[1.3] Pilot Assistant: Atmospheric piloting aids - 1.13.2 (May 28)

[gilflo]

Well I made it easier than I was thinking on 3rd attempt. I descended on prograde, then I just switch to Pilot assistant at 40000m, set a heading and a -300m/s vertical speed, relight engines at 30000m et let it go.

Then I reduced the vertical speed while descending. It was quite simple.

In real life Autopilots works better than man.

For climb, I used Pilot assistant with heading and V/S. Around 25000m on turbojet, when the aircraft began to wobble around mach 3.3, I started Rockets, I switch RCS, I disconnect pilot assistant and switch on Mechjeb Ascent with a 25% ascent profile.

This was sufficient to pass quickly through the wobble, much easier than keeping on pilot assistant. Looks like a piece of cake.....

I leave turbojet as long as possible, then switch them off around 30000m.

On descent I switch from Mechjeb to Pilot Assistant, then I landed on manual. a piece of cake too. No wobble, no spin ! just straight ahead....

30% fuel and oxy remaining...

[Van Disaster]

I re-enter with MJ smartass usually - I'd have to retune SSAS to handle the response in space, and I can't be bothered, frankly. I just set SmartASS Surf mode to whatever heading/+3 to 5 pitch/0 roll, and let the plane slow down by itself. Advantage of SA is you can enable PA on top of it rather than having that moment where one system hands off to another & the plane tries to make a bolt for it. Actually sometimes I just use stock SAS until I'm atmospheric & hand over to PA at that point.

As for landing, I use PA in HDG+VS mode along with NavUtilities, works pretty well as long as the heading mode is responsive enough.

[Crzyrndm]

Well I made it easier than I was thinking on 3rd attempt. I descended on prograde, then I just switch to Pilot assistant at 40000m, set a heading and a -300m/s vertical speed, relight engines at 30000m et let it go.

Then I reduced the vertical speed while descending. It was quite simple.

In real life Autopilots works better than man.

For climb, I used Pilot assistant with heading and V/S. Around 25000m on turbojet, when the aircraft began to wobble around mach 3.3, I started Rockets, I switch RCS, I disconnect pilot assistant and switch on Mechjeb Ascent with a 25% ascent profile.

This was sufficient to pass quickly through the wobble, much easier than keeping on pilot assistant. Looks like a piece of cake.....

I leave turbojet as long as possible, then switch them off around 30000m.

On descent I switch from Mechjeb to Pilot Assistant, then I landed on manual. a piece of cake too. No wobble, no spin ! just straight ahead....

30% fuel and oxy remaining...

Sounds like you got it all worked out now .

Advantage of SA is you can enable PA on top of it...

PA overrides input from pretty much everything actually, and with the version I just pushed to github, it should be smooth taking over from other sources as well.

PS

I finally got to the root of that heading control freaking out around the 0/360 boundary, so that's also fixed.

[Van Disaster]

Hmm... any chance of an option to completely lock SSAS settings? I'm using it on a highspeed land vehicle, I want it to hold a constant pitch ( so it doesn't faceplant ) but be able to adjust heading still via keys; I can do that, but adjusting heading via keys also ends up changing the pitch setting. Maybe right-clicking either the axis enable or the update button could toggle it?

Edited April 15, 2015 by Van Disaster

[funk]

Was anything changed with ssas-system regarding pid reaction? I normally use it to fly HTOLs and adjust the trims manually for desired direction parameters, but with the latest release the plane starts to tumble like a boxer before getting knocked out? changing scalar won't help, it just effects the amplitude of tumbling.

Also, Pilot Assistant - vertical control | vertical speed - seems to avoid high AoA in the last part of atmospheric flight around 30000m+, though the plane has enough pitch authority. It pitches down and causes negative vertical velocity. When switching back to stockSAS it's pretty much stable at high AoA (intended by design).

Edit: found the AoA Limit...

Edited April 21, 2015 by funk

[Crzyrndm]

Was anything changed with ssas-system regarding pid reaction? I normally use it to fly HTOLs and adjust the trims manually for desired direction parameters, but with the latest release the plane starts to tumble like a boxer before getting knocked out? changing scalar won't help, it just effects the amplitude of tumbling.

The major recent change was to heading (to make it a direction lock). Which control axis thows a tantrum as you engage (I'm guessing yaw output is going to be stupid high)? How are you engaging SSAS control?

Edit: found the AoA Limit...

[Crzyrndm]

Going to be recommending usage of this mod alongside Pilot Assistant post 1.0 (I just took a plane from runway to Q>300kPa and back down again with no wobbles without retuning any Pilot Assistant systems). I say post-1.0 because I should have cleaned it up a bit by then () but its already in a usable state

Edited April 23, 2015 by Crzyrndm

[Supereagle]

Hey there Crzyrndm,

It's supereaglecoder from git. In regards to developing an adaptive control system, I was referring to one where it "learns" the aircrafts flight performance in real time and adjust the gains and sampling frequency accordingly to maintain stability.

[Crzyrndm]

That would fall under the second category of my response. It's not that it's particularly difficult (it's basically all down to holding rate of change of forces and MOI in a certain ratio to each other), just that I have no interest in using a system that always performs perfectly (put another way: I like fiddling with the tuning to make everything behave).

[Wanderfound]

That would fall under the second category of my response. It's not that it's particularly difficult (it's basically all down to holding rate of change of forces and MOI in a certain ratio to each other), just that I have no interest in using a system that always performs perfectly (put another way: I like fiddling with the tuning to make everything behave).

It would be very nice to have a mod that I could point new spaceplaners at with just a "install this, leave it on default settings, it'll sort out most of your SAS problems". It looks like that's what you're planning for the new mod, though.

