[1.0.2] B9 Aerospace | Procedural Parts 0.40 | Updated 09.06.15

[bac9]

I don't think it's the issue of your mod, but I've noticed that when I detached a created & fine-tuned wing with assigned action groups to, say, flaps - the action group will not work for the second wing when the wing is re-attached with SPH symmetry.

Just a notice - always re-check AG.

That's an ancient bug on stock KSP side. Stock Bug Fixes mod should have a workaround for that.

[Horus]

A little question regarding textures:

Are LRSI & HRSI planned to be used with DRE? Will they influence weight without changing the surface change - I mean HRSI is thicker & heavier.

Similar question about B9-PCST: you have 3 materials for this surface - two for surface attachment root (top & bottom of the surface) and 1 for surface tip (same texture for top & bottom). In this case it can be just 2 textures - surface top & surface bottom Or 4 textures - top & bottom or surface root, top & bottom of surface tip

What's the idea behind the textures: "Uniform Coating", "Standard alloys", Reinfonced composites. Will they influence weight, strength or else?

[bac9]

Version 0.13

https://bitbucket.org/bac9/b9_aerospace_plugins/downloads

• Implemented a different setup method for the flight scene to prevent FAR checks from running before all procedural parts take their shape. It probably works.
  
• Minor logging changes

_______________________________________

Are LRSI & HRSI planned to be used with DRE?

Yes.

Will they influence weight without changing the surface change - I mean HRSI is thicker & heavier.

Probably not, FAR already controls weight based on connection strength, I can't interfere with that. And from what I understand, differences between those materials are not that significant mass-wise. Maybe cost will differ, but that's it.

Similar question about B9-PCST: you have 3 materials for this surface - two for surface attachment root (top & bottom of the surface) and 1 for surface tip (same texture for top & bottom). In this case it can be just 2 textures - surface top & surface bottom

I'll look into it, but remember that top/bottom surfaces and the trailing edge are using different textures (check the part folder to find the difference) so the trailing edge can not really show the same texture as the top/bottom surfaces. If I go two property route, it will be a sync between two separate textures that just happen to look stylistically similar on layers of same index, which is not very nice. Some people would actually prefer to control them separately.

Or 4 textures - top & bottom or surface root, top & bottom of surface tip

That's too many options for my liking, because then you'll have to use four edge texturing properties for the wing part. I need a tweakable menu with collapsible property sections and a very robust replacement to existing property UI to make that sort of thing convenient to use. Same deal with other properties, like adding separate leading/trailing edge scaling parameter for root and tip side of every edge of a wing.

What's the idea behind the textures: "Uniform Coating", "Standard alloys", Reinfonced composites. Will they influence weight, strength or else?

None, just random names somewhat attached to how textures look, it's better to have those than forcing people to remember featureless index numbers. Feel free to suggest better ones.

Edited January 8, 2015 by bac9

[kcs123]

Besides different look, those textures could have effect on different maximum heat tolerance, cost, weight per volume etc.

I fall in love with procedural wings, (not only this mod) due to game better performance, easier to build whole plane and better L/D can be accomplishend then building whole wing only from stock parts.

In way how KSP calculate aerodynamic (even with FAR, actualy especialy with FAR), large wing consiting of several numbers of smaller stock parts is calculated as each wing produce drag like they were not connected to each other. With Pwings that problem is solved, you can create only one larger surface area and only that part produce drag as it is first node that flaws trough air.

Also B9 is one of essential mods to install on each KSP version. Problem is that with each KSP update, there is more and more stock parts leaving less room for B9 and other mods.

So, once you are complete this mode, are there any plans to merge it with whole B9 mod and maybe abandon existing B9 wings with this new Pwings ?

That will give some room for other mods as well.

Also, if you want to go with this different textures/effects, maybe it will be good to spread different wing textures across tech tree ? So, lower maximum temperature wings could be available sooner and texture that gives higher temperature tolerance will be available in higher grade science node on technological tree. That is jus one example that pops up, there is plenty of possibilities.

[falken]

I just prune content I don't need, kcs123.

Bac9, that seems to have sorted the issue. I did have a *little* control surface stalling, but this was at around stall speed. I found that the shuttle I made flies flawlessly now.

Really, top notch work.

[Horus]

So, once you are complete this mode, are there any plans to merge it with whole B9 mod and maybe abandon existing B9 wings with this new Pwings ?

