TiktaalikDreaming

The stack nodes were introduced about the same time as I added colliders around the wheel arches. And they're the main cause of wheel blockings. The extra colliders mean more sensible surface attachments for all the science widgets, and (fairly obviously) more accurate collisions. Before I adjusted, kerbals could walk into the front of the rover, and attaching lights meant weird overlappings etc. But it seems they interact with wheel colliders if said wheel colliders are too close. It's easy enough to move the wheels down a bit (in the direction of more ground clearance) to avoid, but the stack nodes are where my KSP stopped blocking the wheels for the rear wheel. The front wheel can go up 10cm and still be fine, but I thought most people would prefer if it didn't nose down all the time. :-) I've been watching @lo-fi and @Shadowmage discuss things in the Kerbal Foundries thread with interest as they're basically rewriting the wheel modules. When they have a releasable product (they've done some really good work diagnosing the existing issues and building replacement friction models already) I'll probably convert this over to using their modules. Not just to have better wheels (which, judging by Lo-Fi's example video they will definitely have) but also because tracks. Tracks would mean I could do the Haglund BV206, which is just asking for space travel.

Yeah, I've been meaning to fix that. My numbers are just off. At first I thought it might have been something to do with the mods I had installed but it happens even with no other mods installed.

Wheel Blocked = yes. This is caused by the wheel arches being too close to the wheels. Some time between 1.1 and 1.1.2 KSP seems to have got more aggressive in how much elbow room the wheelCilliders need. And, I added colliders the the majority of the Rover surface, so encountering the issue will be a lot more likely. The latest version has stack nodes that should place the wheels low enough to avoid the issue. I did also note recently, a perfectly functional Rover became wheel blocked after I added a surface attached strip light above the rear wheel, even though said light strip was attached to a collider that obviously wasn't causing the issue.

If you make them available, I'll add them in and put the names in the config. :-) The cornier the name the better. I do still want to do the zebra pattern and that very ubiquitous (and IMHO ugly) almost white with bent stripe that seemed to be on all Defenders about 15-20 years ago. This

Thanks. Nice collection of stuff to check. The only one I can discount immediately is the layers. I've been super paranoid about layers since spending days trying to sort out orientation of an IVA that wasn't correctly layered, and I know 100% that the layers are right for the wheels. But, yes, LookAt constraints in play, wheels are sinking to the point the helper collider for the wheel might be hitting, and obviously there's always tweaking of spring/damper settings. Easiest to check is the non-wheel collider. I'll let you know. :-) Update: Not the collider, and not lookAt constraints either, damnit. Suspension tuning it probably is. :-/ Looks like spring. Added a zero and it spazzes out on the launchpad. Divided by ten and it's almost gone. Although the suspension is now almost bottoming out. moar tuning. :-(

Well, for reference, I'll be using a direct conversion of horsepower for craft before I half scale them. So, basically 8 horsepower = 1 unicorn power. On the assumption that 1 Electrical Charge = 1 kJ.

Khorsepower sounds a bit... um... coarse. I'm thinking Unicorns are where it's at. :-D

On some of my wheels (not all) I'm seeing a weird behaviour when the suspension load is either very light or relieved completely (eg, inside wheels on a sharp corner). The wheels basically snap to past the top of the suspension travel (I suspect top of travel plus the suspension distance again) and back again, sometimes in a vibrating buz between the *correct* position and the anomalous. Sometimes, with wheels popping up, it reminds me of shovel snouted lizards dancing on hot sands. I'm assuming there's a combination of settings that is creating this weirdness.

Torque though is not a unit. It'd be Nm or similar. But, torque isn't conserved between engine and wheel like energy/power is. As you gear upwards, torque decreases and speed increases. But power stays the same. I have considered making a high rez torque curve for wheel speed though. Obviously, for easy direct conversion, power in kW would be easiest. But, kW doesn't say "mechanical" power as clearly as Horse power. And then an imagined kerbal manager to engineer conversation keeps going through my head; "So, what's horse power again?" "It originally meant the amount of energy you can get out of a horse." "What, when you burn them?" "No, the mechanical work they do when you harness them" "So, can I see the horses? I like horses." "No, the horses are invisible" "Oh, like unicorns then. Why didn't you just say Unicorn power? Geez."

d The original dash had a MFD where the CD/GPS console would be. I'm very unhappy with the dash at the moment. From time to time I look at prop writing, cos I'd dearly love a speedo and radial fuel gauge.

Just thought I should let people know what I'm working on. I've decided to add some more generic parts for 0.625m for building rovers. So a 1 kerbal 0.625 inline pod (with slightly squared off side to make wheel attachment easier). Two "engines". One takes liqFuel and either atmosphere or oxidizer, and converts to electricity. AKA a generator. I'll be doing up some different sizes of this, but for now, just one. And an engine that produces a new resource, UnicornPower (it's like HorsePower, but invisible). Add to that 3 sets of wheels still very much in dev. A generic electric wheel modeled off 50's racing wheels, cos I think they look good sticking out the side of a rover. Plus an unpowered, steering enabled wheel with lots of grip (aka, front wheels). And some very gripy powered, unsteered wheels that run on UnicornPower. The Unicorn powered set-up so far is pure silliness, mostly to see how such a thing behaves in KSP. Off-planet rovering would be the elctric wheels plus a power source of some type, of which the generator is just one.

