Wolf Baginski

Some of this is definitely made easier with layers. This example isn't a spaceship, but I think shows the point. It was the collar of a jacket... Bottom layer: the basic jacket fabric Middle Layer: shadowing Top Layer: the collar The shadowing was made by showing the top and middle layers while editing the middle layer, using the airbrush tool, darkest along the collar edge. widening slightly where it needed to look to have a larger gap between collar and base. What's under the collar in the middle layer doesn't matter. The middle layer was then used as a modifier on the bottom layer. There's a couple of other things that make the illusion more effective. The Camo pattern of the different pieces of fabric doesn't match along the seams. You could also use very slightly different tones for each piece. This would be good for multiple panels on a model for KSP. Something like a maintenance or access panel could be very slightly different. A lot of this can be derived from a more-detailed mesh model. However it's done, the shadows in the texture will not always match the lighting. There could be more detail but, for a game environment, you soon hit resolution limits. I made this at a large size, and scaled it down. Some specific detail was lost, but it's a sort of anti-aliasing effect. (In the gaming environment I made this for, some people started complaining that camouflage was cheating: they couldn't see my avatar at a distance. I just kept on shooting them.)

There's a GIMP plug-in to handle DDS files, but I do most of my texture work in Paint Shop Pro and then use GIMP as a converter. PSP does have layers and that is a useful tool, but if I were starting from scratch , no experience, I'd be inclined to concentrate on GIMP. I am constrained by my history.

This thread describes a tool to import Unity model.mu files into Blender, and it seems to be still working. That would let you import a stock Mk2 component and match the cross-section. http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/43513-Blender-mu-import-export-addon I have seen one or two parts which don't match the shape, but are still called Mk2. They're similar, and well-made, but I would have called them something like "Mk2A" to avoid confusion. Once you get away from the circular cross-sections it seems you need a tool like that. I'd like to see some sample meshes in one of the standard formats that can be imported into a wide variety of 3D modelling programs. There are getting to be so many different fuselage styles, and having something to match to would help. Rather than a new fuselage profile, needing so many different bits, there would be things I could build...

There's a YouTube video with a big Duna-landing spaceship ("Stardust"?) which carried two small flying rovers, and it suffered a mysterious explosion after one returned to the ship.

A partial answer is Struts. Not so good for a two-way split, but a flat three could mount the rear part on the centre tank, with struts between the rear of the side tanks and both the centre tank and rear part.

"Regrettable", but it may be a killer for my system. It's a questionable design decision, maybe good for a cupola, doesn't seem that sensible for the small round windows on the various Fustek modules. Are such small windows worth the lag? It's all up to you, but if there isn't an alternative provided, I'm afraid it will all seem rather pointless to me.

One minor advantage is that a parking orbit makes the actual launch time less critical, so Wernher can have a pleasant breakfast before having to shout at the incompetents who built the terrible rocket you're launching. A good breakfast sets him up for the whole day  he'll always shout at you, but indigestion makes it worse.

One of the advantages of aluminium is that for some things such as armour plate, it needs to be three times as thick for the same protection, and that hugely reduces the need for a separate frame, since the thicker plates are stiffer. It's like the use of monocoque structures in aircraft and cars. But, where the resistance to penetration isn't needed, it's not so obvious an advantage. To be honest, I'm not sure if the Kerbals are using steel or aluminium already.

I don't have anything specifically in mind, and the whole thing might lead to an alternative core, but don't forget possible uses in-atmosphere and on the ground. I can see a 2-way core section as part of a rover. the spine forming a chassis component and and the two bays on the sides. Maybe 3-way; left, right, and top. But you could do that with the existing 4-way spine, just not fit anything on the bottom. Although that does suggest an option for a flat-panel wedge, non-opening, to make a platform for the top of a rover. Need it contain anything? Perhaps use the internal space for a battery? That sort of flat-panel wedge could also allow the user to mount a flat solar panel or similar, whether on a rover or a spacecraft.

KIS and KAS have now been updated. You need to update both together, not just one, before you try to load KSP. It's OK to have just KIS if you're not doing things such as using winches and fuel lines in EVA, but if you have both installed, update both. Since the new releases take time to get onto a system such as CKAN you can get a situation where you have updated one but not the other. As near as I can tell, the time difference between the manual announcements caught me out. Not fun.

