Parachutes 1.2

[Loren Pechtel]

1)  It seems that if I set reasonable values for pressure and altitude the chutes come out when needed.  In the old days using these controls was unsafe because you could smack a mountain before they deployed.  It seems they are behaving better now but I'm not seeing information on this--are the triggers now AGL?  And is there any way to set a drogue to pop as soon as it's safe?  With the 1.25m rockets it's no big deal, they're draggy enough that there's plenty of margin.  However, at least in the past with big tourist buses the window between too fast and too late could be pretty narrow if you came down over high terrain.

2)  I found myself wanting to pop the chutes early--I was still over 10km up.  The drogues showed safe but I see no way to make them pop now.  (I saw I was overflying a biome I wanted to land in and collect some science.)

[bewing]

1 hour ago, Loren Pechtel said:

1)  It seems that if I set reasonable values for pressure and altitude the chutes come out when needed.  In the old days using these controls was unsafe because you could smack a mountain before they deployed.  It seems they are behaving better now but I'm not seeing information on this--are the triggers now AGL?

The partial deployment pressure is still absolute, corresponding to an absolute altitude. The full deployment altitude is AGL. The change that happened is that the chutes used to require that partial deployment happened before full deployment could happen. So if you set your partial deployment pressure too high (too low an altitude), you could smack a tall mountain before partial deployment happened. Now, even if the chutes fail the partial deployment altitude test -- if the full deployment AGL altitude test passes, then the chutes will open right then, despite the partial deployment test failing. So it should always be safe now.

1 hour ago, Loren Pechtel said:

 And is there any way to set a drogue to pop as soon as it's safe?

Say what? Of course there is. That's the default mode. You need 3 things: the chute must be activated (usually by staging), the chute must meet it's partial deployment pressure tweakable, and the "open when safe" mode must have been selected when the rocket was launched.

1 hour ago, Loren Pechtel said:

2)  I found myself wanting to pop the chutes early--I was still over 10km up.  The drogues showed safe but I see no way to make them pop now.  (I saw I was overflying a biome I wanted to land in and collect some science.)

If they show "safe", and they have been activated, and they still have not opened -- then logically that must be because you have the pressure set higher than your current altitude. So you right-click on one of the drogues as fast as you can, you grab the "minimum pressure" slider, and you slide it all the way to the right. The chute should open right then.

 

[Streetwind]

What @bewing means with "open when safe mode":

Since 1.2.0, parachutes have a new tweakable option that controls their behavior when they are armed (staged, but not yet deployed). In old versions of KSP, the chutes would deploy as soon as the partial deploy requirement was met - regardless of whether or not you were going too fast at the time. Nowadays, parachutes can be smart: they will only deploy when doing so won't tear them off instantly.

The new tweakable option can only be seen when "advanced tweakables" is toggled on in the game settings. But 99.9% of all players won't ever need to worry about this tweakable even existing, because it defaults to deploying when safe, and would you really want anything else?

Basically, nowadays you can set your parachutes to deploy halfway through reentry, and stage them in orbit, and they will still only open once you're slow enough for them to safely do so. And you don't even have to manually change anything to make that work.

[Loren Pechtel]

Ok, it sounds like the chutes actually work well now.  They were still defaulting like they used to--but in the old days those defaults were deadly.  It sounds like now they are good.

[Clipperride]

11 hours ago, bewing said:

If they show "safe", and they have been activated, and they still have not opened -- then logically that must be because you have the pressure set higher than your current altitude. So you right-click on one of the drogues as fast as you can, you grab the "minimum pressure" slider, and you slide it all the way to the right. The chute should open right then.

A slip of the fingers there @bewing.  To get the parachutes to open at a higher altitude, you need to move the "minimum pressure" slider to the left (ie lower pressure)