[1.9-1.10] Throttle Controlled Avionics

[kcs123]

Similar to six stages of debugging:

1. That can’t happen.

2. That doesn’t happen on my machine.

3. That shouldn’t happen.

4. Why does that happen?

5. Oh, I see. It is easy to fix.

6. How did that ever work?

I have seen that in similar fashion as on provided link, but I couldn't find proper link .
For KSP it better fits sentance "It is not a bug. It is feature."

 

[Solospirit]

Having never used the mod before...I am testing it in 1.1, whilst checking the manual as I go...Everything seems to be working fine so far...I am having some issues, but pretty sure I just need to configure things properly, rather than them being problems with the mod

So far I am impressed...thanks for this, and for all the hard work getting it sorted for 1.1...much appreciated

[Geschosskopf]

On 4/4/2016 at 1:20 AM, allista said:

TCA v3.0.1-KSP-1.1-BETA for KSP 1.1 (2016.04.04)

Just saying "Thanks!" for making this available.  I find it working quite well, no problems to report, although I haven't gotten into all the more sophisticated features yet.

I must not be understanding how to set up engines.  From reading the docks, I was under the impressing that "main engines" were the primary lift source, but I have better luck using "balanced thrust" for that.  The "main engine" setting results in less stability and control.  Am I doing something wrong?  But OTOH, I'm VERY new at building VTOLs so probably don't know what I'm doing.

FWIW, I have discovered a really good thing to use for the maneuver engines.  These are the tiny little "Jaguar" jet engines from @Angel-125's "Buffalo" mod.  They're intended for his Jetwing EVA flying suit and have very fast throttle response so you can hover that thing.  And you can set them to run on jetfuel instead of mono or LFO so your VTOL only needs 1 type of fuel, and the maneuvering fuel lasts indefinitely.  Anyway, I find them quite useful, although you might need to double up on them for bigger planes.

This little jets are radially attached on pylons.  In the pic below, you can see I'm using 6 of them, 2 on each side and 1 each fore and aft.  They don't even cause much problem with the IVA view, either.

Besides the maneuvering jets, this thing has the new radial VTOL engines from Mk 2 Extended as "balanced thrust" and a Wheasley set to manual for forward flight.

[merlinux]

How cool! Thanks @allista . I am glad you got it to work. Cant wait to try this on my next day off work.

Edited April 7, 2016 by merlinux

[allista]

11 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

Just saying "Thanks!" for making this available.  I find it working quite well, no problems to report, although I haven't gotten into all the more sophisticated features yet.

I must not be understanding how to set up engines.  From reading the docks, I was under the impressing that "main engines" were the primary lift source, but I have better luck using "balanced thrust" for that.  The "main engine" setting results in less stability and control.  Am I doing something wrong?  But OTOH, I'm VERY new at building VTOLs so probably don't know what I'm doing.

FWIW, I have discovered a really good thing to use for the maneuver engines.  These are the tiny little "Jaguar" jet engines from @Angel-125's "Buffalo" mod.  They're intended for his Jetwing EVA flying suit and have very fast throttle response so you can hover that thing.  And you can set them to run on jetfuel instead of mono or LFO so your VTOL only needs 1 type of fuel, and the maneuvering fuel lasts indefinitely.  Anyway, I find them quite useful, although you might need to double up on them for bigger planes.

This little jets are radially attached on pylons.  In the pic below, you can see I'm using 6 of them, 2 on each side and 1 each fore and aft.  They don't even cause much problem with the IVA view, either.

Besides the maneuvering jets, this thing has the new radial VTOL engines from Mk 2 Extended as "balanced thrust" and a Wheasley set to manual for forward flight.

Glad you like it 

About Main/Balanced engines: the difference between them is that Main engines are used both for thrust and for maneuvering (i.e. to produce torque in response to user input), while Balanced ones are always tuned to produce zero torque. Engines with slow throttle response are harder to use for maneuvering because you need to take their inertia into account and stop pulling pitch controls long before the needed angle is achieved.

TCA autopilot works around it using needed total thrust vector direction as a vessel orientation cue. Thus it can predict when to stop pitching/rolling to smoothly rotate for the needed angle. A human pilot usually performs much worse at such predictions. So if you use Main engines with AP (say, Cruise mode, or Waypoint Navigation) the vessel should behave much better, and won't even be needing the maneuver engines if it has at least three not-aligned Main ones.

