[1.5.1] Cacteye Optics Community Takeover: Updated 10/22/2017

[CobaltWolf]

11 minutes ago, pap1723 said:

Damn you work fast, and that looks great!

That is only very basically blocked out to get a general idea. I updated it as you were posting if you haven't seen that.

[Wolves_Hero]

Shame this mod Cacteye not worked on custom planets like New Horizons, got error on top left corner camera screen can't get science from custom planets, disappointed mods, only worked on stock planets.

 

I have other mod from Tarsier Space Technology with Galaxies is worked great on custom planets.

[CobaltWolf]

7 minutes ago, Wolves_Hero said:

Shame this mod Cacteye not worked on custom planets like New Horizons, got error on top left corner camera screen can't get science from custom planets, disappointed mods, only worked on stock planets.

I have other mod from Tarsier Space Technology with Galaxies is worked great on custom planets.

Would be a damn shame if someone were to write those definitions...

[oniontrain]

I had a look through diagrams of the (known) spy sats, it doesn't really look like one of those. OAO seems to be the closest match.

[SpaceBadger007]

I think i might have found a bug. I have the cacteye telescope in a 260 km high orbin around kerbin and i dont have the science button pop up on the gui? Is that a bug or am i too low?

[pap1723]

I will rewrite the contracts for this one we have a firm grasp on what telescopes we will have in it.

[CobaltWolf]

14 hours ago, oniontrain said:

I had a look through diagrams of the (known) spy sats, it doesn't really look like one of those. OAO seems to be the closest match.

For Fungeye? Yeah. It's like, he mixed OAO with some other telescopes... I'm pretty sure Fungeye is meant to be a UV telescope though. I will see what I can do for it - maybe add a service module, solar panels, etc.

Edited July 1, 2016 by CobaltWolf

[cxg2827]

On 6/6/2016 at 8:25 PM, icedown said:

This mod was designed to actually remove the skybox as you focus in.  When observing bright objects such as planets, the telescope's exposure time is to little to gather enough light to view anything dim, like stars, in the background.  There are plans to add deep space processors and a new telescope frame for them.  Ones for nebulae and one for DSOs like galaxies and clusters.  I'm working on how the best way to implement those at the moment.

I havent tried this mod out yet (plan to when i slow down with modding), but I have a feature request unless if its already implemented (dont think it is based on screenshots from this mod, or videos).

it seems that viewing objects with the telescope has a pretty high resolution no mater the distance, and the telescopes have a very wide range of useable magnification. Would you consider making some feature that takes into account the camera sensor pixel size, and sensor size? Could be an upgradeable/swappable part with incremental upgrades in the tech tree. Also possibly take into account telescope focal length and aperture?

First available sensor could have a large pixel size , monochrome, and pretty small sensor size so your limited to zoom magnification on planets (for example, 8µm pixel size, 752x480 resolution). Better camera sensors as the tree progresses, and also unlocking one-shot-color.

[rasta013]

Well I sure wish I hadn't been so busy this week that I got behind on this thread so quickly as I have enough 2 cents to throw around to spend about five bucks and this is gonna be tl;dr so my apologies ahead of time...

- @CobaltWolf : Models are looking awesome.  The refresh on the CactEye is looking particularly cool as it adds those extra little details that it's been missing.

- I think that FungEye is a cross between the artist's rendition of OAO-1 and IRAS.  It has the base/body of the OAO-1 sketch but doesn't come close to resembling any of the real life versions and the aperture shield looks like it was taken almost literally off the IRAS and dropped on that OAO-1 sketch base.  No idea what the original inspiration really was though.

- The FungEye actually works quite well with the HECS2 so long as you don't mind the mismatch.  Personally I actually add on an NFT octo-truss of some size depending on design.

Ok this bit is where I get long winded...RE: Observational wavelengths for orbital telescopes:

Over time as you introduce these kinds of changes to the system I think you should consider changing any orbital telescopes that are going to view in optical, infrared or UV to become available reasonably early in the game.  Even on the Explorer missions we were already launching detectors that could make solid observations in these ranges and with the advent of OAO in '66 we had permanent emplacements going up making IR/UV/Optical observations.  My personal thoughts are that Optical/IR/UV processors should be placed fairly early in the tech tree and released in different nodes but on the same tier.  If it were me calling the shots I'd use the 45 or 90 point tier and spread the processors out across multiple nodes.  This could really be enhanced by adding in a CTT patch if the node placements don't make complete sense when placed in stock.

