Dreamer - V1.3 Vertical Launch, horizontal recovery space plane! Updated for 1.05 -

[artwhaley]

New thread created to remove trademarks belonging to someone else, at their request...

Update 1.3 - Updated to 1.0.5 and configured to not explode on reentry. Mostly sometimes.

Update V 1.2 - Includes a brand new IVA with completely custom props, so there's no more Alcor dependency. I also fixed a couple of texture mapping issues and made it a little easier to control in the atmosphere. It's STILL tough to land, by design. Please keep feedback coming - I'm not actively playing the ship much, at the moment, so you guys are the only way I'll know what needs work!


[B]DREAMER RELEASED! [/B]

[SIZE=4]Download[/SIZE][SIZE=6]: [/SIZE]
[SIZE=4][URL]http://kerbal.curseforge.com/projects/dreamer[/URL]

[/SIZE][SIZE=5]Really big special thanks to[/SIZE][SIZE=6] Mike-NZ [SIZE=5]for taking over and improving/updating this ship through the 1.0 to 1.0.4 stage! He solved some problems I'd been banging my head against and I can't say enough how good it feels to have a project of yours matter enough to someone to put the effort into it that he did! [/SIZE][/SIZE]

[SIZE=3]Let's start with the pics - [/SIZE]
[imgur]gd8Sp[/imgur]


And new pics of the updated IVA:
[imgur]MbYJn[/imgur]



[COLOR=#000000][FONT=Noto Sans]What's included besides the basic ship:
[/FONT][/COLOR]


[LIST]
[*][B]Three payload bay modules[/B] - a generic tank (comes preconfigured for TAC life support, but the idea is that you can edit the .cfg file to add any resource from any mod that YOU use... so reconfigure it for snacks or karbonite or anything else), an LFO tank that adds additional delta-v to the ship, and a KAS workshop module that, if you have KAS installed, gives a winch, a pipe attachment, and a storage crate, turning this into an awesome little maintenance and upgrades platform.
[*][B]An Atlas V two-stage launcher[/B] to lob the thing into orbit. This is lower detail, as I wanted to spend CPU cycles and memory on the ship you actually fly all mission, not on the launcher you discard in three minutes. But it's there, and both stages terminate at 2.5m so they're useable with other payloads... though you'll probably have to have an adapter fairing of some sort for the upper stage, because the top of the centaur isn't flat.
[/LIST]
[COLOR=#000000][FONT=Noto Sans]The launch vehicle adapter is 2.5m, so you can hypothetically launch it on top of any 2.5m parts from the game... but... there's a lot of aerodynamic surface on this thing, and it's way up front in the launch configuration. My Atlas V has increased gimbal range to let you counter act the instability instead of fins (just like the real thing) so if you launch this on stock parts, you may need quite a few fins at the base of the rocket.

[B]The IVA requires: (not necessary if you don't want to IVA)
[/B]Raster Prop Monitor - [URL]http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/57603-0-25-RasterPropMonitor-putting-the-A-in-your-IVA-(v0-18-3)-8-Oct[/URL]
[/FONT][/COLOR]

[COLOR=#000000][FONT=Noto Sans]The IVA has 4 unique stations - up front are the pilot and commander who have flight instrumentation, rear facing camera control and resource management options, as well as full control of mechjeb. In the back a science officer has access to action groups and wing cameras, payload bay controls, and similar, while a docking module pilot has a docking interface and appropriate mechjeb command buttons for target referenced functions.
[B]
The Ship Requires:[/B]
Firespitter. It makes the landing gear and airbrakes work. Does anyone NOT have this at this point?[URL="http://kerbal.curseforge.com/linkout?remoteUrl=http%253a%252f%252fsnjo.github.io%252f"]http://snjo.github.io/[/URL][/FONT][/COLOR]
[COLOR=#000000][FONT=Noto Sans]Kerbal Joint Reinforcement seems rather necessary these days... didn't used to be... but something's changed since .90 [URL]http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/55657-1-0-5-Kerbal-Joint-Reinforcement-v3-1-4-6-22-15[/URL]
[B]
Notes:

[/B]The centaur loads with less than full fuel tanks... and the Dreamer loads with more fuel than you probably need. I highly recommend planning your missions and adjusting the fuel in these two stages appropriately.

There's an electric generator built into the capsule. And the output is HIGH. I've had to do this to make the batteries last all the way through re-entry. I suppose I could turn the power down on the flywheel system. I'll play with that. But at the moment you'll never run out of electricity. Which is a little hacky. I need to get this into balance.

