localSol

Yes it is possible to use ion engines in atmosphere but the mass of wing parts, batteries and RTGs or solar panels makes it very difficult to get off the ground without a boost from a discardable rocket or something. Propulsion from Near Future or Interstellar may make this sort of non rocket propulsion easier. There was a challenge once to get a rover to orbit using only ion engines on minmus, hilariously fun and fast but I couldn't quite do it there even with no atmosphere and lower gravity than duna. Firespitter's Electric Propellers or SMA's Electric Ducted Fan(EDF) work in any gas (non-oxygen) and are much more powerful than ion type engines. Interstellar's nuclear thermal jets don't need oxygen either IIRC but need a nuclear reactor attached to that engine.

For TV 1.5.1 , What tweakables did you notice? I only noticed electric charge appearing on engines, though it's not practically usable anyway even though NaN appears there. It looks like you can change it with isTweakable = false hideFlow = true in the resource { name = electriccharge ... } section near the bottom of the file. Some wing parts don't have winglet parameters set but I don't think you need them at all if using FAR. A fix may be putting winglet settings inside a module section like this : MODULE { name = ModuleControlSurface dragCoeff = 0.5 deflectionLiftCoeff = 0.7 ctrlSurfaceRange = 20 ctrlSurfaceArea = 0.95 } Where in pre-0.23 , this stuff was just in the PART { } area with other usual settings like standard part parameters. Otherwise fuel is tweakable already for fuel tanks and engines work fine as far as I can tell, though people have commented about heat being hard with deadly reentry though I really haven't thought much about that. I modded the RAPIER using TV's settings of turbojets and it got me to about 1000 m/s @ ~20km before being in danger of burning or 'kersploding. Good enough for ramjet transition on a heavy plane in my case a number of times but like I say I haven't thought much about it yet.

I've got lunar flight too (more interested because I heard it was getting extra good support) and used it on the Rift. The interior including all of the various functional panels inside are all very much made-for-rift and it shows. The head tracking, and 3d effect are also top-notch in Lunar Flight. Dev kit rifts are not being priced for general mass consumption right now, but oculus has repeatedly said that the consumer version price will go down quite a bit. Even the dev kit at its current price was more than worth it to me. Completely amazed. You know the videos of people using rifts with mouths gaping open, staring out at things, I find myself doing that a lot when I use it. Seeing in 3d is just that different to me from a monitor I guess, unless there's some other weird long-named greek-latin neurological medical term for that..

expanding ISRU bug video : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pzk6XcNO9ow&feature=youtu.be It was also possible at one time (don't know if it changed) to get this when scaling the procedural fairings interstage adapter in a certain way i forget.

I guess this plane probably has a large amount of Thrust to weight ratio, meaning that even small amount of throttle would send your plane zooming in whatever direction it's pointed. Because of the drag at low altitudes, it can be hard to notice just how powerful the engines are until you get a lot higher. Some kind of brake dampening would be extra nice sometimes, but I wonder if adding more wheels helps the braking force, like I would expect it to. Someone mentioned that using airbrakes on real planes can be difficult. I kind of like that FAR does this too. Something I really like about Taverio's smaller engines and nacelles that you might find useful is that they can make this kind of plane easier to land and fly, because the nacelles or small structural fuselage are easier to put under wings, or over them or anywhere because they are physically smaller, and are much less massive. So the smaller parts are less likely to hit the ground on landings for a plane like this. That reduces weight shift instability too, especially if the plane has normal gyro torque and no extra struts. It adjusts mass of other common aerodynamic parts too to make them more useful especially for planes. Edit hmm..I feel like I've been quizzed and I learned something. I rebuilt your plane mostly, but with probably less mass, I don't think it helped the landings though. I think what helped the most was just staying close to an 85 m/s landing speed or less, since my plane would takeoff around 60 m/s. Hopefully this will help you too. I also experimented with flaps, which I have never done before and didn't really understand. On this particular plane they helped with takeoff a lot. I just read , quoting wiki : "Flaps are devices used to improve the lift characteristics of a wing and are mounted on the trailing edges of the wings of a fixed-wing aircraft to reduce the speed at which the aircraft can be safely flown and to increase the angle of descent for landing. They shorten takeoff and landing distances. Flaps do this by lowering the stall speed and increasing the drag." Great writing is concise. But pictures of flapventure : http://imgur.com/a/WBk8T

Good use of unusual symmetry and weight balance in these vehicles! I remember the VTOL challenge from a long time ago. What camera mod is that, KerbCam?

