Cairol

Kiloseconds is something you don't encounter in "normal" life. So for most people it's hard to imagine what 16 kiloseconds are in units you usually are used to. Like hours or days. So I see no point in using kiloseconds, when the next bigger unit is minutes, hours, days, ect. It's also really something special with seconds. It's not like Bytes where "Kilobyte" actually does make sense, because it's commonly used and easily transferable in the next bigger unit, without bending your head. Even with meters, megameters and gigameters it's weird for me. RemoteTech uses mega- and gigameters for it's antenna ranges. I always need to think hard to imagine what 12 gigameters are in kilometers, as this is the common unit you measure distances in the world and be able to understand what that means. If you have ridiculously large distances to state, using "300 light seconds" or "5 light minutes" instead would make more sense than "90 gigameters". Because I have no immediate reference in my head what "90 gigameters" are. But "1 light second" is roughly the distance from earth to moon. 8 light minutes is roughly the distance to the sun. And 100.000 light years is the diameter of our galaxy. So I have a reference there that I can imagine and relate to immediately.

As far as I have seen, the configs are already included in the pack. There is a KW.cfg in the mod folder.

Awesome mod. Sadly, the particles do not show up in the editor in V1.1.2 when using the "Show" button, which makes tweaking new configs a bit tedious. @sarbian Also, would it be possible to add a "spark" effect for a couple of seconds when an engine is activated via staging? Like the sparkler system on real rockets that are there to burn excess oxidizer during the ignition sequence.

Awesome! Big thanks!

The limiting factor for KSP is and probably always was the CPU and the inability of the game to utilize all cores to it's fullest. (which is not to blame anyone, but just a fact). I believe it can use 4 cores / threads up to now, while some CPUs (i7 and such) could offer 8 hardware threads or even more with a 6-core CPU. This means, KSP currently can only utilize 50% of a modern i7 processor for it's physics calculations, because physics calculations of a single craft in KSP are hard to distribute. Squad is obviously improving this steadily. But currently it's still the biggest bottleneck. So If you have a GTX 970 (which is already completely over the top for KSP), you really don't have any advantage with a 1080. It's not your FPS that suffer with heavy part counts, but your simulation speed - which has the same result in the end. The game begins to stutter. Nothing that a GTX 1080 can do anything against. I have a GTX 580 and I never had FPS drops with MAX graphics. Just sim speed drops. The only limitation my GPU has, is it's 1,5 GB VRAM, which prevents me from using EVE (clouds). With a GTX 970, 16 GB RAM and a CPU with at least 4 cores and > 3 GHz clock, you've done everything you can hardware-wise to give the game the best base to work with. Now Squad has to make the most out of that.

Running out of oxidizer while carrying too much LF and/or too much engines is my most frequent problem. I then start to switch LF tanks to O2 tanks and when I finally made it to orbit, I check my fuel and sometimes I can get rid of one or two tanks alltogether for the next trips and subsequently even leave one engine at home. But until I reach that optimizing loop, it's a lot of try and error for me to get that thing to orbit. And that's not what I'm used to in RL for solving my problems. Sadly, it's much more complex than with a rocket. And that's why I only do space planes / SSTOs for short periods and then get frustrated and leave them alone for a while. But I guess that's what makes space planes and especially SSTOs challenging - and also rewarding, if you nailed it at last. Funny side-note: I really got crazy with my new SSTO today, because it was suddenly losing all engine thrust and all controls shortly after lift-off without any apparent reason. I checked my fuel, I checked the intake air, I checked the prop. fulfillment meter, I checked if I had a flame-out. But all parameters were completely fine. But I was still losing power suddenly on every flight. Turned out that I simply lost my RemoteTech signal, because I forgot to bring an antenna with me. The internal antenna of the probe core only has a 3 km range. Normally I only forget my parachutes...

