Revert landing gear?

[Bej Kerman]

I just want the current crappy excuse for landing gear (especially the aircraft ones) we have right now out of the game, and replaced with the pre-1.0 gear.

Edited December 30, 2019 by Bej Kerman

[Lisias]

30 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

I just want the current crappy excuse for landing gear (especially the aircraft ones) we have right now out of the game, and replaced with the pre-1.0 gear.

This can be arranged.... 

Reach this guys and ask them!

[Shadowmage]

54 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

I just want the current crappy excuse for landing gear (especially the aircraft ones) we have right now out of the game, and replaced with the pre-1.0 gear.

Assuming you are talking about the physics implementation -- it is quite impossible, given the changes to the underlying physics engine.  This is entirely out of the control of SQUAD, and is a travesty that was pushed upon them by the Unity team (who themselves released a terrible Wheel Collider and vehicle system).  SQUAD has done the best they can to polish and put glitter on the turd, but it will always be a pile of excrement; no amount of polish/glitter/band-aid patches will change that.

The closest you will come under modern KSP versions is using KSPWheel for your wheel-related parts. ( https://github.com/shadowmage45/KSPWheel/releases/tag/0.16.14.33 ).  This mod was written specifically to mimic the functions of the old (Unity4) wheel-colliders, and to no do any of the silly stuff the current stock wheels do.  Not going to say that KSPWheel is perfect, because it is not, but it is far better than the stock wheel code for nearly every conceivable use.

There is even a stock-part-patch to 'fix' the stock parts (untested/un-maintained in quite some time; use at your own risk) ( https://github.com/shadowmage45/KerbalFoundries2/tree/master/KerbalFoundries-Patches/Stock )

 

TLDR:  This is probably the single-most requested 'change' to KSP in regards to the wheels (i.e. make them not terrible); if it were possible, I'm sure SQUAD would have fixed them literally years ago.  However it is not under their control to fix, and is a problem with Unity itself.

[Bej Kerman]

22 hours ago, Shadowmage said:

This is entirely out of the control of SQUAD

 

22 hours ago, Shadowmage said:

This mod was written specifically to mimic the functions of the old (Unity4) wheel-colliders, and to no do any of the silly stuff the current stock wheels do.  Not going to say that KSPWheel is perfect, because it is not, but it is far better than the stock wheel code for nearly every conceivable use.

How come modders can do something about this, but Squad can't?

[RealKerbal3x]

1 hour ago, Bej Kerman said:

 

How come modders can do something about this, but Squad can't?

KSPWheel isn't a modification of the stock Unity wheel module, it's a completely new module. The reason SQUAD can't do much to the stock module is because it's not developed by them, it's developed by the Unity developers. Meanwhile, modders can mess with KSPWheel all they want because they develop it and are in control of it.

[Shadowmage]

2 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

 

How come modders can do something about this, but Squad can't?

 

1 hour ago, RealKerbal3x said:

KSPWheel isn't a modification of the stock Unity wheel module, it's a completely new module. The reason SQUAD can't do much to the stock module is because it's not developed by them, it's developed by the Unity developers. Meanwhile, modders can mess with KSPWheel all they want because they develop it and are in control of it.

^^ Pretty much that.

To be clear -- SQUAD could implement their own custom wheel system (and I fully believe that they should have once they knew the extent of the breakage with the Unity wheel system), in the same manner that KSPWheel has been implemented.  Likely they could even do it better, having tighter integration with the base KSP source code.

Why they continue to invest man-hours in band-aid style hacks to try and clean up the issues with the Unity Wheel Collider also doesn't make sense to me.  In likely a small portion of the time that they've invested in the fixes (and dealing with the deluge of bug reports concerning the problems), they could have implemented their own wheel system, had the entire thing directly under their control, and could have provided players with a working and non-frustrating option.

Alternatively, depending on how invested SQUAD is in the Unity engine, I believe there is an option to allow source-access to the engine, at which point they could possibly have actually fixed the problem, properly, at its source.  This is mostly speculation though, as the problems actually lie in the PhysX middleware package, which may or may not be editable with a Unity source license.  Regardless, to implement their own or fix the Unity systems, they would have to have someone knowledgeable in wheel and vehicle physics (which I speculate is why they tried to just band-aid the existing stuff; lack of expertise to roll-their-own).

[klgraham1013]

14 minutes ago, Shadowmage said:

SQUAD could implement their own custom wheel system

Seems like a logical solution to me. 