Thanks. That may have come out after I hit the problems, and had checked for a new version. Ho-hum, the player says, how to get things working again? I think I shall have to set up a new KSP install, because it certainly isn't a shortage of memory on my PC. I am not sure I want to take chances on the new pair, not just yet. I had something that was working, dammit!

I am having problems with the interaction between v1.2.0 of the Kerbal Inventory System and v0.5.1 of the Kerbal Attachment System. The latter has things such as fuel connections, which I have in several .craft files, which will not load unless KAS is loaded. The previous version of KIS works fine with KAS. It may be a memory problem, rather than a bug. since the KIS DLL is slightly larger, but that implies that I am running very close to the limit, and I removed a couple of significant mods without any apparent benefit. The loading process stalled, apparently at the same point when reporting the first part in KAS. If it were memory, I am a little astonished that the stall would be at the exact same point.

Windows Search can help, at least letting you confirm where the files are, although it is confusing that so many people, not just the Squad developers, use the part.cfg filename. In Windows 7 the search in Windows Explorer will work on words inside .cfg files. In this case it should also find entries in Module Manager command files. I admit to being wary of auto-update methods such as Steam and CKAN. I have a suspicion about the new version of one Mod.

Many aircraft have an Auxiliary Power Unit that variously provides electrical and hydraulic power without needing to run the expensive main engines. One of those big engines burns a significant amount of fuel just to keep turning, and the spinning prop or the hot exhaust of the jet engine is dangerous on the ground. But how often do our Kerbals need to worry about that? Jebediah laughs in the face of danger. (Yes, Jebediah is a looney.) I decided that something like this might be very useful for somebody using an aeroplane to explore Kerbin and collect Science, so I built it. I couldn't figure out how to build an air intake into the config and make it work, and I decided to use the same model as the stock fuel cell. So somewhere on your vehicle  I've been testing it on a rover, running around the KSC area and picking up some Science  you need an air intake and a fuel tank. For my test rover I used a short Oscar tank, 0.625m diameter, with an intake from Modular Rocket Systems. It now has a couple of APUs on the sides of the tank, the air intake on one end, and a KIS connector to allow the rover to be refuelled in the field. It doesn't look bad as a sub-assembly. This is the test-file. Let me know if you figure out how to build the Intake functions into this. You don't need anything else since it is using the Stock fuel cell model and textures. It may use rather a lot of air, and I am not sure of the balance between fuel in and electricity out, but it didn't seem wildly wrong. You just need this part.cfg I put it in GameData/WolfBaginski/Parts/AuxiliaryPowerUnit/ which helps make it clear. PART{ // Kerbal Space Program - Part Config // --- general parameters --- name = Auxiliary Power Unit module = Part author = WolfBaginski // --- asset parameters --- // Uses Fuel Cell model. MODEL { model = Squad/Parts/Resources/FuelCell/FuelCell } rescaleFactor = 1 // --- node definitions --- node_attach = .06, 0, .03, 1, 0, 0, 0 // --- editor parameters --- TechRequired = basicScience entryCost = 1000 cost = 250 category = Utility subcategory = 0 title = Auxiliary Power Unit manufacturer = Beartech Aerospace description = This is a small generator driven by a tiny engine which provides a small electricity supply by burning fuel and air. It uses a gas turbine and does need an air intake to work. Did we mention "small" and "air"? // attachment rules: stack, srfAttach, allowStack, allowSrfAttach, allowCollision attachRules = 0,1,0,0,0 // --- standard part parameters --- mass = 0.05 dragModelType = default maximum_drag = 0.2 minimum_drag = 0.2 angularDrag = 2 crashTolerance = 7 maxTemp = 2000 // = 3000 MODULE { name = ModuleResourceConverter ConverterName = APU StartActionName = Start APU StopActionName = Stop APU FillAmount = 0.95 AutoShutdown = false GeneratesHeat = false UseSpecialistBonus = false INPUT_RESOURCE { ResourceName = LiquidFuel Ratio = 0.0030 FlowMode = STAGE_PRIORITY_FLOW } INPUT_RESOURCE { ResourceName = IntakeAir Ratio = 0.05 FlowMode = STAGE_PRIORITY_FLOW } OUTPUT_RESOURCE { ResourceName = ElectricCharge Ratio = 2.5 DumpExcess = false } } } I decided not to just double up the fuel consumption and power. Having two in a subassembly had a better feel. I could run one APU while driving around, and switch on the second for when I was doing Science and transmitting data. The Corbus capsule pack has an RCS tank which uses a similar piece of code to convert monopropellant to electricity. Revert to that and you have something which doesn't need an air supply. The advantage of operating in vacuum is that you don't hear the scream of the turbine. I SAID, THE ADVANTAGE OF OPERATING IN VACUUM...