For rockets, the current charts say, you need about 3400 d/v to get to orbit. How much do you need to do the same orbit with an SSTO? Because I often find myself thinking I have plenty of fuel in my plane, but as soon as I switch to closed cycle, my fuel drains much faster than expected, often causing me to fail to orbit. And then usually I tend to enter a loop of MOAR FUEL -> TOO HEAVY -> MOAR ENGINES -> TOO FEW FUEL -> MOAR FUEL -> TOO HEAVY -> MOAR... . Are there tipps for determining needed d/v, maybe also in relation to TWR for SSTOs?

I once had to use the last ounce of Monopropellant to get a de-orbit trajectory for Kerbin. But until now I never had to have a Kerbal push. If I underestimated my fuel demand, the remaining needed d/v was way too high to push it, except from that one occasion.

The most unrealisitc thing for me is parts clipping. I understand that it's allowed to give the player more creative freedom. And actually I like that, despite the fact that it enables players to exploit this to hell and back. If I had to choose an item, I'd choose the ISRU, because it feels unbalanced - like others already stated. But again, it's an item I use seldomly. And this is not related to it's arguably too high efficiency. I've no problem with reaction wheels though. Using them does not take from the immersion or challange for me. I only use them for my smallest stages/vessels anyway. And I barely ever use additional reaction wheels apart from the one integrated in the pod. I simply don't need them very often. RCS FTW!

As the title says, I'm searching mods that add those smoke or vapor puffs coming from some spots on the LFO tanks in real rocket/shuttle tanks while the craft is standing on the launch pad. (2nd video) Same for the engines, where (I think) some O2 condenses to smoke coming out of the engine nozzles before ingition. (1st video) Also a mod that simulates sparks of the igniter system near the engine nozzles. (1st video) That would be awesome for adding some more realism and immersion. Does anyone know mods that do that?

Shut off your PC. Lean back on your couch. Pinch a pencil beteen your nose and upper lip and look out of the window. You will get a good idea what project to do next in no time. (But don't cite me on that... )

I also had a positive effect with this fix. My CPU load went down from 50% to about 30% per core, with 4 of 8 CPU threads utilized by KSP. (Intel i7-2600 @ 3.8 GHz) It definitely helped.

Wohoo! Did not see this. The fix really reduced the CPU load in the VAB. My temperature is now stable at 64°C instead of 97°C with a CPU load of about 30% instead of about 50% without the DLL. In flight, it's still high, but unless it's at the edge of the CPUs limit, I can cope with that. I planned my airflow thoroughly when building my PC and I'm cleaning my coolers and fans regularely. I'm sure it's not my airflow or dust that causes the issue. (I have dust nets on every fan that blows inside the case) The only mistake I did was to use the "boxed" cooler, because early tests when the CPU was brand new actually made it look decent. And at first it really was. But as my machine is no > 4 years old, games became more demanding and new my cooler is constantly overstrained with those games. Even when my CPU is not nearly maxed out. Thanks for your input. Guess I have to decide if I spent those bucks for a new cooler then, or if I further stress my CPU for the next months until the new PC is assembled. I really hoped to not having to disassemble/reassemble my CPU/Cooler. It's something I like to do only once per PC.

Yes, I actually use FAR. But I didn't remember this feature was not working for FAR. I'm pretty sure I used FAR and the Plus module of SBM in 1.0/1.0.5. But maybe I'm mistaken here. There was a phase in 1.0.5 where I had FAR uninstalled...

The parachute spread feature does not work for me. But it's actviated.

KSP was always a demanding game for my CPU. But with KSP 1.1 it even got worse. Especially in the VAB/SPH. What bothers me the most is, that my CPU temperature (i7 2600) is now at up to 90-97 °C which is near the limit of Tj of 98°C. It has a total CPU load of 40-50%. The temperature on the motherboard maxes out at about 43 °C during play. I don't know where the sensor of the CPU is located. But this temperature feels worrysome to me. Even if the CPU is not yet throttling back to prevent thermal overstess. When in flight, the temperature decreases to about 80°C, which is also odd, consdering that in the VAB there are no physics, while in play mode there are. What I tried was to lower the graphic settings from maximum to minimum. But it didn't make any difference. It's apparently not the graphics that cause that. I also deactivated the VAB ground crew. No effect. Recently I added a second side fan directly over my CPUs downblower and made my fan settings much more agressive than I used to have it. But it only had little effect. And I don't want to mount some other CPU cooler, as my PC is 4,5 years old now and I plan to build a new gaming PC until spring 2017 anyway. I don't want to spend more money on upgrades. But until then, I'm stuck here. And summer is coming... Apart from buying a better CPU cooler, is there anything I can do software-wise to reduce my CPU temperature in KSP, especially in the VAB?

