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

[captinjoehenry]

I might have one bug and one potential bug.  I have a spaceplane massing around 500 tons and I use the heavy adjustable landing gear.  Whenever I land with the motors on the wheels free the plane while jump into the air on contact with the ground almost no matter what the decent speed is.  The horizontal speed does not seem to matter for this bug.

Second potential bug again with the same spaceplane is when ever I land roughly in the range of over 10 m/s decent rate the wheels are fine but the space plane explodes.  It appears as if the joints between parts all get overloaded and all the parts of the space plane basically fall off of eachother.   This also happens at lower decent rate when the forward velocity is above about 200 m/s.  I am not sure if this is a bug in KSPwheel or just beyond the limits of stock landing gear or if it is an issue with the adjustable landing gear.

 

The heavy landing gear is scaled to 2x and I have the KSPwheel maxloadscalepower at 4.

Edited May 18, 2017 by captinjoehenry

[fatcargo]

On 16.5.2017. at 8:56 PM, Gaalidas said:

...  This will also let me get around my lack of ability to compile with C#6 features using SharpDevelop (I prefer that to VS due to the fact that VS takes several years longer to load everything up than SharpDevelop does.

Why not try Xamarin Studio Community ? It supports C# 6.0. I got it from this DL link for Monodevelop. Straightforward click and download.

After some tweaks its has 90% of VS functionality. My concern was VS-like code navigation, though i didn't quite nailed it with indentation (but i do very much like what they've done with visual feedback in editor preferences).

[leopardenthusiast]

Decided to have a go at building an AG racer.  Took some work to get the load on the repulsors balanced, but it hovers quite nicely.

It has three Whiplash engines for maximum thrust, which...  may actually be slightly overdoing it.  The engine trails look cool, though!

[Shadowmage]

On 5/17/2017 at 6:19 PM, Carson2006 said:

Just spent over an hour looking for a half decent wheels mod.

Found the first version of this, but saw the incompatibility warning, so didn't pursue further.

Stumbled upon this thread after a 'wheels' search here on the forums (Google-fu was weak). I just signed up for an account so I could come tell you as one coder to another, I see what you're doing here, and you are awesome for it, as well as everyone else who contributes.

Keep up the outstanding work.

Welcome to the forums, and thanks

The system certainly isn't perfect, but is very usable for most purposes.  Hard to do much better without access to the physics back-end.

 

On 5/17/2017 at 7:01 PM, captinjoehenry said:

I might have one bug and one potential bug.  I have a spaceplane massing around 500 tons and I use the heavy adjustable landing gear.  Whenever I land with the motors on the wheels free the plane while jump into the air on contact with the ground almost no matter what the decent speed is.  The horizontal speed does not seem to matter for this bug.

Second potential bug again with the same spaceplane is when ever I land roughly in the range of over 10 m/s decent rate the wheels are fine but the space plane explodes.  It appears as if the joints between parts all get overloaded and all the parts of the space plane basically fall off of eachother.   This also happens at lower decent rate when the forward velocity is above about 200 m/s.  I am not sure if this is a bug in KSPwheel or just beyond the limits of stock landing gear or if it is an issue with the adjustable landing gear.

 

The heavy landing gear is scaled to 2x and I have the KSPwheel maxloadscalepower at 4.

I would have to have quite a bit more information in order to even begin trying to debug what is going on.  Ideally I would need the craft file (assuming stock+KF only parts), but alternatively I would need to know what the spring/damper settings are on the wheels in the right-click menu, AND what all of the wheel spring/damper/compression values read on the debug GUI while you are landing (kind of needs to be a video to see what is going on.... which is why providing the craft file is the ideal for debugging this kind of stuff).

Your first problem sounds like an issue with spring/damper settings.  As in too much of one and/or both.  Does it only manifest when you adjust the motor settings on the wheels (on/off/???)?  Could also be related to the second problem (joint sloppiness causing improper feedback on the suspension code).  More information would be needed to see what/where the problem is.

The second problem sounds like stock joints doing their thing, being sloppy.  Try turning on auto-struts for, well, nearly the entire craft (and/or using some manual struts).  Trying to land 500 tons on just a couple of wheels will put enormous strain on joints that are normally not loaded horizontally (most 200t+ craft that I build are rockets, where the joints compress vertically), and can/will lead to joints breaking loose and unscheduled disassembly of the craft.  Actually had problems with my shuttle parts in SSTU where the wings would fall off seemingly at random due to joint failures between the wings and fuselage.  Adding some struts (auto, manual), and/or increasing the 'breakingTorque' and 'breakingForce' in the config files fixed it up nicely.    If you open up the flight log after it has occurred, does the log show that the joints broke first, or something else?

 

 

 

[DarkOwl57]

I'm designing an off-road rover. However, with quick changes of direction, it slides around a ton. Is there some way of a friction control-like setting on the wheels?

[captinjoehenry]

6 hours ago, Shadowmage said:

Welcome to the forums, and thanks

The system certainly isn't perfect, but is very usable for most purposes.  Hard to do much better without access to the physics back-end.

