[Enter the Shadows.....]

10 hours ago, JPLRepo said:

I'm not sure what you mean by omni? but KSP uses a directional light as the article mentions for the Sun.
Here are the types of lights available in Unity https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/Lighting.html

@J.Random is wondering why point lights aren't used for the sun, as the sun more closely resembles a point light source than a directional one. The confusion is that KSP uses both point light sources and directional sources to represent the sun, whereas only the directional light was affected by the issue being fixed.

@J.Random : My understanding is that point light sources are used for the sun for planets in scaled space (i.e. when you are far enough away to see that they're round), but when you're on or near the surface in the flight scene, a directional light source lights the terrain and vessel, as it's more accurate in that scenario. You often have both lights at once: Sitting on the launchpad on Kerbin, the launchpad and rocket are lit using a directional light, and the Mun is lit by a point light. @JPLRepo is this reasonably accurate?

Edit: Just reading the Unity light types, would an area or emissive light be more accurate in low sun orbit? Craft there shouldn't have strong shadows as the sunlight is coming from nearly prograde through 180° to retrograde.

[Enter the Shadows.....]

Great write up @JPLRepo! I always love to see the care and attention put into the game, as well as the process of identifying issues and figuring out which solutions works best. They make a great resource for the Unity community too.

On 11/6/2017 at 2:05 AM, JPLRepo said:

Which clipping are you referring to?
The one referred to here:

Yes, either the near camera's near clip plane or the scroll wheel FoV control changed noticeably between KSP 1.0 and KSP 1.1, reducing how close you could get to the craft without cutting it.

Here's a screenshot of KSP 1.1.2.1260, zoomed in to a capsule on the launchpad, up the the point of first clipping:

Here's a similar scene in KSP 1.0.5.1024, with no clipping at this zoom level:

The clipping only appears when the capsule's window is zoomed in close enough to fill the whole screen. One more level of zoom beyond this causes the first sign of clipping:

 

[Who needs a level runway anyway?]

5 hours ago, Kerbal101 said:

 

Everyone will then land several kilometers from KSC and recover from there, because recovery cost away would be less than crashed plane due to high risk on bumpy runway or grass.

One will have to modify ALL grass on kerbin, which would also require to modify mountains too, which in turn will make regular exploring very very hard.

 

Why not make L1 runway 2x shorter version of L2 runway, and L3 runway 2x longer than current?..

 

PS. Your SoundManager plugin rocked before 1.2.2 rolled out Thank you a lot for the mod!!

 

If you use a modifier method like that mentioned above, it's cheap to affect anything that isn't the runway, covering the whole planet without any extra effort. For rovers, the roughness is only an issue for the high speeds that spaceplanes normally endure after re-entry, greater than 100 m/s. Normal roving speeds are much lower, so you could have the effects of a rough surface fade out at speeds well before they would be affected.

 

Soundtrack Editor is back up and running for 1.2.2

[Who needs a level runway anyway?]

Quote

With that done… Now what should we do with that lumpy bumpy Level 1 runway?

 

As others have noted, the main complaint with the Level 1 runway is that it's surrounded by completely flat ground. It feels unfair and pointless. The best way to improve it would be to leave it as it is, but make the ground surrounding  it lumpy or otherwise harsh for landings. As an alternative, modify the off-runway area's surface friction to make it difficult to land on. As a hacky example, a PartModule attached to the wheels that detects when they have ground contact with anything other than the runway, and applies a random noise function to wheel parameters such as frictionMultiplier. Get creative and I'm sure you can come up with something quick, simple and fun.

[A Fond Farewell]

24 minutes ago, AndrewHere said:

Why is everyone leaving all of a sudden?

The KSP project has been going since 2011. In the technology sector, people often change jobs roughly every 4 years. It's hard to stay interested working on a single thing after that length of time, and you never want to feel that you've learned all you can learn from a job. Sometimes you need to spread your wings. It's also around the length of time it takes for the wage increase of changing jobs to outweigh the kind of wage rises companies generally give. It's sad, but a fact of life.

[A Fond Farewell]

You'll be missed Ted. Good luck in your future endeavours!