Docking mod

[Randox]

Hmm, it would be very difficult to dock/undock without imparting energy. Ideally, the craft your essentially driving into would have an automatic RCS system to keep it steady, which would work best with a grapple system so that instantaneous forces acting upon it would never need to exceed its thrust capacity. But that wont happen, so you'll have to make any corrections once the docking is complete, with either craft. Fortunately, if your gentle, it shouldn't be too bad. And if you dock small to large, then the bigger the large craft the less it matters. Undocking is a bit better. Just let go and use your RCS system to back off, using short bursts. Ideally your RCS system would not have any thrusters too close to the other craft, so that they don't push it.

I was thinking more about how close can a sattelite be when I go flying past it with 3 big rocket engines at full power, without blowing it up or knocking it out of orbit. I'm guessing its actually pretty close, but I can't say for sure.

[erkle64]

Indeed. it does! When he comes out of timewarp the peices are a bit crooked, and the snap back together again in the same fashion that they do when they dock. I'm impressed that it works, but after a long warp, they might be too far apart for the snap to work, or if it does, it might pull the parts back together too violently.

I don't know if it's exposed in the modding API but in general physics engine can change an object's position and velocity without applying any force.

[HoneyFox]

I don't know if it's exposed in the modding API but in general physics engine can change an object's position and velocity without applying any force.

So is it possible to record the relative position between the lander and the dock when the time-compression starts and then keep this relation during the warp until the time-compression is back to 1x?

Edited September 14, 2012 by HoneyFox

[willitstimothy]

Indeed. it does! When he comes out of timewarp the peices are a bit crooked, and the snap back together again in the same fashion that they do when they dock. I'm impressed that it works, but after a long warp, they might be too far apart for the snap to work, or if it does, it might pull the parts back together too violently.

That "snap" is when the game reevaluates the physics of the spacecraft. It's the same jerk that can take place at the time of launch, as well as during the game from time to time (like when you come out of warp, or when you are launching and climbing and the game's physics reevaluates). It shouldn't rip the spacecraft apart at all - it would just tend to be annoying at times.

[erkle64]

Still not released? Feel free to use my one in the mean time, it's nowhere near as good, but it does handle warp.

http://www.boxtin.co.nz/downloads/ErkleWarpClamp.zip

[fitosm]

it's incredible erkle64!!!!

[RayR]

erkle64... You've made my day !

[fuu]

erkle64, great work, i tested it and it is awesome!

Thank you for creating such a awesome mod

[HoneyFox]

Fantastic!

Have a fast check of the codes. Looks like it is recording the relative position and repeatedly setting the ship's position according to that, just like what i guessed before.

But well, i'm just guessing but you are the man who achieved this. Thank you!

EDIT:

advice: make the nearestDistance as a public member of the class so it can be tweaked via part.cfg. So that we can avoid wrong docking position when we have multiple docks nearby.

Also, can you add some angle check of the docks. Like calculating the normalized direction vector of both docks. If the value is bigger than -1 to some degree (also we can setup this threshold in part.cfg), then the docking request will be rejected because the angle is not good enough.

Edited September 14, 2012 by HoneyFox

[erkle64]

Fantastic!

Have a fast check of the codes. Looks like it is recording the relative position and repeatedly setting the ship's position according to that, just like what i guessed before.

But well, i'm just guessing but you are the man who achieved this. Thank you!

It repeatedly moves both ships into position when in warp mode but it uses a fixed physical joint in real time mode. I'll be looking into pack/unpack and save/load in the morning, New Zealand time, that should allow switching away from the area.

[katyjsst]

Yup! You are one of a kind

[AlexL]

Now to achieve my ultimate kerbal goal of building a halo ring, although I may wait for bop, that'd be too many ships for any other body in the system

[HoneyFox]

It repeatedly moves both ships into position when in warp mode but it uses a fixed physical joint in real time mode. I'll be looking into pack/unpack and save/load in the morning, New Zealand time, that should allow switching away from the area.

Ah...is that joint the source of the traction force which helps to merge the two ships? or is the joint created after they're merged?

Anyway, I guess fuel transfering may be doable via this dock system. But I don't know if the game engine allows changing fuel amount in a part of other ship. If the refuel function (actually it's the consuming fuel function called with a negative parameter IIRC) is exposed to other classes, it can be done.

Edited September 14, 2012 by HoneyFox

[HoneyFox]

Managed to merge two cargo ships together. Wonderful and Thanks again.

[Ekku Zakku]

Right now I'm waiting through school, then I have work later, so I can't try this out until the evening.... FFFFFFFFFF WHY?!?!

[KSPYasin]

erkle64 is it posible to make custom model of docking clamp like 0.43 m one for smal pod?

[Ekku Zakku]

I would try resizing the docking module in the .cfg.

[Justin8Ball]

This mod looks sick. This the answer to our prayers for when 0.17 comes out. I can see it now, my version of constellion.

[Shuttle]

erkle64

Your mod is awesome! I think you should create a thread in this section of the forum so that everyone could see it

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/forumdisplay.php/38-Plugin-Powered-Addon-Releases

The only issue I've found is that the docking ports wobble when turning the ship or engines running - it would be great to strengthen the connection so that the docked ships would behave like a solid construction

But this mod is great anyway, I can now simulate Apollo mission.

[SLAMS]

erkle64

SNIP... it would be great to strengthen the connection so that the docked ships would behave like a solid construction

It's not a matter of strength and there is no connection as far as the game is concerned, the code just keeps resetting the position of the clamps(and the ships connected to them) repeatedly so they are end to end. So it can't be made "stronger".

Still epic.

[fuu]

I'm able to dock with this mod, but there's one annoying problem: the other ships is always spinning. Is there a way to turn SAS on even on "unactive" ships?

Thanks

[QuantumFlux]

It's not a matter of strength and there is no connection as far as the game is concerned, the code just keeps resetting the position of the clamps(and the ships connected to them) repeatedly so they are end to end. So it can't be made "stronger".

Still epic.

Actually, he did say that he uses a physical joint while the game is in physics mode. It only sets the position of the other ship when warping, because then theres no physics around to help you with that sort of stuff.

[Tim_Barrett]

Wait, is this the mod that I saw in the video or a different one?

[bimbo0099]

It's a different one, less sophisticated but all the same awesome ;-)

The one from the video is supossed to be released in the near future.

Quickly tested erkles's mod and it worked brilliantly. Thank you for that erkle64!

[erkle64]

Thanks heaps for the feedback. I'll be ironing out a couple issues and adding a few features today, then I'll post it in the addon release section.

This isn't the docking mod from the OP, I just got impatient and made one myself last night.