Thank you ratzap.

Some time along with 0.22, fusebox stopped showing any GUI in VAB/SPH for me too (or in flight, so it hasn't been available at all), I just assumed it was some incompatibility either with KSP 0.22+ or some mod I use. I realized at some point that I was accidentally installing both versions with KSPModAdmin, but installing stock only the way it's intended to be installed didn't help either. I'm not using real solar system, but I am using modularfuels, far, deadly reentry and a fairly large list of mods, I can list them here if that would be helpful though.

For people with lots of control power who don't want to also lose surgical flippability without going back to the hangar, I was just trying FAR's built-in dynamic control adjustment feature (DCA). It works well. You can try setting it to 70 for a test, after you've left the runway. Or lower for stronger limiting. The default is 150, I don't know how to interpret the value other than in a practical way yet. Careful to set it back if you need it or you may wonder why controls are deflecting less if you close the window. It can severely limit your control surfaces temporarily. The effect depends on the type, placement and amount of control surfaces on your craft. In other words, I have been needing to get a feel for a good setting for each craft with it.

Really good examples here of how all these mods can work well together. Do you use or have you tried ferram's kerbal joint reinforcement mod too?

This is the 'Pitchgreat K-31' based on the Rockwell X-31 experimental thrust vectoring jet from the 90's that I only heard of this week. I named mine because it pitches great, and you could say it rocks well, if to rock is to pitch! [Pun emoticon?] I only guessed at the vectoring and used a miniature B9 f119 with 30 degree thrust vectoring and extra small pseudo-canards from scaled av-r8 winglets, guessing at FAR aerodynamic values for its config. Is it true that the X-31 didn't use elevators? In any case I set the ones I put on it as flaps only to test flight with only the canards and engine, which worked fairly well especially at subsonic speed and low altitude. No idea how the rockwell's engine works other than its three paddles, but I wondered if using a group of 3 tiny(er) f119 engines arranged similarly might simulate it better for another version? Of course this uses the very excellent Procedural Wing mod - the mod that lets you stretch and shape wings with the mouse, so you can do things that would be impossible otherwise, either for looks or for aerodynamics with FAR. (Click gear to watch in 720p) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwRihkhhMx4 engine cfg for modulemanager as 'smallf119.cfg' in 'GameData\B9_Aerospace\Parts\Engine_Jet_Turbofan_F119' : PART { // --- general parameters --- name = B9_Engine_Jet_Turbofan_F119_S_Sub module = Part author = bac9 // --- asset parameters --- mesh = model.mu scale = 1.0 rescaleFactor = 0.5 // --- node definitions --- node_stack_top = 0.0, 0.5, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0 // --- FX definitions --- fx_exhaustLight_yellow = 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, power fx_smokeTrail_light = 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, power fx_exhaustSparks_flameout = 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, flameout // --- Sound FX definition --- sound_vent_medium = engage sound_jet_low = running sound_jet_deep = power sound_vent_soft = disengage sound_explosion_low = flameout // --- editor parameters --- TechRequired = aerospaceTech entryCost = 19450 cost = 2200 category = Propulsion subcategory = 0 title = F119 Turbofan Engine Small Subsonic Fan manufacturer = Tetragon Projects description = State-of-art afterburning low-bypass turbofan engine capable of sustained supercruise speeds. Fitted with latest in thrust vectoring technology, this engine provides extreme pitch authority, and, if multiple engines are present, outstanding roll authority. Obvious choice whenever superior maneuverability is desired. // attachment rules: stack, srfAttach, allowStack, allowSrfAttach, allowCollision attachRules = 1,0,1,0,0 // --- standard part parameters --- mass = 0.255 dragModelType = default maximum_drag = 0.2 minimum_drag = 0.2 angularDrag = 2 crashTolerance = 7 breakingForce = 75 breakingTorque = 75 maxTemp = 3600 MODULE { name = ModuleEngines thrustVectorTransformName = thrust_transform exhaustDamage = False ignitionThreshold = 0.1 minThrust = 0 maxThrust = 45 heatProduction = 600 useEngineResponseTime = True