lo-fi

Grrrr. Save me searching, how do you bring up the in game log viewer now???

Cross fingers, I'm literally about to fire up 1.2 with the new colliders. It will no doubt all go wrong and result in a huge anticlimax with much log searching...

I quickly tried the stock U5 colliders with the long track. Nooooooope. Sideways jitterbug. We did the right thing developing something.

He's a clever dude, for sure. I think he wisely left it while the wheel colliders weren't working, so given a viable alternative can probably be persuaded. If not, I ought to be able to unpick it.

Yeah, this has come up before. I'll get in touch with BD when we've got something working.

OK, hang fire - I'm on it. I *will* restore decent functional wheels to KSP.

Thanks, might be handy. Fingers crossed it just goes smoothly!

Depends if you're talking stock part module, or stock wheel collider. Theres a hard limit with U5 colliders which means you can only have a certain number attached to a given rigid body (part), but I've no idea about the squad stuff on top. You used to be able to. I'll have a play around tonight, it will be interesting to see what it all looks like in game.

Thanks. I do have all the source for that, but there are a few things that stopped me re-releasing the nasa crawler thing. Firstly, KF doesn't support more than one track per part like RBI did, which is why the mole tracks are not a single part chassis. Secondly, the model is unfinished, slightly squiffy in places and generally has some weird stuff going on. The tracks, with such a difference in wheel size are a chuffing nightmare to skin, and it wasn't something that really interested me, so I left it be. The rest of the RBI bits have been bundled into KF with the blessing of the RBI guys. The source files are all available, plus a tutorial on how to set up parts with KF, so no reason somebody else can't pick it up. Not something I'll revisit I'm afraid.

Excellent, I'll get to work.

The famous vergins of U5. They are getting on a bit. I wonder if they have a beacon that looks grail-like...

Hopefully a week or two, then. I'll wait it out.

Seems to compile for 5.2 as long as the jointdrive modes are set to position only, but does some WEIRD stuff. The joints just don't behave like they should! Almost like the damper is doing nothing. I'll poke it a bit more, but looks like waiting for 1.2/U5.3 is the way forward. EDIT: Yup. Pointless. I don't know what's wrong in U5.2, but seems little point figuring out what it is when everything works fine in 5.3. Let's hope they drop 1.2 beta soon!

I'm afraid if they were working, I would have released them. They're based on the same broken bit of U5 that means wheels don't work, and that's about all you can say really :/ The repulsors will likely be the first things that get handed over to a trusted few for testing, as they only use suspension. One step at a time! I'm waiting for 1.2 beta to be available so we can test in-game.

Sigh. I'll get the holy mackerel...

This is all rather worrying...

Bodge after bodge after bodge...

Averaging was how I did it with the plugin previously - it worked well! As and when; no hurry I'm going to keep poking around seeing whether I can break it, and what best I can do with the plugin. Ideas are always welcome. Well, the kind that aren't "can you make this exact thing for me?" On a lot of them, it would require some remodelling and a lot of hierarchy re-jigging, so a button probably isn't practical. An IR style thing with return to centre steering to attach them to ought to be possible, though.

Thanks, that'll be handy! @SpannerMonkey(smce) and @Madrias, thanks for some quality input as always. I reckon the DSR will prove rather popular, Spanner. I'll dig out what I did continuing it - I think I remodeled some of the cockpit, but I can't remember why! i'm way behind the times on IVA stuff too, but I like the side by side cockpit idea. It'll free up some room inside at the rear too, but I'd hate to lose the shape entirely - it's so good. As ever, shout if I can help with your other projects, it can get a bit isolated when you're working away. I'm very grateful to this rabble for their constant interactions, and I cant thank Shadowmage enough for the work on the new wheel colliders; I would never have managed that myself. @Shadowmage I was going to bash it into 1.1/U5.2 guise, but as 1.2 beta is imminent, I'll wait a few days. Having some odd issues with tank steering when the wheels at furthest longitudes run away after losing grip in a turn, and I'm not sure entirely how to deal with that yet. Going to be a learning curve how the new colliders behave, figuring out whether it's a "you're driving them a totally insane way" or "something needs tweaking". The old U4 colliders were just so benign! The guys at Squad have done some incredible thing with Unity, but I wouldn't count on anything wheel related being truly fixed in 1.2... We're doing our absolute best to make a viable alternative.

Ahhh, I hadn't thought of the wheels spinning up! It's simply not a behaviour the stock colliders ever exhibited when grounded. Kenobi is quite correct, I don't ever do real stuff. Only a sort of representation if it's something I really like. The long tracks, for example, are a sort of futureish Russian T55, T34 kind of mashup. Tank hulls, as pointed out, are an ideal thing to start with the if you're going to make a part. The closest you'll get from me is the rover body with its kerbalised, kwerky sort of crazy.. There are two things in the pipeline: Spanners awesome DSR modular rover we've worked on, and the little open rollcage that V8jester was helping me with. Both are entirely freelance! The Christie suspension is kinda interesting, but mostly entirely hidden away! I did an HD, higher poly version of some of the wheels, so maybe an exposed version on the right type of track could look rather good. I got fed up with tweaking code the other night and made a six road wheel track with return rollers, which looks rather nice. It needs some different textures to the existing long track to set it apart, really. Does anyone have any tank models they've got nicely painted up and could take some pictures of? Square on shots of wheels and tracks with nice diffuse light and no shadows are great for making textures from.

It ought to slow down gradually if that were the case.. Most odd!

First bug report... When using tank steering using differential torque, the vehicle continues to rotate for double the amount of time the control input is applied for. Debug force lines confirm, and I've checked that my very simple control script isn't doing anything odd - it drops torque back to zero at the correct point when the key is released. I've disabled the lateral sticky friction joint drive too, which actually makes it worse! I can make a youtube or send the scene if you need, but this one ought to be easy enough to reproduce.

@Shadowmage I can't fault your friction implementation, it seems spot on in the U5 rig. Really looking good. Looking at sticky friction to get rid of that tiny bit of creep on slopes at very low speeds, though: We can use the lateral and forward joint drives just like the suspension, and it works like a charm. Rock solid on side slopes :). Manipulating the xDrive spring value gives an easy way to phase it in as speed drops, so there need not be any nasty transition, but it ought to be tied into the slip of the tyre in the forward direction. Before I go messing with too much, is there an elegant way to add this into your methods? I have a feeling the absolute numbers on this one are going to be an eyeballed "this kinda feels right", but the implementation will want some looking at. Any ideas? If we can get this one last bit nailed I'll look at wrapping it into 5.2 form (it's only really the joint related bits that are different), building a PartModule to add it into parts that have been exported with wheel colliders and wrapping the KF plugin around it.

Seriously impressed with the effort gone into the fish slapping! RL stuff (making the most of the short summer we have here!) has meant I've not had a lot of time to do much of anything, so slow progress. Things are quieting down though and I'm finally able to sit in front of the pc for a decent stint without my back screaming at me, so I'll be back into properly in the coming week I also managed to find my copy of 3D studio, so I'll eventually be able to do some modeling stuff again! Quite looking forward to that.

How long is a piece of string? Fish slap incoming....