The mod supports DRE and FAR. The Far support should be considered a WIP. Please give feedback. The ship isn't designed to be EASY to fly, but if it's uncontrollable it's probably a bug. In general - space planes are hard to fly... Over the course of development I've bowed to pressure a few times to make this easier to handle during reentry and landing.... but it still isn't stupidly forgiving... I recommend reentering such that a ballistic landing would put you right on the KSP pad, so your lifting surfaces will make for a long overshoot... then out over the water at around 10,000m of altitude you can come back around to point west for landing.

The Atlas V 402 launcher is low detail, but it exists. I've put the .blend files in the abandoned model thread and you're welcome to start with my cfg files.... so if anyone is looking for a mod project, a day texturing what's already there... a couple of days building fairings and payload adapters, and a day modelling the single nozzle Centaur engine and you'd have a stand-alone Atlas V mod ready to release. :) All I ask is the option to include any improvements you make back into this mod if they fit with it! :) I may move on to this project eventually myself... but I've got a couple of projects ahead of it, so please feel free. I'll gladly help someone along, if it's their first project! :)[/FONT][/COLOR]

[COLOR=#000000][FONT=Noto Sans][B]Important Note: [/B]This ship draws inspiration from several places, both real world and fictional craft. Any resemblance it bears to specific craft, however, is purely incidental. I've been asked not to use any trademarks belonging to a certain real world company working on a certain real world vertical launch, horizontal recovery shuttle, so let's enjoy this for what it is - a purely fantasy ship with many design features of it's very own.[/FONT][/COLOR]

[COLOR=silver][SIZE=1]- - - Updated - - -[/SIZE][/COLOR]

[video=youtube;X_JThlA_xnw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_JThlA_xnw[/video]

[video=youtube;GQLg9gWbaOI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQLg9gWbaOI[/video]

[video=youtube;YMo9vXFeigo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMo9vXFeigo[/video]



Craft file:
[URL]https://www.dropbox.com/s/wy1nyrvwjqp0om5/Dreamer%20Launch%20Ready.craft?dl=0[/URL] Edited November 22, 2015 by artwhaley

[CommanderSpock]

Are you getting the new model from Mike?

[hieywiey]

It lives again! Man, I almost forgot about this mod... Looks like it would be interesting to water land.

[Speadge]

what am i doing wrong that my wheels wont deploy?

[artwhaley]

I really probably won't be starting over with a new model... my kerballing time is limited these days, and I've got some plugin building ideas rattling around my head for now. Anyone who'd LIKE to do a new model version is welcome to any of my knowledge, config files, etc... but a lot goes into taking a model and getting it cut up and run through unity... I'm probably not going to start over. Especially since a certain trademark has asked that I NOT make it an exact copy of their shuttle... I'm probably going to leave the basic model as is.

It DOES water-land pretty well!

And... do you have firespitter installed? The landing gear depend on it! It used to drive the control surfaces and airbrakes, but I've got all of those moved over to the stock modules now... so Firespitter is JUST running the landing gear. I may at some point try to sort out getting them to use the stock module... but I HATE working with the stock landing gear module and so... I may not! But if you've got firespitter installed and the landing gear still won't travel, let me know!

Art

[Shamus6200]

The whole thing is gorgeous, but the IVA in particular is something to behold. Well done.

[Speadge]

[quote name='artwhaley']
[COLOR=#000000][FONT=Noto Sans][B]The Ship Requires:[/B]
Firespitter. It makes the landing gear and airbrakes work. Does anyone NOT have this at this point?[URL="http://kerbal.curseforge.com/linkout?remoteUrl=http%253a%252f%252fsnjo.github.io%252f"]http://snjo.github.io/[/URL][/FONT][/COLOR]
[/QUOTE]
[quote name='artwhaley']
And... do you have firespitter installed?
[/QUOTE]

damnit.

TL;DR
:D

thanks! Edited November 25, 2015 by Speadge

[MaverickSawyer]

Okay, took it for a quick jaunt around the KSC under onboard rocket power...

How am I supposed to configure the control surfaces? Any attempt to roll induces yaw, and any attempt to yaw induces roll. >:( It's really hampering my ability to fly this to a landing.