Well, normally I have some spare parts on my rocket. Especially solar panels, struts and a Communotron32. Since I once managed to sheer off a solar panel with Jeb attached to a KAS winch (aka: security strap for EVAs) flinging around my craft, I usually have some standard parts to bring with me to space. But for some reason I didn't pack any spare parts this time...

Yesterday I launched a Duna satellite deployer into orbit. When I came back today to send it to Duna, I noticed that I forgot to bring some antennas for the transfer vessel itself. I might use kOS or the drone core during the trip (or the trip back), so I need those extra antennas. What I did now was to assemble a small craft to deliver those antennas to my Duna transfer vessel still waiting in Kerbin orbit. So I put a Communotron32, an 88-88 and an electric screwdriver into my pilots KIS inventory and rendezvous with my Duna vessel. A little EVA to find out my pilot cannot use the screwdriver.... ... but luckily I had a pilot AND an engineer (Nicole) on my Duna vessel (to be more realistic). So Nicole EVA'd over to my pilot Neilcott, took the antennas and screwdriver, flew back to the Duna vessel and bolted those antennas onto the craft. It's now ready for the journey. But I'm not sure if I am.... BTW: Those litte (or big) things that go wrong ,but can be fixed with all those cool mods are, what I like the most about KSP. Sorry, no screenshots. But the rendezvous was done in the planets shadow with no lights on both vessels. So there was not much to see except for the small area lit by the suit lights...

I'd say it's natural that some people leave after a large project has reached a certain state. If you are not yet deeply in your 40s, you probably want to find new challanges and possibilities to use your creativity and newly developed skills to create something new. Same thing will happen to me, when my current project at my real life job will be ready to be shipped to customers. I don't know exactly if this will need another 2 or maybe 3 years, but I already know that I will surely go on with another company shortly after that point. So in my eyes, even if the guy that had the first idea about KSP leaves the project, it's nothing to be astonished or to be afraid of.

I used to run it via Steam until 1.1.x was published. Now I use an external link to start the x64 version. It works just fine.

Probably rolling out my first flag on the Mun. Ok, I had to send a rescue mission directly after that, because of lack of d/v in my lander. And another rescue mission after entering Mun orbit with the rescue shuttle, because I again underdesigned that second craft... But hey, a flag on the Mun is a flag on the Mun!

With 1.1 I had more crashes than with 1.05. But after updating all my mods whenever possible, the situation is now pretty much like in 1.0.5 for me. No noticable higher crash count. It's pretty stable now. But I know that it also crashes frequently for vanilla players. So buggy mods are obviously only one possible reason.

I thought Squad had fixed someting related to this "stowed" thing? At least for fairings, I read something like this in the patch notes of 1.1, 1.1.1 or 1.1.2...

Thanks for the clarification. The documentation says nothing about this. BTW, I like to use the "lock" mechanism of kOS for such things as keeping the optimal throttle throughout the landing or whatever other value is needed during the landing loop. It makes the code cleaner.

Be aware that the ALT:RADAR value is measured from the control part (or the instruments position?) and not from the lowest point of your craft. So you should offset accordingly to make sure your script will terminate upon touchdown or slightly before touchdown. This must be set for every craft individually. So best would be to measure this offset on the ground in a test flight, or otherwise you have to estimate the distance and feed it to your script as a parameter. Don't use SAS in RETROGRADE mode and don't lock the steering to RETROGRADE on the last view meters, because the retrograde marker will start to wander when you are about to coming to a stop. Only use SAS STABILITYASSIST in the final phase.