[1.4.x-1.8.x] Airplane Plus - R26.4 (Fixed issues/Github is up to date) (Dec 21, 2019)

[Caerfinon]

19 minutes ago, Rakete said:

Chancellor Gorkon would agree.

and Shakespeare .

The mods must flow. 

[Rakete]

Just now, Caerfinon said:

and Shakespeare .

The mods must flow. 

You'll enjoy Shakespeake even more, if you read the klingon translation. Tach'pah,... Tach'peh... to be ... or not to be.

[Sl_ew]

@blackheart612Will Airplane plus be updated to KSP's current version? (1.12.5)

[xD-FireStriker]

5 hours ago, Sl_ew said:

@blackheart612Will Airplane plus be updated to KSP's current version? (1.12.5)

Did something break in 1.12.5? I do know a few people were gonna adopt it but im not sure how that project is going. 

What is the latest version anyways? need to download this my self and i dont even know which version/github to get this from

Edited January 20, 2023 by xD-FireStriker

[Grenartia]

On 1/19/2023 at 5:50 PM, Sl_ew said:

@blackheart612Will Airplane plus be updated to KSP's current version? (1.12.5)

 

On 1/19/2023 at 11:00 PM, xD-FireStriker said:

Did something break in 1.12.5? I do know a few people were gonna adopt it but im not sure how that project is going. 

What is the latest version anyways? need to download this my self and i dont even know which version/github to get this from

Its being maintained by @Lisias and @Drag0nD3str0yer

[xD-FireStriker]

4 minutes ago, Grenartia said:

Its being maintained by @Lisias and @Drag0nD3str0yer

Where do i go to find the latest build? Lisias github or Drag0n's github? 

[Grenartia]

1 hour ago, xD-FireStriker said:

Where do i go to find the latest build? Lisias github or Drag0n's github? 

I'm actually unsure. Hopefully my @'ing them will help clear that up.

[Aerospacer]

5 hours ago, xD-FireStriker said:

Where do i go to find the latest build? Lisias github or Drag0n's github? 

Looks like here https://github.com/net-lisias-ksp/AirplanePlus/releases/tag/RELEASE%2F26.6.0.2

[Rakete]

Is this the final version or is AP+ still maintained, developed and supported by the devs even with ksp2 around the corner? @Lisias

Edited February 11, 2023 by Rakete

[Lisias]

Hi.

11 hours ago, Grenartia said:

Its being maintained by @Lisias and @Drag0nD3str0yer

Drag0nD3str0yer decided to focus on his own project, and decided to step out. He did pushed some fixes, trough - thanks, man!

 

1 hour ago, Rakete said:

Is this the final version or is AP+ still maintained, developed and supported by the devs even with ksp2 around the corner? @Lisias

Yes, but… Real Life™ issues terribly screwed up my free time, not to mention some pretty weird KSP weirdities that plagued me not only on this one. That published release is a BETA, and I'm somewhat embarrassed to tell it's not a good one.

KSP2 will not be a thing for me for a long time, my main gaming is going to remain on KSP1 the foreseeable future - I'm a MacOS user - so you can expect anything I publish to be maintained to at least one year yet. Perhaps more.

The next release will be on the works Soon™ - I would suggest everybody to avoid using anything from the "Plus" directory, as these assets are the ones Drag0nD3str0yer decided to incept into his new add'on and will be removed from AP+.

[Rakete]

4 hours ago, Lisias said:

KSP2 will not be a thing for me for a long time, my main gaming is going to remain on KSP1 the foreseeable future - I'm a MacOS user - so you can expect anything I publish to be maintained to at least one year yet. Perhaps more.

Nice to hear. I will also stick to KSP 1 for a while, because my ksp1 install with all the mods currently looks way better than stock ksp2 and has also way more features due to mods. 

Nice to see, that some modders stay "on board" and don't leave right away to the next hot sh*t. 

Looking forward to a semi-stable out-of-beta- release soon (tm).  Yes, real life always comes first. I really appreciate, that modders like you find the time for such work in the free time at all.

Will there be a release without external dependencies like firespitter ? In the past i had many annoying issues with firespitter and am not so keen on having it again. Or can I somehow extract the non-firespitter-needing parts? I am mostly interested in plane fuselages - not so much on propeller engines, as i am more the jet-using-guy. 

Edited February 11, 2023 by Rakete

[Lisias]

Just now, Rakete said:

Will there be a release without external dependencies like firespitter ? In the past i had issues with firespitter and am not so keen on having it again.

Getting rid of Firespitter will be hard and sad, because I love that little bugger. But yes, the main reason the BETA got out of the line is because I started to look for alternatives to it, but didn't did a good job on this first trial.

What I intend to do is to do what I use to do on everything I lay my dirty pawns on: offer the user a choice: you will be able to use Firespitter if you have it installed, but I will reconfigure the thing to use Stock modules if you don't. You will not get a so nice experience without FS for some time, but you will get a working A+ at least.