[trooperMNG]

While on .90 I created a pretty simple texture pack for your Dreamer to resemble the real one. I'll surely NOT release that texture pack, knowing what happened with the old version... anyway thanks for your mod. Pretty basic, but absolutely fun.

Just some screenshots

[imgur]HrDmG[/imgur]

[artwhaley]

trooperMNG - I LOVED your textures for it! I hate texturing and would welcome any help with it, but yes, I DO want to keep from putting any real world logos on it to keep a certain company that doesn't get that science games are influencing their next generation of engineers from killing it! :)

And MaverkickSawyer, that's strange? Do you have all of the pieces attached? The nosecone and tail are both aerodynamically important... but other than that... I still think it has too much command authority, really... with SAS on it's TOO easy to fly.... but with SAS off it's too easy to overcorrect...

You're not setting any of the control surfaces to limit their axis are you? Because of the limited part count, I'm letting the tail (and the nose cone! Damned KSP physics....) act in all 3 axis's instead of making dedicated elevon parts and such. It's a little hacky, but I didn't want to turn it into a 25 part monster by breaking out more pieces.

And it DOES stall and lose control below 25 m/s or so... if that could be your problem. I had trouble taking off from the pad using just the Dreamer OMS engines and getting to a controllable speed before it spun on out, but adding a little booster under it to give it a couple hundred meters of altitude and 40 m/s of velocity and I was able to circle around for a perfect landing just now. Are you running FAR? I haven't tested it with FAR in 1.0.5...

[MaverickSawyer]

Yes, I have all the parts installed, and I've been kicking it up to 90+ m/s before pitching to level and test flying. Still has a nasty roll/yaw coupling with all those parts. I'll try flying on torque wheels alone for a change and start adding surfaces and channels to see what happens.

[COLOR="silver"][SIZE=1]- - - Updated - - -[/SIZE][/COLOR]

Okay, found the issue... I think. It's the center tail. I shut down its ability to do anything, and the Dreamer is much more docile. If I disable yaw on the wings, it's even better.

[Speadge]

[quote name='MaverickSawyer']Yes, I have all the parts installed, and I've been kicking it up to 90+ m/s before pitching to level and test flying. Still has a nasty roll/yaw coupling with all those parts. I'll try flying on torque wheels alone for a change and start adding surfaces and channels to see what happens.

[COLOR=silver][SIZE=1]- - - Updated - - -[/SIZE][/COLOR]

Okay, found the issue... I think. It's the center tail. I shut down its ability to do anything, and the Dreamer is much more docile. If I disable yaw on the wings, it's even better.[/QUOTE]


experienced that, too. if you activate the aero-overlay u see that it is "wobbling" all the time => hard to fly stable

[artwhaley]

I'm seeing that too... With SAS on it has a definite wobble, which I'm attributing to too much control surface authority. You're right... for me turning off yaw on the wings and changing the tail to JUST yaw seemed to help a lot. If anyone comes up with a great set of .cfg files for it, I'd love to fold them into the release! I'll EVENTUALLY get to it! If you are spending a lot of time tweaking things, remember that the nose cone is a 'control surface' too. Like I said, it's hacky, but it was easier than changing the COL offset of every other part on the ship... but the nose's (invisible canard) may only be necessary for pitch control?

[MaverickSawyer]

[quote name='artwhaley']I'm seeing that too... With SAS on it has a definite wobble, which I'm attributing to too much control surface authority. You're right... for me turning off yaw on the wings and changing the tail to JUST yaw seemed to help a lot. If anyone comes up with a great set of .cfg files for it, I'd love to fold them into the release! I'll EVENTUALLY get to it! If you are spending a lot of time tweaking things, remember that the nose cone is a 'control surface' too. Like I said, it's hacky, but it was easier than changing the COL offset of every other part on the ship... but the nose's (invisible canard) may only be necessary for pitch control?[/QUOTE]

That's how I'm running it. Works well enough, but it still turns on a dime.

Additional testing report: Any chance you could add some cabin lights? It's a bit dark inside...

[Svin]

Everything is new - well forgotten old!!!
[IMG]http://www.friends-partners.org/mwade/graphics/s/spiral2.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]http://seradata.com/SSI/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Dreamchaserprototypeglide1.jpg[/IMG]

[Proteus]

the mod is great,but the landing gear won't work,you can't adjust it in the vab either.

Edited December 7, 2015 by Proteus

[Dr. Jet]

Most 1.0.5 problems are caused by KSP engine forcing convex colliders in place of non-convex. As Dreamer (0.9.0 version) had some hollow parts - it's most surely the case.

