silverfox8124

@Ser, I have not looked at it, but simulating weather without large resource consumption would mean they're either doing really local weather, or they're just polling the weather from a website or weather network, probably adding in some fancy effects with it.

@Solestis, odd, your report seems to be lacking an output log and a certain settings file.

@Ser (Note: I could be wrong, but I'm probably not) Having larger cells means less accuracy, and of course, less weather phenomenon can happen. Smaller cells means that we can more reliably produce real world results as weather in a local area is a result of the sum of the surrounding area's data. No matter how we do this, it's a metric .... tonne of data to process, store, and retrieve, there's almost no way around it. It's going to be CPU intensive, and probably consume some good amounts of RAM, when graphical weather effects come in, graphics specs will go up as well. Make sure to note all of this and not try and run KWS on a tiny little netbook, it will not go well for you. Another thing to note: A cell's data is for that local area. If a cell encompasses something like... half a country, then half the country will be more or less the same temperature, the same humidity, and have the same weather details, pretty much, and the sunrise time wouldn't be reliable either because there's too much surface covered by a cell. The main problem here is the memory usage and the amount of cells that come in the grid as we move up the levels. We're going to need to do some number crunching and such, but I'd honestly tell you to expect to have about 2-6GB of RAM dedicated to KWS. That's just how it's going to be. Building this weather simulation has not been easy at all for us, there are challenges and hurdles literally *every* step of the way, with the entire time we need to be concerned about how much your computer would melt. What makes it even harder for us is that Unity stuff isn't kind to multi-threading, so we can't easily work with it in that way of parallelizing our work. We want to bring you guys something that's as real as we can get it, and it's going to come at a hefty resource cost, that's how it is until some godly revelation is had. TL;DR: Yes, smaller cells accumulate into the larger picture, but are necessary for weather phenomena to function properly to scale. This work is hard, and it'll take a while to develop, and will be resource heavy, sorry but that's how she goes for now.

@herman, 1) Save button should work, check your version and make sure it's the latest. If that check passes, have you tried using the Load button? 2) that does seem odd, but what's more odd is that there's an issue with no logs or settings files to back it up...

The thing is, with RSS, things are MUCH, MUCH larger, meaning the cells have lesser accuracy, and that means I need to up the cells for more accuracy, and then that means a lot more resource usage... about 280MB - 1GB per planet... so yeah... As much as I'd love to go stock, the stock model is just absolute crap for use with weather.

@Steven Mading, crosswind can be fun, it should be fine, idk. Dev Update! So... good news and bad news. Good news is that the model is making further progress. Bad news is that Squad doesn't like doing planets right. The temperature scales for all the planets are/can be off by a good chunk and temps at different latitudes don't correspond with what our model is showing, and with such, we'd have to butcher a perfectly good model just to accommodate for stock's crap. It's seriously starting to annoy me. I know you guys want stock really badly, but I'm afraid to say that it's not looking too peachy. RSS support will be had in the next update as it gives "realler" values for us to work with. Stock support has butchered not only our model, but the chances for players to make their own planets to add to KWS. It has butchered it to the point where we could've had a model going by now. It has butchered it to the point where we have to un-butcher it to get RSS support, and that is ass-backwards. If full on stock support is to be a thing, it may not be until it's in the stock game itself, as there is too much squad has gotten wrong for me to work with reliably. It has killed too much of my dreams. I am holding off full-stock support. The only stock support I may put in, is for stock aero, in prep for a potential future stock support if a KWS Lite comes out. Until next time, ~SilverFox8124

@ThatOneBritishGuy... oh stahp it you~ I'm not as good as you make me out to be. Don't get your hopes up too high, I don't want to crush them hard when I can't deliver. However, Dev Note: We're making progress slowly still, working on some calcs regarding rain droplet size, then it'll be putting together the on-paper model and then seeing what it outputs. From there I will let you know what comes out of it. Should be hopefully soon. Wish us luck! ~SilverFox8124

StarCraft 2 wasn't a major disappointment though, Duke Nukem forever was worked on for 15 years and was given abysmal scores from critics.

@ThatOneBritishGuy... Duke Nukem Forever

As diomedea put it, it would be impossible for a natural model to model the Kerbol system.... with that being said, if you all are adamant on keeping things as is, then we're going to need some time to "Correct" our model. Since you guys asked for changes, don't be surprised if it takes us longer to do it.

