White Owl

A greater variety of part shapes is less conducive to imaginative building? Okay.

Spaceplanes have thick wings. Hell, a lot of non-spacecraft but plain old airplanes have thick wings. The old wing parts weren't thick enough, and always looked weird. The new wing parts are better, but could still be thicker. Spaceplanes need thick wings for the extra strength, insulation and heat dissipation, and not least because all sorts of equipment like fuel tanks and landing gear bays are stored inside the wings. Most spaceplanes have a lifting body fuselage that blends smoothly into the thick wings, and this is much easier to pull off visually with the new parts.

Nope. The new parts are superior. We still have analogues for the old wing parts, and a bunch of new toys in the same package.

I have been awkwardly clipping the whole inline cockpit into things for so long... This is such a better solution!

Oooooh.... I never use other people's designs, but am frequently asked to share my own. And since I use so many mods, sharing has always been a big hassle. This might work!

I'm looking at it in Firefox, and it's buggy... flickers and the picture sometimes disappears, but is stable enough to view the whole thing eventually. Yeah, you can keep zooming in through dozens of levels.

Weird... I'm looking around and not seeing a thread about this one yet. http://xkcd.com/1416/ Keep scrolling and keep looking at all the different pictures. (There are more than you think at first.) One series has him pulling rocket parts out of a box labeled KSP. I thought it was pretty cool.

I like the island runway hanging off the edge of a tall cliff! This doesn't need fixing! Where's your sense of adventure?

The value would be that the Kerbals' individual behaviors - the emotions they display down in the corner - would change with the supply of snacks. For entertainment value, nothing more.

Is it possible to change Kerbal stats on the fly? Like adjust bravery, stupidity, and BadS up and down relative to the supply of snacks? I think that would be better than directly altering control of the vehicle. (Oh, and I'd love an option to rename the consumable(s). My Kerbals have a long tradition of consuming sandwiches and Mountain Dew.)

So far as I understand, FAR can apply lift and drag to any given part in one of two different ways. First, the most obvious, is designated wing parts have the relevant stats spelled out in the part's config file. That probably won't work here, because the vehicle has to be a command pod and/or probe core. It may be a lifting body, but you can't call it a winglet, so can't explicitly define the aerodynamic stats. The second way FAR works is to look at the part mesh and estimate its aerodynamic qualities. Lift and drag from non-wing parts can certainly work, and work well. Wingless aircraft are already very possible ingame, and have been for some time. I see no reason why the Blackfish shouldn't have lift enough to fly. Control, though... I wonder how this can work without separately defined control surfaces. Maybe this is why you're seeking coding help? Or has this problem already been solved?

I was never interested in the little shuttle mod, but this looks very interesting. And it's already FAR compatible, you say?

The crawler is very cool, and I understand why everybody is so excited about it... but honestly, I'm much more interested in all the spaceplane parts. I'm seeing a small issue with the retractable RCS ports. They don't actually fit flush to the surface; they stick out just slightly too far. Other than that, they work great. I love that they extend whenever the RCS is turned on. Much more user friendly than having to assign and remember an action group. Any hope of a Real Fuels config for the engines?

This mod doesn't appear to be compatible with the most recent version of Real Solar System. The clouds end up hundreds of km above Kerbin's surface. Is a fix possible?

I just tried out the latest RC, and my planets look just like PingoPete's. Also, the cloud layers are seriously off; the cloud altitude appears to be about halfway to geostationary orbit. I uninstalled Environmental Visual Enhancements, so the clouds are gone. But the weird luminescent grey oceans remain.

I know I saw that same bug a couple times when I was installing/reinstalling the mod. I don't have the faintest idea what caused it, though, or why it magically resolved itself.

Aha! I've been making false assumptions and complaining about a problem you already fixed. Sorry about that.

Yes, everything needs rebalanced for the larger delta-V requirements. It's not difficult, though. Get Real Fuels, and then choose an engine configuration package. I like the Stock Engines configs, but I think the Realism Overhaul is more popular.

LOL I wasn't even going to mention the fun of designing intake geometry and whatnot! Actually, I realized I can fake the proportions myself. Edit the exhaust nozzle mass so it's almost nothing, grab some procedural structural parts and test weights, then make a subassembly of the appropriate length and width, with the mass in the center. Save that assembly, and use it in place of the engine. Easy.

You know why making an airplane with realistic proportions is more difficult than it seems like it should be? It's because our jet engines - even these much improved engines - are the size of mere exhaust nozzles. Sure, you can add simple structural parts to represent the entire length of the engine, but most of the mass will still be concentrated waaay back at the exhaust nozzle. I like these engines a lot. What kind of effort would it take to make the overall proportions and center of mass as accurate as the performance stats? I mean, we have the SR-71's engine here, and it's less than a meter long, while the real deal is closer to 5 1/2 meters... about 3 1/2m at kerbal scale.

I put together a new instrument panel for the MK2 cockpit, using several customized instruments. Or rather, one instrument (the ledPanelSpeed) repurposed as several different instruments. LINK Watch it in action:

Oh man... I don't know if 2 gigs is going to work. Especially since Windows 7 is going to eat up most of that on its own. My PC is a few years old now. AMD 1090T processor with mild overclock. Graphics card is a 6950 2GB whatsit. 8 gigs RAM. It was pretty cool when it was new, but starting to show its age nowadays. In other news, my cockpit is ready to share! LINK Install RasterPropMonitor first, then install mine, and overwrite the one file. Let me know if it sucks or not.

I despise the stock separatrons so much. They look so horrible, I can't imagine how they ever passed muster to be included in the game. These separatrons are great!

Yeah, I came up with a similar solution by placing a camera on top of the vertical stabilizer. You can also fly a curved final approach to keep the runway in sight until just before landing. It's a little trickier, but very satisfying when it works right.

No I did not know that, thanks! I just tried it. The problem of staying lined up with the runway while at a high angle of attack is fixed, so that's good... but now I can't see any instruments. LOL