Moach

It's definitely terrain related - It'll be fixed once I upgrade to the 2.0 version of the third party terrain system, but its release seems to have been delayed (probably because of the virus problem in some loosely related way) and it hasn't come up on the Unity asset store yet.... Shouldn't be too long I hope. If you find it gets unplayable for it, try the "NT" build (lower down on the download page) - That has the auto-gen feature disabled so that only the nearby chunks of terrain are available. This version will not hang or freeze much at all, though it offers somewhat more limited country to explore... (not that there's anywhere special to go out there anyways, that's gonna be implemented once terrain 2.0 is up, else I'd have to do it all over again anyways) Cheers!

New build Mk1b2 is now available! Change log for build Mk.1b2: Camera follows aircraft heading. Reduced excessive propwash effects, making aircraft less jumpy in response to controls Fix for strangely violent wheel caster shimmy with steering unlocked. Added fallback NT build as an alternative for those having too much trouble with terrain-gen induced lag.

Aha! Thanks for confirming this also happens on good PCs (I couldn't tell if my baseline rig here was having problems that others wouldn't) Anyways, don't be discouraged - there is a known issue with the terrain generator in its present implementation that makes it quite slow for about a minute or so when you first switch from hangar to flight. Once the terrain blocks around you are done generating, it gets pretty smooth, even on my below-state-of-the-art machine. Then it only stutters briefly, although quite annoyingly, whenever you travel the 5km required for the terrain to start generating new areas. Yet then it doesn't have to generate as much area as on that first run, and you shouldn't have such a big issue with it. Be aware, anyways, this has nothing to do with your GPU specs, as it is a CPU bottleneck intrinsic to the underlying terrain system. That system is bound to be replaced with it's upcoming new 2.0 version (should be available by now, I hope) and that claims to be capable of generating the same terrain independently of output resolution - That is, we can have the far out blocks made at lower res and increase gradually closer to the camera. Thus making it possible to have a vastly wider visibility radius whilst also reducing the hiccups significantly. As for pre orders - I'll be sure to start offering that option as soon as I can have it set up. I'm very glad to hear I'm not the only one who's been wanting to play this game for quite some time now... I Wanted it badly enough even to go ahead and make it from scratch The plan for the near future is to be able to physically setup shop, and have "BoolDog Games" be a proper development studio dedicated to MotorWings. That will require investment of a kind I have no means to afford by myself at present. So either we build up to that by pre-orders in a crowd-funding like manner, or find someone with a deep enough wallet willing to jump in for shares while the opportunity is up for grabs... Ether way works for me, though the latter would probably make things happen that much faster. Just click the picture on the OP, it'll link you to MotorWings.net,where you can hit the "Start Flying" button and get it from there.

It is quite rough indeed - This is the first time it's been actually made playable and everything in it right now is placeholder. Anyways, rotating parts is indeed one of the top things on the to-do list at the moment, it is quite limiting to be without it The auto-symmetry feature is also just so we could have ANY symmetry whatsoever until I finish working out the interface for it, there will be buttons to lock and override symmetry modes soon I've had the same gripe with the camera not following turns as you describe, so nice to know my own perception matches that of players at least on one count. That will also be fixed soon (remember, work in progress) as for your plane pitching down, there is pitch trim, try the W and S keys - or move the wings a little bit more forward to stop it doing so (mind that this balance will change across different airspeeds due to airflow interactions between wings and tail) Roll controls are especially sensitive due to the fact that all wing sections are configured to use their trailing edge flaps as ailerons - that will be more workable with the planned Tweakables system to allow one to choose what each section does in response to controls and finally: the black silhouettes are just placeholder icons for the parts, since I haven't had time to make proper icons yet. See, unlike KSP, MotorWings only loads each part to memory when you actually select it (or load it with a saved plane). This is to prevent extremely long loading times when modding support is done and ppl start stacking up tonnes of parts Anyways, thanks for the feedback - It's nice to have some sense of player priorities when deciding what to tackle next. Ain't easy working as a one-man team (the other half of our "studio" has computer problems and can't help at all right now) But from what I recall, KSP in its first public releases actually started out with somewhat less polish than even this - that only shows how far these things can come in so short a time once a good strong player community builds up around it. Make sure to keep an eye on the live devLog page, where I make a habit of holding often lively conversations with myself as I work on the game - That's where any relevant thoughts that come to mind while I develop will appear for the world to see.