engineAccelerationSpeed = 1.3 engineDecelerationSpeed = 2.0 useVelocityCurve = True fxOffset = 0, 0, 1.8 PROPELLANT { name = LiquidFuel ratio = 1 DrawGauge = True } PROPELLANT { name = IntakeAir ratio = 45 } atmosphereCurve { // Based on Isp/TSFC data from NASA EngineSim, and Kerbin atmo. key = 0 1731 0 -8600000 key = 7.5E-06 1675 0 0 key = 0.0006 1781 0 0 key = 0.11 1715 0 0 key = 1 1800 120 0 } velocityCurve { // Based on Fnet data from NASA EngineSim, curve fitted with MuMech CurveEd key = 0 1 0 -0.002 key = 500 0.67 0 0 key = 550 0.44 -0.01 -0.01 key = 605 0 0 0 } } MODULE { name = ModuleAnimateHeat ThermalAnim = jet_engine_f119_heat } MODULE { name = ModuleAlternator RESOURCE { name = ElectricCharge rate = 5.0 } } MODULE { name = SmarterGimbal gimbalTransformName = thrust_transform pitchRange = 30 useGimbalResponseSpeed = true gimbalResponseSpeed = 60 } RESOURCE { name = ElectricCharge amount = 0 maxAmount = 0 } MODULE { name = FXModuleConstrainPosition matchRotation = true matchPosition = false CONSTRAINFX { targetName = lookatfx_target1 moversName = plate1_holder } CONSTRAINFX { targetName = lookatfx_target2 moversName = plate2_holder } } } relevant av-r8 mod for use with modulemanager (an-add on to TV-PP.cfg [or another cfg] in 'GameData\Squad\Parts\Aero\winglet2' : PART { // --- general parameters --- name = R8wingletES module = ControlSurface author = NovaSilisko // --- asset parameters --- mesh = model.mu scale = 0.1 rescaleFactor = 0.625 // --- editor parameters --- TechRequired = flightControl entryCost = 500 cost = 200 category = Aero subcategory = 0 title = AV-R8 Winglet Extra Small(ES) manufacturer = Kerlington Model Rockets and Paper Products Inc. description = The R8 Active Control Winglet series marked the debut of Kerlington Model Rockets in the Spacecraft engineering world. These winglets are equipped with movable pivots, which allow them to swivel and act as control surfaces. This feature was considered a huge advancement in control technology and most agree that it made Kerlington staff and R8 fans simply unbearable to be around. // attachment rules: stack, srfAttach, allowStack, allowSrfAttach, allowCollision attachRules = 0,1,0,1,1 // --- node definitions --- // definition format is Position X, Position Y, Position Z, Up X, Up Y, Up Z node_attach = 4.32401, 1.39785, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0 // --- standard part parameters --- mass = 0.008 dragModelType = override maximum_drag = 0.01 minimum_drag = 0.01 angularDrag = 5 crashTolerance = 12 breakingTorque = 50 breakingForce = 50 maxTemp = 3400 explosionPotential = 0.1 // --- winglet parameters --- // dragCoeff will override the maximum_drag value dragCoeff = 0.77 deflectionLiftCoeff = 0.16 ctrlSurfaceRange = 15 ctrlSurfaceArea = 0.95 MODULE { name = FARControllableSurface MAC = 0.85 e = 0.75 IsSmallCtrlSurf = 0 MidChordSweep = 27.6 maxdeflect = 15 b_2 = 0.75 TaperRatio = 0.611 } // --- tweakables (coming soon...) --- // ----- DO NOT EDIT BELOW THIS POINT ------ } More technical stuff : It's a subsonic plane using no pitch control surfaces in the video other than the tiny canards on the front, modded by scaling an r8 winglet down and guessing for aerodynamic values based on ferram and taverius's settings for larger r8 winglets. The engine is a scaled down B9 f119 turbofan with 30 degree vectoring added (normally 20 degree) and using mostly taverius's turbofan(not turbojet) engine settings for rapid subsonic thrust. In the video I turned off gyro force in the pod, and I'm demonstrating the plane's ability for short takeoff, air-stunt ability and the plane's reliance on thrust for pitch control at (relatively) high subsonic speed. I think a real X-31 is around 5.5 to 7 thousand kilograms. The K-31 has similar but different fuselage proportions because I'm not an artist and wanted a functional plane quickly. I'm using Modular Fuels with realfuels and some N2O4 as ballast (increase weight/mass). It is about 3.5 to 3.8 thousand kilograms but has less thrust than an X-31, at about 30 to 45 kilonewtons with no afterburner installed, where the X-31 is supposed to have up to ~71kN with afterburner. Romfarer's lazor system mod would make an afterburner possible with a few parts. Todo : add afterburner to break mach to around 1.28 like the real X-31, experiment with weird-funner thrust vectoring.. A NASA page on the X-31 : http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/news/FactSheets/FS-009-DFRC_prt.htm Wiki's page on the X-31 : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockwell-MBB_X-31

