Poodmund

Thanks for the endorsement, Theysen. Benji13, you can preview the ones I have listed here: Alternatively, if you don't fancy any of them, the TextureReplacer OP has a list of various skyboxes for you to download and use. EDIT: Also do not forget the gorgeous one that DasValdez uses on his Twitch channel which is a blend of Astronomer's Interstellar nebula skybox layered ontop of Raredens real 8k skybox put together by respawntwo: http://goo.gl/R9mIVs

I decided to have a bit of a play around and ended up making some 360° VR Previews of my Skyboxes so that users can view them before deciding to download them. Have a gander: Deep Star Map Skybox Calm Nebula Skybox Milky Way Skybox I think that this is a pretty decent way of displaying them outside of the game. Further info can be found here:

With respect to dV maps, I've actually always preferred reading it from an infographic listed like this: http://i.imgur.com/Vi8H41I.png Just food for thought. For reference, here are a couple of shots of the ones I did bundled with OPM mimicking the stock layout:

If you ever need help in figuring out KSPedia entries, I did the ones for OPM quite a few months back and have the templates that I used in Unity if its any help... if you want to mimic the stock-a-like feel.

Thanks for your incredibly helpful input.

PSA to @Muji-k, @sAssIn and @Vandest and all others who use CKAN, thanks to RangeMachine's latest update (2.5.3), it is now possible again to do automated installs of Skyboxes via CKAN... go get downloading!

I did look into the parts in D-Magic (whoah they are huge!) but the configs for them say that the parts are Tech Level = Unresearchable...? Are they only meant for Sandbox and not Career or are they just in a test state right now?

Don't worry peeps, I haven't forgotten about this. It will get some love in due course. Hopefully during KSP 1.2 I can push this out of Dev and into Release.

Plock is the furthest away at its apoapsis... if you wanted a constant connection to Plock at all times you would have to have a Relay satellite around Kerbin with 14 RA-100 relay dishes and a probe at Plock with 14 Communotron 88-88 antennas. That would give you a 1% signal at the greatest possible distance between Kerbin and Plock. It seems an Antenna pack specifically for OPM bodies may be helpful.

Galileo is there anything more you'd like me to knuckle down with or are things starting to wrap up?

Yeah you can see from https://github.com/RangeMachine/TextureReplacer/commits/master that there have not been any commits made to the repo since RangeMachine was notified of the issue and said that it will be sorted in the future. You can check the 'Releases' tab on the Git Repo to check if a new release has been made to solve the issue but until then CKAN will not be able to update as there is not mod update for it to pull from. If you want it via CKAN fully automated... sorry, be patient.

Yeah thats pretty much what I have deduced, as per my 'Edit' to my previous post. It makes sense logically and seems to reflect the in-game readouts when calculating Signal Strength,

You can also grab this info from the Tracking Center in game. Focus on a body and open the Info tab and it should display the information you are looking for.

Update: The average combinability exponent value used for a vessel is now weighted to provide more accurate results. After some encouragement from @Plusck I have incorporated the proportionality of the power to combinability exponent value when calculating the average value for the vessel. This now should mean you get more accurate results when using multiple antenna on a craft that have different combinability exponent values. This is calculated in the following way: Sum((Antenna 'n' Power * Antenna 'n' Exponent):(Antenna 'n+1' Power * Antenna 'n+1' Exponent)) / Sum(Antenna 'n' Power):(Antenna 'n+1' Power) i.e. A vessel with a Comm 88-88 (100e9 @ 0.75) and also a Comm 16 (500e3 @ 1.00) would have the following: ((100e9 * 0.75) + (500e3 * 1.00)) / (100e9 + 500e3) = 0.75000125 ... being the Weighted Average Combinability Exponent for the Vessel. Basically what I am doing is weighting the Combinability Exponent value used for any antenna proportionally against its total power level when working out the Combined Combinability Exponent for the vessel.

