[1.8.x] Kerbal Foundries -- Continued - Tracks, Wheels, and Gear

[Meltdown]

So I dropped the Heatshield and turned a few rounds in orbit : here's the result 

The tyres kept spinning while in orbit and finally broke to stress / failure time. Putting on the breaks reset the failure time. I didn't think about that in the first place but it fixed the problem :-)

Edited March 30, 2017 by Meltdown

[Shadowmage]

41 minutes ago, Meltdown said:

So I dropped the Heatshield and turned a few rounds in orbit : here's the result 

The tyres kept spinning while in orbit and finally broke to stress / failure time. Putting on the breaks reset the failure time. I didn't think about that in the first place but it fixed the problem :-)

Thanks for the updated testing and information; I'll do some tests in the dev environment to see if I can duplicate the problem.  From your description it appears that the wheel speed/velocity is being incorrectly still calculated/used when the wheel is not grounded.

Hmm... thinking on it a bit more, this could be part of the 'scaled wheels have overpowered motors' problem, with the motor itself driving the wheels beyond their max safe speed.  At least that gives me a place to start investigations.

[Gorzideudeus]

On 3/30/2017 at 0:41 AM, Meltdown said:

I encounter a problem with some of the wheels provided by this mod : This is the craft  I'm trying to get to Mars in RSS but as soon as I'm in orbit around earth and the timewarp starts, the wheels brake due to stress.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Any idea why this is happening? I tripplechecked all the fairings and it seems as if they're fine.

I also have this issue; I've found that I can avoid the problem by turning the gear ratio to the lowest possible speed during high-timewarp situations or planetary transfers. The brakes should also be on.

[Sparky_Sct]

Someone needs to update the original mod thread so as there is a link to think thread, it took me ages to find out that there is an updated Kerbal Foundries.

[Shadowmage]

23 hours ago, Sparky_Sct said:

Someone needs to update the original mod thread so as there is a link to think thread, it took me ages to find out that there is an updated Kerbal Foundries.

Sadly that someone cannot be me; only Lo-fi (or a moderator) would have access to edit that thread.

 

On 4/1/2017 at 7:43 PM, Gorzideudeus said:

I also have this issue; I've found that I can avoid the problem by turning the gear ratio to the lowest possible speed during high-timewarp situations or planetary transfers. The brakes should also be on.

I've filed a bug ticket on this issue, you can track its progress from: https://github.com/shadowmage45/KSPWheel/issues/41

[Fireheart318]

I'm not sure if anyone's brought this up before, but can you please center the wheel on the small adjustable landing gear? I have this little plane, Ocelot I, that can't land and falls over and blows up because the wheel is off center. Not to mention my "ocd" gets cranked up to 11 whenever I see it

[Shadowmage]

3 minutes ago, Fireheart318 said:

I'm not sure if anyone's brought this up before, but can you please center the wheel on the small adjustable landing gear? I have this little plane, Ocelot I, that can't land and falls over and blows up because the wheel is off center. Not to mention my "ocd" gets cranked up to 11 whenever I see it

No, sorry, cannot be done with the current model.  It is intended to be used as a side-mounted-gear placed in symetry, not as a nose or tail gear (for those, use the medium one scaled up/down appropriately).  Sadly, the original ALG models lack any of those, hence the current situation.

[Fireheart318]

12 minutes ago, Shadowmage said:

No, sorry, cannot be done with the current model.  It is intended to be used as a side-mounted-gear placed in symetry, not as a nose or tail gear (for those, use the medium one scaled up/down appropriately).  Sadly, the original ALG models lack any of those, hence the current situation.

Well what about a somewhat-complete rework, alternate model, or just a 'plane' new addition to the mod?

I've managed to remedy the leaning situation with the next biggest gear scaled down massively (just realized you said that, sorry), but it just looks out of place

 

Edited April 3, 2017 by Fireheart318

[TiktaalikDreaming]

1 hour ago, Fireheart318 said:

Well what about a somewhat-complete rework, alternate model, or just a 'plane' new addition to the mod?