 

I would have to have quite a bit more information in order to even begin trying to debug what is going on.  Ideally I would need the craft file (assuming stock+KF only parts), but alternatively I would need to know what the spring/damper settings are on the wheels in the right-click menu, AND what all of the wheel spring/damper/compression values read on the debug GUI while you are landing (kind of needs to be a video to see what is going on.... which is why providing the craft file is the ideal for debugging this kind of stuff).

Your first problem sounds like an issue with spring/damper settings.  As in too much of one and/or both.  Does it only manifest when you adjust the motor settings on the wheels (on/off/???)?  Could also be related to the second problem (joint sloppiness causing improper feedback on the suspension code).  More information would be needed to see what/where the problem is.

The second problem sounds like stock joints doing their thing, being sloppy.  Try turning on auto-struts for, well, nearly the entire craft (and/or using some manual struts).  Trying to land 500 tons on just a couple of wheels will put enormous strain on joints that are normally not loaded horizontally (most 200t+ craft that I build are rockets, where the joints compress vertically), and can/will lead to joints breaking loose and unscheduled disassembly of the craft.  Actually had problems with my shuttle parts in SSTU where the wings would fall off seemingly at random due to joint failures between the wings and fuselage.  Adding some struts (auto, manual), and/or increasing the 'breakingTorque' and 'breakingForce' in the config files fixed it up nicely.    If you open up the flight log after it has occurred, does the log show that the joints broke first, or something else?

 

 

 

Ok the craft file will be more than a bit painful to get together as it has parts from a lot of different mods.  Using stock landing gear the vessel lands perfectly without any strangeness.  I will try and get you the rest of the information you need and I can zip my ksp folder if that might help.  First though how do I turn on the debug ui?  After that I'll see about getting you some info.

[0111narwhalz]

7 minutes ago, captinjoehenry said:

First though how do I turn on the debug ui?

Options>Difficulty>KSPWheel or Kerbal Foundries (can't remember which)>Advanced>Enable Debug UI

It requires a scene change, but it also gets reverted when you revert ('cause it's a difficulty setting?). So adjust it in the Space Center view.

[captinjoehenry]

@Shadowmage Ok i have attempted to replicate the issue as I don't have the original version of the craft.  With .5 spring rating and .65 damp ratio the issue is less pronounced but it is still there.  The F3 menu shows a collision between parts of the spaceplane but no mention of the wheels failing.  With stock landing gear the issue does not show up at all.  If you need more info let me know.  One thing I should mention is the game freezes for a second on landing before the issue shows up.  As such the kspwheel debug doesn't update before the craft explodes entirely so it doesn't actually show the load at landing.

[Shadowmage]

On 5/16/2017 at 0:56 PM, Gaalidas said:

If i get a chance, i'll try to add some stuff for the shadow to put into his next release to expand the action group functionality.  Either that or I'll put them in an add-on for KF that I'm mulling over.  My plan right now is to try and create an add-on rather than integrating directly into KSPWheel.  That way I can add the vessel-aware steering and expand on the module action groups without modifying the original code.  This will also let me get around my lack of ability to compile with C#6 features using SharpDevelop (I prefer that to VS due to the fact that VS takes several years longer to load everything up than SharpDevelop does.

Something to keep an eye of for the wheel/repulsor group functionality: if you're using symmetry and decide to use an action group to update the like-grouped parts, you cna easily end up activating something twice or more for all the action-grouped parts under that symmetry.  I know we did a lot of work in the original mod to counter this possiblity, but I have yet to check on that in the current code.

This was more apparent when I had the action groups available to increase or decrease the height on the repulsors by a set interval.  If I activated the action group on one repulsor I could then iterate through the rest of the group to update them all.  However... if I action grouped a symmetric part it would then activate the command on both parts in the symmetry resulting in double the increment/decrement.  That's the trouble with adding action group commands to parts that also have their own settings sharing system, such as the wheel/repulsor groups.

Creating an external plugin -- seems like a good way to go about it.  Removes the compile-time problems you are having with c#6, as you can just link in the existing .dll.  -Might- be some code-side things that I would need to adjust in order to make it all link in a bit better (might need to move some field accessors from internal to protected/etc).

It should be entirely possible to write a new / alternative / replacement steering module that could be patched into the existing parts.  As most of the modules in KSPWheel function independently, you should be able to plugin in any module-based steering solution.  Same with any of the other modules; the entire thing was written to be as compatible as possible regarding different module combinations.

If/when you get to the coding phase and would like or need a few pointers, please send me a PM.  Hopefully the overall layout/structure of the wheels system should be evident from reading the existing code, but I'll gladly explain anything that needs it.

 

AGs interfering/duplicating -- that all comes down to how the code is handled on the back end.  Action-groups are already symmetry aware / called in symmetry from the stock code, so you simply don't do symmetry updates when writing the action-group handling code.

