Dish orientation required for comms

[NFunky]

Hey guys,

I've been looking around, but can't seem to find anything like this.  I love playing with extreme realism, and one thing that is very important in real life is spacecraft attitude for communications.

I would like to either find a mod (or if need be, develope one) that requires orienting non-omni antennas toward either the DSN or a relay.  I want to require GEO satellites to point their dishes down toward the planet (using PersistentRotation makes this possible).

Ideally, if comms are not oriented correctly, the spacecraft would act as if their was a loss of line-of-sight, and have all the limitations that implies.

Is there such a mod?  I am not an expert modder, but I have done a lot of amateur .cfg editing and tweaking, and I have a rudimentary knowledge of C#, etc.  Would this be a difficult mod to create?

[DStaal]

You want RemoteTech:

This is one of it's features.

 

[Loskene]

Even remotetech doesn't make you physically point the dish (only assign it a target) as you need yet another mod (persistent rotation) to have the smallest chance of keeping the dish aligned. The game doesn't really have much in the way of stock or modded tools to enable this behaviour, or compensate for loss of dish alignment during manoeuvres. Remotetech has the option to queue commands to an autopilot but it's janky as hell and doesn't include an option for component facing, only gross ship movement.

[Tyko]

Add a probe core oriented to align with the antenna - when you want to transmit, control from that probe core and use SAS point towards target mode.

If you wanted you could use +PART to make a special very small, very light probe core used only for this purpose.Just scale it down and lower the mass.

Edited July 24, 2019 by Tyko

[NFunky]

Yeah, it's physical orientation I'm talking about, and yes, with the use of PersistentRotation in mind.  Ideally, I would like to use a mechanism similar to celestial body occlusion.  If possible, cause parts to occlude comms the same way.

I am hoping something using the stock comms, or even solar panel phyhsics would be doable, but I'm open to any suggestions.  I have never coded an actual mod before, but I'd be willing to give it a shot.

Any modders want to tell me how to get started?

[Nightside]

21 hours ago, NFunky said:

Hey guys,

I've been looking around, but can't seem to find anything like this.  I love playing with extreme realism, and one thing that is very important in real life is spacecraft attitude for communications.

I would like to either find a mod (or if need be, develope one) that requires orienting non-omni antennas toward either the DSN or a relay.  I want to require GEO satellites to point their dishes down toward the planet (using PersistentRotation makes this possible).

Ideally, if comms are not oriented correctly, the spacecraft would act as if their was a loss of line-of-sight, and have all the limitations that implies.

Is there such a mod?  I am not an expert modder, but I have done a lot of amateur .cfg editing and tweaking, and I have a rudimentary knowledge of C#, etc.  Would this be a difficult mod to create?

Seems like there is potential for kOS and the new robot parts here.

[Dunbaratu]

On 7/24/2019 at 10:23 AM, Loskene said:

Even remotetech doesn't make you physically point the dish (only assign it a target) as you need yet another mod (persistent rotation) to have the smallest chance of keeping the dish aligned. The game doesn't really have much in the way of stock or modded tools to enable this behaviour, or compensate for loss of dish alignment during manoeuvres. Remotetech has the option to queue commands to an autopilot but it's janky as hell and doesn't include an option for component facing, only gross ship movement.

There are places where the desire for physical realism comes up against the brick wall of the game's inborn limitations, and this is one of them.  The problem is that the game cannot have a vessel actively performing motions when it's not within the tight "physics bubble".  Therefore 'station keeping' and 'antenna pointing' isn't something a probe can do when you're not looking at it.  The game is modeled on "one ship at a time does stuff.  The rest are stuck" and this is pretty deeply embedded in the system.  Thus it's unfair to introduce certain kinds of realism like this one.  Yes real probes have to physically point their antenna, but real probes aren't physically *prevented* from doing so like the ones in KSP are, where a probe cannot be rotating itself when you're flying another rocket somewhere else.  In the real world, multiple probes are doing multiple things at the same time, with multiple teams of ground controllers talking to them. 

I suspect that's why RT didn't make you physically point the antenna but instead abstracted it with a menu option to "point" at a thing.  If you had to physically point it, then it would break contact after a bit of time warping in which the vessel cannot move itself or change anything because the game has locked in place due to the time warp.  Even a scripted system like kOS still cannot force that to change.  (The only thing it could do is re-aim the antenna after a time warp is over, but it can't aim the antenna during the months of sitting there under warp, while a real probe could do that because waiting doesn't freeze the universe in the real world.)

Also consider the case of the relay antenna.  If your rover is relaying through a satellite in orbit, both the rover and the satellite would need to aim their antennas at the same time, and they can't because of the physics bubble problem.  You'd have to be constantly switching focus back and forth between them, reloading the scene again and again to keep both pointed the right way.