I've managed to remedy the leaning situation with the next biggest gear scaled down massively (just realized you said that, sorry), but it just looks out of place

 

I was going to hop on and say a small nose gear is entirely possible as a new part, but have been completely distracted by the imgur album actually functioning in the forum.  That's been broken for so long I'd almost forgotten the forum used to have the embedded albums.

[Fireheart318]

One more gear-related suggestion - Let us change the gear settings on the go. The gear can go through all the required changes to actually assume the position that they've been set to, so why can't they be re-programmed mid-flight? Think of all the things you could do with that! In addition to the obvious, you could make a kneeling bus/plane (which could eliminate the need for a ladder and save a lot of time as well), a rover that could easily fit in a cargo bay and then expand, make takeoff easier by increasing angle of attack and do the opposite for landing, Speed Racer-style jump jacks on Minmus, and a lot of other cool stuff. There's also a lot of even more Kerbal purposes like debris recovery and transport and maybe even improvised weapons and Kraken summoners!

Maybe multiple profiles could be added sorta like a chroma keyboard or autostrut to automatically change to a set position. That way, jump jacks could work seamlessly, planes can change from takeoff to landing configurations easily, etc

If I understand this stuff correctly (I probably don't), it would be as easy as changing or adding a couple of values, just like you can make Intake Air visible and tweakable in the VAB/SPH. In fact, something similar is already possible with the hoverpads repulsors but not as advanced

Also, why is there a dotted line under here all of the sudden?

Edited April 4, 2017 by Fireheart318

[Shadowmage]

12 hours ago, Fireheart318 said:

If I understand this stuff correctly (I probably don't), it would be as easy as changing or adding a couple of values, just like you can make Intake Air visible and tweakable in the VAB/SPH. In fact, something similar is already possible with the hoverpads repulsors but not as advanced

Go ahead and try it; it is not going to work like you would expect.

(Hint:  There is a reason I don't allow reconfiguration in flight, or gimballing on the repulsors)

[Esquire42]

Holy **** I didn't see that this got released until now. Well done @Shadowmage! All the rep!

[TiktaalikDreaming]

13 minutes ago, Esquire42 said:

Holy **** I didn't see that this got released until now. Well done @Shadowmage! All the rep!

Fake internet points for everybody!!! 

:-) 

[Fireheart318]

So I found a trick to fix the landing gear - just add two. That still isn't a permanent fix to the problem though

[uwotm8]

PLEASE HELP. my wheels start bugging out when they touch the runway. they start moving and shaking an then they start smoking as if i was breaking what can a i do or is it a mod problem

[damerell]

3 hours ago, uwotm8 said:

PLEASE HELP. my wheels start bugging out when they touch the runway. they start moving and shaking an then they start smoking as if i was breaking what can a i do or is it a mod problem

Craft file (better yet, complete savefile)? List of installed mods? Can't tell you much with no information.

[0111narwhalz]

3 hours ago, uwotm8 said:

PLEASE HELP. my wheels start bugging out when they touch the runway. they start moving and shaking an then they start smoking as if i was breaking what can a i do or is it a mod problem

You might try turning down the damper. If it's too high, it sets up oscillations (because of low simulation frequency). Spring strength might also be too high. If you're at either extreme of travel (bottoming out or barely compressed), you might also run into problems. IIRC Shadowmage reccommended 25-75% compression in normal use for best stability.

[stickman939]

6 hours ago, uwotm8 said:

PLEASE HELP. my wheels start bugging out when they touch the runway. they start moving and shaking an then they start smoking as if i was breaking what can a i do or is it a mod problem

 

2 hours ago, damerell said:

Craft file (better yet, complete savefile)? List of installed mods? Can't tell you much with no information.

Agreed.^ We're gonna need more info.

IE
What version of KSP are you using?
What mods are you using?
Have you tried using KF by itself (No other mods installed)?