X-Ray observatories are a bit more problematic on the tech side for orbital emplacements because of sensitivity, resolution and focus issues but not so difficult that we hadn't started solving these problems early on as well.  The first X-Ray observations of the Sun were made in '61 by balloon and '63 by rocket and we've been sending up X-Ray detectors/collimators of some sort ever since.  The tech improved drastically beginning in the late 70s/early 80s indicating that any X-Ray processors should probably be placed considerably higher up the chain from IR/UV/Optical.  To continue my suggestion I'd recommend the X-ray processors be placed most likely around the 300 point tier to keep it within range of a level 2 research center.  Also, the intervening space between a 300 point tier for this processor and the earlier IR/UV/Optical detectors at 45 or 90 could be used for other upgrade parts or potentially upgraded detectors for additional science if you ever thought about expanding into this type of arena.

Gamma rays are an entirely different beast altogether.  While we have been making orbital gamma ray observations since the 60s we had no way to tell where it was coming from, just that it was there and in varying degrees of strength.  This is due to the low quantity of gamma rays in comparison to the other wavelengths as well as the extreme difficulty which exists when trying direct them anywhere because gamma rays have a tendency to simply just pay through solid objects.  Additionally we (still) have a huge issue with resolution.  For a comparison...the most recent gamma ray observatories (Fermi, Swift etc) have resolutions on the order of 6 arc minutes in the GeV energy levels and this is the best it's ever been.  Yet in X-rays we can resolve down to 0.5 arc seconds on low energy (low keV) X-rays and 1.5 arc seconds on the high end (100 keV).  This means that even the lowest energy gamma rays in the GeV range have resolutions 240x-720x worse than our X-ray observations.  If gamma ray processors are put in they should be very deep in the tech tree as we didn't even start resolving gamma ray point sources until the late 80s when the first supernova progenitor (SN1987A in the LMC) had gamma ray observations made of it that identified it unequivocally via balloon detectors.  Large scale orbital resolution of point sources really started occurring with the Compton (CGRO) launched in '91.  Personally, I feel that gamma ray processors should be placed at the 550 point tier for the simple reason that it would require a center upgrade to access it but still places it side by side on the tiers with X-ray processors.

Furthermore, in regards to high energy telescopes like X-ray or Gamma, they are their own separate world.  For example, detectors to observe in X-ray or gamma wavelengths cannot be put onto something like the Hubble because it has no way to collect the photons.  Also, the surfaces used for grazing detectors on X-ray telescopes tend to be rather long pathways and use materials like gold foil or ceramics as a detector surface onto which the photons are guided.  By way of example just look at the difference in size between the ESA designs for INTEGRAL(low keV) and XMM-Newton(high keV).  Gamma ray observatories however tend to be extraordinarily compact because there is no need for collimation or grazing incidence detectors since we can't yet focus at those energy levels (yet).  Even the CGRO in '91 was smaller than XMM-Newton and that doesn't even begin to compare modern observatories like Swift or Fermi.  All of this is to say that X-ray processors and gamma ray processors, if they are included, should not be either (a) allowed on the same telescope as a processor if any other kind of processor is already installed or (b) should have a separate design that can only have x-ray or gamma ray detectors installed but no others.  The nice part about (b) is that @CobaltWolf already seems to be heading in this direction.

Last but certainly not least is the question of microwave detectors.  Microwaves have proven to be as important to astronomy as any other wavelength and are still short enough to allow for orbital telescope observations to be made (unlike radio, again, yet).  However, microwave observations tend to be considerably longer in period than the other wavelengths.  This is not to say that short term microwave observations aren't made, just that it's not the norm.  A suggestion would be to include microwave detectors as an option to use on the X-ray/gamma ray telescope body (again as an independent detector not to be included with any other) and then utilize the contract system to implement the required observational time.  For example, give a contract similar to what's being done in DMOS and ScanSat where the contract calls for a craft to be placed in orbit with n parts, for T amount of time, in orbit around X.  A contract could be used to give the science reward instead of when the observation is made.

One last 2 cents to throw in...Although I hadn't really seen this discussed I'd figured I'd toss it in the pot and stir.  No upgrades to processors for any telescope that has X-ray, gamma or (potentially) microwave detectors.  Other hardware is fine, like replacing reaction wheels, but processors on high energy telescopes just simply don't get upgraded in the real world.  In reality, if reaction wheels fail on these types of craft they are simply de-orbited and a new one is launched somewhere down the line much less if there is some kind of detector problem.  This is because a high energy telescope is constructed around the detectors and the entire craft is geared towards supporting those detectors.  To change them out would essentially be a total redesign of the craft so upgrades simply aren't a case to even be tested.  Alternatively, IR/UV/Optical scopes still rely on mirrors to collimate and focus the beams and the "detector" is actually a recorder as the true detector is the mirror allowing upgrades to the "recording" system but you wouldn't see them going up to replace a mirror.  If you want to put it in context, when Hubble was launched with its faulty mirror surface, a special instrument was installed to compensate for the defect but no mirror was changed or "upgraded" unless you want to call corrective glasses an upgrade.

