Stand alone VAB?

[Kaiser82]

not sure where to ask this, but is there a mod or something that lets you build in the VAB without opening the game? I just get annoyed listening to the bulldozer engine sounds from my PC while trying to concentrate on tweaking my ships, and hoped there was a way to do it without the entire game running.

[legoclone09]

Sadly, no. However you can turn down the sounds of the bulldozers and such in the VAB in the pause menu in-flight or in the Space Center view.

[polkinghornbd]

The bulldozer sounds are his fan/cooling system.  He wants a way to not have the strain of all of KSP running while he is in the VAB.  Unfortunately, I do not believe this exists either.

[Alshain]

A stand alone app would change nothing in that regard.  You would still be loading all the parts and rendering all the same detail.

I suggest replacing your fans with something quieter.

Edited September 5, 2016 by Alshain

[Scientia1423]

Either replace some of your hardware (unlike on a laptop since everything is glued down with peuter or something) or get a quieter computer. I have a rubbish laptop with a Intel celeron and a mobile GPU and It runs KSP with little lag.

Either that or blow into the fan when the PC is off, as the dust is clogging the fan from working and can make it act like some loud thing.

[KerikBalm]

You'd think there could be an app that allows you to design craft using minimal resources, or at least for planning designs even if you can't import them directly as craft files...

after all, with just a pen an paper you can do quite a bit

Although I wasn't doing a lot of calculations there... mostly just total thrust calculations.

In the editor, you don't need the orbital connections, physics, etc. Even the lighting and textures aren't needed soo much.

Just XYZ spatial stuff, node connections, and some basic stuff with action groups and fuel/thrust settings

[Brainlord Mesomorph]

There's an option of turning off the ground crew kerbals. That lightens the processor load a lot.

[Laie]

25 minutes ago, Brainlord Mesomorph said:

There's an option of turning off the ground crew kerbals. That lightens the processor load a lot.

This.

No other scene eats as much CPU as VAB/SPH. Multithreading only means that it can now hog several cores. Turning off flight crews helps, but the fundamental problem seems to be that it is "doing nothing, very quickly". I've grown quite fond of that FPS limiter mod, it's one of the Kerbokatz tools. Limiting the framerate to (say) 25 does a lot to ease the load.

[GoSlash27]

1 hour ago, KerikBalm said:

You'd think there could be an app that allows you to design craft using minimal resources, or at least for planning designs even if you can't import them directly as craft files...

after all, with just a pen an paper you can do quite a bit

Although I wasn't doing a lot of calculations there... mostly just total thrust calculations.

In the editor, you don't need the orbital connections, physics, etc. Even the lighting and textures aren't needed soo much.

Just XYZ spatial stuff, node connections, and some basic stuff with action groups and fuel/thrust settings

^ This. I do my engineering work on spreadsheets and my design work on paper. This allows me to plan entire missions (and occasionally entire programs) without being anywhere near my home computer.

Best,
-Slashy

[Curveball Anders]

5 hours ago, Alshain said:

A stand alone app would change nothing in that regard.  You would still be loading all the parts and rendering all the same detail.

There is some small load that could be cut, but nothing major and not enough to create a stand alone VAB (aka EFT/Pyfa in EvE lingo) by just cutting stuff from KSP as it is.

Creating a separate application limited to just building crafts and view calculated data could be done and would create result in a much 'lighter' application.

But it's questionable if anyone would take on that job.

Personally I use a copy of my main install on my travel laptop with all graphics and other fluff turned down to minimum (and all mods except MJ removed). Just so I can tinker in VAB/SPH when on the road.

It works, as long as I don't try to launch anything

[monstah]

2 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

You'd think there could be an app that allows you to design craft using minimal resources, or at least for planning designs even if you can't import them directly as craft files...

after all, with just a pen an paper you can do quite a bit

[snip cool images]

Although I wasn't doing a lot of calculations there... mostly just total thrust calculations.

In the editor, you don't need the orbital connections, physics, etc. Even the lighting and textures aren't needed soo much.

Just XYZ spatial stuff, node connections, and some basic stuff with action groups and fuel/thrust settings

Jup, can't find it but I had a notebook from the companyI used to work for with a space station plan on it; drawing a cupola is so awesome  

[KerikBalm]

22 hours ago, GoSlash27 said:

^ This. I do my engineering work on spreadsheets and my design work on paper. This allows me to plan entire missions (and occasionally entire programs) without being anywhere near my home computer.

Best,
-Slashy

I do a lot of "spreadsheet engineering" without considering placement of parts, just what I want the payload to be (typically a full science kit, and a pod), some general idea of what other stuff I'll add to drymass (ie 4x landing legs, ladder, 2x retractable panels, docking port, maybe a reaction wheel if I'm thinking the thing will be too massive for the pod to handle it)...

Then with a minimum dV and TWR in mind, I have it compute how much fuel I need using X number of Y engine.

I mostly care about fuel mass used rather than total craft mass - at least for reusable designs, but an eve lander on the other hand, I'll go with minimum total mass. I even try to optimize dV distribution across 2 or 3 stages in some cases

[Samniss Arandeen]

On 9/5/2016 at 6:18 AM, GoSlash27 said:

^ This. I do my engineering work on spreadsheets and my design work on paper. This allows me to plan entire missions (and occasionally entire programs) without being anywhere near my home computer.