Edited July 26, 2019 by Steven Mading

[Mecripp]

9 hours ago, Steven Mading said:

There are places where the desire for physical realism comes up against the brick wall of the game's inborn limitations, and this is one of them.  The problem is that the game cannot have a vessel actively performing motions when it's not within the tight "physics bubble".  Therefore 'station keeping' and 'antenna pointing' isn't something a probe can do when you're not looking at it.  The game is modeled on "one ship at a time does stuff.  The rest are stuck" and this is pretty deeply embedded in the system.  Thus it's unfair to introduce certain kinds of realism like this one.  Yes real probes have to physically point their antenna, but real probes aren't physically *prevented* from doing so like the ones in KSP are, where a probe cannot be rotating itself when you're flying another rocket somewhere else.  In the real world, multiple probes are doing multiple things at the same time, with multiple teams of ground controllers talking to them. 

I suspect that's why RT didn't make you physically point the antenna but instead abstracted it with a menu option to "point" at a thing.  If you had to physically point it, then it would break contact after a bit of time warping in which the vessel cannot move itself or change anything because the game has locked in place due to the time warp.  Even a scripted system like kOS still cannot force that to change.  (The only thing it could do is re-aim the antenna after a time warp is over, but it can't aim the antenna during the months of sitting there under warp, while a real probe could do that because waiting doesn't freeze the universe in the real world.)

Also consider the case of the relay antenna.  If your rover is relaying through a satellite in orbit, both the rover and the satellite would need to aim their antennas at the same time, and they can't because of the physics bubble problem.  You'd have to be constantly switching focus back and forth between them, reloading the scene again and again to keep both pointed the right way.

It can be done but it was took out of RT a long time ago but at one time it did work ( this was when JDP did RT )

[Dunbaratu]

1 hour ago, Mecripp said:

It can be done but it was took out of RT a long time ago but at one time it did work ( this was when JDP did RT )

How?  When the satellite is out of contact because its aim became wrong over time (Kerbin moved), how do you control it again to turn the antenna?  It seems like a catch-22 - you can't turn the antenna without control.  You have no control without first turning the antenna.  It would seem like this approach would require something to autopilot it when you're not able to control, like a kOS script or something like that, that is set to a default program that does nothing more than aim the antenna when it wakes up and starts running.

[Mecripp]

4 hours ago, Steven Mading said:

How?  When the satellite is out of contact because its aim became wrong over time (Kerbin moved), how do you control it again to turn the antenna?  It seems like a catch-22 - you can't turn the antenna without control.  You have no control without first turning the antenna.  It would seem like this approach would require something to autopilot it when you're not able to control, like a kOS script or something like that, that is set to a default program that does nothing more than aim the antenna when it wakes up and starts running.

There was like only 2 or 3 dishes that it would work they just pointed to what ever you set has target if some one knows coding or the code that its in maybe they could look at the old dll and see ?

6 minutes ago, Mecripp said:

There was like only 2 or 3 dishes that it would work they just pointed to what ever you set has target if some one knows coding or the code that its in maybe they could look at the old dll and see ?

https://github.com/JDPKSP/RemoteTechLegacy

Edited July 26, 2019 by Mecripp
EDIT- Here is a link that might help https://github.com/JDPKSP/RemoteTechLegacy

[Dunbaratu]

24 minutes ago, Mecripp said:

There was like only 2 or 3 dishes that it would work they just pointed to what ever you set has target if some one knows coding or the code that its in maybe they could look at the old dll and see ?

https://github.com/JDPKSP/RemoteTechLegacy

Remember the "it" I was talking about when you posted the reply saying "It can be done" was the player having to point the antenna, as contrasted with RT pointing it for you.  What you describe here still fits under RT pointing it for you, with the phrase, "they just pointed to what ever you set has target".  The only thing that was changed was NOT whether you merely had to pick a target off the menu, but rather it was whether the mod also added the physical effect of rotating the probe to aim it.  But that still wasn't the player having to aim it.  The player just had to select the target.  The player having to do the aiming still seems impossible to me without a script or mod to turn it for you, since you lose manual control when it goes out of alignment so you can't fix the alignment yourself as a player.

Edited July 26, 2019 by Steven Mading

[NFunky]

Thank you guys.  I am looking at the legacy RT files, but I'm not much of a coder, so it'll be slow going.

Seems to me like it would be fine for the spacecraft to auto-orient to a selected target.  That was essentially what I was planning to do with the stock system, only using the SAS's "hold target" thing.  In stock comms, when you lose LOS, you can still issue SAS commands.  The old RT system actually sounds more elegant than tat, so I'd be fine with it.