12 hours ago, cxg2827 said:

*snip*also unlocking one-shot-color

I truly do apologize in advance as I hate to be a science pedant but even now we don't shoot in one-shot color unless you are an astrophotographer doing nothing but pretty pictures, and even then anyone who does get into AP is going to quickly upgrade their setup away from one-shot as its fidelity is, well, horrible.  Most observations are made in wideband LRGB wavelengths of light and then combined together during processing to produce an image using an assigned value color pallete.  Or alternatively, narrowband filters can also be used to gather data on things like HII/SIII/OIII regions.  If you aren't familiar with the process behind an astronomical image you wouldn't ever really know this but one-shot color is really truly horrible for doing science.  As a matter of fact, none of the various astronomy groups I am a member of will accept any kind of science data based on one-shot color CCDs.  This is because there is a question of data integrity (of which some is lost), and the accuracy of your results will be skewed in some way depending on the nominal parameters of the CCD at image time and there is no possible way to know those on a one shot CCD. *climbs down off soap box*... I really don't like being a pedant...

[icedown]

23 hours ago, SpaceBadger007 said:

I think i might have found a bug. I have the cacteye telescope in a 260 km high orbin around kerbin and i dont have the science button pop up on the gui? Is that a bug or am i too low?

If the science button is not showing up, first guess is that your target has been unset,  The planet must be targeted for it to work.

@CobaltWolf  Those models are awesome. 

I think the Fungeye was just a quick addon to allow science until you could loft the big one.  Replacing it's model completely will not get any arguments from me.  I really don't care for the current one.

@cxg2827  The current system simulates that to an extent. That's why there are 3 different "level" of processors,  You shouldn't get full science from 1 & 2.  The problem of changing the available magnification is that it's used to make it more difficult to get a shot of the distance planets.  It requires the planet to take up a certain amount of the view for the science to be done.  

@Wolves_Hero More configs will probably be added in the future, it on my list but not a priority at the moment.

Right now my focus is on bug squashing, specifically the camera issues.  I haven't dealt with the cameras much so it's a lot of trial and error, and every trial requires a recompile and restart of KSP so it's a very slow process.  I'm also still working on the science rebuild, I'm working out balance based on processor, platform, and planet. 

As far as other types of telescopes, they are on my todo list but I'm still working out how they need to operate.  I did do a post earlier about a couple possibilities. 

 

[SpaceBadger007]

On 7/2/2016 at 7:41 PM, icedown said:

If the science button is not showing up, first guess is that your target has been unset,  The planet must be targeted for it to work

 

 

I have it targeted but I realized will it still work in sandbox? I know no science will come up but will the whole description come up etc? 

Edited July 3, 2016 by SpaceBadger007

[AlamoVampire]

@icedown Any word as to why the sun is breaking the telescope even with that option toggled off?

[icedown]

On 7/2/2016 at 4:39 AM, SpaceBadger007 said:

I have it targeted but I realized will it still work in sandbox? I know no science will come up but will the whole description come up etc? 

Science does not work in sandbox

16 hours ago, AlamoVampire said:

@icedown Any word as to why the sun is breaking the telescope even with that option toggled off?

I have it figured out and will be fixed in the next update

[AlamoVampire]

@icedown Neat! Ill keep an eye out! If i spot any more wonky happenings Ill keep you informed  

[Norcalplanner]

I like the look of this mod, but I've been unable to do any science with it so far.  I'm running RSS, and tried pointing the Fungeye (in the orbit specified by a contract) at the Moon, Mars, and Venus, with both the level 1 and then the level 2 wide angle camera, and I got an error message in the upper left corner.  Is this a known problem and/or an RSS incompatibility?

[AlamoVampire]

@icedown another peculiar thing I JUST noticed. I also have the toggle disabled for the slow decay of the gyros and they are decaying. I wonder if this is like the sun breaking the telescope even with that toggle off...?

[icedown]

@Norcalplanner I will have to install RSS to trouble shoot it.   As of right now it does not support RSS.  I will have to write configs for this.

@AlamoVampireThose are the same problem.  They are corrected.

Research Bodies has been updated and I'm working on implementing it in the next release as well.  Work and school have been a bit troublesome so things are a little slower than I would like though.

Current thoughts.  Fungeye will not be capable of discovering moons (except Minmus).  Only planets will be Eve, Duna, and Jool.  The primary telescope will be required to find the other planets and all moons.