That will give some room for other mods as well.

Though it sounds quite reasonable, remember about the people who have their crafts created & flying on rails. If you personally need extra space & do not need B9 wing parts - just remove them from the mod At least, for a while

[kcs123]

I know how to get rid of parts that I don't need to make room for other mods. Not all people know that and at some point any moders have to make hard decision to abandon obsolete parts.

When this mod is finished it will make a lot of other wing parts pretty much obsolete. People who have planes on rails should deceide will they upgrade to latest B9 or not until they finish tasks with those planes, put them in hangar and upgrade with new wings.

KSP is still heavy in development and more then plenty other mods as well. At some point you will be forced to make choice what to maintain further and what not.

If you develop far better parts for same purpose then it is better to put effort in some new stuff then waste time and energy on stuff that most of people will stop to use anyway.

Just a suggestion, not everybody will like it, but it will make modders life easier for sure.

[Tellion]

There is also the pleasant middle ground of including a legacy folder that can be installed by ppl with older saves, while being completely ignored by everyone else

[Hyomoto]

Do you have any plans to include camber? I know it would likely just be a visible thing, but it would be great to get away from the pancake wings. When someone shows you something awesome you can't help but dream a little.

[ferram4]

Camber isn't really the best idea. There are a few problems with it:

1. Any wing that needs to have multiple parts on the chordwise direction isn't going to get process right, and it'll look like there are a bunch of waves on the surface of the wing.
   
2. FAR won't simulate single-part-camber right. Not much point, to be honest, since camber only adds lift at subsonic speeds; above Mach 1, all lift effects can be resolved from angle of attack changes. Yes, even control surface deflections work this way. All camber is good for at those speeds is adding more drag.
   
3. Trying to hack it into FAR by hiding it as a change in wing AoA will cause lots of interaction issues between wings, don't do it.
   

Yeah, this is one of those suggestions that's constantly brought up. There are reasons FAR doesn't bother with it.

[camlost]

with 0.13 adn FAR dev version, both the ailerons and the flaps are 15 degrees.

[Horus]

@kcs123, personally I totally agree with you. As soon as mods add a real juicy cherry to the game you want to use them. And their size sooner (mostly sooner) or later become a problem. So, I agree that optimizations like removing/replacing obsolete parts is a necessary thing. Some mod developers are keeping in their mind this and splitting large mods into separate packages, etc.

@camlost, yes, seems that stall effect still present there.

[falken]

Thing is, when said obsolete parts get removed you get folk moaning because that just happened to be their favourite part!

[Hyomoto]

Yeah, this is one of those suggestions that's constantly brought up. There are reasons FAR doesn't bother with it.

Woah, hold on a second. I said visible camber, I never mentioned FAR. Thanks for shoveling all those words in my mouth, I actually had to double check where I posted. It has been asked exactly one time in this thread and, considering this thread is about B9's procedural parts, FAR and camber has been asked about exactly zero times. I'm asking if there are plans for VISIBLE camber. As in, B9, do you have any plans to allow for visible camber? Which, barring the b9 part, is exactly what I wrote the first time. I asked that on purpose and I was careful to phrase it that way.

[bac9]

Woah, hold on a second. I said visible camber, I never mentioned FAR. Thanks for shoveling all those words in my mouth, I actually had to double check where I posted. It has been asked exactly one time in this thread and, considering this thread is about B9's procedural parts, FAR and camber has been asked about exactly zero times. I'm asking if there are plans for VISIBLE camber. As in, B9, do you have any plans to allow for visible camber? Which, barring the b9 part, is exactly what I wrote the first time. I asked that on purpose and I was careful to phrase it that way.