New build just uploaded! (Mk.1e1) ---------- original OP ------------- So, I'm making this game: As the thread title says, the concept is basically what would happen if you took the stylish ambience of Crimson Skies, then put it together with the assemble-and-physics of KSP in an open world elite-like environment. It's a concept I've been sitting on for a very long time. Anyways - since I have a production budget of just about what loose pennies I can find under my seat cushions, this is an early-access release. Here we have a very first playable preview of what will gradually build up into the full game - It's free for now, as getting people involved with the project is currently the most important thing. Eventually there'll be a pre-order option and things should follow pretty much in the same lines as the sales method used for KSP. It's all about the player community, as we all know so well. Anyways, enjoy! Updates should come up very frequently in this early stage, so make sure to keep an eye on it!

well, I made my own flight simulator.... I'll put up a proper nice looking thread about it shortly

Why does anyone write Sci-fi? Because they can. To be fair, the name given to the genre has been stretched and pushed so far and hard since it came up that it makes less sense every year to stick to such arbitrary categories... I mean, where would you place the world of Crimson Skies? Is it fantasy? Alt-History? (is that even a genre? shouldn't it be?) There are inventors and newfangled contraptions in it, so why not Sci-Fi? Because it's not in space? Jurassic Park isn't in space, and it's definitely Sci-Fi... Is it the presence of things like robots and Higher-than-presently-available tech? If so, then what of the myriad post-apocalyptic dystopies that tell of whole civilizations built on scrap metal? Is Star-Wars Sci-fi?(pre-Disney, when it was you know, good) It probably isn't, actually, as it apparently takes place in a whole alternative universe with quite different laws of physics - But then again, the fact that it makes you think of a new set of physics laws to account for it, isn't that what Sci-Fi is all about, Yeah - good point! It goes on and on... Anyways, my point is: All this labeling leads to basically nowhere, and ultimately adds very little or even detract from the creative impulses that cause people to write Sci-Fi.... The real question is really: Why are there people out there who do not read Sci-Fi, and how can we get them the help they need? Me personally, I don't write much at all (except in forum posts, where I blabber non-stop) - But that's mostly because I find narrative storytelling to be a much too finite media for the concepts I enjoy coming up with. So instead, I make computer games, and these are mostly made up of worlds in which each player's experience allows him to tell his own story. Case in point: When I was about 15 years old, me and my brother were playing with a model rocket set we had, and I fashioned a little tin-foil man and taped him to one of the boosters. I called up to my brother and said: "Hey, look! He's a um... 'Kerbo'! He's gonna try to get to space, and yeah, he's gonna die!" - We then proceeded to make more of them and started giving them names. In a whimsical nonsense moment, I decided that all of them should have the surname "Kerman" - because, Why not? - And where do they live? Uh, "Kerbin", I spurted, in a semi-conscious contraction of "Kerbo" and "Bespin".(Star Wars Episode I was in full hype at that time) This name proved very satisfying as it also brought to mind the picture of a bin full of the creatures, thus drawing a creative connection to those little green guys in Toy Story who worship "The Crane". That may or not have had some effect on their cultural personality as the idea developed, who knows (or cares?).... My brother started naming their ships "Kerbal I, II, III" and so on, and he drew a mission log to celebrate the heroic attempts at spacefare. Some 10 years later, we both became game developers, my brother moved to Mexico and somehow talked his boss into taking a chance on making a game. He told me what game he was gonna make, to which I replied: "Hey! I was gonna make that one!" - But this kinda thing happens all the time when you're a twin.... And anyways, Now I'm working on another idea that he had first kinda called dibs on - But more on that later.... Yet curiously enough - besides the observation-based mission logs from our historic cardboard space program, neither of us ever really wrote down a single line of any tales whatsoever that happened to individual characters. We just came up with the universe in which any such stories could take place and left it at that.