[Bej Kerman]

5 hours ago, RealKerbal3x said:

KSPWheel isn't a modification of the stock Unity wheel module, it's a completely new module. The reason SQUAD can't do much to the stock module is because it's not developed by them, it's developed by the Unity developers. Meanwhile, modders can mess with KSPWheel all they want because they develop it and are in control of it.

Then Squad could just make a new module, like the smaller groups of modders that are seemingly 3,141x better than Squad at programming stuff.

[RealKerbal3x]

32 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

Then Squad could just make a new module, like the smaller groups of modders that are seemingly 3,141x better than Squad at programming stuff.

Yes, they could. But you know, SQUAD doesn't always make the logical choice...

[Lisias]

17 hours ago, RealKerbal3x said:

Yes, they could. But you know, SQUAD doesn't always make the logical choice...

I think I'm the only one that likes the new gears?  Adjusting the springs and the dumpers are needed too on real life, and I enjoy such engineering challenges.

What I think it's missing it's a decent automatic adjuster. The automatic settings are the one to be blamed, not the gears itself - once you set them correctly, they works.

[Bej Kerman]

13 minutes ago, Lisias said:

I think I'm the only one that likes the new gears?  Adjusting the springs and the dumpers are needed too on real life, and I enjoy such engineering challenges.

What I think it's missing it's a decent automatic adjuster. The automatic settings are the one to be blamed, not the gears itself - once you set them correctly, they works.

I've tested many configurations for an SSTO and all of them lead to it evaporating on touchdown, no matter the vertical velocity. Some other times, the gear turn into infinite energy sources, which is the complete opposite of 'realistic' as you claim them to be. Just... how do you put up with these? I want to know.

[Lisias]

3 hours ago, Bej Kerman said:

I've tested many configurations for an SSTO and all of them lead to it evaporating on touchdown, no matter the vertical velocity. Some other times, the gear turn into infinite energy sources, which is the complete opposite of 'realistic' as you claim them to be. Just... how do you put up with these? I want to know.

So  you are abusing the gears. You need MOAR GEARS  wisely placed on the hull to correctly spread the load.

See, this is used on real life:

If you are a TweakScale user, the current 2.5 Beta are scaling (stock) gears correctly, if you want to try it.

On the other hand, there's nothing wrong on hating such "engineering challenges" neither - so that patch above applying KSPWheels on the stock parts is also a valid way out for your problem.

[eddiew]

On 12/31/2019 at 6:35 PM, Shadowmage said:

Why they continue to invest man-hours in band-aid style hacks to try and clean up the issues with the Unity Wheel Collider also doesn't make sense to me.

My observation is that the Squad of modern times hesitates to engage in anything that might require them to do maths... How long did we wait for delta-v calculations?

Which is not to say I lack love and respect for the devs, I just kind of notice they prefer making new parts to altering existing code

[Bej Kerman]

13 hours ago, eddiew said:

My observation is that the Squad of modern times hesitates to engage in anything that might require them to do maths... How long did we wait for delta-v calculations?

Which is not to say I lack love and respect for the devs, I just kind of notice they prefer making new parts to altering existing code

...why don't they pick anyone up that's remotely competent with math?

[klgraham1013]

13 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

...why don't they pick anyone up that's remotely competent with math?

It's easier to blame Unity, and most of the community seems to accept that.  The "good enough" attitude is somewhat pervasive in KSP.

[Lisias]

37 minutes ago, Bej Kerman said:

...why don't they pick anyone up that's remotely competent with math?

I can only speculate, but there're a kind of shortage of professionals able to carry such jobs. Writing games demands some skills not usually valued on other fields of the trade, and writing space computer games demands yet more unusual skills - as advanced maths.

Most people I known or get in touch never laid a foot on a College, and the ones that did usually stayed away from Calculus and Algebra, focusing on social and political classes as Project Management. I can count using my fingers the guys I known that really studied Software Engineering, what to say about Advanced Calablculus and Astrophysics? (google about STEM crisis and similar wording)

And once you find such a guy, well... You need to hire him somehow. The game industry is not exactly known to provide a good quality of life for the employees together a good payment and convenient working models (of course, there're honorable exceptions) - so hiring talented and experienced old farts are somewhat tricky, making hard to build an heterogeneous team with different talents that would sustain a self-learning, self-improving culture.Homogeneous teams tends to close themselves in a self-reference, self-indulging culture, usually ending in disasters.

 

41 minutes ago, klgraham1013 said:

It's easier to blame Unity, and most of the community seems to accept that.  The "good enough" attitude is somewhat pervasive in KSP.

Blaming Unity is an explanation, not a solution - but boy, Unity just don't help on it. The atrocities these guys pushed on us are.... laughable sometimes.