A minor thing I just noticed (and I may be a build or two back in my downloads from Github). The .version file is still set to KSP v0.25 and so I get a warning message. I know that some mods have this file set to allow a range of KSP versions without warnings, and it is only a warning, but don't forget it as you get close to a release.

The Wikipedia article on the SR-71 gives a good outline of the effects, and that plane's service ceiling isn't far off the limit for air-breathing engines in KSP (allowing for the difference in atmosphere between Tellus and Kerbin). You can go faster, but you hit heating problems if you don't keep climbing. Essentially, a zoom-climb, which is supposed to be how an RAF Lightning F.6 was able to get a picture of an SR-71 from above. They knew exactly where it was going to be, at the end of a speed-record attempt, and the English Electric Lightning was one hot plane. A large print of that picture was displayed at RAF Binbrook, in the Officer's Mess. until the Lightning was retired and the base closed. The RAF tends to brag a little about its fighter pilots, and with good reason. They were part of the world's only integrated air defence system, 75 years ago, and some bits were only just there in time. The Luftwaffe didn't realise what they were getting into.

The atmosphere is documented, and 6000m on Kerbin is about the same as 25000ft in standard Terran conditions, so 20km is about 83000ft The real atosphere goes up and down a bit. Check the Wiki, there's a formula. http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Kerbin#Atmosphere For test flights from the KSC we're on Kerbin's equator, which puts the tropopause at around 16km The Kerbal engineers seem able to make air-breathing jet engines that give useful thrust at that altitude, Well, so can humans. It's in the same territory as the "service" ceiling of the SR-71. That's the usual working limit for any aircraft, still able to climb.

The great test pilots of the past, the ones who became the great astronauts, didn't have huge amounts of technical help to record what went wrong. There were pen recorders for some instruments, but when Chuck Yeager, in the movie "The Right Stuff" is reading out the speed, it's not to dramatise it for a cinema audience. He's telling an engineer something that might be useful, via the radio, if he doesn't come back. In the tradition of Chuck Yeager and "Winkle" Brown, we can write things down as we fly, but it would be nice to have a few tools to help us record things. Speed and altitude, for instance, maybe plotted on a graph. This might be something that could usefully go down the path of a connection to a browser. I don't have enough RAM for that, but if an HTTP connection can feed the data on speed, altitude, attitude, and time to an external program it could bypass a few problems for somebody wanting to log flight data.

"OPT" is another part maker. The B9 set revised the Mk2 fuselage section, and you can't really mix those with stock. OPT has essentially produced a really big version of the Mk2 for large spaceplanes. Thread Here http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/97525-1-0-4-WIP-OPT-Space-Plane-v1-7 "CoL" is centre of lift The problem that was described may be a sign of getting short on usable RAM. I've had exactly the same symptoms, and I don't use FAR. I am thinking I may have to do SpacePlane things in a different install, without the big boosters. These things can all be well-designed for RAM usage, but it adds up nevertheless. Or it may be some sort of memory leak. It depends on the OS, but certainly consider a KSP restart, check for crud running in the background, and maybe restart the OS. (Most people need the Firespitter plug-in. Most of the Firespitter parts, while good, are superfluous. Do you really need that biplane when you're flying hypersonic spaceplanes? You do get the choice.)

