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


Crzyrndm

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Control is exactly the same as stock SAS, press button and it releases control, release button and it locks again. About career, it's not particularly good at flying rockets (or rather facing vertical results in a lot of stupid behaviour) so I don't have much issue with it being constantly available. That's just my opinion though

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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.

I'm still not seeing anything with all of those mods. Could you give it a try with this version please.

q9YXH6t.png

Yea, that's still flying with 0 control sources. 1.0 changed something...

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http://i.imgur.com/q9YXH6t.png

Yea, that's still flying with 0 control sources. 1.0 changed something...

LoL, flying headless. more like zero control modules. But its actually interesting. Imagine a ghost ship flying the skies...

Actually I was interested if its possible to make something like the Virgin Galactic plane. Hull up a smaller space ship with a plane detach and ignite engines.

My question is, if detaching from the previous vessel would it still keep pilot assistant on safely to let you take control of the other vessel until safe?

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That seems to have done the trick - no more crashes. Should I even ask what happened your cockpit? :D

Alright, version 1.5.6 is the "official" recompile of that (+ the fix for the ghost ship...).

RE: The cockpit

It found Mach 2 and then the drag from the front of the craft being completely flat brought it back down to what you see there (I was sitting there waiting for it to crash into the ocean, because you know, no control source...)

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Ok, I'm really curious why this is happening. Both this and MechJeb's spaceplane guidance tend to drift off course when you put in a heading. Interestingly, this even changes my target heading where you enter it. Slowly, but surely, the heading changes.

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Sir, I must commend you on the incredible control stability in this mod. Previously I had to fiddle with PID values every flight; no longer. Your mod has made long-range aviation possible with zero pain for me. 45-minute polar transonic flight done in 15 minutes because pilot assistant suffers almost no issue with the x4 glitchy physics. o7

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Ok, I'm really curious why this is happening. Both this and MechJeb's spaceplane guidance tend to drift off course when you put in a heading. Interestingly, this even changes my target heading where you enter it. Slowly, but surely, the heading changes.

Because unless you are travelling exactly along a heading that is a multiple of 90 degrees (0,90,180,270. ), following a fixed heading number results in a non-constant direction. The heading control is actually fixed to the direction the original heading you entered was in, and then the heading is constantly updated to follow that direction. Think about what would happen flying over the north/south pole if this didn't happen, and then go do it (with the camera in chase mode preferably, otherwise it spins around the pole)

EDIT: East/West/90/270 being a constant direction actually only applies at the equator. At other locations it would have a turn rate that exactly matches a slice of the planet perpendicular to the N/S axis

Edited by Crzyrndm
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Ok, I'm really curious why this is happening. Both this and MechJeb's spaceplane guidance tend to drift off course when you put in a heading. Interestingly, this even changes my target heading where you enter it. Slowly, but surely, the heading changes.

Also look up Great Circles for more information.

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Because unless you are travelling exactly along a heading that is a multiple of 90 degrees (0,90,180,270. ), following a fixed heading number results in a non-constant direction. The heading control is actually fixed to the direction the original heading you entered was in, and then the heading is constantly updated to follow that direction. Think about what would happen flying over the north/south pole if this didn't happen, and then go do it (with the camera in chase mode preferably, otherwise it spins around the pole)

EDIT: East/West/90/270 being a constant direction actually only applies at the equator. At other locations it would have a turn rate that exactly matches a slice of the planet perpendicular to the N/S axis

True navigational problems, XD, funny facts, if following a straight heading you end up doing a sectional curve around the globe, real plane do this....

Anyway, had you guys test the sub SAS systems, like point prograde or retrograde? It worked a hell lot of fiiddly for me, not sure if it related to the mod or stock, and of course I thought this mod could actually fix it.

The whole thing is wobbly has hell, seems affected by different settings than default SAS, and also sometime has an offset off where its supposed to be pointing.

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The whole thing is wobbly has hell, seems affected by different settings than default SAS, and also sometime has an offset off where its supposed to be pointing.

I am officially ignoring the "extra" SAS settings. They are untuneable, hidden, and generally horrifyingly bad at control. Why they didn't make them use the same gains as the original SAS type I have no idea, but there was exactly nothing I could do about it in 0.90 (situation may have changed, but my level of doubt is very high...)

