[PART, 1.0.2] Anatid Robotics / MuMech - MechJeb - Autopilot - Historical thread

[sojourner]

Since MJ is the only mod I've seen that calculates sea-level-thrust (for Realism Overhaul), I've pretty much switched over to it from Kerbal Engineer for building rockets. A feature I'd like to see: the ability to mark stages in the delta-v window as atmospheric or vacuum so that I get a more accurate "total delta-v" result.

The D/v window already lists both atmospheric and vacuum d/v for each stage.

[NathanKell]

Yes, but it's hard to do it by hand.

The best, of course, would be to LERP the dV for a stage based on its TWR, to try to figure out exactly how much atmospheric loss you'll take (and only use vacuum Isp if you calculate it'll be out of atmsophere before ignition). But I'm not even going to suggest that.

[sarbian]

zombielinux : you are the second Arch user reporting that, but players with others distrib have don't have this problem so ...

[jrandom]

The D/v window already lists both atmospheric and vacuum d/v for each stage.

That's not useful when you have a mix of atmospheric-use and vacuum use engines. I want to have it use atmospheric numbers for my lower stage(es), and vacuum numbers for the upper and orbital ones. I'd rather not have to add it up by hand -- it's very time-consuming when building a rocket, especially when using stretchytanks where the numbers get altered a lot.

I don't need anything that tries to analyze and guess which engines will be used where -- just let me mark them as atmo or not in the delta-v window and then use the specified mode when calculating the total delta-v.

Edited December 21, 2013 by jrandom

[Glockshna]

Yes, but it's hard to do it by hand.

The best, of course, would be to LERP the dV for a stage based on its TWR, to try to figure out exactly how much atmospheric loss you'll take (and only use vacuum Isp if you calculate it'll be out of atmsophere before ignition). But I'm not even going to suggest that.

Plus what if the vessel intends to be in the atmosphere at a specific point that the mod determines it COULD be out of the atmosphere for some reason. Then people get mad. It's fine the way it is imo.

[Boamere]

Anyone know what the "display module" does (i think it could come from the rasterprop monitor mod) It seems to spam the console with null reference errors

[zombielinux]

sarbian:

It seems to be working intermittently, at least with build 139. Which distributions seem to be working? Any other rolling release ones? Or just debian/ubuntu? Should we start a separate issue thread for linuxes?

[Jean Deaux]

I'm noticing a staging issue with builds 137 and 139, though root cause may be with the core KSC. Fuel usage does not appear to be equal which is what I think the root cause of the failure to autostage. I'm finding one of the fuel tanks has a .005 trace amount of oxidizer remaining in two different ship builds (1st stage). Nothing the manual slap of the spacebar can't fix, but if you walk away to use the can you may come back to a little suprise.

[sarbian]

MOARdV : fixed in 142. It's a problem in .23, not in MJ. The Reaction Wheel are displaying there is "Not enough Electric Charge" when MJ is doing tiny movement. That's how I checked that they are operational, so MJ think that there is less torque and make larger movement to compensate. I now check that there some electric charge on the ship.

Get 142 to fix the periodic "jolt".

jrandom : for now I am fixing bugs before the official release. new feature will come back next year ^^

Boamere : need the log from \KSP_Data\output_log.txt to tell you more.

zombielinux : Ubuntu is working. No report from an other rolling release distrib, and my own arch PC has no video card that can run KSP. It's a KSP crash so I don't really so what I can do.

Read more here : https://github.com/MuMech/MechJeb2/issues/256

Jean Deaux : that was fixed in 140.

[MOARdV]

MOARdV : fixed in 142. It's a problem in .23, not in MJ. The Reaction Wheel are displaying there is "Not enough Electric Charge" when MJ is doing tiny movement. That's how I checked that they are operational, so MJ think that there is less torque and make larger movement to compensate. I now check that there some electric charge on the ship.

Get 142 to fix the periodic "jolt".

You are awesome! Thank you once again.

[JebDynamics]

Thanks for the new resonant orbit feature of the maneuver planner, I had cooked up my own solution ( before I lost the ability to compile somehow ) for use in launching satellite constellations from one ship.

Thanks a bunch for your work developing and maintaining this mod.

Edited December 22, 2013 by JebDynamics

[asbrand]

Just discovered something odd with the "Docking Autopilot" and the "Rendezvous Autopilot" in the latest DEV release (v142) and KSP 0.23. Unlike in any prior version I've used for MechJeb, this one is missing your options / controls for Docking / Rendezvous autopilots. Just a box with a window with the title of the part, and it telling me to choose a target. I captured a screenshot to show you what I mean. I do have some other mods running (Fueltastic, KW Rocketry, Aviation Lights, Crew manifest) that never had problems with MechJeb before. And yes, I had my docking port as "Control from here" and had targeted the other docking port. I even switched control to the other ship, and tried it the other way, but had the same issue.

[MOARdV]

Okay, the intermittent twitchy rolls are gone in 142. I am, however, seeing this in my log:

[ERR 21:06:03.093] MechJeb module MechJebModuleThrustController threw an exception in Drive: System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
  at MuMech.MechJebModuleThrustController.FlameoutSafetyThrottle () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at MuMech.MechJebModuleThrustController.Drive (.FlightCtrlState s) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at MuMech.MechJebCore.Drive (.FlightCtrlState s) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
[EXC 21:06:03.095] NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object

Nothing I see going wrong in flight, but I was in orbit, and not using an air-breather, so the flameout safety shouldn't have been doing anything, anyway.