KSP Interstellar's Reactors (nuclear, thorium, fusion , antimatter), and microwaved beamed power support would be extra nice though I don't know if they would need special support. If the reactors are netting megajoules, they also make some of that into normal charge, IIRC. Thanks.

I didn't know about that maneuver, that's good. But I wonder about some kind of helper mod, that could boost engine efficiency only during atmospheric landings until the landing is over. Maybe Kerbal ISP Difficulty Scaler could do this if it changes engines that are already in-flight? If not I guess it would be possible though a plugin otherwise. Edit : DaMichel : I like to see stuff made for FAR! I used interstellar's nuclear thermal turbojets too, they work fine with FAR as far as I can tell.

Requires, but how could that be? I have not actually landed yet (in one piece) but did notice the speed for me was pretty amazing at low altitude due to the low atmospheric pressure/density. I just guessed I might need more wing area, swing/telescoping wing or a fancier solution to land for some planes than just gliding with control surfaces. And/or huge flat improvised runway and nerves of titanium. 1316 m/s in H2, that does go against my unfamiliar intuition, I just read that the speed of sound in liquid water can be around 1484 m/s which seems very close! But then I just understood, this formula includes density, it must be very dense hydrogen even at altitudes you can get away with flying in. ...Jupiter stunt pilots... IIRC just for discussion the temperatures likely on earth didn't change the speed of sound in air as much as I wondered they might when I went googling around some time ago..I guess in the scale of kelvin, usual temperatures of earth atmosphere are very narrow.

Just what I was thinking. Haha! Yeah! Now I have more reasons to hyperedit my various planes above other planets for re-entry or high altitude tests..why did I wait so long to try that last week, very fun..now with that, even better. No idea how sound travels in CO2. Looking forward to flying in all kinds of weird gas mixtures.

I like the control assists too. Adjust a few things and it's a flight comfortable enough to serve yourself an in-flight meal. And you're the captain. And captains get a captain's hat. What would be great too if possible too would be a way to adjust deflection angle during flight of control surfaces, or even toggle P,Y,R independently as part of per actiongroup toggles that would include all settings from the FAR control surface menu.. With this you could have better maneuverability at low altitude and better sensitivity during transonic and higher speeds at high altitudes or on other planets. I realize though I have hardly used the dynamic control adjustment feature which may do a lot of that if I adjust the variables. I just get into a routine and forget it's there.