I have never had a dental cavity. In fact, I have all 32 teeth correctly deployed! Even the annoying ones at the back that most ppl need to have extracted in their late teens. I don't actually take any unusually good care of my teeth even. Truth be told, most dentists would probably say I'm alarmingly sloppy... Oh well... bonus random fact: I (and others) once concocted a sort of home-brew Napalm. We did it by dissolving Styrofoam in petrol until it became a pinkish sticky goo-type substance. Once ignited, this curious ooze combusted quite slowly, excreting an abominable smell and continued to burn for well over 5 minutes. We had made about a liter or so of it. - My friend still has the alien-looking black gnarled rock that was left when the fire finally went out. We call it "The Napalm Rock". DO NOT attempt this at home! Or if you do, at least don't tell where you got such a stupid idea.

I got an FAA Approved Airplane Seat Belt Extender/Demonstrator for $6 bucks at Salvation Army once. I adapted it and use on my Sim-Pit for a seat belt - it really helps prevent slouching and bad posture. Lots of things on my Sim Pit came from Thrift Stores and other similar pot luck sources See here: Things found in thrift stores include the power distributor, that plate where the SpaceNavigator is mounted, a bracket which props up the main monitor to keep it vertical and a bunch of other bits and pieces (mainly junk) which have been assembled in various creative ways

There isn't one YET - but please be patient, as I am myself currently working on just exactly this project. I suppose there isn't any point in keeping it under wraps, especially after I went down to FSExpo in Orlando recently and told everyone whom would listen about the idea... Anyways, the concept is basically the long-lost lovechild of KSP and the grand classic "Crimson Skies" It goes like this: And this is quite honestly a work in progress at this exact moment. I kid you not! - This is what I'm actually staking my career as a game developer on I wasn't gonna post about it until we had our web forum setup and whatnot, but oh well, I knew the demand for this concept was much too high for it not to pop up all by itself sooner or later... So yeah, it's out there now - MotorWings is a real thing, and I'm the lead developer of it. Here's a free screenshot of our running prototype: This features full physics-based simulation built on a "fly-by-parts" approach. That is, the airplane is really just the sum of it's parts, each one of which is programmed to react to airflow and forces in their own specialized way . Parts are then connected by slightly flexible joints (not too wobbly, but enough so that long wings will realistically flex) - and there's a bunch of options on wing parts to define how they should react to pilot controls, like say "this part is a wing with an aileron section - move it up and down along with input X axis" and so and such... I haven't coded the editor (hangar) interface yet, and for now I've been arranging the airplane parts using the unity scene editor so that I can debug the basic flight dynamics... ... ...I suppose I should write up a proper thread about all this, since there's a whole lot to the project which is awkward to elaborate here. It'd certainly derail the OP's thread for one thing. I'll definitely start a topic about it shortly. Let me leave you for now with an artistic impression of an envisioned in-game scene: Cheerz

This video was made in 2011. It is the earliest recording I can scrounge up from the "olden days" of Kerbal Spaceflight. That's 0.18, or 19 maybe... sometime around that general epoch, for sure There was no map view back then, nor any method of measuring orbital parameters without doing the math yourself from speed and altitude alone. The game had not much earlier been planned as a casual "how high can it go before boom" type challenge, which would have likely veered towards the mobile "casual" market (and therefrom unto oblivion) ... After some insistence by myself, since back then HarvesteR would sometimes still take advice from his own twin brother, the concept was fortunately turned towards the simulator side. I recall promoting it as "if they're gonna blow up anyways, it might as well happen on the way to a realistic orbit. No sense dumbing it down for accessibility" - much to our benefit, that idea actually stuck, and KSP as we know it was born. This video was made a few months after that event. Note that there were already some mods made. - Mod friendliness were always a high concern in KSP development history. One of the very first major parts packs "Wobbly Rockets" is being used in that video. Plus some assorted bits I had made myself and have since become most thoroughly obsolete many times over There was no Mun, or anywhere else to go... there wasn't even time warp (some of us used cheat-engine type software to force faster running) so completing a full orbit around Kerbin and reentering near enough home base was the pinnacle of achievement. It had to be done by the seat of one's pants, so it was much more art than science really...

