Solar panels no longer blocked?

[Foxster]

I was messing with the various solar panels and I just couldn't get any of them to be blocked by the shadow of objects. Planets and moons yes.

Did something change?

[Hcube]

hmmm not for me, at least in space. I havent tried this on the ground though... EDIT: maybe the game considers that some light is passibg through the gaps between the plates ? is that possible ?

Edited April 8, 2015 by Hcube

[Foxster]

hmmm not for me, at least in space. I havent tried this on the ground though...

Really? I've tried this on the ground and in space and with all the panels. What did you try?

[Deadpangod3]

ive had solar panels be blocked by THEMSELVES when the end is facing directly at kerbol.

[Hcube]

Really? I've tried this on the ground and in space and with all the panels. What did you try?

well, i put some solar panels on a ship and turned the ship so that the hull would hide the panels from the sunlight, and the solar panels were not blocked

[smjjames]

It's a known bug with KSP I think.

I've had panels not get blocked by an entire planet before.

[GoSlash27]

If it's a thing, it's not universal. I nearly had a mission ruined 2 days ago due to solar panels being blocked by wing panels. This was on the surface of Kerbin.

I was doing the biome hopper challenge with an airplane/ rover combo. Processing data in the lab had drained my batteries and I didn't want to wait all day for the airplane's panels to recharge the batteries, so I dropped the rover and proceeded to drive it out into the sunlight to deploy it's panels....

And it died right under the plane.

Both of it's panels were blocked by the airplane's wings so I was unable to recharge or reconnect.

Thankfully, I was able to coast it out into the open by releasing the airplane's parking brake.

TL/DR;

solar panels *do* get blocked on the surface.

Best,

-Slashy

[Foxster]

Well, here's a few examples:

This carries on working fine and the light isn't blocked by the panels mounted on the vehicle...

This one dies when it gets under the shadow of similar parts but on another vehicle...

Even surrounded by thick parts the sun gets straight through...

Edited April 8, 2015 by Foxster

[thadisjones]

Ah yes I am pleased to see our engineers have developed next generation solar NEUTRINO capture panels to take advantage of this unblockable particle stream for the production of electrical power. Although our physics guys say "not theoretically possible", the crafty engineers have covertly replaced all the old generation models without anyone else being the wiser.

[godefroi]

Remove all your mods and see if you still see the same thing?

[Reactordrone]

Just ran a test while I was in sandbox. Mine are showing as blocked when they're 50% covered by shade from the large structural panel mounted on the same vehicle.

[Fleb]

Just tested it on my unmodded install and got same results.

[Foxster]

Thanks for checking. Glad to see its not just me.

[SkyRender]

The occlusion code is a bit imperfect at the moment, yes. It's very common, for example, for sunlight to reach objects on the surface of Minmus straight through Minmus. It's also true that the eclipse occlusion code is "too good" right now: until you have at least 50% exposure to the sun from an occlusion caused by a planet or moon, you will get zero sunlight.

[Starhawk]

I just ran several test myself, and I can confirm Foxster's results.

No portion of the craft to which the panel is attached appears to block the light as far as the calculations for evaluating how much electric charge is created go. Visually, there are shadows but they don't have any effect.

Other objects not connected to the craft can still block the light.

Of course, the angle between the panel surface and the sun is still crucial.

Happy landings!

[Guest]

I got my solar panels blocked, when only storage box was blocked and panels themselves isn't. I think big panels should check for occlusion for each segment separately. And what I see is a bug, although I never encountered it. Strange.

[Fel]

What the solar panel code "should" be doing is making a raycast from the solar panel origin to the sun. It is fairly clear that the squares are clipping, not saying this is the cause but that if an object is "clipping" it may have the "internal boundaries disabled." which thus isn't blocking the raycast.

http://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Physics.Raycast.html

*I have no idea...*

*Though, I wonder if it was someone else who told me this; looking at that would explain the problems... possibly... but wouldn't explain why SQUAD wouldn't use occlusion. I remember reading this after posting issues about the solar panels; just don't remember where.*

Though again, raycasting would explain something like this.

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/92150-Solar-Panels-better-light-detection

Edited April 10, 2015 by Fel

[Red Iron Crown]

I don't see this issue reported on the bugtracker, Foxster. Would you mind creating a bug report for it on http://bugs.kerbalspaceprogram.com/ ?

[Esme]

The occlusion code is a bit imperfect at the moment, yes. It's very common, for example, for sunlight to reach objects on the surface of Minmus straight through Minmus. It's also true that the eclipse occlusion code is "too good" right now: until you have at least 50% exposure to the sun from an occlusion caused by a planet or moon, you will get zero sunlight.

I've had that too. Having spent a giganinormous amount of time mucking about on Minmus since 0.23, I can confirm that at the very least, the hills of Minmus seem to have no effect with regard to blocking the effects of the sun on solar panels, and I've had my suspiscions that the panels might've still been working at times even with the sun well below the horizon out on the flats, but didn't get around to checking that for sure.

[Warzouz]

The occlusion code is a bit imperfect at the moment, yes. It's very common, for example, for sunlight to reach objects on the surface of Minmus straight through Minmus. It's also true that the eclipse occlusion code is "too good" right now: until you have at least 50% exposure to the sun from an occlusion caused by a planet or moon, you will get zero sunlight.

Yesterday I notced that the Sun wasn't hidden by Jool. I think I was orbiting. I could see the sun trough Jool. I didn't check the solar pannels though. But few days ago, the sun was correctly obscured.

[Starhawk]

I've had that too. Having spent a giganinormous amount of time mucking about on Minmus since 0.23, I can confirm that at the very least, the hills of Minmus seem to have no effect with regard to blocking the effects of the sun on solar panels, and I've had my suspiscions that the panels might've still been working at times even with the sun well below the horizon out on the flats, but didn't get around to checking that for sure.

My understanding is that the body of a planet will block the sunlight, but surface terrain will not.

Happy landings!

Edited April 10, 2015 by Starhawk

[Mister Dilsby]

I don't always block my solar panels, but when I do it's with a tight lattice of PB-NUK radioisotope generators.

[Xavven]

I'm curious, does KSP account for light scattering? Even if a solar panel doesn't have a 100% clear line of sight to the Sun, enough ambient light should still reach the panel to generate some power (for the same reason you can still see the grass underneath a shady tree).

I'm not at my gaming computer ATM to test it, but do you get the same results when you put your solar panel blocked by structural panels in orbit?

[mrclucks]

Try placing solar panels over solar panels, I've had a big problem with them blocking each other so I just use fission, fusion and/or radiostopic generators for reliability