nli2work

yeah I'm particularly careful about scale, they're all 1,1,1. Anything other than that you get odd compressions and stretches when GOs get animated.

Spring/Damper are all constant in the 5 screencaps. you can see the suspension is compressed the same distance in all of them. I'm just not seeing any easy relationship between the suspensionDistance setting to the actual suspension height in game; except when it's 0 in the first screencap. the blue/yellow marker line, half way down the leg goign through the disk marks the pivot of the suspensionTransform that is moved by the wheelCollider physics... just like earlier KSP versions. with suspensionDistance 0; it sits on the ground. as expected. with suspensionDistance 0.25; it's sitting about 1m above the launch pad collider(which is slightly lower than the visible mesh) with suspensionDistance 0.5; it's sitting about 1.8m above the launch pad with suspensionDistance 0.75; it's sitting ~2.8m above I guess there's a factor of 4 going on here... but where is it coming from? Here's what groundHeightOffset does, so yeah lo-fi sums it up nicely, it replaces Bounds collider

like I said before, it would take a huge art overhaul for KSP to look decent in VR.

if it's less than the height of deployed legs then legs take precedence. if higher, vessel spawns in the air and drops. It's only considered when the vessel is first unpacked in the game, afterwards the height must be saved somewhere and you don't see the effect of groundHeightOffset. (presumably) the wheelCollider settings in the LT05 lander leg. not very close to the config settings. another caveat... according to the last devnote wheel suspension is getting changed... so all this maybe for naught.

groundHeightOffset adjusts how high the vessel is unpacked. It's added to the distance from what KSP figures is the lowest point on the vessel, to the surface of terrain. If you set it 0. vessel is unpacked on the terrain. if you set it to 5, vessel is unpacked 5m above terrain and dropped.

believe it or not, the suspension Distance in unity collider is set to 0.

alright... have to do it the hard way. The only value I changed is SuspensionDistance, in 0.25 increments. SuspensionOffset is same value as Distance but negative just to keep things consistent, it doesn't affect the actual suspensionHeight, only moves suspensionTransform up/down the suspensionLine. Yellow disc is center of WheelCollider The leg arms are all 1m long; each tick on the green ruler is 0.2m. Red line marks bottom of Leg Foot, it's floating quite a lot with higher suspensionDistance. I'm not seeing any kind of pattern here... where, and in what direction, is suspensionDistance measured from??

you have to post your logs then. I have no idea where and how you're looking. The error message in the OP simply means "im.test" isn't in memory when KSP is attempting to generate dragCube for that part. Delete KSP.log in the root, then run KSP till it hangs. ALT-F4, then search KSP.log for test.mu; there should be at least 4~6 entries. one of them would likely contain the error message you need to figure out what's wrong.

cool idea! a lot of work though. pretty much doubles the amount of work on any single part. you could try animating the opacity on the exterior shader, and trigger that with animateGeneric.

it wouldn't be very good without a huge art work overhaul, especially for IVAs.

try a parent object that moves both deployTgt and wheelCollider. doesn't seem to be any restriction on moving the wheelCollider, as long as it's not part of the same branch as suspension transform.

yep

the magnetic force should get it into perfect alignment when you get close enough in Roll angle. You'd have to use MM or edit the stock configs... so technically not 100% stock

no no, I meant enforce roll angle when docking is in stock module. no motor joints (except wheels) anywhere in KSP, much less docking ports.

really that important 2 degrees off?

You'll most likely have to write a custom animation module for this. I don't know of any animation modules stock or plugin that runs the kind of logic checks you are looking to do. it's something that would be easier with animator component. another reason for Squad to ditch legacy animation system.

there's an error message if KSP hangs loading your part, you just haven't looked in the right place. if you're attempting to load "im.test" as the part model I expect that would be prolematic. all KSP models are *.MU. your error message in OP is NullRef when attempting to create dragCube for "im.test". that means whatever "im.test" is, it isn't in memory when KSP is generating dragCubes. The relevant error is likely earlier in the load process when KSP is loading the actual models.

I don't think the animations need to get tagged. Just assign different layers to multiple ModuleAnimateGeneric in the part config.

looks like the MU couldn't load, you'll have to find the relevant error messages, either in KSP.log or in Unity Console. Since it's animation related, I'd start checking in Unity Console. CTRL-SHIFT-C in Unity, then export your model and see if any error messages come up. If not, load up KSP and search KSP.log for any errors related to your MU file. this thread may help if you find error messages

doesn't look related to animation... but problem with valid dragCube for the part.

it seems even suspensionDistance is multiplier... but it seems to only apply if you set the type to LEG instead of MOTORIZED nope... not a multiplier

LOL... been replying in the wrong thread... apparently suspensionRatio and damperRatio are multipliers to the wheelCollider settings exported from Unity. hm.... explains why my legs were throwing me up several km. and apparently only for LEG and not for MOTORIZED? cna't reproduce it on the wheels. WheelCollider doesn't get turned off... so leg works even when retracted. LOL I been trying to get something that works like Squad's landing struts. They're all at an angle to the ground once deployed. *FACEPALM*... forgot to change the wheelCollider name in the config. I'm such a noob alright... things are falling into place now more or less. just have to figure out what's making everything float up in the air.

I'm also seeing the wheelCollider is not destroyed on retraction like I see with the deployable wheel I made... maybe that's just side effect of me setting up the leg wrong.

I'm making magical launch legs now... kinda frustrating. Leg either clips through ground, or launch the vessel up several km. how do you guys have leg's wheelcollider oriented? like LT-1/2 or LT-5? LT1/2 rotated the entire leg to keep the wheelCollider is oriented to world XYZ... LT-5 has rotated wheelCollider to match the piston's orientation when deployed.