Which atmopshere do you prefer?

[ShadowZone]

I am not sure, honestly... have not experimented enough with 1.0.2, but so far it's not really as bad as some people make it out to be. I abstain my vote because not even a week of playing is not enough to legitimately have come to a valid conclusion.

[Wallygator]

I'm not getting any dV savings. My orbiter that could rendevousz can barely make orbit now with 2 units of fuel left.

To be clear this opinion is based on my own play style and launcher design preferences.

[royying]

I still can't have fun in 1.0 after couple days of practice

SSTO dead, Shuttle flip over.

It make me frustrated:(

[LostOblivion]

The Apollo Lunar Ascent Stage was an SSTO. /pedantic

More seriously, some real life launchers could SSTO if they had no payload, which is the real problem with chemically-powered SSTOs IRL. At best you'll get 1-2% of the rocket mass as payload.

Perhaps it is exactly what you are saying, but most launch vehicles IRL can get tops 2 % usefuk payload to orbit, so any SSTOs would be far less from what I've heard.

[Jouni]

After flying a few early career mode rescue missions, the new 1.02 aerodynamics are starting to feel familiar. It's not exactly FAR, but it's close enough that rockets fly pretty much in the same way.

[Slam_Jones]

Never thought I'd say it, but I miss the soup

[Red Iron Crown]

Perhaps it is exactly what you are saying, but most launch vehicles IRL can get tops 2 % usefuk payload to orbit, so any SSTOs would be far less from what I've heard.

I was going from (obviously fallible) memory there and slipped a decimal place, should be 0.1-0.2% payload fraction. Thanks for the correction.

[Mister Spock]

I haven't played enough to decide, either. 1.0 and 1.0.2 both seem within the realm of reason to me; both are far better than .90. I've been tooling around with jets today in 1.0.2, and I've had fun with it, though it may be a tad too draggy at low altitude -- which isn't the end of the world for a jet, as it makes things easy to land. I dunno, I have to play around more. I'm certainly surprised that so many people think 1.0.2 is a horrible soup-o-sphere. It may be a tad too draggy, but it's night and day compared to .90, as far as I'm concerned.

[hellblazer]

They still didn't fix the visual depth of the atmosphere. I fly up a couple thousand feet and the sky turns black. I'm pretty sure when your in a real plane at 30000 feet the sky isn't black lol

[Superfluous J]

They still didn't fix the visual depth of the atmosphere. I fly up a couple thousand feet and the sky turns black. I'm pretty sure when your in a real plane at 30000 feet the sky isn't black lol

Are you converting the meters on your gauge to feet, or do you mean 30000 meters up?

At 30km the sky is quite dark, actually.

[hellblazer]

Are you converting the meters on your gauge to feet, or do you mean 30000 meters up?

At 30km the sky is quite dark, actually.

Feet

[SkyRender]

The atmosphere in 1.0 had the scale height a bit off (it thinned out much too fast), while 1.0.2 feels a lot closer to correct now. It's not FAR, but the skills a player learns using FAR will carry over to it nicely. If anything, you end up being even more cautious since FAR aero causes craft to flip out even more easily than the new aero model does!

[Temeter]

I was going from (obviously fallible) memory there and slipped a decimal place, should be 0.1-0.2% payload fraction. Thanks for the correction.

Funnily enough, the Skylon concept is quite a bit higher with 4.5%.

[Red Iron Crown]

Funnily enough, the Skylon concept is quite a bit higher with 4.5%.

On paper. We'll see, if it ever flies.

[Silent_Thunder]

Really the problem isn't atmosphere, is that they still have the Impulse tweaks that were intended for the 1.0 atmos.

[Frozen_Heart]

On paper. We'll see, if it ever flies.

It won't fly not due to the technical feasibility, but due to the inefficiency of the company building it.

[Superfluous J]

Feet

http://i.imgur.com/HPIXtLb.png

Your sky is darker on the horizon than mine, though mine is darker above than the pictures I see of Earth. I think your extra darkness is due to that visuals mod you have installed.

Granted, Kerbin is not Earth (though it approximaes it at sea level) so you expect some differences.

[Temeter]

On paper. We'll see, if it ever flies.

Of course, tbh I can't imagine they''ll get those numbers, even if it's be possible. Just an interesting contrast.

[NWDogg]

I'm a long-time FAR user, so I got fairly accustomed to launching just about anything in that model. The new stock aero, though, feels off to me. I don't know how to explain it, but 1.02 stock feels much more difficult to maintain control on rockets than FAR ever did. In .90 FAR, I could launch single-stack rockets with no fins easily, but in this new stock I've been having trouble keeping any rocket (with fins, no fins, fins up high, fins down low, reaction wheels, RCS, etc...) from flipping straight over.