But yet, you are only the victim on the first time - from the second strike and beyond, you are an accomplice of the problem.

(had I mentioned self-indulgence recently?)

[Bej Kerman]

53 minutes ago, Lisias said:

I can only speculate, but there're a kind of shortage of professionals able to carry such jobs. Writing games demands some skills not usually valued on other fields of the trade, and writing space computer games demands yet more unusual skills - as advanced maths.

Most people I known or get in touch never laid a foot on a College, and the ones that did usually stayed away from Calculus and Algebra, focusing on social and political classes as Project Management. I can count using my fingers the guys I known that really studied Software Engineering, what to say about Advanced Calablculus and Astrophysics? (google about STEM crisis and similar wording)

And once you find such a guy, well... You need to hire him somehow. The game industry is not exactly known to provide a good quality of life for the employees together a good payment and convenient working models (of course, there're honorable exceptions) - so hiring talented and experienced old farts are somewhat tricky, making hard to build an heterogeneous team with different talents that would sustain a self-learning, self-improving culture.Homogeneous teams tends to close themselves in a self-reference, self-indulging culture, usually ending in disasters.

Can't they just implement mods into the stock game? The Mk2 plane parts came from a C7 mod I think.

[Bej Kerman]

16 hours ago, eddiew said:

Which is not to say I lack love and respect for the devs, I just kind of notice they prefer making new parts to altering existing code

Thinking about it, Squad is probably headed in the same direction as Frontier with their Elite: Dangerous, I.E. 'All decorations, no features'.

[Lisias]

1 hour ago, Bej Kerman said:

Can't they just implement mods into the stock game? The Mk2 plane parts came from a C7 mod I think.

No, due licensing and political issues. They need to hire the guy to do the job for them, otherwise they would be using non exclusive assets on the game, what it's bad from the business point of view - just imagine Simple Planes using the same MK2 models as KSP?  

From an old fart developer, I need to tell you that most (but not all) Add'Ons around here are crafted by non professionals. Some of them abuse Unity in a way that Squad can not dare to do so, as they pay for support and by doing such stunts, the Unity guys would [insert your non forum compliant favorite expletive here] them big time.  When you pay support to someone, you do what they say - otherwise they are not responsible for the outcome.

And corporations work by paying people to be responsible by the outcome.

So, even if the licensing allows, they need to rewrite the thing to meet their constraints - and so we have again the problem of hiring workforce not only to built the thing, but to maintain it too as KSP evolves.

What's another source of problems, as Squad, apparently, is having a bad time on evolving the product without breaking a lot of working things - switching Engine's version is already hard enough, but I think there's a lack of methodology (perhaps due cultural issues) on their process that ends up with a lot of loose ties on the final product, with the consequential breakage on the field.

 

1 hour ago, Bej Kerman said:

Thinking about it, Squad is probably headed in the same direction as Frontier with their Elite: Dangerous, I.E. 'All decorations, no features'.

It's a insightful though. Congrats.

Edited January 2, 2020 by Lisias
some missing S's, some S's in excess.. =P

[Klapaucius]

On 1/2/2020 at 5:24 AM, Lisias said:

I think I'm the only one that likes the new gears?  Adjusting the springs and the dumpers are needed too on real life, and I enjoy such engineering challenges.

What I think it's missing it's a decent automatic adjuster. The automatic settings are the one to be blamed, not the gears itself - once you set them correctly, they works.

For the most part I agree. I've been able to get most of my gear working pretty well by tweaking the spring strength and dampers. The exception is the LY01 and LY05 small gear.  I simply cannot get this to play well with very light aircraft.  I love this little plane, but it is like landing on pogo sticks, and taking off is a bounce fest.

 

https://kerbalx.com/Klapaucius/Roald

 

[Guest]

What are these issues people are having with wheels? I only have two worth mentioning: the bounce when physics kicks in (and in the current build that's pretty much under control), and the slow drift on parked craft (and that's not even specific to wheels). 

[Lisias]

5 hours ago, Klapaucius said:

For the most part I agree. I've been able to get most of my gear working pretty well by tweaking the spring strength and dampers. The exception is the LY01 and LY05 small gear.  I simply cannot get this to play well with very light aircraft.  I love this little plane, but it is like landing on pogo sticks, and taking off is a bounce fest.

 

https://kerbalx.com/Klapaucius/Roald

 

Try scaling them down with TweakScale 2.5 Beta. I'm testing (correctly) scaling Wheels form some time, and this code is working fine until now, it's stable enough to be in use on my "production" KSPs, but, as usual, try the thing on a disposable copy of your instalment.