[Galane]

I really really hate "transfer to another planet." If you're under ten days from a launch window it'll go right to the next window a year or more into the future. Sending multiple missions that are days or minutes apart to the same destination or different destinations is impossible with mechjeb. The same destination is made a bit easier if things are within half an hour because you can see the flight path of the first mission and try to mimic that burn by hand and fine tune your periapsis with mechjeb. Mechjeb is very handy for finding a burn point months of rotations in advance, but don't try to use it a few days of rotations in advance.

Must be something recent. I had no problems going to Duna in .22 with less than 2 days to the window. I had to really push it to get my ship assembled in orbit in time, after doing the R&D in another save to figure out what to build and how to put it together.

[Slideshow]

Okay, the intermittent twitchy rolls are gone in 142...

As of 142 the twitchyness has gone for me too. One small thing I have noticed though is that using the maneuver autopilot to adjust my Ap or Pe for instance it doesn't look like Mechjeb kills the roll rate of the ship. This is not a problem until the very end of a burn when the ship starts to oscillate violently chasing the last bit of dV. My dV precision is set to the default 0.1 and I suspect if I increased this to 0.5 for instance the problem might go away (I'm unable to test this right now though). I never had this problem prior to 0.23 though.

Thanks for your work on this Sarbian.

[Frostiken]

Bug report:

If you have illegal characters in the vessel name, it works when launching from the VAB, but Mechjeb goes nuts when trying to load the vessel in any other capacity.

[Error]: MechJeb caught exception in core OnSave: System.ArgumentException: Illegal characters in path.

at System.IO.Path.GetFileName (System.String path) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0

at KSP.IO.IOUtils.GetFilePathFor (System.Type T, System.String file, .Vessel flight) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0

at MuMech.MechJebCore.OnSave (.ConfigNode sfsNode) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0

Squad *should* have the game designed so that you can't put illegal characters in the craft names, but until they do, perhaps some sort of 'hook' in Mechjeb to detect and notify you of this is in order?

Edited December 22, 2013 by Frostiken

[sarbian]

asbrand : can't help you unless you check error message in the log. Those 2 modules works fine here.

MOARdV : I can't duplicate it. What engine did your ship use (even the inactive) and did it have intakes? And what module were you using

Frostiken : thanks for the detailed report. fixed in 144

Edited December 22, 2013 by sarbian

[ajmac]

Mechjeb is still not working for version 0.23 on OSX. The parts appear in the VAB but no Mechjeb controls are available on the launch pad. I have tried the updated version available to download from this forum and it still won't work.

[Read have Read]

In 144 tonight, adding a mechjeb module part in the VAB spams the log with

(Filename: C:/BuildAgent/work/ea95e74f6e5f192d/Runtime/ExportGenerated/StandalonePlayer/UnityEngineDebug.cpp Line: 54)

MechJeb module MechJebModuleMenuToolbar threw an exception in DrawGUI: System.MissingMethodException: Method not found: 'MuMech.ComputerModule.print'.

  at MuMech.MechJebCore.OnGUI () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 

(Filename: C:/BuildAgent/work/ea95e74f6e5f192d/Runtime/ExportGenerated/StandalonePlayer/UnityEngineDebug.cpp Line: 54)

MechJeb module MechJebModuleMenuToolbar threw an exception in DrawGUI: System.MissingMethodException: Method not found: 'MuMech.ComputerModule.print'.

  at MuMech.MechJebCore.OnGUI () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 

Edit: I just remembered that Toolbar functionality is a separate module, and I should have looked at your other thread, Sarbian, my mistake.

Edited December 22, 2013 by Read have Read

[sarbian]

ajmac : christmas is in 2 days, so if you ask appel nicely they may deliver a Mac to my doorstep in time. Meanwhile I have no way to debug that :/

Read have Read : you need to update the toolbar extension for MJ.

[BARCLONE]

Sarbian, I don't know if this is anything you can do within MJ, but is it possible to "trap" keystrokes from passing through to the base program when typing data into the text blocks? I can't tell you how many times I've triggered decouplers, activated time-warp, fired up the main engine, or some other destructive command because the dialog box needed text input and the text being typed triggered those commands.

[Noik]

By the way, something I wondered as I hoped to land a VTOL capable craft with Rapier engines on Kerbin using the Landing Guidance, does this actually work for Jet Engines at all? Or only with the much more direct rocket engines?

[star1228]

Sorry for bothering the creator, but I have been using mechjeb since i just began to play kerbal; it's my most used mod, on most ships even if it's not going to be used. however, recently the GUI stopped showing up all together; I tried to reinstall it to see if that would help at all. has anyone else ran into this glitch on windows?

[skips]

Mechjeb is still not working for version 0.23 on OSX. The parts appear in the VAB but no Mechjeb controls are available on the launch pad. I have tried the updated version available to download from this forum and it still won't work.

Can you provide some more details? I have had no problems using MechJeb on MacOS X 10.8 and 10.9 other than ones that have been posted to this forum. MacOS X 10.9 has issues with KSP that are independent of MechJeb.

(the independent issues are 1.) KSP writes to directories in its directory. Since this activity is expressly forbidden for the /Applications directory, it is wisest to have KSP installed in your home directory or a subfolder of your home directory. 2.) MacOS X has issues with the manner in which the SM3 Terrain Shader handles memory management - or at least that is how I read the sampling - and so hangs when the shader is being used. The SM3 Terrain Shader in settings:Graphics should be disabled in MacOS X 10.9)

skips

[sarbian]

Noik : no, jet engine (and rapier in jet mode) have a large reaction time and that confuse MJ in the final steps of the landing. You could try switching to rocket mode just before the ground, it should get it from there.