Terrainium - World building experiments

[Nightside]

 

 

Terrainium 0.1 - Mahia Launch Complex 1 

The objective of this project is to bring detailed and accurate real-worlds height maps into KSP. Realistic geographic features have so much more detail and depth of experience, see the picture above 

DEPENDENCIES - Kerbal Konstructs & Omega's Stock Structures & Module Manager (not included)

TEST RELEASE

Terrainium 0.1 Mahia Launch Complex 1 - Brings an actual size recreation of RocketLab's LC1 to Kerbin at the actual latitude. I will port this to RSS at somepoint int the future.

more pix:

Spoiler

 

ASSORTED IMAGES (Some areas shown may not be included in download yet.)

Mt Hood, Oregon, US

Spoiler

 

I have created these features from grayscale height maps (found online or created in ArcGIS) and bringing them into the game using Kerbal Konstructs.

 

 

Edited May 14, 2020 by Nightside
made a thing!

[drtedastro]

looks great.

[Nightside]

3 minutes ago, drtedastro said:

looks great.

Thanks @drtedastro

I just learned that Kopernicus has a method for adding these features. Link for reference:

 

[KAO]

any possibility for concave surface features? caves, rocks, overhangs, arches?

[CobaltWolf]

5 hours ago, KAO said:

any possibility for concave surface features? caves, rocks, overhangs, arches?

Impossible with just a height map.

[Nightside]

@KAO, the wolf is correct. 

The only method I know of for making caves, etc is to build a static model for Kerbal Constructs.

 

[wasml]

Have you seen this site - covers most of North America in one format or another

https://viewer.nationalmap.gov/basic/?basemap=b1&category=ned,nedsrc&title=3DEP View

 

[Tyko]

This is really cool. One of the asks that comes up often in Science discussions is the lack of interesting micro-biomes to explore. Have you considered adding those? It would be cool and give people a reason to visit your sites...

Dormant volcanos, ice flats, dried up estuaries, mud flows, craters, cliffs, you name it 

 

[Bottle Rocketeer 500]

@Nightside Maybe place a heightmap of the Himalayas somewhere, so I can try to land helicopters on Mount Everest in KSP.

[Jesusthebird]

Swamp . like Florida or Louisiana? A mt everest or Appalachians? I dont know much about underwater stuff..but...trenches maybe the boat/marine players would like that? Poping out ideas as requested.

[Nightside]

Thanks @Jesusthebird,  I agree real underwater terrain would probably be a LOT more interesting than stock. 

Swamps are tricky because the the difference in elevation is very low, and the wave action on kerbin looks funny. It makes you realize how important plant life is. (Arguably plant life is important for other things than making video games look cool). 

I am making incremental progress on this, but I got a bit hung up trying to get it to work using Kopernicus instead of Kerbal Konstructs. I would prefer to use Kopernicus, since it is a more commonly used mod, and offers other features relevant to modding the planets surface, however I can't get MapDecal or MapDecalTangent to work at all.

[Nightside]

 

Started messing around with this again. I added a "grandish" canyon system between KSC and the eastern mtn range. 

I gave up trying to do this with Kopernicus/Kittopia as it was pretty buggy with my install, so this is done with Kerbal Konstructs.

I also added some lakes at higher altitudes using Kerbal Konstructs custom water, but they disappear with Scatterer installed.

Edited January 3, 2019 by Nightside

[Gameslinx]

This is exactly what the stock game needs. The heightmaps for planets like Eve are incredibly underwhelming and boring and look like low effort in the stock game.

8 hours ago, Nightside said:

I gave up trying to do this with Kopernicus/Kittopia as it was pretty buggy with my install, so this is done with Kerbal Konstructs.

Kopernicus is also able to add MapDecals but you would need a planet config for this (and KittopiaTech is recommended for editing these ingame).

Kerbal Konstructs is not really the best mod to use if you're messing with terrain - that would be Kopernicus and Kittopiatech. You can hit "save body" on KittopiaTech before changing anything to generate a config of Kerbin (also can be found here https://github.com/Kopernicus/kittopia-dumps/blob/master/Configs/Kerbin.cfg ) and you could start editing from there. Hope this helped

[Nightside]

Preview of Mahia Launch Complex and Mahia Peninsula with Kerbal Konstructs.

Using statics from @damonvv and @Omega482.

Edited January 27, 2019 by Nightside

[Nightside]

MAHIA LC-1 - Download coming soon...

(Note: 1 of these 3 pics is not from KSP)

Edited February 10, 2019 by Nightside

[Stone Blue]

Sweet....