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In 1.0.1 Pilot Assistant stops responding to button input after lift-off. Manually entering target hdg, target altitude and target speed works though.

Edited by Andy81le
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I am officially ignoring the "extra" SAS settings. They are untuneable, hidden, and generally horrifyingly bad at control. Why they didn't make them use the same gains as the original SAS type I have no idea, but there was exactly nothing I could do about it in 0.90 (situation may have changed, but my level of doubt is very high...)

Understandable, maybe they fix their behavior in the future, its seems pretty badly afterall.

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Understandable, maybe they fix their behavior in the future, its seems pretty badly afterall.

Actually, I have some good news. Someone at Squad saw reason with 1.0 and the tuning parameters are open now. I've got some investigation to do as to how these new ones work, but I should be able to add them to the sas module.

EDIT

And this reminds me how unweildy the backend of the preset system is. This could take a while...

Edited by Crzyrndm
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If anyone's feeling adventurous, there's a new pre-release build on Github that enables tuning of the alternate SAS modes.

Please back up your presets before using this as the system has received a major overhaul.

RE: The new SAS Modes

Whoever wrote this screwed up the derivative action somehow. Zero the Kd factor and the control is MUCH more statically stable (moving to a point could get ugly though, be careful with it)

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I have a very simple Tech level 3 plane with the basic jet engine, one intake a mk1 cockpit and a mk1 inline cockpit. Its fairly well balanced with the CoG just behind the CoL during all aspects of flight and levels of fuel (I based it off of Manley's latest tutorial). I was having trouble with controlling the aircraft in level flight. It would slowly nose over at a rate of a degree or two per second. That brought me here. I landed, quite and loaded the Pilot Assistant, and the restarted and took off again. Again, I'm stable in roll/yaw and speed. So I opened PA, toggled the Vertical Control to red, selected the Mode:Altitude and set my target at 5k.

PA holds me at the altitude just fine. It ascends and decends to the target in all flight regimes - except, when warping. during 2x-4x acceleration, I slowly drop the nose (or quickly in 4x) and decend again. Since It can adjust the pitch during 1x I thought I'd be safe in 4x. Am I missing something? Stock SAS and SSAS have no affect on or off btw. Any advice?

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Physics warp can do some weird things on occasion. Possibly all you need to do is give PA a little bit more authority.

Options => Show Control Surfaces & Show Limits

If the elevator is deflected upwards ~40% constantly => Open the Elevator Controller and increase the "I Clamp" by 0.2-0.4

If the plane sits at about 10 degrees of AoA => Open the Vertical Speed Controller and increase the "I Clamp" and "Max Out" by 5

Alternatively, sometimes it gets the shakes at higher warps. If so, reduce the Kd on the vertical speed controller slowly (it should fix itself pretty quick, if you don't see any change by the time you've halved the value try the same on the elevator controller)

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I came across the issue that Pilot Assistant causes the plane to constantly descent and climb again in altitude hold and vertical speed modus (both hdg hold and speed are activated as well). Sometimes it will just fly the plane into the ground. It will never reach the set altitude, although manually the plane is perfectly capable of reaching it. What am I doing wrong?

Edit: Fixed it by exchanging the AV-T1 Winglets with the Delta-Deluxe Winglets ...

Edited by Andy81le
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Probably the same thing as the person before you. The controllers have operational limits (mostly for sanity so it doesn't try and climb with a 40+ degree angle of attack or something silly like that) and some strange behaviour will appear if you push those limits.

Options => Show Control Surfaces & Show Limits

If the elevator is deflected upwards ~40% constantly => Open the Elevator Controller and increase the "I Clamp" by 0.2-0.4

If the plane sits at about 10 degrees of AoA => Open the Vertical Speed Controller and increase the "I Clamp" and "Max Out" by 5

Alternatively, sometimes it gets the shakes at higher warps. If so, reduce the Kd on the vertical speed controller slowly (it should fix itself pretty quick, if you don't see any change by the time you've halved the value try the same on the elevator controller)

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