@wasml, it's hard to say what the other planets will be in terms of predicted atmosphere height, but Kerbin would definitely not be 800km....

@wasml, I can't rescale the entire kerbol system because all the planets are different. There isn't a universal scale size, last I recall.

@Corax, The thing is, Unity provides plenty of useful stuff that I'd have to use manually. Like Vector3's and Vector2's, all the functions that come with them, and all other sorts of things as well. There's plenty that would be lost if I made it a standalone, but then again there's also some gain there as well. All this will come into thought at a later date. @Everyone, It has come to my attention that the planets in KSP aren't particularly accurate in their atmospheric height to gravity to molar mass of air to other related stuff, the model as we have it would say that Duna's atmosphere is realistically 300km instead of 50k. Just wanting to get some feedback on what you guys think if KWS altered some of the planets to better fit realism in weather. ~Silverfox8124

@Corax, I've debated having a central server in my home or whatnot that I run and then have all the clients connect to it, but it's a little iffy on that as the bandwidth needed may be a bit higher than I want and I definitely don't have the bandwidth to support tons of players. If I had a server on one of those server racks at those database centers that have intense bandwidth it may be another story, but I'd also have to pay for their usage; money I can't spare each month because of going to college in a month. I have thought of externalizing the system, and I have tried that before, and it's a lot more challenging for me than one may think. There were bugs and the sim just wasn't cooperating. However, with the new model we may be able to squeeze in some multi-threading and see how it goes. This mod is still very early in it's days and we're making progress, so don't worry. We're just sorting out the kinks of the system and what all would be needed for weather to be properly stable. Once we get our stuff sorted out, it'll make it's way to code. Sidenote: "...it's not like you're trying to use Unity to predict tomorrow's weather on Earth" Teeeechnically we are. And we could. If the weather sim is built properly, it'll have to handle RSS(Real Solar System), which replaces Kerbin with Earth. I also plan on somehow shoehorning in weather predicting. I mean, if you're experienced enough in the meteorology field, then you could do it with some work from the current state of the sim, but for the layman to predict the weather would require a bit more processing on our end, and I don't fully know if the sim could handle that. TL;DR progress is being made, multi-threading is being looked into, but is difficult because Unity API isn't thread-safe. KWS *could* be used for weather prediction on Earth, server weather not looking too hot. ~SilverFox8124

@Ser When I worked on KWS alone, I had the end goal in mind the whole time and couldn't stop trying to add ideas to it and make it "better". I do this with everything and it's sort of the bane to my existence. However I have a small team of people who are working on what they need to be, and I do my best to contribute and make sure that everything is on track. We at KWS also try to focus on the immediate next goal once nearing the completion of the current goal, so we get a tiny leg ahead of it. We try to stay away from the end goal too much unless the end goal would be preventing us from doing KWS in a meaningful manner. As we are trying to run a weather sim on home computers, through unity, through a single-cored physics thread, used by another program and mods simulataneously, we have a lot to manage when it comes to making it work, and taking it step by step is the best way to do this. On another note, I am still very open to people who have vast knowledge in the weather fields to come and join, as the larger our knowledge base, the better we can tackle problems that may arise. ~SilverFox8124

@jsimmons, what a fountain of knowledge you are. I've open the paper you have linked and will give it a thorough read-through soon enough. It's an interesting find to see a similarity in the way the atmospheres are on different planets. However, what I mean by not greatly studied is that we have live maps of the weather and ocean currents here on earth that are easily accessible by the public. We also have weather simulations being run everyday for the planet to give us weather reports. We as the public don't really have access to that same kind of data for other planets, if there's even the same data for the other planets, so to study the behaviour in weather on other planets is a tad more challenging for me to do with a lack of data. On the note of kerbin being different from Earth, I stick by my point of the geography being different. It will almost certainly produce a different weather flow than what we see on Earth. On another note, how long have you been interested in weather stuffs? ~SilverFox8124

@Shad0wCatcher, thanks but I already have my team working on the details of what makes up Eve and Jool, as well as Laythe. Venus and Jupiter are different colours than Jool and Eve. Also the thicker atmosphere doesn't necessarily mean it traps more gases, it just means there's potential for more of them in a set space.