[Crzyrndm]

I would need to bundle that default, but yes that would be the case (it would also "help" people destroying planes because of overspeeding with FAR aerostress on, because you wont get 20 degrees of deflection at 100kPa)

Edited April 24, 2015 by Crzyrndm

[Crzyrndm]

v1.5.5

• Recompiled for KSP v1.0
  
• Quick hack to get around app launcher bug
  

[alexguy]

Clicking on "Vertical Control" crashes the game.

[Crzyrndm]

logs...

[Adyx]

I'm also getting a crash if I click on Vertical Control or Heading Control. In addition I'm getting at least two but sometimes four icons on the toolbar. I'll try and get logs tomorrow.

[Crzyrndm]

Since I can't replicate either issue, I really need those logs. It sounds like something is failing to initialise properly, but there's a whole host of things that could be doing so

[Aghanim]

Suggestion: Add a terrain following mode where the altitude hold isn't referenced to the above sea level altitude like the normal altimeter uses, but it uses radar altitude like MechJeb true altitude and IVA radar altimeter. So in the altitude hold add a selection box where we can chose to use above sea level altitude or true altitude.

[Crzyrndm]

but it uses radar altitude like MechJeb true altitude and IVA radar altimeter.

May actually happen now the terrain memory leak is no longer an issue, although it's much less simple than just using radar altitude if you want it to be worth anything.

I may need to deal with smoothing transitions out a bit first though (the current system doesn't like changing from climbing to descending much, doing that constantly would make that very obvious)

Edited April 29, 2015 by Crzyrndm

[Versatyyle]

logs...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8xj1qw1kzujtbqj/output_log.txt?dl=0

Happening to me too. Here's mine. Lemme know if you need any of the other ones.

[Andy81le]

Excellent mod! Is this working with RasterPropMonitor?

[Crzyrndm]

There is no specific integration (I don't use IVA)

[Adyx]

I'm also getting a crash if I click on Vertical Control or Heading Control. In addition I'm getting at least two but sometimes four icons on the toolbar. I'll try and get logs tomorrow.

Right, I just tried to replicate this to get logs and decided to use a fresh install with no other mods - and it works fine with no crashes. I'll check for conflicts with the mods I had installed but they all worked fine together in 0.90 and honestly I'm expecting they'll work now and we can just put this down to the vagaries of KSP and mods.

Edit: As I expected, I re-added each mod one-by-one and Pilot Assistant works fine - no crashes and just one toolbar button. I'll just chalk it down. Thanks Crzyrndm!

Latest Edit: Okay I'm really sorry. I'm back to getting crashes/button issues again. All I did was install RPM. Here's the log. If it matters, the other mods are; Ambient Light Adjustment, B9 Procedural Wings, Heat Warning, KJR, HyperEdit, MechJeb and Procedural Fairings.

Edited April 29, 2015 by Adyx

[Gfurst]

Hey just tried out the new version after a long time away.

I like it very much, seems to be getting better and better, though some of the balancing of previous balancing seems to be gone, now the auto-pilot is much less responsive.

Though with a bit of tweaking of the PID limits and stuff its a bit better.

One thing I didn't expect is the new SAS stuff, whats its purpose and how does it work? How is the SSAS, surface SAS?

And also I quickly noted, that with this we can activate the custom SAS even when there's no SAS control on the ship, no pilot and whatnot, so it could be a little cheatey in career mode.

Have you thought about separating buttons for both modes so to have quicker access?

Edit: excuse me, I just thought to go to the first page and check out the description on the SAS stuff

Edited April 29, 2015 by Gfurst

[Crzyrndm]

though some of the balancing of previous balancing seems to be gone, now the auto-pilot is much less responsive.

...

One thing I didn't expect is the new SAS stuff, whats its purpose and how does it work? How is the SSAS, surface SAS?

1) You're probably running into the "Easing" behaviour. It smoothly changes the setpoint to reduce the jump that would occur when it slammed form "I want to go here" to "I want to go there"

2) Incase the OP didn't get it across, SSAS is surface relative SAS (with a few extra bits and pieces).

First, Pitch held shifts as you travel to remain the same no matter where you are on the planet. No annoying pitch up as you travel.

Second, all the axes are separated. When you give pitch input only, SSAS still maintains control over the roll axis (and the yaw axis if roll angle is very small).

Third, in addition to the separation, you can activate and deactivate control for individual axes. Particularly, pitch+roll with no heading control is amazingly useful for planes (because you can turn by rolling, as you should)

Latest Edit: Okay I'm really sorry. I'm back to getting crashes/button issues again. All I did was install RPM. Here's the log. If it matters, the other mods are; Ambient Light Adjustment, B9 Procedural Wings, Heat Warning, KJR, HyperEdit, MechJeb and Procedural Fairings.

Thank you

Edited April 29, 2015 by Crzyrndm

[Gfurst]

2) Incase the OP didn't get it across, SSAS is surface relative SAS (with a few extra bits and pieces).

First, Pitch held shifts as you travel to remain the same no matter where you are on the planet. No annoying pitch up as you travel.

Second, all the axes are separated. When you give pitch input only, SSAS still maintains control over the roll axis (and the yaw axis if roll angle is very small).

Third, in addition to the separation, you can activate and deactivate control for individual axes. Particularly, pitch+roll with no heading control is amazingly useful for planes (because you can turn by rolling, as you should)

Thanks, I'm also guessing this will be unbelievable useful for better ascent profiles, but a bit cheaty though. One thing a didn't understand, will the command keys works as they do in regular assisted pilot? eg, pitching up changes pitch to hold not actual pitch controls.