[1.9.x] Mouse Aim Flight (1.1.3) - Pilot airplanes with your mouse!

[tetryds]

 

Mouse Aim Flight (MAF) is a tool that allows you to pilot aircraft with the mouse created by me and @ferram4, with credits for @BahamutoD. The goal of the mod is to have a control system that can pilot anything you create as well as possible, making it easier to fly stably at extremely high speeds and also allowing for aiming with precision, without having to worry about wobbliness or trim.
Right now, MAF is consisted of three different behaviors and a static controller that can handle most of your creations pretty well, but on the future it will be able to operate crafts more robustly, and adapt to virtually anything you can build.
The purpose of the mod is allowing you to easily handle your craft, but it will not make any attempts on preventing you from crashing, stalling or destroying yourself from aerodynamic stresses.
This is a serious project, thus every feedback you can provide is welcome, files of craft that the mod cannot yet pilot properly are also welcome and will help improving the mod*.

Download on Curse Forge
(source on GitHub)

How to use the mod:
Press P to activate MAF, make sure SAS is OFF.
Move the mouse around and the vessel will point at the target.
Press O to change mode, find the mode that best suits your craft and flight style.
On the GUI you can find a few customization options.
You can also override the target indicator using pitch and yaw controls, or input roll control which will not reset the target.

 

 

Recommended mods:
Ferram Aerospace Research
BDArmory
Improved Chase Camera
 

Planned Features:
Control System Adaptation, to greatly improve performance, this is the main goal of the mod.
Improved trimming system, making it capable of handling very unbalanced crafts.
Several different behaviors, from piloting VTOLs to rockets and hypersonic vehicles.
Dedicated camera behavior.

Considered Features:
Mode for piloting the velocity vector rather than craft orientation.
Change the color of the target.
Different control systems.
More aim reticles.
Ground vehicle piloting.
Control rate piloting (like a joystick).

FAQ:
My craft wobbles, this is not even a question.
If that happens, please post the craft file on this thread. It probably means you have way too much control authority, but I need the craft for testing purposes.

My airplane never points at the target circle, why?
That means it's unbalanced and requires much more trim to fly straight than it should (more than 20%), while MAF will be able to compensate for that on the future, it's advised that you balance your craft for increased overall performance. This may also happen with well balanced SSTOs or hypersonic craft that require high angles of attack to fly level.

Why does it take so long to point at the target circle?
It should not take long to point at the target, it may be slower to adjust if you fly too fast or have too little control authority.

Changelog:

v1.1.3
Ported to KSP 1.9

v1.1.2
Ported to KSP 1.3

v1.1
New Features:
Added Aggressive Flight mode
Finished Cruise Flight mode
Ported to KSP 1.2

v1.0.1:
New Features:
Improved pitch down performance
New experimental flight mode, Cruise Flight
Better handling on stock aerodynamics
Reticle opacity and size options

Bugfixes:
Cursor no longer has a chance of disappearing when MAF is turned off
Disables itself on EVA

*It is highly recommended that you use and give feedback only on release versions, development versions may have known issues and issues added on purpose for testing, feedback on this kind of change is unworthy.

All Rights Reserved unless otherwise stated on the license file.

Edited February 20, 2020 by tetryds

[Halo305sparts]

Awesome!!! Trying it out!

[Box of Stardust]

If this works this will be the greatest. One of my SSTOs suffers from being difficult to point up properly at a crucial point in its flight, without going into a death wobble because keyboard inputs. 

[Nansuchao]

Wonderful!!!!!

[MrZurkon]

This will be perfect for dogfighting.

[stickman939]

11 minutes ago, MrZurkon said:

This will be perfect for dogfighting.

I second this, lol. I'm utterly horrid at dogfighting manually

[tetryds]

I am really interested on seeing how well MAF can handle your creations, I have been testing it with numerous different airplanes but you can never know for sure.

And if it does not pilot yours well I would really appreciate the craft file, sometimes all you need is one craft that has a specific behavior and you can end up improving it for everybody.

[tetryds]

Improved Chase Camera has just updated, I highly recommend using it with this mod.

 

[qromodynmc]

Thanks for grear work tetryds! I tried this with fairly complex design and one simple design. Overall, sadly it didn't live up to my expectations but im sure you'll improve. My first impressions;

1. It's using ailerons too much, even for little yaw command, it tries to roll first then pitch up or down.

2. Rudder is almost nonexistend, Imo it should use rudder more often.

Im kind of veteran War thunder player, i love way it handles planes there, so im really appreciating  your work!

Good luck on path man.

edit; i'm still trying different planes, having problem with pitch down, instead of simply using elevator, it uses aileron to roll 180 degree then uses elevator. I guess mod is actually working fine, just using long ways to make things right.

Edited April 23, 2016 by qromodynmc

[jrolson]

This mod is great!

I would like the see a target transparency / opacity setting in the GUI for a future version.

[ferram4]

@qromodynmc: As far as the low rudder usage goes, that's primarily because the controller currently uses the rudder to reduce plane sideslip.  It's fairly necessary given that high sideslip can cause planes to stall out very quickly, but WT adds some cheaty anti-stall behavior to their flight models to hide that in any mode where mouseaim is available.  Also, pushing the rudder usage higher and reducing the roll rate would create the "nose rises rather than the plane turning" issue that plagues quite a few WT planes at higher speeds, which is something we really want to avoid.