Excellent, this was even better information that I was hoping for. I understand what you mean here. Wikipedia also tells me that I made a mistake and confused counter-rotating blades with contra-rotating (coaxial) blades like in your rotorcraft, that I had not heard of until this year. I wondered where the old DR free-rotatrons went, I'm glad to know I can use an IR Docking Washer for this function. How can you tell the blades go supersonic, by observing only? I notice FAR can't give much data in this unusual situation, really I don't expect it to. Wow, very similar and sleek, and intakes as pseudo wings! I never thought of trying that. I guess your double fuselage works similarly for lift as mk2 tanks instead. Edit : bgryderclock : I don't know, but one more thing to try would be to install KSP in a different folder than the old one, or delete the old one before a new install and see if the game works without any mods. I have never had any problem like that with any version of FAR.

The cockpit has some gyro power, but IIRC one of those skinny ones I made couldn't take off very well and it was at pretty high speed. You know those planes that won't take off until you run off the end of the runway? That may have been one. I find those takeoffs hilariously fun, especially in FAR. I guess that can be part of the sacrifice for planes without much wing area. There are two like that there I think, don't know which you mean but - Thanks for the compliment, really though all the important work is being done by FAR and these MK2 pieces from the B9 pack. At least I think they are working like a lifting body? I haven't actually compared mk1 or large cylindrical part Cd, Cl and L/D numbers, I just assumed and went on the feel of flight. On the general topic, you don't have to turn on SAS for gyro power to help and usually it's best not to do that until you're in orbit with a FAR SSTO, but it depends on how strong your SAS force is compared to mass of the plane and how strong your control surfaces are working at any time. This B9 cockpit is supposed to have less gyro strength than most manned stock pods though. They all used regular B9 landing gear with heat shield, nothing special on my part. Somehow I rarely use canards for high speed planes because they can cause more drag, but they do really help for maneuverability depending on where the center of mass is. LAtely I tried some other "planes" and it's possible to "fly" by using lots of gyro strength to drag around a reasonably shaped thing without wings. But in some sense it's not really flying, but weird techno-assisted fuselage-draggery IMO. It's nice to have the option though I think. Taverio's Aerospace also has various sizes of AV-R8 winglets for large planes and rockets. Plus tapered wings, tailfins and control surfaces that work with FAR. There are much more expert people who post in this thread than me, I just hung around to try to learn some basics. Edit : Also to mention again, the H2 as fuel from ModularFuels really helps because it is very lightweight. You've got to use oxidizer though which in ModularFuels is called liquidoxygen. The B9 SABRE is neat also with that if you get the adjustment for it, it's better balanced and unique, it only burns H2 with liquidoxygen, is pretty heavy but very efficient at burning H2 in the atmosphere. I tried that also on a few planes. Trade-offs of H2 is that engines configured to use it will make around half thrust, and you'll need more tank space to hold much of it, it's a refreshingly unusual thing since I'm so used to the density of liquidfuel. Triple Edit : Another good reason to use ModularFuels with FAR : You can customize entirely, how much fuel and what type you have loaded in each fuel tank in the actiongroups menu. So use a lighter half-full tank of liquidfuel if you want, fill the rest of that same tank with xenon or other potential orbital delivery resources, or use RealFuels module and even customize the tech level (changes mass and efficiency) of your rocket engines. Also comes with several smaller rocket engines to use with FAR SSTO planes.

Wow, do the rotors counter-rotate too? I realized I have been underusing the very good B9 turbofans that are available. I wonder if its possible to make joints for rotors that can pitch a little too. I love making stuff for FAR. Can't help but advertise. Album of stuff from the last couple of weeks : http://imgur.com/a/JCWir#3 A fun SSTO that worked, using ModularFuels, burning H2 for light weight. Started basing loosely on the X-15 but through playing with Procedural wings it ended up accidentally looking like a cross between that and a YF-22. Also a Kerbijet based on the X-13 Vertijet and a long range EDF kethane plane.