And if anyone has a clue about what is happening with the cameras with EVE, any help would be greatly appreciated.  I'm about to pull my hair out with these things.

Edited July 28, 2016 by icedown

[KaiserSoze]

I've has a look at the contracts and they seem to be failing.

The main issue is that contract system do not recognize the experiment. The name in the contract is: CactEyePlanetary.

 

I've looked at the science definitions and it seems that there is a different experiment for each body. This means I have to modify the contracts so they are generated again. But they will not be dynamic (meaning they will not cover new planets from other mods not covered by me. I don't think it's a big deal since science definition are also manual. (or is there any default science that I'm not finding that  its used for unkown bodyes)

 

[icedown]

On 7/28/2016 at 4:15 PM, KaiserSoze said:

I've has a look at the contracts and they seem to be failing.

The main issue is that contract system do not recognize the experiment. The name in the contract is: CactEyePlanetary.

 

I've looked at the science definitions and it seems that there is a different experiment for each body. This means I have to modify the contracts so they are generated again. But they will not be dynamic (meaning they will not cover new planets from other mods not covered by me. I don't think it's a big deal since science definition are also manual. (or is there any default science that I'm not finding that  its used for unkown bodyes)

 

Contracts are failing at the moment because of the change in the science.  I'm still pretty new the contract stuff but I've been working on them.  I've put the other stuff on hold right now as I am working on getting research bodies working. 

I will do a release soon to fix the damage configs being ignored and this Dres science bug. 

There is no default science for unknown bodies at the moment.  This is why this doesn't work for any planets with out configs, eg RSS.  I don't know of a good way to do a generic science like that with the way the stock system works, though research bodies may give the ability to do this.   The EVE camera problem is really liquiding me off at the moment so it's good to work on something different.  I'm working on balancing science based on the processor and research bodies.  Once I get those done I'll start redoing the contracts.  The literal stream of "put a new telescope in orbit" gets a bit annoying. 

 

 

[KaiserSoze]

Don't worry with the contracts.

I made the last fix and will fix it soon (tm). I just received and advice that could make this happen very soon (hours rather than days).

Once I have them fixed I will send a request in github with the fixes.

[KaiserSoze]

small update on the contracts issue:

I have managed to solve it, they work fine on my installation (with OPM) but I'm not happy with the actual grouping of the contracts. I want to sort them in a better way and also try to make some thing more easy to update for new planets/moons/experiments.

since I'm out this weekend this means that I will not include my commits until next week.

 

BTW: now the contract for putting a new telescope in orbit is only completed once (I think I will include more than one, but the second one in a more difficult orbit )

[Mars Mullo]

Would it be possible to have the web page link in CKAN updated to this web page please.

 I had to navigate through 2 old web page thread thingies to get to this one where the 1.1.3 version is on the OP.

Cheers.

[Angelo Kerman]

@icedown I was doing some integration testing of MOLE's new 1.875m DenEye telescope and found some issues in the code. I created a pull request for it here. Quick summary:

Fixed an NRE that occurs with the telescope menu. Also, instead of
having fixed science values for the large and small telescopes, scopes
now have a science multiplier. Finally, updated the config files to use the new scienceMultiplier and to use the correct field that identifies the camera transform. These changes will make it easier to create different telescopes in the future.

Picture of the scope in case you're interested:

Spoiler

 

[icedown]

On 8/8/2016 at 2:58 PM, Angel-125 said:

@icedown I was doing some integration testing of MOLE's new 1.875m DenEye telescope and found some issues in the code. I created a pull request for it here. Quick summary:

Fixed an NRE that occurs with the telescope menu. Also, instead of
having fixed science values for the large and small telescopes, scopes
now have a science multiplier. Finally, updated the config files to use the new scienceMultiplier and to use the correct field that identifies the camera transform. These changes will make it easier to create different telescopes in the future.

Picture of the scope in case you're interested:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Great!  I won't be using your file directly because I'm integrating research bodies and that is part of the modifications i'm doing. I'm also working on balancing the science for each body and for research bodies if installed.

This will be compatible with Research Bodies but will not require it.

Things are going a bit slower than I'd like right now.  College + work are keeping me loaded down but I am making progress.

[COL.R.Neville]

having a problem with 5760x1080 and 6012x1080 resolutions. looks like here is where its taking a wrong turn.

public CactEyeCamera(Transform Position)
	{
	this.CameraTransform = Position;
	CameraWidth = (int)(Screen.width*0.4f);
	CameraHeight = (int)(Screen.height*0.4f);

 

which ends up giving a gui of like 2302x432. Tarsier works fine. they have a user config panel to where you choose what size the windows are.