I'll try to use the same technique for user input: to interpret it not as a torque request, but as a final pitch-roll angle request. This means that the absence of user input will be equivalent to the Level program. And this has to be an explicitly togglable mode of operation dedicated for VTOLs...

8 hours ago, merlinux said:

How cool! Thanks @allista . I am glad you got it to work. Cant wait to try this on my next day off work.

All thanks to you 

[SkyKaptn]

Desided to try this mod, but I cannot seem to get past the manual when clicking on the TCA-button. After having done some reading I found that it says: -"In Editor, TCA Configuration window may be summoned by the toolbar button if a ship has at least one TCA-capable command module and at least one engine. Otherwise the Manual is summoned by that button"

What I am missing? BTW, I play in sandbox so everything should be unlocked?

 

[martinezfg11]

Is anyone having issues with TCA and the Kuey rotor from KAX?

I activate TCA and the Kuey's thrust goes to zero or near zero.

[allista]

32 minutes ago, SkyKaptn said:

Desided to try this mod, but I cannot seem to get past the manual when clicking on the TCA-button. After having done some reading I found that it says: -"In Editor, TCA Configuration window may be summoned by the toolbar button if a ship has at least one TCA-capable command module and at least one engine. Otherwise the Manual is summoned by that button"

What I am missing? BTW, I play in sandbox so everything should be unlocked?

 

I would guess you're missing ModuleManager which is required by TCA to install its modules into engines and command parts.

[SkyKaptn]

Just now, allista said:

I would guess you're missing ModuleManager which is required by TCA to install its modules into engines and command parts.

Huh what do you know....the strangest thing had happened. ModuleManager 2.6.21 had simply vanished from gamedata folder. Really wierd because I had a ton og mods that depended on it.

[SkyKaptn]

Thanks BTW @allista for pointing me in the right direction. I must have hit that delete button while moving my keyboard or something. -Time to enable that delete confirmation in windows again

[kcs123]

1 hour ago, martinezfg11 said:

Is anyone having issues with TCA and the Kuey rotor from KAX?

I activate TCA and the Kuey's thrust goes to zero or near zero.

Several pages back - you need at least 2 Kuey rotors on craft for TCA to be able to balance them. Also you might need small PID adjustment, because Kuey rotor have slow response when you apply throttle.

Or you can try different aproach, use kOS and make your own custom hovering/autopilot script, like I did

[martinezfg11]

29 minutes ago, kcs123 said:

Several pages back - you need at least 2 Kuey rotors on craft for TCA to be able to balance them. Also you might need small PID adjustment, because Kuey rotor have slow response when you apply throttle.

Or you can try different aproach, use kOS and make your own custom hovering/autopilot script, like I did

Hmm, I've always wanted to use KOS for such a thing. I may give it a shot, just gotta find out where to start.

[kcs123]

7 minutes ago, martinezfg11 said:

Hmm, I've always wanted to use KOS for such a thing. I may give it a shot, just gotta find out where to start.

Check out links in my signature, you will find link to download craft files and with those there is kOS script created for KAX heli and for powered "suicidal burn" landing of rockets.

It was created for previous version of kOS, I didn't updated scripts since then, but those are created just with basic set of commands so it should work.
Not a very advanced, but I tried to comment out all important stuff, so it is usefull for learning how stuff works in KSP.

[Geschosskopf]

11 hours ago, allista said:

About Main/Balanced engines: the difference between them is that Main engines are used both for thrust and for maneuvering (i.e. to produce torque in response to user input), while Balanced ones are always tuned to produce zero torque. Engines with slow throttle response are harder to use for maneuvering because you need to take their inertia into account and stop pulling pitch controls long before the needed angle is achieved.

Ah, OK, so it must be the engines I'm using that are giving better results as Balanced instead of Main..

So here's another question....  I have mods that provide engines that rotate 90^ so you can use them for VTOL and also forward thrust in conventional flight.  In my experiments with them so far, I haven't figure out how to keep TCA running for them in forward flight so what I've been doing is a 3-step process in the switch from vertical to horizontal flight:

1. Hit Y to turn off TCA
2. Hit Z to get the throttle back to full.
3. Hit the action group that changes the engine's thrust direction

Is there a better way to use these engines with TCA?

11 hours ago, allista said:

TCA autopilot works around it using needed total thrust vector direction as a vessel orientation cue. Thus it can predict when to stop pitching/rolling to smoothly rotate for the needed angle. A human pilot usually performs much worse at such predictions. So if you use Main engines with AP (say, Cruise mode, or Waypoint Navigation) the vessel should behave much better, and won't even be needing the maneuver engines if it has at least three not-aligned Main ones.