It's going to be some heavy work, but - hey, A+ deserves it.

[Rakete]

3 minutes ago, Lisias said:

Getting rid of Firespitter will be hard and sad, because I love that little bugger. But yes, the main reason the BETA got out of the line is because I started to look for alternatives to it, but didn't did a good job on this first trial.

Yeah, the thing is, that was a nice bug source. At least in the past gave up on firespitter. I don't know if it is even maintained anymore. 

A version only using stock modules will be nice. My install is already heavily modded and every plugin less is good. What will be lost, if you get rid if FS? Why do you want to get rid if it, if you love it so much?

[Lisias]

22 minutes ago, Rakete said:

Yeah, the thing is, that was a nice bug source. At least in the past gave up on firespitter. I don't know if it is even maintained anymore. 

I'm working on something to fix that. Unfortunately, the original is not maintained anymore - more than one Fellow Kerbonaut submitted fixes in the last years, but the P/Rs are not merged or at least acknowledged.

 

24 minutes ago, Rakete said:

A version only using stock modules will be nice. My install is already heavily modded and every plugin less is good. What will be lost, if you get rid if FS? Why do you want to get rid if it, if you love it so much?

We will lost the propellers anymation, that so will need to be worked around using stock modules like the robotics do. Frankly, I hate this kind of animation. The current engines are way overpowered, a punny cesna engine is giving us as much power as the engine for an F-18 - frankly, ridiculous. The original FS support had done that right, AFAIK, and I'm working to resurrect that support and then rework the stock patches to mimic the same power curve.

And I don't want to get rid of FS, I want to fix it somehow. But some people want to get rid of FS and still be able to use A+, so...

[JadeOfMaar]

1 hour ago, Rakete said:

Will there be a release without external dependencies like firespitter ? In the past i had many annoying issues with firespitter and am not so keen on having it again. Or can I somehow extract the non-firespitter-needing parts? I am mostly interested in plane fuselages - not so much on propeller engines, as i am more the jet-using-guy. 

After having CKAN insteall AP+ and Firespitter you can manually delete Firespitter and the engines folders from this mod. It's an easy job. The wider set of options available to you are:

• Easy: Create configs just to use B9PS to disable the blurred blade meshes.
• Medium: Create configs to use Angel-125's Kerbal Actuators modlet to do what Firespitter does for most of the engines. (There are some heli engines that use the FS engine module. RIP them. Sorry.)
• Hard: Rip the models, delete the blurred blade meshes, redo any animations, re-export models then they won't need any plugin mod.

30 minutes ago, Lisias said:

But some people want to get rid of FS

Guilty.

[Manul]

35 minutes ago, Lisias said:

The current engines are way overpowered, a punny cesna engine is giving us as much power as the engine for an F-18 - frankly, ridiculous.

It's kinda normal if we take into account the weight of parts. Kerbalized version of small plane cockpit is heavier than the real cessna 172 at it's maximum takeoff weight. Single engine planes that should have a weight under 1t can be 5-7 times heavier. 

[Lisias]

Just now, Manul said:

It's kinda normal if we take into account the weight of parts. Kerbalized version of small plane cockpit is heavier than the real cessna 172 at it's maximum takeoff weight. Single engine planes that should have a weight under 1t can be 5-7 times heavier. 

That's the problem: everything in KSP is trimmed to use engines that have the same thrust of their directly real-life equivalent counterparts. You need better balanced parts to use on that engines, otherwise what's the point on adding such engines at first place?

[Manul]

37 minutes ago, Lisias said:

You need better balanced parts to use on that engines, otherwise what's the point on adding such engines at first place?

The major problem with weight balance is that most cockpits are balanced to match stock ones, and stock ones are made this heavy to prevent Mk1 command pod from being completely useless after the early career when you just heed something to strap Jeb to SRB.

[Lisias]

1 hour ago, Manul said:

The major problem with weight balance is that most cockpits are balanced to match stock ones, and stock ones are made this heavy to prevent Mk1 command pod from being completely useless after the early career when you just heed something to strap Jeb to SRB.

Exactly. Stock cockpits have an excuse for being heavy as hell - they are meant to go into space.

Airplane Cockpits doesn't have such a role. The whole point of having an Add'On for Airplanes is to fly… Airplanes. If you want spaceplanes, you don't want propellers!

Edited February 12, 2023 by Lisias
Ty

[JadeOfMaar]

18 minutes ago, Lisias said:

If you want spaceplanes, you don't want propellers!

This statement definitely has its place! But this situation or argument is not that place. While the engines here may have excessive thrust, they're not going to operate at all at extreme speeds because of their speed curves, and very likely, not one of these engines (except the two turbojets) is going to produce thrust at speeds over Mach 1.5. There's also the matter that some folks will want to build planes that can fly as far as possible without needing to refuel somewhere and somehow. High thrust means the plane can carry more of the stupidly heavy stock fuel and any cargo like a returning Mk1 command pod or a large rover.