This is correct and was unfortunately something I could not easily rectify on Google Sheets without doing some major rework to the spreadsheet. I (ignorantly) presume that users will not combine the C16 antenna with much more powerful ones. I presume a Weighted Exponent takes the relative power between antennas and uses the combinability exponent relative to the other antenna power levels on that vessel? Anywho, for a quick and dirty explanation, I did try to update the CommNet Wiki page somewhat to provide some more accurate information as well as that Google Sheets page: http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/CommNet EDIT: @Plusck I have edited my Spreadsheet so that the Combinability Exponent value used in the Signal Strength calculation is done by the following method: Sum((Antenna 'n' Power * Antenna 'n' Exponent):(Antenna 'n+1' Power * Antenna 'n+1' Exponent)) / Sum(Antenna 'n' Power):(Antenna 'n+1' Power) i.e. A vessel with a Comm 88-88 (100e9 @ 0.75) and also a Comm 16 (500e3 @ 1.00) would have the following: ((100e9 * 0.75) + (500e3 * 1.00)) / (100e9 + 500e3) = 0.75000125 ... being the Weighted Average Combinability Exponent for the Vessel. Basically what I am doing is weighting the Combinability Exponent value used for any antenna proportionally against its total power level when working out the Combined Combinability Exponent for the vessel. I've tested this in-game and it seems to work well. Weirdly in the Vessel Info tab where it shows the link details the value for the signal strength (0 < x < 1) is almost always 0.01 lower than the Percentage Signal strength shown at the top of the screen in the CommNet toolbar.

@Astronomer, its pretty much redundant now as that particular feature has been so successfully implemented by another mod and is extensively used in KSPRC and SVE to great effect.

Thank you so much for such a quick response. The true hero does it again, thanks man! For those using CKAN, please wait for a new build of TextureReplacer to be released to reflect the above change and also for the time that it takes for CKAN's NetKAN index to update. Please be patient.

Ah it seems that @RangeMachine has accidentally included a certain Skybox's EnvMap files in the latest distribution of TextureReplacer... possibly whilst the reflections were being tested? Anyway, if you are having trouble downloading Skyboxes off of CKAN, for the time being, you can fix this by navigating to the: GameData\TextureReplacer\EnvMap folder in your KSP directory and deleting the following files: NegativeX.png NegativeY.png NegativeZ.png PositiveX.png PositiveY.png PositiveZ.png Now you should be able to install a Skybox through CKAN. Let me know if this fixes the error.

@RangeMachine, could you please shed some light on this?

I think the best way to go about this is for the CKAN guys to somehow split the default textures out into a 'config-like' download where when you select to install Texture Replacer, it asks you then what Skybox you want to download. I'll bring it up with them and see what they think. I'm sure this didn't used to happen though, has Texture Replacer started to bundle a different Skybox in the download?

Haha, there usually aren't that many people using it at once. The combinability exponent is listed against combinable antennas so that those with a value < 1 have a diminish-able return when adding multiple antennas on the same craft. You effectively can get 'infinite' range on your connection if you just keep adding antenna but you are more limited to vessel size and part count at that point. For reference, if you have a DSN Lvl 3 and a craft at Eeloo at its furthest point away with 20 of the most powerful antennas, you get about 80% odd signal strength.

All the combinability exponents are listedin the 'Antennas' sheet for your perusal. However, off the top of my head, I can tell you that they all have a value of 0,75 except for the Communotron 16 which has a value of 1 and the 16S which has a value of 0. Also nothing combines with the DSN obviously.

*Disregard this post*

On the Lili appearing spherical issue, can you not push the Scaled Space -> PQS fade in range further out so basically the player will still see the PQS at a range where the resolution of the moon on the screen is small enough that the switch to a spherical shape isn't as noticeable?

Update: Implemented Range Modifier and DSN Modifier difficulty settings to allow you to input the values on your difficulty sliders to give you the information for you custom difficulty games. I am pretty sure I've implemented this correctly, if you find any inconsistencies, please let me know.