[Potato3478]

Hope you make it for 1.3 soon!

[Shadowmage]

Re:  1.3 requests -- possibly sometime later this week/over the weekend.

Seems like it will mostly require a few plugin-side changes to the KSPWheel plugin for the changes in stock code / API and a basic recompile, but most everything else should come across unscathed (should not be any save/craft/game breaking changes in either KSPWheel or KerbalFoundries).

Will update with more info as it becomes available.

[0111narwhalz]

58 minutes ago, Shadowmage said:

Re:  1.3 requests

This pleases me.  Can't wait to drive my monstrosities at irresponsible speeds over terrain free of chasms!

[Shadowmage]

To anyone interested in testing a KSP 1.3 version of KSPWheel/KerbalFoundries, you can find an updated .dll  here:   (  https://github.com/shadowmage45/KSPWheel/blob/dev/GameData/KSPWheel/Plugin/KSPWheel.dll  ). 

You should be able to download that file and replace the existing KSPWheel.dll in your KSPWheel folder, and it should load and work fine after that.  Please make sure to report any problems you run into on the relevant trackers (KSPWheel for physics problems, KerbalFoundries for config problems), and if everything looks good, I will pack this up for an official release later this week/weekend.

There shouldn't really be too much/any changes compared to the current 1.2.2 release versions.  Possibly some very minor changes to the back-end motor EC-use calculation code.... that simply made the existing calculations more accurate for arbitrary inputs, but should not have changed the input/output values that much.

[Merlin43210]

21 hours ago, Shadowmage said:

Re:  1.3 requests -- possibly sometime later this week/over the weekend.

 

Yay, I can make mobile bases again. BTW this add-on is just great.

[kiwinanday]

I downloaded the new .dll, but still no menu interface shows up when right-clicking on the wheels in SPH, so they aren't usable. Am I dun goofing?

[Shadowmage]

11 minutes ago, kiwinanday said:

I downloaded the new .dll, but still no menu interface shows up when right-clicking on the wheels in SPH, so they aren't usable. Am I dun goofing?

Could very likely be some issues with the updated .dll.  It was entirely untested.  I literally recompiled it while on a break at work, and won't have time for any further testing or fixing until sometime over the weekend.

So... I would say to file the 'no right-click menu items' as a bug on the KSPWheels github repo, which will make sure that I take a look at it when I do have time do do more fixing/work on KSPWheel.

[Shadowmage]

2 hours ago, kiwinanday said:

I downloaded the new .dll, but still no menu interface shows up when right-clicking on the wheels in SPH, so they aren't usable. Am I dun goofing?

Did some very quick testing, and I am unable to duplicate that problem on my dev install (using the DLL/etc linked earlier).

This is what I get when I right-click on a part in the editor:

Seems to work fine in flight scene as well:

 

Have you guys tried grabbing the entire GameData/KSPWheel folder from the dev branch? (might be some non-plugin related changes in other files that are needed)

Anyone who is having problems able to post/host/link some log files (namely the KSP.log file)?

 

[kiwinanday]

@Shadowmage I have not, I'll do that next. Hopefully a fresh install of the mod will solve the problem.

[0111narwhalz]

I found that the dev branch is nonfunctional. You want the 130updates branch.

[kiwinanday]

Because I'm an idiot, is this the correct directory that I should be trying?

https://github.com/shadowmage45/KSPWheel/tree/master/GameData/KSPWheel

[0111narwhalz]

1 hour ago, kiwinanday said:

Because I'm an idiot, is this the correct directory that I should be trying?

You should be in the 130updates branch, not the master branch. Just replace "master" with "130updates" in your URL. There should also be a dropdown near the upper left of the filestructure in which you can do the same thing.

[Shadowmage]

12 hours ago, 0111narwhalz said:

I found that the dev branch is nonfunctional. You want the 130updates branch.

Ahh, yep, that would be the problem

My apologies, I forgot that I had moved the 1.3 stuff over to a new branch; so used to using the standard 'dev' branch that it completely slipped my mind.

 

The correct link for the .dll is (  https://github.com/shadowmage45/KSPWheel/raw/130updates/GameData/KSPWheel/Plugin/KSPWheel.dll  )

That one should actually work as a drop in replacement

 

[kiwinanday]

2 minutes ago, 0111narwhalz said:

You should be in the 130updates branch, not the master branch. Just replace "master" with "130updates" in your URL. There should also be a dropdown near the upper left of the filestructure in which you can do the same thing.

W00t! That fixed it! Thanks so much, all!

[Toonu]

Hi, is there good old alignment guide as was in ALG for ALG wheels? I can't find it under any of Fs F1 F2, etc... nor in wiki...

Edited June 2, 2017 by Toonu

[Shadowmage]

42 minutes ago, Toonu said:

Hi, is there good old alignment guide as was in ALG for ALG wheels? I can't find it under any of Fs F1 F2, etc... nor in wiki...

Right click on the part.  Press the 'Align to Ground' button.  No alignment guide needed, just a single button.