The bear cleans his spectacles and peers at you over the top edge of his drawing board. "Try Action Groups," he says. "Attach the chutes using symmetry, and you don't have to click on each individual chute to set it up. 24 chutes is three symmetry groups of eight chutes. You can have a Group of drogue chutes to pop first, stabilise the payload and slow it down a bit. Then the main chutes, with that initially-reefed canopy if they're set up that way. Finally, you can use a retro rocket, like the Russians do with a Soyuz. They use the same method for tanks, and no way is this bear standing on that drop zone." He checks a notebook. "There's a Mod called Smart Parts. They're a sort of single function probe core that can trigger staging or an action group, So you could release the chutes at specific altitude, or after a delay. The Altitude sensor could fire that retro-rocket automatically." He pauses. "Remember, when you remove the pin from the grenade, Mr Grenade is no longer your friend..."

I got the speed by changing the intakes, and then the engines, from the stock circular and the J-33. It gets a bit crazy, from something resolutely subsonic to almost a spaceplane that needs some careful flying not to overheat explosively at Mach 3.9 In some ways, it's more like the Vickers Valiant than the Handley Page, things like the mid-set tailplane. I see what you mean about the tail-fin, but I'm not sure how the aero-model works. I don't use FAR, just stock, and I've been seeing some things that feel a bit odd. The original J-33 version, with the higher capacity intakes from the B9 set, flies a little fast, and flies a long way, but feels good. The circular inlet from the B9 set is better than anything in stock, and things really start happening with a bigger engine as well. I was doing test flights, and noting the differences. The J-X4, and the similar D-30F7 from the B9 Aerospace are set to do some strange stuff, maybe to make a spaceplane possible. Today I managed to get the J-X4 version up to the density altitude the SR-71 would operate at, but the engines overheated pretty quickly. The rest of the plane was staying cool, and the heat-flow from the engine through the structure was poor. A little lower, and it was going a lot faster, and the airframe overheated first.

I mentioned, a few days ago, the non-stop round-Kerbin flight I made. This is a slightly different form of the plane. The Valentina II is inspired by the long-range bombers of the 1950s, but isn't a close copy of any of them. It's perhaps closest to the Handley-Page Victor, the fastest of the British V-bombers This is the hottest version, capable of 800 m/s at 1000m altitude, but watch those temperatures. The long-range version used the stock J-33 engine and the circular intake from the B9 pack. https://www.dropbox.com/s/xcd0hqwme93ciae/Valentina%20II%20Bomber%20Type%20S3H.craft?dl=0 It's been interesting seeing what choice of intake makes with the same engine unit. The way the engine pods are made, it's also easy to put in engine coolers, though they don't do much until you get to spaceplane territory. I can't say the way that jet engines work is all that realistic. Most of the model uses the B9_Aerospace pack, with a few stock parts and the Circular Antenna from Blagleg Industries. There is ample room for cargo, but it's a bit short of power for electrics. You can load up with science instruments to clock up a lot of science from the biomes you fly over, but you need something else than the engines. A small oxidiser tank and a couple of fuel cells might do the job. (I hope I have all this right.)

Both KIS and KAS are showing as well out-of-date, I get warning messages when I start, but I can't really see how anything relevant has changed since 1.0 came out. I'm not having problems, just warnings. There has been a sudden flurry of mod updates, sometimes in closely-spaced jumps. New MechJeb version, and there's something in the JSI RPM notes about how they talk together. I think it was coincidence, but I am feeling wary of automatic updates after my recent KSP experiences.

I've been testing a plane, and things can depend on how they're being controlled. Default flight is manual+SAS and that is stable. Though doing a balanced turn is liable to lead to finger trouble. Use the MechJeb Spaceplane module and it hold altitude and heading, but can get into ocillations for pitch, roll, and yaw. Switching off some of the control surfaces helps. One thing I have tried, with some good results, is pumping fuel between forward and after tanks to modify forward and after trim. That's what Concorde did to account for the shift in centre of lift in supersonic flight. The whole thing went glitchy last night and I lost the option to switch on and off control services, but an action group to toggle a set of control surfaces might work.

I am flying tests on my Valentina II project, a long range jet using the B9 Aerospace set, and inspired by the Handley Page Victor. Early versions were a bit unstable, and things sometimes exploded, but the current test flight is now more than half-way around Kerbin, using less than half the fuel, cruising at 250 m/s at 5000m, on slightly less than full throttle. I sis have a version with a tendency for the engines to explode. This version is sticking with the J33 and a well-place Basic Fin is helping get rid of some heat. I'm currently at 70° E. Go on, build a plane and fly around Kerbin. (Oh, and this flight is getting science too.)