diomedea

Back in the day I started with KSP (and you are as old) there was just the KSP demo, few basic trainers and some fine vids providing good hints to start. Most of what you suggest seems to be covered now in Start game / Training and KSPedia with the game itself. If more was needed, however, you are certainly welcome to add tutorials yourself with the forum section (I'm sure you have enough knowledge on such subjects to cover them with ease). That forum section is completely volunteer-based, we gladly accept more entries.

You never cease to be amazing!

Highly recommend to follow the Challenge Submission Guide . First of all those points, show what YOU are able to do.

112 man days if all bug reports were perfect, requiring no more than 20 minutes to reproduce, diagnose, and fix. Most of those are actually way less than so, and can't be reliably reproduced in 5 hours. Often times, those reproduced, take more to correctly diagnose. And not being one of Squad developers, I'm not hinting at how long could take to actually fix, but from experience with past ones, it takes often more than a day to fix and then check one is actually fixed for good. Then, who made you think there are 10 people with 8 hours or more available to test bugs? Most of times, there's only a handful (2-3). Any help from the community, who may be more successful at replicating those old bugs (if still exist) than we all, is welcome. We have no gain at all from all the time spent testing KSP. Notwithstanding that, I'd be curious to see you first buy other 5 copies of KSP, may be that is all we need.

And I hope you'll have fun too on the forum. Welcome!

oh, no! you're back. I hoped you were gone forever. Now where's that ban button, I always forget about it.... Jokes apart, welcome back to the fold .

Yes, that's how I reckon it works. Believe RT controls when orders can be received by a vessel, MJ just accepts any order that can pass the RT "filter". But that is just my idea of the interaction.

About how MJ interacts with RT, I have never checked (you may have to ask the authors for details). But MJ allows to plan a maneuver way before its execution, and when time comes to execute it, does reliably without need for further communications (so, signal delay has no effect because the time to execute was determined already). In a way, MJ acts as a powerful navigation computer with the vessel, so it can also autocorrect based on the current position of the vessel, without link to a remote station. I should actually check if still stands in the latest RT/MJ versions, that a player can't issue orders to MJ unless there is a link with the vessel.

Yes, Signal Delay is a must have for me. Of course that requires some careful planning with my missions, but I wouldn't have it otherwise. I do use MJ. Used kOS too.

Seems to me some misconception about the forum rules exist: discussion of a political nature requires a political argument. There was none such argument up to now, but sure someone is monitoring that none will come.

Could be this two together help: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/news-room/20141202IFG82334/EU-budget-explained-expenditure-and-contribution-by-member-state http://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2015/11/24-2016-budget-approved/ From the data published above, UK net contribution = 11341.6 M€, against total EU payments of 143890 M€ (7.88%); EU spending in UK = 6984.7 M€, against a total EU spending of 128564.9 M€ (5.43%); UK is then a net contributor to the EU for 4356.9 M€ (3.03% againt the EU payments).

If the rescaling follows the barometric formula (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barometric_formula), it would take just one adjusted parameter in the simulation to handle that. That parameter is Scale Height Factor (SHF = Universal Gas Constant / Atmospheric molar mass / gravity), a value that multiplied by Temperature at any altitude gives ScaleHeight (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale_height). Static pressure in the simulation is computed according to U.S. Standard Atmosphere 1976 (meaning, temperature samples at different altitudes are used, ScaleHeight is variable and pressure changes with each altitude level are cumulative). To adapt as best possible to the pressure curve with KSP bodies, we already have to use SHF values 'slightly' different that the natural ones (e.g., with Kerbin, 'natural' SHF = 8.3144621 / 0.0289644 / 9.81 = 29.26177; but a value of 26.403 best matches the pressure curve). Eve's pressure curve is the most distant from what its peculiar molar mass and gravity would give (natural SHF = 19.71719; adjusted 43.3778; most of Eve's atmosphere would be compressed in the very first Km from the surface if the natural SHF had been used). Running the simulation with different, non-standard bodies, is already possible in theory, all it takes are a few config files holding the body fundamental values. SHF is one of them. All that said, it follows that the simulator doesn't care at all about the coded pressure curve, and won't be able to adapt to any curve not following the barometric formula.

Thanks . The KWS sim saves its state each time KSP does, is meant to keep one set of its data with every valid KSP savegame; when KSP reloads an existing savegame, the sim also reloads its corresponding data to keep going from that time. It is theoretically possible to use KWS data saved at a specific time, and load that with a different KSP savegame, and still all would work seamlessly if the time (UT) in both KWS and KSP saves was the same. That's because, nothing done in KSP can affect KWS data (we don't simulate kerbalkind caused climate changes), so the only variable that would affect the sim state is the UT time (that's in theory at least, as timewarping in KSP would reduce the accuracy of the sim and may produce different results).

Windspeed at altitude. 15 minutes only into the sim, but some clear pattern is showing already (scale shows increasing windspeed from dark blue, to green, yellow, red, purple). Bet everybody recognizes what those streams with higher winds at specific latitudes mean. If not, here is the Earth's equivalent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_stream. Again, nothing coded specifically for the effect, all comes by itself because "laws of physics".

The pic below shows my earliest attempt at an overlay for vertical wind. Grey means neutral, to turn reddish for descending flow and blueish for ascending. Still faint (but, not even 20 minutes since the simulation started) and already the overlay shows alternating areas in latitude with ascending/descending flow. Doesn't that all resemble the Hadley cells/convergence zones (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadley_cell ) ? Was a nice surprise, as nothing was coded to achieve it on purpose: it comes naturally. Also, trying color-coding with horizontal wind. Still grey is neutral in the pic below, and saturation stands for wind intensity while hue goes with wind direction (red for eastern, same as a colour wheel). While not yet completely done, wind patterns are showing. How long before a cyclone to be clearly recognizable?

