What parts do you find especially unrealistic

[TimePeriod]

Realisme in a video-game about little green men flying rockets ducktaped together.

 

I think this game is about as realistic as it needs to be.

[Cairol]

The most unrealisitc thing for me is parts clipping.
I understand that it's allowed to give the player more creative freedom. And actually I like that, despite the fact that it enables players to exploit this to hell and back.
If I had to choose an item, I'd choose the ISRU, because it feels unbalanced - like others already stated.
But again, it's an item I use seldomly. And this is not related to it's arguably too high efficiency.

I've no problem with reaction wheels though. Using them does not take from the immersion or challange for me.
I only use them for my smallest stages/vessels anyway. And I barely ever use additional reaction wheels apart from the one integrated in the pod.
I simply don't need them very often. RCS FTW!

[Corona688]

2 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

Unsaturatable reaction wheels: really weak reaction wheels would be a gameplay bore like ion enegines, but their ability to counter significant thrust imbalance indefinitely is unrealistic and renders RCS for direction control entirely redundant.

If they just called them gyroscopes it wouldn't be a problem, I don't think you can saturate those.

[KerikBalm]

yes, you could, conservation of angular momentum still applies

[THX1138]

The parachutes are ridiculous.

[samstarman5]

16 hours ago, regex said:

Pretty much every part is unrealistic in one way or another.  Most are simply far too massive for what they do.  This is needed because KSP's tiny, unrealistically dense solar system needs something that the real world doesn't give a single damn about: game balance.

Everyone here has a right to express their opinion so ... deal with it.

Funny. I express my opinion and you retort that everyone has a right to express theirs. I am not saying anybody doesn't.  Deal with it.

[regex]

3 minutes ago, samstarman5 said:

Funny. I express my opinion and you retort that everyone has a right to express theirs. I am not saying anybody doesn't.  Deal with it.

You were implying that no one should express their opinion talk about realism because people are "tired of it".

[Corona688]

3 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

yes, you could, conservation of angular momentum still applies

Surely.  This does not mean they suffer from the same windup problem.  Their flywheels operate at constant speed, torque is generated by forcibly tilting the flywheel, which takes force.

[Andem]

Lander cans... Apparently 2 inches of metal without a heat shield can survive hitting the atmosphere at several km/s.

[AbacusWizard]

I'd say the most unrealistic part is a kerbalnaut on EVA. Spacesuit with unlimited life support, jetpack with ludicrously strong thrust and immense ∆v, and enough armor to survive high-speed collisions.

[ExtremeSquared]

A thrust-reversed jet engine with a forward-facing inlet can fly backwards. Even worse, it can fly backwards... upwards.

Edited June 14, 2016 by ExtremeSquared

[SpacedCowboy]

All of them! And that what makes it so much fun!

[The Optimist]

2 hours ago, Andem said:

Lander cans... Apparently 2 inches of metal without a heat shield can survive hitting the atmosphere at several km/s.

I don't think they can

[samstarman5]

2 hours ago, regex said:

You were implying that no one should express their opinion talk about realism because people are "tired of it".

I was most careful with my wording. You read it as such. It really sounds like you have the issue with opinions that differ from your own. But that's all I am going to say about it, as this is way outside the subject of the thread. If you feel the burning desire to respond, that is on you.

[wumpus]

13 hours ago, mk1980 said:

ISRU seems a bit over the top. i'm not really sure if it's *unrealistic* since i have no clue how real ISRU is supposed to work, but i guess the converters would be a lot less efficient and heavier? (i may be totally wrong here).

also, the nuke engines seem a bit unrealistic to me. as far as i know, they were never actually used in real life, so having working nuke engines in the game seems a bit weird, especially since they are placed on a fairly cheap research node. i could see them as some sort of "near future" tech similar to the rapier engines, but then they'd have to be on a 1000 tech node and require the fully upgraded R&D to unlock.

but maybe that's just me.

I don't think anyone has built an ISRU device.  As far as I know, it would work fine.  The real catch is the kerbal babysitting it doesn't need life support.

The nuke is perfectly reasonable, except that it should be burning hydrogen and not "rocket fuel that is really RP1" (if you check, "fuel" is much heavier than "oxidizer").  So the nuke engines really are roughly as unrealistic as most of the high-ISP vacuum engines (they are modeled after hydrogen burners), that blithely avoid all the issues of hydrogen and its fuel tanks.  The prototypes for the nuclear engines were built at least by the 1970s, so they don't need "high tech".