[Lisias]

3 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

This statement definitely has its place! But this situation or argument is not that place. While the engines here may have excessive thrust, they're not going to operate at all at extreme speeds because of their speed curves, and very likely, not one of these engines (except the two turbojets) is going to produce thrust at speeds over Mach 1.5. There's also the matter that some folks will want to build planes that can fly as far as possible without needing to refuel somewhere and somehow. High thrust means the plane can carry more of the stupidly heavy stock fuel and any cargo like a returning Mk1 command pod or a large rover.

A Cessna Caravan has a max autonomy of 1070nm, or about 1980Km on Real Life™.

Kerbin has an Equatorial diameter of about 3.770 KM. Earth (the real one) has about 12.740 KM. So Kerbin is about 0,29591837 times the size of Earth.

So, if I want to make a Cessna Caravan correctly balanced for Kerbin, the thing should have about 320KM or autonomy! Otherwise, again, why bother building an add'on for propelled airplanes? People willing to throw balancing trough the window can cheat their way into the game, why spoil the game for people willing to have a balanced, challenging game using airplanes?

[Rakete]

1 hour ago, Lisias said:

A Cessna Caravan has a max autonomy of 1070nm, or about 1980Km on Real Life™.

Kerbin has an Equatorial diameter of about 3.770 KM. Earth (the real one) has about 12.740 KM. So Kerbin is about 0,29591837 times the size of Earth.

So, if I want to make a Cessna Caravan correctly balanced for Kerbin, the thing should have about 320KM or autonomy! Otherwise, again, why bother building an add'on for propelled airplanes? People willing to throw balancing trough the window can cheat their way into the game, why spoil the game for people willing to have a balanced, challenging game using airplanes?

Just a thought... maybe it would make sense to split AP+ into several packages, that can be installed independently... maybe a wings & fuselage package, an enginespackage etc, so you can update and distribute them in your speed of fixing them.

[Manul]

7 hours ago, Lisias said:

Exactly. Stock cockpits have an excuse for being heavy as hell - they are meant to go into space.

Part named "cessnacockpit" from Airplane + has a MaxTemp of 1100K so it's not meant for space, but it's mass is the same as for stock cockpits: 1t. The same deal with 1.25m helicopter cockpits. I tried to make small planes and helicopters with this mod since ksp v 1.3, they appear to be much heavier than their real counterparts so I had to minimize the amount of fuel and other useful things onboard limiting their range and capabilities to flying around the KSC and practicing the VAB helipad landing. So there are two ways: rebalance every part or live with some OP engines and reduce their performance to non-cheaty levels by other means such as velocity curves.

 

7 hours ago, Lisias said:

If you want spaceplanes, you don't want propellers!

My Eve SSTO wouldn't agree with you... but it exploded.

 

3 hours ago, Lisias said:

So, if I want to make a Cessna Caravan correctly balanced for Kerbin, the thing should have about 320KM or autonomy!

Such things should be scaled by the scale of Kerbal technology compared to it's human counterparts (0.5-0.75x), not by the scale of Kerbin itself. Otherwise the Kerbal scale Cessna Caravan should have the 0.3  size of real one,  have a service ceiling of 2km and max speed of 30m/s . And it would be completely useless for upscaled homeworld (not to mention RSS)
Kerbal-human scale works fine with jets (heavy cockpits are balanced with light engines), if you build a kerbalized strategic  bomber the size of a human jet fighter you get almost the same range and ordnance mass as the human fighter has (have to measure cargo capacity in ordnance because I don't know much supersonic cargo planes built by humans)

Edited February 12, 2023 by Manul

[Manul]

6 hours ago, JadeOfMaar said:

There's also the matter that some folks will want to build planes that can fly as far as possible without needing to refuel somewhere and somehow. High thrust means the plane can carry more of the stupidly heavy stock fuel and any cargo like a returning Mk1 command pod or a large rover.

Small propeller planes are mostly built because they are cute, not for cargolifting and endurance competitions. Early career exploration around KSC, some seaplane rescue missions, Island Airfield Airlines or flying under the RnD bridge are the major uses of small aviation.

Speaking of endurance: when I needed to do polar science in early career I made it to the north pole and back in a Schwalbe-style jet with two F5 tiger engines from this mod and no early-career propeller plane could beat it's range. Sounds ridiculous but going full afterburner at the edge of service ceiling with constant stalls and engine flameouts appeared to be more efficient  than flying in a normal way.

[ColdJ]

Though I am not modding right now. I have shown in the past that it it is possible to do reasonable propeller animations using just the stock modules and the right animation, set up with blender.

Have a look at my helicopter mods or my Belafonte mod.