Best,
-Slashy

Ah, another spreadsheet guy. KSP makes me really glad I took all those Microsoft Office courses in high school; with my Excel-fu, I can calculate orbits and required dV stage-by-stage. burn-by-burn, using it to influence craft design and loading.

[Sharpy]

This is my asteroidal RCS project.

[Tex_NL]

On 5-9-2016 at 7:20 AM, polkinghornbd said:

The bulldozer sounds are his fan/cooling system.  He wants a way to not have the strain of all of KSP running while he is in the VAB.  Unfortunately, I do not believe this exists either.

If a PC can't handle the VAB the problem is NOT with the game but rather with the PC.
Get a better PC or better cooling. Cleaning it can also work miracles.

[samstarman5]

On 9/5/2016 at 5:40 AM, Curveball Anders said:

There is some small load that could be cut, but nothing major and not enough to create a stand alone VAB (aka EFT/Pyfa in EvE lingo) by just cutting stuff from KSP as it is.

Creating a separate application limited to just building crafts and view calculated data could be done and would create result in a much 'lighter' application.

But it's questionable if anyone would take on that job.

Personally I use a copy of my main install on my travel laptop with all graphics and other fluff turned down to minimum (and all mods except MJ removed). Just so I can tinker in VAB/SPH when on the road.

It works, as long as I don't try to launch anything

Like you don't feel the temptation to.

 

I would love a builder app myself, with some way to transfer it to the game to actually test and use it.  I would find it likely such an app would definitely require a decent amount of memory, to allow for a vast span of creation. Whackjob stands as a testament to a player's willingness to go for the gold with a build.

[Curveball Anders]

Just now, samstarman5 said:

I would love a builder app myself, with some way to transfer it to the game to actually test and use it.  I would find it likely such an app would definitely require a decent amount of memory, to allow for a vast span of creation. Whackjob stands as a testament to a player's willingness to go for the gold with a build.

Technically it could be just a craft file editor, with minimal graphics.

But it's a serious bit of software and not a quick hack in any way.

[Sneaky Bstard Sword]

If this thing could actually be made, i would use the excrements out of it. I currently have at least 2 hours of free periods at school, with nothing but a chromebook on my school's wifi, which blocks just about all even remotely entertaining sites (it used to block wolfram alpha, for crying out loud). But since I have Debian installed on the chromebook through the magic of Crouton, this sort of application would be a perfect time-waster while i'm not in class. 

[pandaman]

On 06/09/2016 at 6:59 PM, Sneaky Bstard Sword said:

... this sort of application would be a perfect time-waster while i'm not in class. 

And you can always claim your studying physics, without actually lying. 

[Sneaky Bstard Sword]

5 hours ago, pandaman said:

And you can always claim your studying physics, without actually lying. 

Despite the fact that my school doesn't even offer physics lmao

 

[Bill Phil]

On ‎9‎/‎5‎/‎2016 at 0:40 AM, Alshain said:

A stand alone app would change nothing in that regard.  You would still be loading all the parts and rendering all the same detail.

I suggest replacing your fans with something quieter.

Depends, really. You could make it so that it's all very low poly with low quality graphics and the absolute minimum of requirements.

You'd load all the parts, but the detail could be reduced heavily...

[Alshain]

1 hour ago, Bill Phil said:

Depends, really. You could make it so that it's all very low poly with low quality graphics and the absolute minimum of requirements.

You'd load all the parts, but the detail could be reduced heavily...

It still wouldn't likely change much.

[steedcrugeon]

On ‎06‎/‎09‎/‎2016 at 3:19 PM, Tex_NL said:

If a PC can't handle the VAB the problem is NOT with the game but rather with the PC.
Get a better PC or better cooling. Cleaning it can also work miracles.

I can attest to this! my GFX card was the nosiest part of my machine (it still is) after I swapped all my cabinet fans for quieter kinds and put big front in fan from 12v to 5v (no heating issues evident from the monitoring s/w) but I stripped off the fan from my GFX card to find it had accrued a layer of kind of emulsified dust on the pressure side of the blades. gave it a quick clean and removed the majority of what I could get to, -the heat-sink fins and the noise was markedly less. I'd imagine it hasn't changed the cooling for that much but the noise!

[Sharpy]

also... while in VAB the game doesn't need to simulate physics (or the rest of the universe, which is essentially paused), anyone with some experience must have encountered such a situation:

Your rocket is almost complete. Huge launch stage, large orbital segment, lander segment, a rover... the crew cabin of the lander happens to be the root part.

Then you recall your lander with the new science modules will need more electricity. Nothing easier, add a battery, it will fit nicely.

So you detach the rest of the craft - the whole ginormous launch stage and transfer stage, attach the battery, then try to attach the rest of the craft.

And you touch a part with 8x symmetry.

I don't know about you, but my computer completely freezes for some 4 seconds as it generates eight copies of the whole launch and transfer stages.

VAB is NOT a 'KSP lite', the part that's easy on the CPU and GPU. Not by a long shot.

[Corona688]

10 hours ago, Sharpy said:

also... while in VAB the game doesn't need to simulate physics (or the rest of the universe, which is essentially paused)

It doesn't need to, but seems willing to.  give things a nudge with whack-a-kerbal and they fly. 

They combined the VAB with the rest of the game in order to make switching between them faster, but I don't think it actually got faster, since the really intensive parts, the generation of ships, didn't change.

Edited September 8, 2016 by Corona688