Shameless plug to my own compositions maybe... Influences include of course all the basics like, John Williams and ilk, Koji Kondo, Jeremy Soule ( particularly the Total Annihilation OST ), perhaps a bit of Dream Theater here and there, and in some parts even the above mentioned "Adventures of Tintin" theme. Plus a million other random bits of tune from galaxy knows where... Music you make is always made of the music you hear. Yet, inconveniently lacking an orchestra at my disposal, this was all done with MIDI

Lol! Busted! It was me in GeoFS - Small world eh? to everyone else asking "what da?", long story short: we've met flying online on GeoFS, both with different usernames. I suppose this goes to show how KSP fans are an overlapping audience with flight simulators in general. This is actually quite important for my next project, to which "Dr. T" is the key for our hopes of resources.

curiously, that full screen bug you mentioned is something I had happen to me as well once... but I couldn't make it happen again afterwards, and it went full screen fine if I did it after the load game screen... I'm gonna look into it, hopefully it's something stupid and not a deeply rooted issue with GMS (the underlying engine, which has caused us no end of problems so far) Thanks for letting us know; And please do tell if anything else comes up. Cheers!

That was the whole idea! I'm very glad you like it! - Enjoy

Doctor Tsunami, the game is called. All the artwork in it was made using nothing other than MS Paint; And it was put together with Game Maker Studios (The "Paint" of game engines) to boot. But why? I hear you cry. What ever could have possessed someone to do this? Well... I can't really say. It's art I think. Or maybe its just a way to prove that you don't need modern tools that promise to make it all easy for you; And anyone can make a game if they just put their mind to it. Even without expensive specialized software. As for me, this game is special because well... I was part of the very small team who made it. I got in half-way through development, but then I ended up buffing up most of the code, redoing anything that didn't really work and whatnot (especially whatnot, when the rest of the team is ONE other guy) But mainly, I feel my biggest part in it was writing the original soundtrack. I had been brewing up some of this music for eons, as if waiting for some big project where it would fit. When my friend Rob (the guy who did it all in Paint) asked me for help and I saw the game, I felt this was somewhere I could put down all those ideas, not saving any for "later" as I had done so far. And since he was doing it all in Paint, animation included; (over 4000 individual images, in the end) I had no reservations about the fact that I did not have any of my music equipment ready at hand. And kept with the spirit of the project by scoring all in MIDI by mouse and keyboard. Of course, there are many better ways of doing it... But I think this was the whole point of the exercise, to show that games are not made by the tool, but by the hands and minds that wield it. And yesterday, the game was finally released on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/8618 ... r_Tsunami/ Needless to say, as a two-man team just breaking in to the gaming industry; We got quite a lot riding on this. Anyways, I hope you like it. G. A. "Moach" Falanghe (yes, "Falanghe" as in "the guy who made KSP" - he's my brother btw, did I mention it?) Ps: If you find any bugs, let me know. There are over 180 levels in Doctor Tsunami, and you can probably guess that a team of two is by no means sufficient to cover it all thoroughly enough to find them all. We've set up a forum for it here: https://www.doctor-tsunami.com/forum Well, enjoy!

I'd always figure it'd be something like this: except instead of cars, it'd be.... you know

I'm a big fan of the Logitech G700 series, can't live without it ever since I got one I've had THREE of them so far, and every time I abused them into the grave, I was all but unable to find any other model for a replacement that even came close to it - so I just got another G700 besides the fully programmable 13 buttons it has, I gotta say, the one feature that no other mouse has managed to satisfy, is the unlockable scroll wheel. the G700 has a little button right under the scroll wheel which toggles the ratchet mechanism. so when it's unlocked, the metal wheel is heavy enough that you can flick and it'll continue to spin smoothly until you stop it with your finger or re-engage the lock, making it behave like a normal wheel again. no other mouse has this, and though it may sound like a gimmick, I assure you: it is such a handy feature that it rapidly becomes muscle memory, and I always find myself fiddling for that button whenever I use another kind of mouse. so, if the OP is in any position to forward this opinion to whomever is in charge of such design decisions - that would be my main suggestion, which to me is a must-have for any new mouse I may consider in the future also, if it were up to me, I'd add moar buttunz (the G700 is an ergonomics masterpiece, I heartily endorse that button layout) another important factor for me: wireless sucks -- conveniently, the G700 doubles both as wired or otherwise, so I always have mine plugged. AA batteries are very unreliable, a good cord never lets you down but I gotta say - this does look pretty cool, it looks like it'd be quite handy for 3d modelling as well -- also, I reckon the ArmA crowd might be extremely interested in something like this on another note: this thread seems a bit out of place in this forum... I think it'd be more at home in the hardware talk section. I haven't been a moderator here in a while though, so it's not up for me to move it - anyways, carry on