I also have trouble getting anything other than the 3.75m parts into orbit. My 2.5m designs flip wildly at around 15km, and I haven't gotten a 1.5m stack past 30km Ap. I don't know what the difference is between FAR and this new stock, but new stock is absolutely more difficult than FAR ever was, for me. That said...I do actually like the new aero. It feels so much better than stock ever did before, and I'm not giving up on the new challenges. I look forward to nuFAR being released, because I much prefer the feel of FAR, but I can live with this new aero model until then.

[Westi29]

1.0.2 has made me really frustrated. Everything blows up that didn't blow up on 1.0 and nothing makes it to space. Now, somehow I can reenter the atmosphere at an absurd angle and live (with the wing strakes surviving) but I can't get to space anyways and the shuttle loses all lift below 100m. Just nose dives at 20m/s into the ground. I dunno, congrats Ferram lovers you've ruined the game for me.

[NathanKell]

Interesting factoid time!

1. There was absolutely no change in the atmosphere from 1.0 to 1.0.2. There was a considerable increase in dragcube (i.e. not wing) drag, but a slight decrease in wing drag.

2. 1.0's (and thus 1.0.2's) atmosphere is thicker than .90's, and so to compare drag at a given place between .90 (presumably with FAR) and 1.0.2, you need to compare density altitudes. 0.5kg/m^3 occurs around 14km in 1.0 (and thus 1.0.2).

3. 1.0 had much, much less drag than FAR (on .90) did. Terminal velocity for the Mk1 pod was ~100m/s in FAR in .90 near sea level, and 170+m/s in 1.0. Up high, say at density-altitude 0.1kg/m^3, you could get an extra 500m/s off the same thrust on the same craft. Delta V to orbit in FAR was about 3400, minimum, 3600 average; in 1.0 it was 2800 and 3300 respectively.

4. Even in 1.0.2, there's less drag up high. Top speed at 0.1kg/m^3 for the same craft with the same thrust is ~100m/s higher in 1.0.2 than in FAR-0.90. Down low, however, drag is much higher in 1.0.2 than in FAR. For rockets, that about evens out in terms of delta V to orbit costs.

I encourage people to stop speculating and stop going off perception and to actually test stuff.

[TothAval]

i voted 1.0.2., but i generally don't care at all. it's a gameplay environment and i treat it the same as every environment i encounter, whether in a game or in RL, i simply adept to it. and if certain things don't work anymore i change them and try something new, until my will is enforced upon the environment. i don't see the need to waste energy on this matter.

[Alias72]

remember when the forum was filled with doom and gloom about how 1.0 aero would destroy spaceplane creativity... *looks at poll nuumbers*

[Wren]

Interesting factoid time!

1. There was absolutely no change in the atmosphere from 1.0 to 1.0.2. There was a considerable increase in dragcube (i.e. not wing) drag, but a slight decrease in wing drag.

2. 1.0's (and thus 1.0.2's) atmosphere is thicker than .90's, and so to compare drag at a given place between .90 (presumably with FAR) and 1.0.2, you need to compare density altitudes. 0.5kg/m^3 occurs around 14km in 1.0 (and thus 1.0.2).

3. 1.0 had much, much less drag than FAR (on .90) did. Terminal velocity for the Mk1 pod was ~100m/s in FAR in .90 near sea level, and 170+m/s in 1.0. Up high, say at density-altitude 0.1kg/m^3, you could get an extra 500m/s off the same thrust on the same craft. Delta V to orbit in FAR was about 3400, minimum, 3600 average; in 1.0 it was 2800 and 3300 respectively.

4. Even in 1.0.2, there's less drag up high. Top speed at 0.1kg/m^3 for the same craft with the same thrust is ~100m/s higher in 1.0.2 than in FAR-0.90. Down low, however, drag is much higher in 1.0.2 than in FAR. For rockets, that about evens out in terms of delta V to orbit costs.

I encourage people to stop speculating and stop going off perception and to actually test stuff.

Please take the Stearwing D45 and fly it attempting to get into orbit. You will find that between 10k - 20k altitude the turbojets will loose thrust just at the same time as the wings don't provide enough lift for you to gain any speed or altitude, so there is absolutely no way to get high enough to jettison them and get into orbit. I tested for about 8 hours yesterday with several different engine mix and configuration that I could for a small 25 ton spaceplane to try and get into orbit and found that in no way could I do it, and I was building spaceplanes extensively since .20. I literally can't get anything into space unless it is using 8 RAPIER engines and 8-10k units of LFO, which pretty much makes mark2 parts useless.

Edited May 2, 2015 by Wren

[adsii1970]

I encourage people to stop speculating and stop going off perception and to actually test stuff.

And that is exactly what I have done. I have even brought some of the craft forward from vanilla .24 to compare with 1.01/02. Things I thought flew well with NEAR in .24, .25, and .90 fly even BETTER in 1.0.1/.2. I have had to redesign some of my rockets as it has been interesting watching the cartwheeling rocket of spectacular failures (same thing happened with .90). Overall, I like the new aerodynamics; not the quality of NEAR but I do like it better than what existed in .24.

Thanks for a great job...