Unity's strengths are basically around portability. No real work to make it buildable for Windows, Linux, Mac, IOS, Droid, and various console flavours. Of course with KSP, it'd crash the hell out of just about any mobile, and requires a lot of rethink for consoles, so that advantage is maybe not as useful as it may have sounded at the beginning. But it's also (excluding crazy physics) pretty good for modders, as the full editor is available free if you're not making money (above a threshold, which also makes it good for start-ups) from it and don't need collaboration features. Not that I've checked out the Source engine. I can't mod KSP in Source. ;-)

I'll be adding stack nodes to an updated release in an hour or two. Just need to run some more tests. I have noticed that stack nodes will not do mirrored symmetry, so you'll end up attaching 4 different wheels, rather than 2 sets of 2. But of course, I haven't turned off surface attach, so you can still attach the wheels the "old way". Although, for that, it'd be nice to have an equivalent to the holding Alt so you can disable the stack attach.

THAT sounds lovely. Because KSP wheels certainly don't behave that way. :-) And, I've said this on a few topics. Take your time. Yes, people want this, but unlike Squad, they didn't pay you for it. The only deadlines are your own, and try to remember you're doing this for "fun". At least I tell myself all that. ;-)

It's intrinsic in wheels inside a wheel arch. Wheels in Unity need elbow room out to about +25% of radius apparently, and that means moving them a bit from where they *should* be. I'll be adding stack nodes to place wheels at a nominal functioning position for the next update.

I feel the following needs inserting here;

It's fairly easy to get the Wheel Obstructed annoyance. With the wheels where they *should* be, I'm pretty sure KSP thinks the wheels shouldn't work. And, you can't tell until you launch. It's in the right click menu for the wheel after launch. It's basically a case where the collision mesh for the body is too close to the wheel and KSP shuts the wheel down. This is the reason I'm tossing the idea of adding a sedan/hatchback type car. The gap from wheel arch to wheel just isn't big enough. I have considered this. But I like them as more generic wheels. I could add them as an option. So surface plus stack nodes, just hold alt(mod) to disable surface attach type thing.

Yep, looks like. It makes going off-road (aka, all of KSP rovering) a bit tricky. <Nerd-rage> Oh well.

Unexplained widget appears to be the "Force App Point Distance". From what I can find out, it is the point at which the wheel's forces apply to the rest of the vehicle. But, changing it doesn't effect the "wheels only drive when surface contact is directly in line with suspension" issue. Judging from discussion going on in the Kerbal Foundries wheels posts, I'm inclined to think this is a limitation imposed by physx and it's gross oversimplification of wheels.

I happen to think that for KSP, there's a pretty strong community that includes many people that have pretty solid skill sets in physics and often programming as well. BUT, making things open source creates a collection of other problems as well, with moderating code updates and so on. They'd want to be pretty careful, because the KSP community includes those useful people, but isn't composed entirely of them. What KSP does have is a requirement for mods to be open source (essentially), so they can pick over the work done by the community for useful bits. I personally think they'd be better off publishing their source (at least for a few modules), without necessarily allowing anything but comments from the peanut gallery. Because the comments from the peanut gallery could contain useful info. And might be a lot easier to sort through. Also, there's a couple of issues. Wheels are nVidea's fault, pure and simple. Unity inherits the physx friction weirdness, and KSP inherits Unity's friction weirdness. Tracks are a different thing, as @Shadowmage and co are trying to invent a way of having tracks work using physx/Unity components. A lot of that boils down to nvidea's fault as well, but less directly. :-)

I've had Bob manage to flip it spectacularly into somersaults and have it land upright. It was on it's roof though, so there's a spot under the bonnet of kerbals-can-be-under-collider and then weird stuff happens. It's actually harder to flip from it's side. Good work Val. :-)

I'd probably need to do something like that for a sedan. Luckily there's a large amount of head room in the Defender, so kerbal heads squish in OK. Total height of a seated Kerbal isn't exceptional, as their torsos are so short. But the head size means their eyes are lower due to the foot or so of forehead. Which makes dashboards a bit weird.

Basically yeah. It can be used off planet, but it's a bit annoying for that. Glad you like it. :-)

I never messed with wheels in pre 1.1 KSP, so I don't know if this is new or always existed. If it always existed, no-one seems to discuss it. So, onwards... I've noticed that rovers (esp 4 wheel rovers) get stuck with no motive power when their wheels are the only parts touching the ground, but it's not the "bottom" of the wheel. Eg; While this might be a fine approximation for a track race car, it seems somewhat limiting for an off-road vehicle like a lunar rover, or any rover for that matter. I notice in Unity, once you add the Rigid Body so you can see the wheel collider, that there's a small ball of lines drawn in at the bottom of the wheelCollider. This seems to correspond to the part of the wheel that can drive. See; There doesn't seem to be any configurable value to change this widget. Does anyone know what it is? Or why only a tiny bit of the wheel is capable of producing forward force? Thanks

Also, it contrasts nicely with how Unity believes it works, http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/class-WheelCollider.html