Investigating significant drag and heating changes introduced in 1.8.0

[ExtremeSquared]

This sounds like a drastic change. Eve landers will highlight more subtle changes because the margins are usually fairly small.

[MechBFP]

I think someone “oops’ed” the parts file in one of their builds. Wouldn’t be the first time Squad released a bad build.

[Kergarin]

4 hours ago, ExtremeSquared said:

If you fly Eve missions in multiple KSP versions, you'll realize how regularly aero and heating changes don't make it into the changelog. The question should be "Is this better or worse?"

Was there a change after the pressure rise in 1.2 on eve? I fly eve on the verry edge 

This clearly is a bug as it shows unexpected behaviour

[Wolf Baginski]

23 hours ago, OHara said:

It is worth trying them.

KSP automatically added entries for the new parts, to the 'PartDatabase.cfg' that I copied from 1.7.3. 
One might expect the new parts to have errors in drag, but the ones I've checked seem fine.

The file is the drag cube settings for parts, a sort of pre-loaded cache. I am not sure how the data is generated for a new part, and I am not sure that this workaround can be relied on for anything more than a stock game. On what I have seen of the results of this change, stock parachutes, at default settings, barely have time to slow the capsule to a safe landing speed when the fully open.

 

Drag/Heating is one of those things in KSP where the smaller planets lead to distortions. How does a planet as small as Kerbin have the surface pressure and gravity that it does? . We might have a better atmosphere for planes, but this is Kerbal _Space_ Program, and that side is feeling badly wrong.

[GunnyErmy]

Soooo... it's been almost a week, and in my opinion the game is currently unplayable with the thermal/drag bug.  Ascending through any atmosphere with the reduced drag is essentially cheating, and getting back through the increased thermal with an SSTO is barely on the possible side of impossible.  Even the 10m heat shield isn't working, so you can skip descents with that.  It seems to protect from heat, but you definitely get thermal visuals and drag on the parts behind it.  This is a bug worth a hotfix, not a patch.  I've spent all of my game time the last 6 days trying to work around this bug, and quite frankly, I'm just about sick of KSP now.  Changing the convection rating feels like cheating.  Cheating to orbit, changing parts, watching ships burn up, etc.  The only thing I can do that doesn't feel broken is make things in the VAB (like rovers and bases, not anything intended to fly, cause, let's face it, you can't really test it correctly with the atmosphere bugged).  It honestly feels like I won't have much interest in my career mode anymore, even if this bug gets fixed.  I haven't had an update kill a game for me since Star Wars Galaxies.  Sorry, rant over.

[Kergarin]

Yes.

This clearly needs a fix, or at least some comment, if there was an intended change or if we are fine with replacing the partsdatabase.cfg.

Playing 1.8 makes absolutely no sense at the moment, if no one knows, if the crafts we design now, will still work tomorrow.

Also sticking to 1.7.3 makes no sense, if we don't know, if there were intended changes.

 

I'm playing since 1.0.x and never had a bug stopping me from playing.

This totally breaks the game, and needs at least a quick developer comment, what's intended.

Please just give us a hint squad

[gsantos9489]

Hello guys!

This is a very annoying feature that came along with 1.8 update and I'm experiencing it too.

Here are two videos that I made to SQUAD support:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKhRtwioIn8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27JQvcVvrgI&t=

 Ticket 10481.

[AggressiveYoghurt]

4 hours ago, Kergarin said:

Please just give us a hint squad

If you read between the lines its quite apparent that they rushed 1.8 out the door for whatever reason, maybe deadlines had come and gone and it was time. There are so many obvious bugs in 1.8 that there is no way anyone tested this for any reasonable length of time, things like the altimeter bug, settings resetting bug, lights missing on some parts, aero/thermo bug for anyone who plays spaceplanes (i think nobody in squad does, sadly) would be impossible to miss if there was any testing. That is why i think they just polished the cool new parts and textures and started working on the issues after launch. There will be a hotfix and a hotfix for the hotfix, 1.4 all over again.