The controller will allow pitch-down, but it dislikes doing that, just like WT's mouse aim in RB.  For most dogfighting conditions the controller is only going to pull a max of ~3 negative g before it tries to roll the plane instead.  Considering that most planes are far better at pulling up than pushing down, this result in much better flight performance.  If you absolutely need to pitch down, WASD will still override the controls, just like in WT.

[m4ti140]

We can fly with the mouse, soon we'll be able to complain about the Russian bias.

Edited April 23, 2016 by m4ti140

[qromodynmc]

4 minutes ago, ferram4 said:

@qromodynmc: As far as the low rudder usage goes, that's primarily because the controller currently uses the rudder to reduce plane sideslip.  It's fairly necessary given that high sideslip can cause planes to stall out very quickly, but WT adds some cheaty anti-stall behavior to their flight models to hide that in any mode where mouseaim is available.  Also, pushing the rudder usage higher and reducing the roll rate would create the "nose rises rather than the plane turning" issue that plagues quite a few WT planes at higher speeds, which is something we really want to avoid.

The controller will allow pitch-down, but it dislikes doing that, just like WT's mouse aim in RB.  For most dogfighting conditions the controller is only going to pull a max of ~3 negative g before it tries to roll the plane instead.  Considering that most planes are far better at pulling up than pushing down, this result in much better flight performance.  If you absolutely need to pitch down, WASD will still override the controls, just like in WT.

Hmm, maybe it's just me, still may use some optimizations in future.

1 minute ago, m4ti140 said:

We can fly with the mouse, soon we'll be able to complain about the Russian bias.

Haha, good one!

[Quintkat]

This seems like so much fun, but thing is, it's not working for me. Maybe OSX is incompatible? And yes, I did press "P".

[konsti156]

1 hour ago, m4ti140 said:

We can fly with the mouse, soon we'll be able to complain about the Russian bias.

damn soviet UFO^^

 

i love this mod. finally i can fly space planes but it still feels a little akward

Edited April 23, 2016 by konsti156

[ferram4]

@Quintkat: ...we don't even have the power to make things incompatible on different OSes.  I suspect an install error or leaving SAS on to override it.

Remember, if you want support, you need to provide complete log files and complete reproduction steps.  No ifs ands or buts.

[Quintkat]

3 minutes ago, ferram4 said:

@Quintkat: ...we don't even have the power to make things incompatible on different OSes.  I suspect an install error or leaving SAS on to override it.

Remember, if you want support, you need to provide complete log files and complete reproduction steps.  No ifs ands or buts.

So, first of all, I checked for SAS, not on.

Then I looked at the Log; this comes up 5-6 times a second, literally thousands upon thousands of this:" [EXC 00:01:19.766] MissingMethodException: Method not found: 'KeyBinding.GetKeyDown'. "

Then I removed the mod, restarted the game, same thing comes up...

Remove ImprovedChaseCamera (installed at the same time) and the line of code went away...

Reinstalled MAF without ICC and it still doesn't work.

Log files: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/bciizsk4puagz05/AACGQFBaYTgVM9saRrOVCq3Pa?dl=0

"KSP" being with MAF only installed, "KSP1" with MAF + ICC installed (Never used dropbox before, so bear with me.)

The button on the toolbar also doesn't exist

Also, come to think of it, does this mod support KSP version 1.0.5? Because KSP 1.1 doesn't work on my end so that might have something to do with it.

[tetryds]

6 minutes ago, Quintkat said:

Also, come to think of it, does this mod support KSP version 1.0.5?

Nope, it does not.

[Quintkat]

Just now, tetryds said:

Nope, it does not.

well, bugger

[Alshain]

Just watched the video, and I gotta say it is very impressive.  For people who don't want to buy a flight stick for one game, this mod is a wonderful improvement over keyboard flight.

[Kowgan]

This is an excellent addition, thank you so much for this!

Now, I've rebound the toggle key to F, and I noticed it has been changed on the settings file as well. But everytime I load a new vessel, the toggle key resets to P (even though it still says F on the file). Anyone else having this issue?

[ferram4]

Well, they should be considering I just reproduced it and fixed it in the dev build.  No idea when the ETA will be for it to show up in a release, because I think tetryds was intending to get some more stuff into it first.

[DuoDex]

Two biggies so far:

1. IVA view can be messed up. Dunno how or why, but when it does break it breaks spectacularly. Disregard this as I can't seem to reproduce.

2. Cursor will exit the screen edges, rendering it invisible. Very hard to keep track of something you can't see.

[Canberra_Gaming]

I missed this. I MISSED THIS AMAZING GADGET!

[Volt]

This looks like a fantastic solution to my biggest problem with FAR flight and might even get me back into it! I was sick to death of having to feather-tap the controls to get small control deflections, which is exactly the reason mouse aim is in War Thunder also (apart from arcade scrubbiness :P) so this will just be amazing. Time to hit the tutorials to re-learn aircraft design analysis.