@wasml, We at KWS *could* just tell stock ksp that it's wrong and just go with whatever we want, but that would mean generating our own base data for the planets, and that'd take up time and resources to do. We'd much prefer to grab stock temps and then go from there, but we need to find out what Eve is like as a planet, same with Jool and Laythe.

@Everyone, Wow this thread just BOOMED up over night. I'd like to say that while yes, cars and planes are engineered to take lightning strikes, but you have to ask yourself, are kerbals that prepared for it? Lightning in the least damages what it touches in some way or another. The bolt itself is quite hot and packs a ton of punch. Having parts explode and break would encourage the player to not fly in storms. On the topic of Rbray's clouds, rbray and I have been talking a tad more since he's picking back up on EVE. One problem we're facing is having individual cloud segments and controlling each separately. It's a tad harder than you all may think, as even the both of us are stumped for ideas. On the topic of the current progress on the weather sim, we did a cleanup on it and are prepping it for it's final writings. We've hit some bumps on some formulas but we hope to get that sorted out soon. As I tell my team, it doesn't matter how long it takes(within reason), as long as it's done right. I want to give you guys (and myself) a proper sim and not something crudely thrown together for visual effect. This mod has potential to be BIG, and we're making sure that KWS can withstand that pressure (haha get it ;D) as it gets nearer to it's goal. We don't want the project collapsing on itself from lack of foundation. Another great thing we realized is that there aren't any reliable weather patterns for Mars. The climate isn't as studied as Earth's, same with Jupiter and Saturn. So we're going out on a limb when we try and simulate those, sadly we can't guarantee how accurate those planets(Eve and Jool) may behave in game. To add to that, Laythe is an entirely new planet with no IRL analogue, we'd be tackling that salty water ball with blind eyes. Also note that Kerbin != Earth. It's close, but it's not there, it tries to be, but it's not there. Kerbin's geographical layout is also MUCH different than Earth's. So don't go into KWS expecting to get Earth's weather(excluding RSS because that's a whole other bucket of worms). I love it when the forum booms like this, keep up the discussions and suggestions! Sincerely, ~SilverFox8124

@capi3101 A bachelors in Meteorology you say? Would you like to join in and maybe lend a hand to the very progress of the mod? We're always accepting people in the climatology/meteorology fields. Yes, there will be a forecast function, And if we can implement it properly, there will be a part which sits on kerbin, acts like a super computer, and predicts the weather coming up for a few days ahead. There will be temp maps and wind maps and all the other map .... you guys can handle (provided we have the parts for it). Yes, I hopefully plan on having lightning strikes explode parts on vessels. I bet you have taken a beautiful look already, but http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=temp/equirectangular is something I've always wanted to implement. TL; DR I like your major, so join us maybe? Yes, Yes, annd Yes.

@Fafnir48 odd that the 0 is causing problems...

@sober667 the clouds will be back, and will be wind. If anything, I'll try and fit as much of the new model as I can into the next release, and then work on aesthetics from there. The clouds require some special attention that EVE can't give them currently. so the clouds may stay the same, but they are functioning as is in the new model. The new model is all maths and functions, so even if you dont see rain, there could be rain(assuming that at that point I haven't made rain yet). In fact, if it's completely necessary, I'll have to put in the full model, but only a few of the graphical signs(clouds at most, *MAYBE* if the air gods are pleased enough; rain). But storms and snow and such probably won't be shown.

@Fafnir48 Have you looked at the contracts that it was declining and comparing that to your max funds/science/rep for that type of contract? I tried upping the amount, but it may need more tweaking

@AllOfYouGuys, Tbh, with how much the weather model is going to need to be worked on to finish on paper, don't expect a release too soon. I'd say by September we might have the model on paper done. From there it's all trying to get it coded properly to work with ksp, then it's shipping it off to you guys. I'd say that a KSP release for KWS might no be until the end of the year thereabouts :'C Sorry guys, but this is how she is. Don't worry though! It'll come in due time.

DEV UPDATE! WOO! So over the course of the past few weeks my other team member diomedea, amazing fellow, has been working on an actual weather model for us to run. It's coming along and we're already past wind and onto weather fronts and soon rain and clouds. After the model is complete and running properly, we will work on implementing it into the game so we can run ksp on it. CANNOT WAIT!