Sure enough when they let me in, was them having a good sense of humour

Can't talk about others. But sure I am among the oldest around (in age), at 58.

Wind is really a difficult beast to tame. But had I better insight on what was the issue, taming it wouldn't have taken so many days. However, even with all the tests we kept doing, the bug was real slippery to catch. I'm therefore glad to announce this nasty one is now squashed, so on with the next now! (had to do with the effect of vertical wind on pressure, that is computed for each layer separately. However, pressure updates for upper layers work using the pressure of the lower layer and the barometric equation, and that made the wind effect with lower layers be included even with upper layers, which already had their own wind effect).

Have to echo what the OP wrote just few posts above: keep the discussion civil guys! Fo how much I would hate doing, if things don't improve, forum rules will be enforced.

Eh, nice idea. That shows beyond winds, WeatherSystem will have to allow public use of the air density at any altitude, so buoyancy with balloons can be accurately computed (air density in KWS is a bit different than in stock KSP: it includes humidity, so the more humid, the less dense air is under same pressure and temperature).

So, another improvement to the Weather System is done (though will require a lot of internal testing to be sure it works as expected). This was about how precipitations are computed/managed. Droplets start by nucleation of excess vapor (beyond saturation) over some condensation nuclei (like salt, dirt particles) or, if temperature goes really low (below ~233°K for water), they form spontaneusly; then increase in size as condensation proceeds over their surface (on Earth, the main mechanic involves a mix of ice and water, as Ice has a lower saturation point for vapor so attracts water molecules from water droplets); when droplets grow large enough, their weight makes them fall increasingly fast (relative to the air current) so they collide with smaller and slower droplets (coalescence), further increasing in size. The model had the characteristic droplet size (for when droplets were falling faster then the air up current) as the limit telling when those would make in precipitations (as rain, hail or snow, based on temperature and time spent in the air current); however the intensity was tied to only the amount of condensed water/ice in those droplets. With this latest improvement, parameters were introduced and managed to represent the variation in time of the droplets size (each "sample" of droplets falls when it increases beyond the limit size, but smaller droplets don't unless collided by larger ones); this will allow to have continuous precipitations for a long time or very intense but short-lived (and all the different shades in between).

While I'm not thinking this to be advertising (there's nothing currently to advertise), sure there are a few issues in your endeavour. First, this add-on is released under CC-BY-NC-ND. The ND stands for NO Derivatives. So, unless you get (and can demonstrate) to have special permission from the author of this add-on, you'll not be allowed to release anything that comes as a spin-off of this. Then, if it wasn't a true spin-off, what you will build would rather be seen as a competitor to this add-on. Coming here to make plans for an alternative to this add-on isn't the best way to win friends. Others suggested you start your own thread for going with your plans. I modestly suggest you to be careful about any licenses of existing mods too. Happy modding.

Sure equations and code alone don't tell much. One thing with this mod, sure, is that proper handling of weather comes first, visual effects later. With code now running without major problems, is possible to experiment what happens after a consistent interval of in-game time. While each test run takes longer (we can't yet use timewarp in game, that feature will come later), unexpected behaviour is revealed and needs be corrected. Sometimes, it's just a single error in how an equation was entered in code, so takes very little to fix after the issue is discovered (oh, how many little bugs come each day). But the simulation increasingly shows to need more precision too, so more or better equations have to be used. Weather modelling is really a multi-disciplinary subject, and one never knows where research will land. E.g., now the effort is with laws about how relative humidity really goes, as it keeps increasing more than expected. Till now, used those good equations every meteorologist knows about, about evaporation, saturation and condensation. But those aren't enough, so the effort goes about some way to include thermal velocity of water molecules and relative speed of diffusion of the different gases in the mix. Surprisingly, most good documents found on the subject were not from meteorology nor physics, but about insulation and building materials....

There's no official release after KSP 1.0.5 and until KSP 1.1 - and that includes all the test builds Squad produced internally. I'd be wary about anything like that version 1.0.8 you read about, seems like a way to entice players to install unofficial and probably malware-ridden software.

I've looked into the activity of the hacker who compromised the account and then made the statement. Was quite interesting, as he really shows to be committing such misdoings regularly. He entertains himself with a network of his siblings, where a sort of commerce in cracked passwords databases is common practice. However, having checked that, I came to the conclusion that was the way he used to get into the private e-mail and from there into the moderator account, but he could definitely not have gained any access to the real KSP database from there. You know, only admins have access to the database (and not all functions). Mere moderators don't, and therefore can't download any portion of the database for their own use. But not even admins have access to the passwords, those are actually hashed (using some advanced protection techniques, such as salting, so the usual brute-force attacks won't reveal anything). Nobody can actually retrieve the passwords used, and that's why, in case any user needs help with a lost password, we can only start the procedure for the system to issue a new one instead. To actually be able to provide KSP passwords, a hacker should 1) be able to download the passwords database from the system (impossible to moderators); 2) know the salt used with the hash function (that's secret, internal to the system); 3) make a brute-force attack (it uses a dictionary of possible passwords and tries them all with the hashes in the database, hoping to find some correspondence; unusual passwords are not in the dictionary and are very difficult to guess even after the hash function is cracked with those from the dictionary. Or, by having luck, it could be possible to find the password a person uses with a less protected account, and find that same password also opens his KSP account. Should this sound like an advice to users about better securing their passwords? well yes, it's best practice when it comes to passwords to: - use very unusual ones, better if formed with all kinds of character types (upppercase, lowercase, digits, special), at least 12 character long, and without any resemblance to your publicly accessible data; - never use the same password with more than one site; - when changing password, use something very different from the ones used before.