Just my thoughts on the matter, and also why i rarely ever play the current version.

[gsantos9489]

18 hours ago, gsantos9489 said:

Hello guys!

This is a very annoying feature that came along with 1.8 update and I'm experiencing it too.

Here are two videos that I made to SQUAD support:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKhRtwioIn8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27JQvcVvrgI&t=

 Ticket 10481.

The support team answered me just now. They will send this issue to QA to further investigation.

[MechBFP]

17 hours ago, AggressiveYoghurt said:

If you read between the lines its quite apparent that they rushed 1.8 out the door for whatever reason, maybe deadlines had come and gone and it was time. There are so many obvious bugs in 1.8 that there is no way anyone tested this for any reasonable length of time, things like the altimeter bug, settings resetting bug, lights missing on some parts, aero/thermo bug for anyone who plays spaceplanes (i think nobody in squad does, sadly) would be impossible to miss if there was any testing. That is why i think they just polished the cool new parts and textures and started working on the issues after launch. There will be a hotfix and a hotfix for the hotfix, 1.4 all over again.

Just my thoughts on the matter, and also why i rarely ever play the current version.

I am fairly certain why they pushed it out is because they are essentially using KSP 1.8 as a test bed for finding or troubleshooting issues in KSP 2 since it is (or will be) running the same engine version.

Essentially let’s them get free testers for KSP2 related issues. 

EDIT: Although we do get a better version out of the deal in the end, so not entirely free... even though we didn’t actually agree to be a part of this deal.

Edited October 23, 2019 by MechBFP

[Kergarin]

it's somehow annoying that this game breaking bug is still prioritized as low 

[MechBFP]

5 minutes ago, Kergarin said:

it's somehow annoying that this game breaking bug is still prioritized as low 

It is assigned already to someone working at Squad so at this point the assigned priority level is somewhat just an aesthetic. 

Although I agree, according to their own priority table this IS a “normal” priority issue. 

[Anth]

@kergarin yeah it the priority isnt an issue.

Once the weekend was over squad jumped all over the important bug reports like fly to honey.

The temperature and drag issues will most likely be at the top of their list

[katateochi]

On 10/21/2019 at 7:25 PM, ExtremeSquared said:

The question should be "Is this better or worse?"

Given this:

On 10/22/2019 at 12:56 PM, GunnyErmy said:

Ascending through any atmosphere with the reduced drag is essentially cheating, and getting back through the increased thermal with an SSTO is barely on the possible side of impossible.

I'd definitely say it's worse!  

 

4 hours ago, MechBFP said:

Essentially let’s them get free testers for KSP2 related issues. 

isn't KSP 2 supposed to be an almost from the ground up rebuild?

[MechBFP]

2 hours ago, katateochi said:

isn't KSP 2 supposed to be an almost from the ground up rebuild?

That is true, but they are still using Unity so I would definitely not be surprised to see similar issues between the two popping up during development due to engine issues being the root cause.

Edited October 24, 2019 by MechBFP

[fourfa]

I'd been wondering if they nerfed something in aero & drag in 1.8 to give a boost to prop planes and helicopters.  One of mine that made 254m/s max in 1.7.3 now goes 279m/s, with drastically different prop pitch settings than before.

Then, realizing that they'd nerfed some of the challenge out of SSTOs, cranked up aero heating to balance the scales a bit.

Just speculating.  All I know for sure is that Kerbin's newly-thin atmosphere feels more like Laythe's did.  Haven't been to Laythe yet in 1.8, perhaps it's like Duna now.

Edited October 24, 2019 by fourfa

[Kergarin]

13 hours ago, Anth12 said:

@kergarin yeah it the priority isnt an issue.

Once the weekend was over squad jumped all over the important bug reports like fly to honey.

The temperature and drag issues will most likely be at the top of their list

I'd just be happy to hear some hint if there are intended changes, or if the final version will behave like 1.7.3.