I'll try to use the same technique for user input: to interpret it not as a torque request, but as a final pitch-roll angle request. This means that the absence of user input will be equivalent to the Level program. And this has to be an explicitly togglable mode of operation dedicated for VTOLs...

Very interesting.  Thanks for the info.  I'll try a 3-poster next time.

[allista]

8 hours ago, Geschosskopf said:

I have mods that provide engines that rotate 90^ so you can use them for VTOL and also forward thrust in conventional flight.  In my experiments with them so far, I haven't figure out how to keep TCA running for them in forward flight so what I've been doing is a 3-step process in the switch from vertical to horizontal flight:

1. Hit Y to turn off TCA
2. Hit Z to get the throttle back to full.
3. Hit the action group that changes the engine's thrust direction

Is there a better way to use these engines with TCA?

The engine-balancing part of TCA should handle this situation just fine; what may cause unwanted behaviour is the Vertical Speed/Altitude Control, which is programmed to switch off Main engines that are pointed even a little upward, so that you could do a barrel roll and would not be pinned to the ground with the full thrust of lifting engines.

So what I would do is I'd disable the AutoThrottle and VSC/AltControl, took off by manually throttling up, then disabled the Stop program (if it's on) and rotated the engines while throttling to the full power.

BTW, what mods are you referring to? I could do a test drive and make a video of possible TCA usage in this case.

[kcs123]

Two mods that I'm aware of is B9 Aerospace (having special VTOL engines that can rotate) and other one is Infernal Robotics(IR in short).
IR have several parts that allow engine to be attached at and rotate/move engine as desired.

Ability to rotate engines combined with TCA can bring a lot of interesting craft design. For example, If COM shift too much due to payload (de)attach or fuel consuption, some of engines might become uneffective as TCA can low down thrust too much to compensate for torque. But if you rotate that engine or even translate it to be closer or further away from COM, you could be able to use full thrust on engine without having too much torque.

Both mentioned mods still need to be properly updated for 1.1., so any work around those ideas should be postponed after official 1.1. release to reduce workload needed to suport those.

[Geschosskopf]

11 hours ago, allista said:

So what I would do is I'd disable the AutoThrottle and VSC/AltControl, took off by manually throttling up, then disabled the Stop program (if it's on) and rotated the engines while throttling to the full power.

Thanks for the advice.

 

11 hours ago, allista said:

BTW, what mods are you referring to? I could do a test drive and make a video of possible TCA usage in this case.

The main one I use is @SuicidalInsanity's very cool Mk2 Expansion.  It has at least 2 pivoting engines.  One is a small, radially attached thing with integral intake (seen under the wings in my pic above).  On this one, only the nozzle pivots.  The other is a Mk2 cross-section part with a magic rear end that appears or not depending on whether the engine is in the middle or rear end of a stack.  If you leave the rear end exposed, then it can be used in both VTOL and forward flight.  In the middle of the stack, it's just a retractable VTOL engine.  Either way, the entire engine and intake assembly rotates within a fixed frame.

You can see both these engines on the right of the 3rd pic in the gallery of parts in the mod's OP.  The mod also has numerous dedicated VTOL-only engines, both jets and rotors.

[Arglebargle]

Hi, I'm new here and I must have messed up something in installation. I have TCA in my tech tree, but nothing on any of my parts and no TCA button on my taskbar while in flight. Is there an extra step to installing it beyond unzipping to GameData, or is there a problem with module manager, or what? I use radial engine setups extensively for propulsive landing and skycranes, so this mod would be a huge help. But I can't seem to even get to step one.

[kcs123]

2 hours ago, Arglebargle said:

Hi, I'm new here and I must have messed up something in installation. I have TCA in my tech tree, but nothing on any of my parts and no TCA button on my taskbar while in flight. Is there an extra step to installing it beyond unzipping to GameData, or is there a problem with module manager, or what? I use radial engine setups extensively for propulsive landing and skycranes, so this mod would be a huge help. But I can't seem to even get to step one.

If you play it in career mod, you need to unlock certain tech tree first. Other kind of error might be with Blizzy toolbar, in some rare situations you need to reinstall it or at least delete config files. Other than that it is hard to say what went wrong without log files.