If you do find it's a mod conflict(KF works fine alone), I suggest uninstalling all mods (excluding KF), and reinstall them 1 by 1 .

My method is install them in groups of 5, then if I run into a problem, uninstall the last 5 and reinstall them 1 by 1 after testing the game to make sure everything works.

 

 

Hey again Narwhalz lol

 

[Shadowmage]

On 4/8/2017 at 3:55 PM, Fireheart318 said:

So I found a trick to fix the landing gear - just add two. That still isn't a permanent fix to the problem though

Which landing gear are you referring to?

[Fireheart318]

On 4/10/2017 at 0:31 PM, Shadowmage said:

Which landing gear are you referring to?

Oh excrements just realized I forgot about this! They're the adjustable ones

I meant to reply to this three days ago but my teacher kept closing the tab remotely (what) and I wasn't able to command-shift-t my way back to get the link because he kept closing it! [Smacks head on keyboard]

[SpaceOdissey]

As Mettaton says: OHH YESSS! Finally Kerbal Foundries is on KSP 1.2!

[LexxyT]

Hi all, not sure if this is a bug but I am trying to make a HUGE mun crawler and I have 5 sets of the KF large wheel at 2x scale (unevenly spaced along the side of the vehicle). Yes it's going to be big! Anyway, I have an issue when turning. All wheels turn to full lock and this causes them to bind up with the ground and makes turning near impossible. I've tried grouping all the wheels and setting them individually but still having problems. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.... Cheers.

[Gaalidas]

1 hour ago, LexxyT said:

Hi all, not sure if this is a bug but I am trying to make a HUGE mun crawler and I have 5 sets of the KF large wheel at 2x scale (unevenly spaced along the side of the vehicle). Yes it's going to be big! Anyway, I have an issue when turning. All wheels turn to full lock and this causes them to bind up with the ground and makes turning near impossible. I've tried grouping all the wheels and setting them individually but still having problems. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.... Cheers.

Hmm... I'd need to see a shot of the problem happening... but right off the bat I can think of a few things that might cause this.  First off, I'd make sure the wheels are truly attached the right way up.  Beyond that, I could imagine that something has been borked on the scale implementation, which would be a configuration problem and totally not something you could fix yourself.  I would also do a test with a craft layed out the same way except with the normal sized wheels to see if the problem is with the wheel itself or whatnot.  I do know more recent work on this mod has implemented damage states and, if the wheels are being overloaded then they could be breaking upon trying to turn.  Either way, it sounds like a bug.

[0111narwhalz]

It is important to note that KSPWheel has no vessel-level knowledge. That is, each wheel (or symmetry pair) is completely encapsulated. This means that you have to tune each wheel individually. You can change the steering limits in the context menu. You can even set different ones high and low, so your crawler will turn on a dime when you're going slow but transition to "highway mode" and steer more gradually (or even front only). Steering response determines how rapidly the wheel responds to steering inputs. I don't understand steering bias, and therefore it is magic.

Go to full turn at a standstill and look at the wheels' collective curvature. Ideally, you would want a line extended from the axle to infinity to intersect every line of the same kind from each wheel at a single point. (Interestingly, real cars turn the inside wheel a little sharper than would yield this, to compensate for the lesser weighting.) Since this generally takes more tuning than I'm willing to deal with, I usually settle for an approximation of this. However, those wheels which are nearest the center of turning should always have more restrictive limits.

Also note that tracked and tank-steering vessels turn tightest when they are widest. Excessively wide aspect ratios have pitch stability issues, but turn on a dime.

I wonder if some kind of Aukermann-tanksteer hybrid could be created, where both the axis and the throttle are modified by steering inputs. That way, the vessel could have a long aspect ratio without suffering slippage, because the wheels turn to align their axis with the circle. Or something.

[Gaalidas]

I thought the mod, under lo-fi's code, already did some of that in the background.  KSPWheel must have changed a lot of the back end stuff.  Then again, I never totally understood most of this stuff.