on the contrary - upon a player reaching a point where the efficiency of his interplanetary exploits are of concern, such a player is all the more likely to become community-involved, installing mods, and opening up whole new worlds of possibilities and possibilities of new worlds it is hard to place ourselves in that position - and it was indeed rather difficult at the time, with many disagreements between myself and my brother about just what was the best way of pulling it off... the back and forth would eventually settle on something between "too much" and "not enough info" it's even harder to say if the way it was done was indeed the very BEST way it could have been done... safe to say, it probably felt like that to my brother at the time he made it - anything that he felt was truly unsatisfactory in the long run, probably got changed eventually, leading to the format we got now advanced players (of the kind that make mods, not just install them) are often estranged of many decisions taken over this UI - even I had many times insisted for more conveniently placed gauges in the flight scene and whatnot... but eventually I saw the reason too it's not only because it would be intimidating to new players... that can be solved very easily with an "advanced" button or two -- but no, the main problem is that, upon reaching that level of expertise, players grow very unique personal requirements and opinions about their "ideal interface" - so a more advanced interface was sensibly relegated to a case of "choose whatever mod you feel accomplishes that best" - in full understanding that those who requested these things were almost always mod-capable players, if not mod authors themselves so in the end, the UI was made "least-first" - and kinda maxes out at point upon which it stops being possible to attain any degree of consensus about just how exactly it should be done. personally, I really like that decision - since I'm more of a NanoGauges type player and less of a MechJeb user (I don't need precision, I got plenty more volunteers!) others may prefer an Orbiter-style interface with more efficiently displayed numbers... in any of a myriad possible configurations I for one, am glad that the interface was designed such that we are able to choose

if he were using the main theme (from the opening menu) or the one other track (which was it again?) which were written by HarvesteR, then I reckon he may actually care to know about it... not that he'd have a big problem with it being used, I suspect - except if perhaps it was done without credit... but well I can't speak for my brother on that those are the only two tracks in KSP which were composed specifically for it - the others were made by Kevin McLeod, as noted before, and those are royalty free in a way that allows them being used in various applications, as the OP has noticed that's the thing with royalty free music, in the end... it's royalty free (often this requires a one-time purchase) for anyone who wants to use it - this is a very economical way of getting yourself a soundtrack, just don't be alarmed if you start hearing it in other places as well

ksp tends to be more "pragmatically oriented" than Orbiter, which is very scientific and all about precision (most of the time, at least) there was an early design decision taken to get players to first realize WHY they need a bit of information, and THEN give them a way of finding it - this was deliberately done throughout the design of the interface in order to exercise natural curiosity, instead of blunting ppl with a wall of intimidating numbers which they don't necessarily understand right away... remember, most ppl are absolutely traumatized by math by the time they're through highschool - so KSP had to circumvent more than the usual non-familiarity of a new subject in its learning curve - for most people, densely packed numerical displays are often regarded as a "thing that does not look like it would ever be any fun" .... not sure if this has changed since my days in school (which were thoroughly un-enjoyable in a majority of ways) - but most of my peers have many issues with this stuff nowadays since HarvesteR and myself both have a severe enough case of ADHD, it probably helped that we just weren't paying attention back then anyways - and after we learned programming, we noticed that these once-horrible subjects became items of curiosity, as tools for realizing a personally meaningful project. and now, they appeared as welcome answers to nagging questions - and thus learning them was not just easy, but also extremely pleasant putting that in practice, the KSP interface is built from a least-first approach, giving out no more information than one would THINK necessary, until that necessity comes around... this is why there is no ApA/PeA on the flight view, requiring one to switch to the map, as he'd intuitively do once such a level of orbital awareness becomes relevant. on the other hand, a new user still learning the ropes of "keeping the hot end of the stick pointed backwards" would not really have much need for the details about an orbit he's not yet been able to reach once space is reached, and the concept of "falling fast enough that you miss the ground" is established - then such specifics are naturally found by a quick glance at the map... a similar process takes place when dealing with orbital maneuvers and encounters, and so on... ultimately, it was anticipated that by the time any player became experienced enough to desire this data in the convenience of the flight UI, and/or required more precision such as mentioned by the OP, then that player would most likely be perfectly capable of installing mods to his game