[allista]

2 hours ago, Arglebargle said:

Hi, I'm new here and I must have messed up something in installation. I have TCA in my tech tree, but nothing on any of my parts and no TCA button on my taskbar while in flight. Is there an extra step to installing it beyond unzipping to GameData, or is there a problem with module manager, or what? I use radial engine setups extensively for propulsive landing and skycranes, so this mod would be a huge help. But I can't seem to even get to step one.

It seems like ModuleManager problem, bun not enough data to be sure. What KSP and TCA versions are you using? If it's KSP-1.1, have you installed the compatible beta-version of MM from its forum thread? Do any of the cockpits/probe-cores in Editor in their info panels tell something like "TCA: Unavailable" or "TCA: Software Installed"? And sharing logs is always a good idea 

[Arglebargle]

7 hours ago, allista said:

It seems like ModuleManager problem, bun not enough data to be sure. What KSP and TCA versions are you using? If it's KSP-1.1, have you installed the compatible beta-version of MM from its forum thread? Do any of the cockpits/probe-cores in Editor in their info panels tell something like "TCA: Unavailable" or "TCA: Software Installed"? And sharing logs is always a good idea 

No, there is nothing in parts info in editor, which is what makes me think it's a modulemanager problem. I'm on 1.05 and have installed MM 2.6.18 and the latest version of TCA. I don't know what log I should share. Thanks for helping by the way!

Edited April 10, 2016 by Arglebargle
politeness

[dark jam]

is 3.0.1 meant for ksp 1.0.5 because it is not working for me please help i am trying the 3.0.0 

Edit:Still not working i dont know what i am doing wrong

 

Edited April 10, 2016 by dark jam

[allista]

3 hours ago, Arglebargle said:

No, there is nothing in parts info in editor, which is what makes me think it's a modulemanager problem. I'm on 1.05 and have installed MM 2.6.18 and the latest version of TCA. I don't know what log I should share. Thanks for helping by the way!

This is definitely MM's problem, because the absence of these info messages means TCA modules are not being installed by MM. Does MM loading screen appears at all on game start, btw? You know, when it prints "applying patches" or some such. Also, is ModuleManager.dll  and ThrottleControledAvionics folder reside directly in GameData folder? And the @kcs123's question: are you using Blizzy's Toolbar or the stock Application Launcher?

Logs: on Windows(x64) it's KSP(_x64)_Data/output_log.txt, on Linux it's ~/.config/unity3d/Squad/Kerbal Space Program/Player.log

1 hour ago, dark jam said:

is 3.0.1 meant for ksp 1.0.5 because it is not working for me please help i am trying the 3.0.0 

Edit:Still not working i dont know what i am doing wrong

 

There are two versions of 3.0.1, for KSP-1.0.5 and for 1.1; but if you say the 3.0.0 is not working, there's something wrong with the installation. Check that the latest ModuleManager is properly installed, that ThrottleControlledAvionics folder is directly in GameData, and, if you're playing in Career mode, that you have purchased TCA in R&D.

Edited April 10, 2016 by allista

[dark jam]

1 hour ago, allista said:

This is definitely MM's problem, because the absence of these info messages means TCA modules are not being installed by MM. Does MM loading screen appears at all on game start, btw? You know, when it prints "applying patches" or some such. Also, is ModuleManager.dll  and ThrottleControledAvionics folder reside directly in GameData folder? And the @kcs123's question: are you using Blizzy's Toolbar or the stock Application Launcher?

Logs: on Windows(x64) it's KSP(_x64)_Data/output_log.txt, on Linux it's ~/.config/unity3d/Squad/Kerbal Space Program/Player.log

There are two versions of 3.0.1, for KSP-1.0.5 and for 1.1; but if you say the 3.0.0 is not working, there's something wrong with the installation. Check that the latest ModuleManager is properly installed, that ThrottleControlledAvionics folder is directly in GameData, and, if you're playing in Career mode, that you have purchased TCA in R&D.

i tried with the 3.0.1 for 1.0.5 but it didn't work either i extracted the ThrottleControlledAvionics folder from the downloaded game data folder 

I also see the GUI but it just seems to crash to the ground when i press the land command

Edited April 10, 2016 by dark jam

[allista]

1 hour ago, dark jam said:

i tried with the 3.0.1 for 1.0.5 but it didn't work either i extracted the ThrottleControlledAvionics folder from the downloaded game data folder 

I also see the GUI but it just seems to crash to the ground when i press the land command

Ah, so basically it works, just not as you expect it to. Then could you describe more verbosely the situation: the design of a ship you're using (you may post a screenshot, too), what you're trying to do and what exactly happens.