Ferram has mentioned valid problems with visible camber and I agree with his opinion on wings made from a chordwise sequence of parts too. I am not planning to introduce support for it. Some reasons:

• Supporting shaped chordwise cross sections (especially asymmetric) will significantly complicate the way I control wing geometry even if I limit the shaping to the middle section of the wing without touching the way I handle edges
  
• Supporting it fully will require complete rewrite of the current structure (separate leading/trailing edge objects and middle box), making whole wing one piece of geometry with vastly complicated deformation code
  
• Supporting multiple cross section types is an additional memory leak risk and additional hierarchy clutter if I do it through mesh swapping
  
• There is no elegant way to allow a wing to take on an arbitrary slice of a cross section to properly support segmented wings (and you don't want wavy wing surfaces, do you)
  
• KSP attachment system will freak out completely if forced to deal with curved surfaces like those, goodbye precise landing gear placement
  
• I'll be forced to use a mesh collider instead of a box collider to support proper collisions, which will have significant performance impact
  
• While I got mirroring to work so upside down cambers won't be an issue, I have no way of controlling it which leads to random flipping of vertical surfaces and will require implementing separate geometry handling for vertical and non vertical wings if I want to keep the former symmetrical

So yeah, sorry, it's an enormous can of worms I'd rather not open.

Edited January 9, 2015 by bac9

[RainDreamer]

So I saw your exchange with Starwaster on DRE, and I wonder, since Starwaster said it might not be possible for what you were planning to do, would you just give 360 heatshield coverage for the wings then?

[bac9]

So I saw your exchange with Starwaster on DRE, and I wonder, since Starwaster said it might not be possible for what you were planning to do, would you just give 360 heatshield coverage for the wings then?

The issue he pointed out does not exist when the part orientation is set up properly and symmetry is properly configured, so all my proposals still stand.

And nope, I'm not really interested in using 360 coverage.

[TheReaper]

Hello guys,

i dont know if anyone else mentoned this before. I freshly installed ksp and with some bunch of mods with this that actualy work together pretty well, the game is very stable. However whenever in hangar after i am done with main hull or something, after i start the wings and tweaking stuff. within several minutes i crash to desktop with "ksp stopped working" error. I dont get any bug report file in ksp folder, so i cant send outlook or log file here. This happens more frequantly when i am done with main wing and after i attack another procedural wing to its tip end for more costumazation.

i run latest version of this mod and far and any other mod. i run .90 x32 ksp.

What should i do?

[RainDreamer]

Sounds like memory leak problems. I thought it got fixed recently though.

[Hellbrand]

these wings dont really provide much lift from what i can tell, Spaceplane designs using the original P-wings mod that i change over to this one tend not to work too well at all. either far acts like theyre not there or there are some weird phantom forces acting upon the craft.

[Hyomoto]

So yeah, sorry, it's an enormous can of worms I'd rather not open.

I assumed it would be problematic but I wasn't thinking a 'proper' camber. Something unimpressive like an offset between the height at the leading and trailing edges to let your basic shapes handle the illusion and remain compatible with a box collider is beyond enough, though I can only visualize the end result. However, this isn't a suggestion, just a description of what fueled my question. In KSP the approximation is usually more valuable than a rigorous model and these wings already border on too good as it is. Composition is clearly very important to you, it's interesting to see a technical mod from the viewpoint of an artist.

[bac9]

I assumed it would be problematic but I wasn't thinking a 'proper' camber. Something unimpressive like an offset between the height at the leading and trailing edges to let your basic shapes handle the illusion and remain compatible with a box collider is beyond enough, though I can only visualize the end result. However, this isn't a suggestion, just a description of what fueled my question. In KSP the approximation is usually more valuable than a rigorous model and these wings already border on too good as it is. Composition is clearly very important to you, it's interesting to see a technical mod from the viewpoint of an artist.

Yeah, distorting the central box with split thickness values is possible, although some issues with that will remain (box colliders can't be deformed like that, you'll still have to use a mesh collider) and some new ones will pop up with that approach (one of the edges will be disproportionately distorted). I might look at it later, but just as with proposals about more properties and more fine-grained control over various parts of the wings (like separate configuration of top/bottom leading/trailing edge surfaces), I need to figure a way to radically rework the UI first - otherwise I risk making UI an unreadable mess of endless properties that is hard to use efficiently. Ideally I need something like a layered menu with separate property groups that can be opened and collapsed at will.

[ricktza]

This mod looks pretty good, i'll need to give it a try.

I'm getting pretty close to max memory though :s

[Tellion]

Well then this is going to help you! It actually allows to delete most (if not all) other wing parts, saving you alot of ram in the process.

[Dale Gribble]

This is awesome, but would it be possible to make the wings even smaller/thinner (decrease the minimum width and thickness to like 0.001 or something?)

I often like to use procedural wings to make small details and cockpits but these are a somewhat too big

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Edited January 11, 2015 by Dale Gribble