females do seem to have a noticeably lower eyepoint in IVA, which I actually find a lot better placed for reading the instruments and still getting a good view outside... I think this is really the only big difference - or perhaps it affects the framing in the portrait cameras as well, could be the models must be different enough that this offset is required, I guess

I have had a full course in Intellectual Property and copyright law during university, so I'm aware of what is and isn't protected under copyright law... in short, it's "simply complicated" (simple in theory, complicated in practice) any such a case would require digging up plenty of evidence, and a whole complex, expensive and thoroughly unpleasant process would have to take place in order to cause nothing besides trouble and torment for anyone involved... I for one, would much rather not turn it into one of those "facebook scenarios" that ppl end up making movies about... I don't see how anyone (myself included) would stand to truly gain anything from it which would be of greater value than having KSP itself be a reality and that's why I never really mentioned it early on, when things were so precarious see, both myself and my brother have always operated under the "money to make games, not games to make money" concept... just recognition for my part in the initial concept, both before start and during early development, in the form of my name in the credits, would really be all I'd ask for. everybody likes being acknowledged, right? unfortunately, it is hard to effectively remind a guy to do something as trivial as adding a name in the credits when he's got issues of the "omfg! why is it doing THAT now?!" type and frequent sightings of the Kraken to sort out.... the usual reply I got was always in the lines of "yeah yeah, dude, ok... but why ever did that just explode?" I'll see if I can get my brother to comment on this, anyways - he's not been around here for ages, it seems...

...to be fair - the answer is more usually "not yet" if there's really a need for it - somebody's bound to make a mod... and if nobody starts it, one may always go and learn to make it himself remember that all addons for KSP must be open-source when published, so it's very easy to take something for a starting base, and use that as a learning tool as you go about making it into whatever you have envisioned - just mind the licenses and give ppl proper credit (which is most often all they ask)

in games, this kind of effect is VERY rarely ever really needed in the sense of a full technical implementation... such as you say, the magnus effect - very curious concept, how a spinning object will deflect air and generate lift from this rotation - now KSP does not model this, in vanilla form... mostly because - it's not necessarily necessary that it does.... one might argue, in and rather extreme and outright bizarre use case proposition, however: well, what if I wanna take an empty fuel tank, and spin it around through the air, and make a vehicle out out THAT? (effortfully ignoring the obvious question "why?!") -- does this not make it so that such dynamics would then be lacking? well, yes - i.e. a mod would be needed... but also, no - i.e. the full dynamics behind the effect are not actually needed to achieve this... because, see, simulating every last particle of air in the space around the craft would create somewhat "undesirable" performance issues this may cause a bit of frustration among users who do not acquire their computers by means of time travel imports from the quantum-powered future (peasants, bah) a simpler, more practical representation could be obtained much more cheaply... if we figure a cross product vector (a direction perpendicular to two given others) - assuming one vector is the object's velocity, and the second one is the axis(world) in which it's spinning (namely the length end of a cylinder), multiplied by it's angular speed as and an adjustment factor... ...the result of this operation would be the lift vector, (might require some fiddling with the signs, tho) - and this could simply be applied as a central force upon this rotating body... for whatever gains one may expect out of endangering Kerbal lives in such a way this would of course, require fine-tweaking of parameters to correctly approximate the scale of the resulting effects - but it's still substantially simpler than achieving it by "brute force" so, that's what could be done by <insert mod volunteers here> thus the magnus effect can be "factored in", rather than "supported by" the (modded) game - this is the difference between a "simulator" and an "emulator", respectively