13 hours ago, MircoMars said:

Yeah, we should really call the devs to nerf radiation damage and buff tolerance to gravity changes! this is game breaking, like they never thought about a late game. if they don't change that I'll go play something else! graphics are still outstanding, but not everything! and please add savegames...

OT: magnetic docking ports, really practical in-game, but totally unrealistic. in RL they have to be spot on, in line and pretty slow for docking. we'd need a lot of stuff (i.e. docking alignment indicators, more precise spacecraft controls, hours of RL time approaching) to pull a "real docking" off consistently and without hundreds of failed attempts. chasing the docking port until both crafts wobble in place is ... appropriately kerbal.

Isn't the minimum .1m/s display in KSP way too fast for "real life" docking?

7 hours ago, TimePeriod said:

Realisme in a video-game about little green men flying rockets ducktaped together.

I think this game is about as realistic as it needs to be.

My plan remains enjoying this game while getting good, then moving over to RO/RSS.  KSP realism works in the game, but I'd like to try my hand a something more like the real thing.

6 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

yes, you could, conservation of angular momentum still applies

How complicated would "realish" ASA units be?  Would you manually have to "desoak" them, or would they just use up RCS undoing their momentum changes?  And how much thrust would you lose (I'm assuming that only capsule control would make sense, and then you would be afraid to touch time warp because it would be so slow).

8 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

Turboramjets, panthers and rapiers... not in terms of mach number, but in terms of % of orbital velocity that they can attain (because KSP dV requirements are about 1/3 of real values, these are breathers get far far far too close to orbital velocity)... also their Isp is too high

Kerbals/crew pods... life support is irrelevant?

 

I'm not sure that the ISPs are two high on the jet engines, it is more an effect of letting them go too fast (the ISPs might work if averaged over 0-1000km/s).  Once they start going faster ISPs should drop even more.  And going nearly all the way to orbital speed really kills realism of spaceplanes [note the x-43 hit mach 9.6, wildly faster than any kerbal spaceplane* and possibly the start of a real SSTO].

Life support is bad.  Stuffing a kerbal in a mk1 cockpit all the way to Duna (or even Eeloo) is worse.

* spaceplane in the atmosphere.  Obviously you can crank up the speed with a nuke and go off to the Mun at >3.0km/s.

[cantab]

Regarding reaction wheels, I think they could be made a bit more realistic. What I might do: Rename them to gyroscopes, since control moment gyroscopes are more powerful than reaction wheels. Add a "Saturation" parameter that increases as they're used, and slowly decreases over time (gravity gradient, magnetotorquers, etc to despin them). Add a "Desaturate" option that uses some monopropellant (or LFO on a Vernor ship) to quickly reduce Saturation. Tune things so that typical space manoeuvres on a craft with a sensible amount of gyro won't even hit the saturation limit, but using them for control in atmosphere will. And don't sweat details of the different control axes, don't worry about gravity gradient torque differing for different craft and orbits, etc. Keep it simple-ish.

[SorryDave]

Reaction wheels would not saturate if the ship they are stabilizing rotates clockwise and then counter-clockwise.

OT-Cabin lights are the most unrealistic, they consume no power.

[AbacusWizard]

1 hour ago, wumpus said:

I don't think anyone has built an ISRU device.  As far as I know, it would work fine.  The real catch is the kerbal babysitting it doesn't need life support.

Depends on what mods you use. My Minmus mining outpost has plenty of N.O.M.S. containers and a greenhouse on top.

 

54 minutes ago, SorryDave said:

OT-Cabin lights are the most unrealistic, they consume no power.

Nah, it's bioluminescence from the kerbals themselves.

[Andem]

2 hours ago, The Optimist said:

I don't think they can

Eeehhh...

[ag3nt108]

Personally I hate the strut mechanic the game sort of forces on us.  I simply don't like to look at craft that appear to be held together by scrap found in a junk yard.  Its not so much about realism ill admit as more about aesthetics  

[Jeb1969]

6 hours ago, ExtremeSquared said:

A thrust-reversed jet engine with a forward-facing inlet can fly backwards. Even worse, it can fly backwards... upwards.

Yeah that's kinda odd. As far as I know from my observations as a constant passenger aboard Jet Airliners thrust reversers are just one of many measures pilots use to bleed off excess thrust at touchdown, that and rarely used in lieu of a tug for pushback. 

[kBob]

Wow, some interesting stuff turning up.  I guess if I apply to be rocket designer for NASA I won't mention I learned it all in KSP
 

I recently edited the physics.cfg file to give my Kerbals mass when inside parts, it really doesn't make a lot of difference (given my usually over powered ships) but not having mass always kind of bugged me (kerbalCrewMass =0.09375).