My computer probably wont handle this mod, but I still want to at least *try* it... lol

As to locations to add, off the top of my head, maybe:

Earth
Tanegashima Space Center
Pacific Spaceport Complex on Kodiak Island
Satish Dhawan Space Centre
Mt Fuji

Moon

South Pole area (Shackleton crater)

Mars

Olympus Mons

Cydonia

Valles Marineris

 

[Nightside]

I finally have something to release, an actual sized Mahia Launch Complex 1, (and the whole Mahia Peninsula to boot) home of RocketLab's Electron Rocket. Please check the OP for details on dependencies.

 

 

6 hours ago, Stone Blue said:

My computer probably wont handle this mod, but I still want to at least *try* it... lol

You should definitely try, thanks to @Ger_space's efforts, Kerbal Konstructs works great these days (especially if you are not also running Kopernicus). @Omega482's statics are relatively lightweight as well since they recycle stock textures (although they manage to look much better than on the stock buildings somehow).

 

6 hours ago, Stone Blue said:

Earth
Tanegashima Space Center
Pacific Spaceport Complex on Kodiak Island

These look great - I will put Tanegashima and the Pacific Spaceport high on my list because to of the surrounding hills and mountains. In the mean time, check out Tanegashima on Google Earth, it actually has some pretty neat 3D models of the space center.

 

[Stone Blue]

Wow... Maia looks GREAT

I always thought Tanegashima was te most scenic of all launch centers... till Rocket Labs built Mahia...

Edited February 10, 2019 by Stone Blue

[Clamp-o-Tron]

@Nightside: is this mod dead? It's so cool, and I'd love to see it being actively developed again.

[Nightside]

25 minutes ago, Clamp-o-Tron said:

@Nightside: is this mod dead? It's so cool, and I'd love to see it being actively developed again.

Thanks, @Clamp-o-Tron. I think Mahia should still work in current versions of KSP, but I admit I've not tried it lately, but give it a try. I've heard rumors that @Zoeille is planning to model the actual Electron Launchpad, if that happens I'll definitely update this.

In other news I am working on a new project. I'm trying to use real world GIS data to populate configs for hundreds-to-thousands of real airport runways in RSS. But my mediocre VBA skills mean I'm having a little trouble getting it over finish line.

[Clamp-o-Tron]

I was thinking more about the addition of the sites listed in the GitHub issues page. As far as I can tell, they haven't been added to the release, right? (On my phone, can't open the .zip)

[Zoeille]

8 minutes ago, Nightside said:

Thanks, @Clamp-o-Tron. I think Mahia should still work in current versions of KSP, but I admit I've not tried it lately, but give it a try. I've heard rumors that @Zoeille is planning to model the actual Electron Launchpad, if that happens I'll definitely update this.

In other news I am working on a new project. I'm trying to use real world GIS data to populate configs for hundreds-to-thousands of real airport runways in RSS. But my mediocre VBA skills mean I'm having a little trouble getting it over finish line.

Yup I will work on the Mahia launch site soon !

[Clamp-o-Tron]

Sorry, but I'm less after the launch sites than pursuing the AWESOME terrain seen in OP. I love Aurora space center, but I really would like to improve how stock Kerbin looks.

[Nightside]

On 4/20/2020 at 1:53 PM, Clamp-o-Tron said:

I was thinking more about the addition of the sites listed in the GitHub issues page. As far as I can tell, they haven't been added to the release, right? (On my phone, can't open the .zip)

Yeah, I probably should bump that up in priority.

 

This is what I have been working on. Using GIS airport location data to generate runways at real airport locations. I need to work out some issues with elevations, Currently everything ends up in a hole, which certainly makes landing planes more challenging! But they do work, and the game doesn't seem to have an issue with hundreds of Kerbal konstructs sites.

Next steps:

- Figure out Elevation issue (this may be resolved in the next  RSS release, providing more accurate heights)

- Try to figure out runway orientation and length from GIS for all sites (this data may not exist for all sites, I think I found some for US runways).

(the little gray boxes on the map are Runway sites where you can land with Kerbal Konstructs or Nav Utilities)

[Clamp-o-Tron]

20 hours ago, Nightside said:

Yeah, I probably should bump that up in priority.

 

This is what I have been working on. Using GIS airport location data to generate runways at real airport locations. I need to work out some issues with elevations, Currently everything ends up in a hole, which certainly makes landing planes more challenging! But they do work, and the game doesn't seem to have an issue with hundreds of Kerbal konstructs sites.

Next steps:

- Figure out Elevation issue (this may be resolved in the next  RSS release, providing more accurate heights)

- Try to figure out runway orientation and length from GIS for all sites (this data may not exist for all sites, I think I found some for US runways).

(the little gray boxes on the map are Runway sites where you can land with Kerbal Konstructs or Nav Utilities)