I don't want to put days or weeks into the game to create new designs, if they are based on the wrong aero and become worthless after the patch

[Guest]

On 10/23/2019 at 12:54 AM, AggressiveYoghurt said:

That is why i think they just polished the cool new parts and textures and started working on the issues after launch.

They didn't even polish those — the service bays use PNG textures.

[MechBFP]

55 minutes ago, Rocket Witch said:

the service bays use PNG textures.

And that’s a problem because....?

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, MechBFP said:

And that’s a problem because....?

Not sure of all the implications, but there is some elaboration here: https://bugs.kerbalspaceprogram.com/issues/23991

Edited October 24, 2019 by Guest

[Waxing_Kibbous]

9 hours ago, Kergarin said:

I'd just be happy to hear some hint if there are intended changes, or if the final version will behave like 1.7.3.

I don't want to put days or weeks into the game to create new designs, if they are based on the wrong aero and become worthless after the patch

Me too, just bought breaking ground but don't want to commit to a save until I know what works.

*I have no opinion either way btw, I'll adapt to aero changes

Edited October 24, 2019 by Waxing_Kibbous

[Kergarin]

@Just Jim could you please give us a hint, if there are intended aero and heat changes in 1.8 or if it will stay the same as in 1.7.3?

[djr5899]

So, is there any decent workaround for this until an official fix is released?  I saw something about editing a .cfg file, but, it didn't seem certain of what value to adjust, and whether that was a true "pre-1.8" value or just a drastic swing at correcting it.

Would really like to play some KSP this week, but, as a few others have said, I find it rather unplayable as it currently is.

[Kergarin]

42 minutes ago, djr5899 said:

So, is there any decent workaround for this until an official fix is released?  I saw something about editing a .cfg file, but, it didn't seem certain of what value to adjust, and whether that was a true "pre-1.8" value or just a drastic swing at correcting it.

Would really like to play some KSP this week, but, as a few others have said, I find it rather unplayable as it currently is.

This makes the game behave like 1.7.3. Works fine for me:

On 10/21/2019 at 3:25 AM, OHara said:

Many of the coefficients of drag in 'PartDatabase.cfg' , and a few of the part dimensions, seem to be clearly wrong in 1.8.0. 
If we delete that file, KSP regenerates it, but again with the wrong values.   

Those of us with a previous working installation can copy over the old 'PartDatabase.cfg',  delete the line containing "version = ..."
and that solves the 1.8.0 problems with aerodynamics and heat.

The problem is, squad doesn't tell us, if there are any intended changes in aero and heat, or if 1.8 was meant to still behave like 1.7.3.

 

This is the second weekend with an unplayable broken release, and without any comment. There is no point in playing the game and creating new designs, if no one knows if they will still work next week.

 

I'm not asking for a fix or a deep analysis. I know this can take time.

But squad DOES absolutely know all the time if they intended to change aero and heat in 1.8.

 

So please squad give us a hint. A or B. You can answer this in a second.

A. There are no intended changes, the patched release will behave like 1.7.3. You are fine with sticking to its aerodynamics.

B. There will be changes, you can stop playing until the patch comes out.

 

Edited October 27, 2019 by Kergarin

[Manwith Noname]

On 10/24/2019 at 7:35 PM, Rocket Witch said:

Not sure of all the implications, but there is some elaboration here: https://bugs.kerbalspaceprogram.com/issues/23991

Which isn't entirely true.

KSP contains a texture converter which means png files are appropriately converted to DDS and I believe, this includes creating mipmaps. Lack of mipmaps isn't always an issue though. No mipmaps means you have the full resolution texture displayed all the time regardless of how far it is viewed from. The effect this has depends on the texture but typically it results in "crawling", or more correctly aliasing. Fairly plain textures don't suffer too much but more detailed ones do.

The textures should however be converted to DDS by Squad in an external application for other reasons like, potentially better results, ensuring correct formats (I don't know if the algorithm can tell that a texture should be DXT1, DXT5 or DXT5nm) and ultimately quicker loading of the texture during program startup. What is an issue with the new parts, is the error in the normal maps for the orange foam nose cones...

Spoiler