 

7 hours ago, AbacusWizard said:

I'd say the most unrealistic part is a kerbalnaut on EVA. Spacesuit with unlimited life support, jetpack with ludicrously strong thrust and immense ∆v, and enough armor to survive high-speed collisions.

Good points, I've recently started doing EVA jetpack stuff, I'd forgotten how much dV they contain (especially now that I don't waste it all fumbling around) . 

6 hours ago, ExtremeSquared said:

A thrust-reversed jet engine with a forward-facing inlet can fly backwards. Even worse, it can fly backwards... upwards.

Oh I'm putting that on my to-do list!

[ExtremeSquared]

2 hours ago, kBob said:

Oh I'm putting that on my to-do list!

Already made a nose-vertical-landing V/STOL

[KerikBalm]

13 hours ago, Corona688 said:

Surely.  This does not mean they suffer from the same windup problem.  Their flywheels operate at constant speed, torque is generated by forcibly tilting the flywheel, which takes force.

Well, you can only twist/tilt the gyroscope so much, no? spin a gyroscope, spin it faster and faster... (not the rotor, but the housing of the gyroscope), no?

Gyroscopes can be made very small, if they didn't saturate, why would reaction wheels ever be used?

10 hours ago, wumpus said:

So the nuke engines really are roughly as unrealistic as most of the high-ISP vacuum engines (they are modeled after hydrogen burners), that blithely avoid all the issues of hydrogen and its fuel tanks.

...

I'm not sure that the ISPs are two high on the jet engines, it is more an effect of letting them go too fast (the ISPs might work if averaged over 0-1000km/s).  Once they start going faster ISPs should drop even more.  And going nearly all the way to orbital speed really kills realism of spaceplanes [note the x-43 hit mach 9.6, wildly faster than any kerbal spaceplane* and possibly the start of a real SSTO].

...

How complicated would "realish" ASA units be?  Would you manually have to "desoak" them, or would they just use up RCS undoing their momentum changes?  And how much thrust would you lose (I'm assuming that only capsule control would make sense, and then you would be afraid to touch time warp because it would be so slow).Life support is bad.  Stuffing a kerbal in a mk1 cockpit all the way to Duna (or even Eeloo) is worse.

See this thread for the Isps of Jets and chemical engines compared to real life

It does not match hydrogen burners, but rather Aerozine50/NTO or Kerosene/LOX engines

The jet Isps are too high... see the comparisons in my post

Realistic-ish reaction wheels would normally not have long term sautration problems if you don't have offset thrust.

You would not lose "thrust" you would lose "torque". Realistically, one reaction wheel would only be able to impart a certain rotation rate to your vessel, it couldnt' keep spinning your vessel faster and faster... so a big ship with a single tiny reaction wheel would never start to spin at a decent rate no matter how much you held down the key... it would get to a certain roation rate, and then the reaction wheel would saturate...

But in the long term, when you cancel the rotation that was induced with the reaction wheel, it desaturates again. So if you start to pitch up, you start to saturate the rxn wheel, then when you null your pitch rate you desaturate the wheel again.

With offset thrust, just holding the heading steady will saturate the wheel, and the only way to desaturate it would be to spin the craft (in theory you could complete your burn, then spin your ship, and have it on the right trajectory, but tumbling).

When you time warp, since it stops rotation, this could lead to a reaction wheel desautration exploit, so a litlte calculation would have to be done to calculate how much stopping the ship's rotation would saturate the reaction wheel, and then store this value.

Reaction wheels could also saturate in settings such as atmospheric flight, or when landed or in the water. Right now you can build a craft with radial wings and a lot of reaction wheels, and have it fly like a gian helicopter rotor. Realistic reaction wheels would rapidly saturate, and the thing would lose all thrust/toque on the shaft leading to the thrust/lift. (thats why real helicopters have a tail rotor to cancel the torque, or contra rotating main rotors)

Edited June 15, 2016 by KerikBalm

[Xavven]

4 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

Well, you can only twist/tilt the gyroscope so much, no? spin a gyroscope, spin it faster and faster... (not the rotor, but the housing of the gyroscope), no?

 

 

Yes you are correct that a CMG (Control Moment Gyroscope) can become saturated. Rather than explain something I don't fully understand, I will let everyone google it, but suffice to say that a couple minutes of searching revealed the correct answer. I don't think it has to do with the housing of the gyroscope spinning too fast, likened to the problem with a reaction wheel, but rather more to do with the gimbal tilting (as it stores angular momentum) until it can't generate any more torque because it's no longer at an angle where it can impart angular momentum to the spacecraft.