[Dr. Jet]

Checked. Flies fine.

Found bugs:

1. Ship assembly is ridiculously imbalanced. Upper stage booster has over 1k dV left in LKO, not mentioning the Dreamer itself (with internal tank) has over 2.8k dV! I believe that fuel volumes are left there since 0.X.X versions souposphere... so they should be reduced.
2. More imbalance. Fuel-full Dreamer itself (without rocket) has TWR of 1.04 at sea level. Concidering this small engines are vacuum type - it's obviously impossible.
3. Dreamer COT is not aligned with COM. Accelerating in vacuum would require tons of RCS to just hold prograde.
4. Hatch "ladder" collider in model is misdirected, pointing 90 degree away from the ship.
5. Using Firespitter as a dependancy for such mundane thing as landing gear... is not a best choice. Especially concidering that mod does not rely on CKAN to ensure dependancies.
6. Missing collider at cargo bay "bottom" does not allow puttting there surface-mounted parts.

[artwhaley]

I'd... be interested to know how much interest there IS in this mod?  I'm happy to work on the balance issues as we get into 1.1...  and could even do a folding wing version with the cargo carrier module...  but...  it's a lot of effort if this is a craft that people are loading up and playing with once, saying 'cool' then going back to building rockets from discreet components!  

[StahnAileron]

If you could develop it into a platform like the Mk2 or Mk3 series (for Stock; similarly there are the Mk-IV series from Nertea and the J and K series from the OPT mod), I think it would generate some more interest overall. I could be wrong as gamers can be finicky, but that's my thought on the matter. You already took the first step by including gameplay-value added features (cargo bay, nose cone). And I think the community is always looking for more wings. (The now-stock SpacePlanePlus/Mk2 wings are very flexible for designs, but horrid for part count.)

A new platform is a lot of work (and I'm not directly asking for one from you), but it's a path you can take if you're up to it. Whatever you do, good luck!

[Nansuchao]

12 hours ago, artwhaley said:

I'd... be interested to know how much interest there IS in this mod?  I'm happy to work on the balance issues as we get into 1.1...  and could even do a folding wing version with the cargo carrier module...  but...  it's a lot of effort if this is a craft that people are loading up and playing with once, saying 'cool' then going back to building rockets from discreet components!  

I think there's a lot of interest in a mod like this, I will use such vehicle for many missions in my saves, and I think a lot of other players will do the same.

[speedwaystar]

heads up: the CurseForge project address has changed to http://kerbal.curseforge.com/projects/dreamer

[illectro]

On 1/15/2016 at 5:10 PM, artwhaley said:

I'd... be interested to know how much interest there IS in this mod?  I'm happy to work on the balance issues as we get into 1.1...  and could even do a folding wing version with the cargo carrier module...  but...  it's a lot of effort if this is a craft that people are loading up and playing with once, saying 'cool' then going back to building rockets from discreet components!  

Well I was about to do a video on it, it certainly needs a bit of balancing to make it fit closer to reality, it could also use the folding wings that are in the final version. The cargo pod is probably easy enough to build from stock parts.

[speedwaystar]

does anyone have a link which lists the real-world version's OTS engine specs for specific impulse and thrust? or are they a closely guarded corporate secret? wikipedia doesn't help.

[artwhaley]

19 hours ago, speedwaystar said:

does anyone have a link which lists the real-world version's OTS engine specs for specific impulse and thrust? or are they a closely guarded corporate secret? wikipedia doesn't help.

I'm not certain they've actually been ironed out yet as that ship has undergone several redefinitions along the way.  When 1.1 comes out and I do a balance pass on this mod...  I'll be trying to extrapolate them by comparing to other vessels with somewhat similar payload specs and general ascent profiles...     Though I WOULD like to ask that, due to my paranoia, we try not to discuss any real world space craft in this thread...   I'd REALLY like to not be asked to discontinue work on this mod altogether because a company that's working on a winged ship similar to mine has overzealous lawyers who don't like video games!

 

And....  crap my mod got featured in a Scott Manley video!    Now I HAVE to update it.  ((KIDDING!  I'm highly flattered!))   In good news, I've resurrected my old hard drive and have access to the .blend and unity files again!  So, some of the things that weren't likely to get fixed may soon get fixed....  such as removing the firespitter plugin dependency and cleaning up some normals and smoothing issues!