Dr. Jet]

The ridiculously stable flight is the cause of the ridiculously unstable launch.

Exactly! What I suggest to do - is to experiment with same-sized SP Mk2 craft. It should be barely glide-stable at 120 m/s and should not flip over the 2.5m rocket when launched on top. Than just sum up the lift coefficients of it's parts and divide them between Dreamer parts.

BTW. Make your landing gers physicsless (PhysicsSignificance = 1), if you haven't already. They are NOT FAR-shielded when retracted (and provide extra drag in stock model).

The same refers to cargo bay payload - it's NOT shielded, as cargo bay is not something separate and Dreamer body is not concidered by FAR/NEAR to be shielding part.

All of that said - some day I probably will spend a few hours trying to tune a better compromise for the aerodynamic properties... that will probably happen whenever Squad gets around to the new stock aerodynamics engine... then I'll do the final tuning to get cfg parameters that work well for stock and FAR for a final release.

Right now I recommend to stick with NEAR. It's not overcomplicated as FAR, but pretty stable and gives you much, much more fun then stock "soup". It's most likely that Squad will implement NEAR or NEAR-like model. Implementing FAR model in stock... is impossible. Squad tries to keep game simple even at cost of realism.

There is a mesh collider on the forward body and wings... but it's based on the model before the surface was subdivided, and it's definitely closer to the finished shape some places... and further away in others. The back is just a crummy capsule collider. Generating good collider meshes is one of the the 'yeah, it was good enough to move on to the next thing during testing, but needs to be revisited' list. The shape has enough reverse curves that it's not going to be easy to generate good convex colliders for all of it, but it does need to happen.

I had some experience with complicated colliders (look at SP tails and lander tanks from my mod). It's quite simple in fact - most efforts are spent on low-poly subclones for green colliders (and you generally don't need those everywhere - just in some important places).

I hate landing gear. I hate it, hate it, hate it. I used toe FS module because I got it to work one day when I was frustrated with an inability to figure out what I was doing wrong with the stock module. If I ever get the aerodynamics tuned so most people don't need the airbrakes, I'll revisit the landing gear to try to clear the FS dependency completely. I'm also tired of people reporting 'bugs' caused by not having firespitter installed... and in general I try to avoid dependencies whenever possible. So this is a goal. But I hate landing gear. If you missed that part earlier.

Landing gear is simple. I've managed to make even ACTIVE (motorised) landing gears with stock modules alone (though it was hybrid of rover wheel and landing leg modules). Most common things one screw at when making wheels or landing gears are:

1) Proper Unity parts hierarchy. (covered by tutorials from KSP forum)

2) WheeelCollider parameters. (unluckily no tutorial for those - just keep experimenting until you got something working)

3) Improper animation import parameters (anything other then "Legacy" is wrong).

If you share corresponding blender and unity files, I'll be able to help with landing gears and tidying up the colliders.

[Vitasalato]

Hi! Someone could explain me in what status is this mod? There is just one developer?