Good link about wiggling, those are fun, I only tried them this year. But, oh I really think that KSP in the Rift with good setup, even DK1, would knock your socks off and send them into orbit as far as the amount of depth. It really feels like you're on the nacelle-ish parts looking across the wing. With this FOV you can't see much further past the velocity indicator and the rest is peripheral. The sense that it wraps around you is fantastic and that's something the rift does that nothing else I know of does. Oculus is planning for a consumer version of an even better 'Rift in 2014. That will take your socks, now orbiting kerbol, into interstellar space. Apparently Valve will also announce something HMD-wise in January.

Don't know how to help specifically, I got as far as looking in Assembly-CSharp needed to compile mods for KSP. I was looking around SGT - MatrixHelper, {}UnityEngine, UnityEngine, and various KSP code including the name Camera..still not much idea.. Also went to : http://docs.unity3d.com/412/Documentation/ScriptReference/Camera-projectionMatrix.html and http://docs.unity3d.com/412/Documentation/ScriptReference/Matrix4x4.html

Really? I swore I could see small differences in certain parts when I used my Rift to look at these. But there seems to be something weird going on with Vireio 2.0 for me right now, I was not able to get the World Scale option to seem to do anything, going all the way from tiny units of 1 game unit = 9.2568 * 10^-12 , up to the maximum of something like 1344, no change. If I understand correctly, the left eye edge of whatever object you're using to align with the GUI marker is supposed to appear to move/warp in the horizontal so you can use the gauge to tell the difference. I couldn't get it to budge from the second left marker from the center. Convergence also seemed to do nothing going from maximum to minimum. There seemed to be a small amount of 3d anyway, though I could be wishfully thinking? The SPH ran at ~1FPS though, no idea why. Same thing happened for me in Portal, both World Scale and Convergence seemed to not function. I'm using Catalyst 13.9, the latest official. Might try 13.11 beta if I can't think of anything else..Plus re-read the documentation, see if there's anything..This is on a Radeon 6850, I'm not concerned about FPS hits at this early stage in development but 1FPS in that certain scene seems like something not working as intended for the moment. Edit : Distortion Scale works though, about 0.74 is good.

Wow, well I hope you have time to try if you like. I'm available to test for sure. I want to try Vireio 2.0 with KSP too, it's a good package and works with a few things I've tried that TriDef doesn't right now, and vice versa. Would you like to give settings you use in Vireio here, Archimid? I'll try playing with Vireio 2.0+ now in the mean time. I viewed your screenshots in fullscreen with Irfanview, the solar system one has the most depth as far as I see it, all are comfortable to view. The EVA one does make the pod+kerbonaut look like it's floating above the planet and the IVA view makes the instruments stand out too.

Even with limited support right now , KSP in the Rift is totally awesome. Any kind of plugin to help would be great! I got a Rift Dk1 last week too and tried a bit today with Tridef 3d ignition. I got lucky and caught the cheaper sale if you've got an AMD card. Also you can use it for 14 days free. Here are the settings I used (press numpad zero to bring the tridef gui up, then num 8, 2, 6, 4 to move, and num 5 to enter) : Generic Profile World Scale 0.15 Force Output FOV 110, Force Game FOV 110 ('Both' mode) Press Numpad + to Switch to safe FOV to shrink the screen as a toggle to read GUI that is too far out on the edges. Can't see the navball or much GUI with this FOV but it looks so real and HUGE!, much closer to measured sizes of meters wide....I constantly find myself trying to touch stuff and pickup objects but my hands don't appear! I was wanting to pat the fuselage I spent so much time building because it's way cooler to see and fly in the Rift. "Yeah, this thing will do zero to 1600 mph in 1.5 minutes!" Here's a few of the stuff I tried with tridef, only the first is rift viewable..without a utility possibly..I think? : First Picture : Album, download full resolution of first picture to see it in 3d on the Rift DK1: http://imgur.com/a/DWcMi#0 Yeah just tried, you can view this realtively well in semi fullscreen if you pick full resolution at fullsize, and better downloaded in a fullscreen image viewer with no borders, on the Rift. Subject to minor variation in IPD difference I guess but it looks good for me. I'm using default of 64mm.

'Awesome happens'. I'm using it. Haven't noticed any side effects or anything.