[1.3.1] Ferram Aerospace Research: v0.15.9.1 "Liepmann" 4/2/18

[ss8913]

7 hours ago, ferram4 said:

@lude: that means that you installed it incorrectly.  I don't know what went wrong, but what did go wrong is that FAR did not load up properly at all if FARControllableSurface modules were not applied to stock surfaces.

@ss8913: As I've said many times, CKAN is not my problem.  If they're being incompetent or slow like they normally are, that's their job to deal with.  This is what happens when you rely on unnecessary middlemen.

@ferram4 - I understand, I'm just never sure if this is a CKAN issue or an issue somewhere else.  I need to go educate myself on how CKAN actually works, I guess.  Is it something where you just put it up on spacedock and CKAN is supposed to... find it there?  I'll just install FAR and KSPIE by hand for now.

[lude]

 

4 hours ago, tempsgk said:

Maybe I didn't notice it, but using FAR causes  FPS to be lower. Is it natural/expected?

It's natural for FAR to take up FPS, not a lot tho, it applies new physics rules and adds stuff to be calculated that does not exist in vanilla at all.

but I had no crashes and 'perfect' performance on that, even with ~200 part SSTO it performed better than not having FAR and being on 1203 or 1209) even when crafts disintegrated themselves (but that's more ksps feat i think)

I assume this bug is caused by one of the ~12000 MM patches or some other mod in some other way.

I wonder how I could have installed it incorrectly but for now I'll have a look at other mods being the culprit and sift through the error log, beside it being far from gamebreaking since everything works and I know the values from memory.

 

Edited April 21, 2016 by lude

[flx]

Thank you for such fast update! For me KSP is absolutely unplayable without FAR.

[blackrack]

4 hours ago, tempsgk said:

Maybe I didn't notice it, but using FAR causes  FPS to be lower. Is it natural/expected?

I know it's normal for FAR to cause some FPS loss, however with this fresh 1.1 release the hit seems much much bigger than usual.

I'm also seeing much higher CPU usage compared to stock, this is normally a good thing, but I'm getting 70-90% cpu usage in the space center view with nothing happening. I must also add this doesn't happen the first time you load the game, but once I go in flight the CPU usage jumps up and stays that way when I get back to space center view. Tested with both 32bit and 64bit windows builds with just FAR and scatterer installed, CPU is an i5-2400 @3.1 Ghz, no errors or anything weird in the log.

[lude]

16 minutes ago, blackrack said:

I know it's normal for FAR to cause some FPS loss, however with this fresh 1.1 release the hit seems much much bigger than usual.

I'm also seeing much higher CPU usage compared to stock, this is normally a good thing, but I'm getting 70-90% cpu usage in the space center view with nothing happening. I must also add this doesn't happen the first time you load the game, but once I go in flight the CPU usage jumps up and stays that way when I get back to space center view. Tested with both 32bit and 64bit windows builds with just FAR and scatterer installed, CPU is an i5-2400 @3.1 Ghz, no errors or anything weird in the log.

doesn't necessarily need to show an error in the log, could be a normal log operation

last mod that completely broke the game for me wasn't even a plugin mod but a contract pack: field sciences it spent most of the time creating new contracts and never stop ui lag of several seconds

but with only two mods having such bad performance is pretty strange and far only does so and so much on space center view (finishes pretty quickly usually)

Have you tried changing the physics related settings under FAR yet?

As long as you're not on a laptop i5-2400 @ 3.1 doesn't seem too bad but kerbal is a very hungry game when it comes to single core performance.

[blackrack]

6 minutes ago, lude said:

Have you tried changing the physics related settings under FAR yet?

As long as you're not on a laptop i5-2400 @ 3.1 doesn't seem too bad but kerbal is a very hungry game when it comes to single core performance.

Last I checked there weren't any settings in FAR that affect the performance. It's not a laptop and an i5-2400 has more than enough single and multi-core performance for KSP.

[lude]

Just now, blackrack said:

Last I checked there weren't any settings in FAR that affect the performance. It's not a laptop and an i5-2400 has more than enough single and multi-core performance for KSP.

First: Kerbal doesn't care much for multicore performance, sure having win10 is better than 7 in sheer performance, especially multicore but eh

Second: There are several settings that affect the performance by changing how much physics load there is, they are explained in game under the settings.

Third, the more concurrent programs you have that require accurate and fast cpu time the less performant kerbal will be, because it's physics engine is restrained to one core and due to technical limitations barely can use 100% of it

there are few things one can do to help there, removing programs that require a lot of calls will help even tho windows will try to schedule it somewhat smartly it won't always succeed

increasing the FSB gives the greatest increase in this 'mythical IPC' rating since it increases the speed at which information gets delivered (or rather the bandwidth)

on some CPU you apparently can restrict one core per CU (architecture dependant) it should be a net single core performance increase of over 10% but will ravage multicore (since it basically halves the amount of cores)

also ,

my cpu isn't that much more powerful and I'm running ~65 mods and have yet to run into any performance problems, doesn't matter if I dart through the sky at 1km/s or leave atmosphere while nearly burning up.

 

Perhaps it's just some bug from 1209 or something completely unrelated, have you opted out of the beta yet to receive the most recent built? Have you had a look at the logs and could just upload them?

If it's using that much cpu there is a high likelyhood at least something will be logged. and there's also the possibility to enable dev version and probably increase log verbosity, perhaps that's even possible without or not.

 

p.s.

You have to be in space center view to access the physics part of FAR and without these two mods performance is normal?

 

Also my CPU is by far not strong enough to handle KSP (how I play it) despite outperforming yours by quite a bit.

I'm used to ascending at half frames per second.

[blackrack]

1 hour ago, lude said:

First: Kerbal doesn't care much for multicore performance, sure having win10 is better than 7 in sheer performance, especially multicore but eh

Second: There are several settings that affect the performance by changing how much physics load there is, they are explained in game under the settings.

Third, the more concurrent programs you have that require accurate and fast cpu time the less performant kerbal will be, because it's physics engine is restrained to one core and due to technical limitations barely can use 100% of it

there are few things one can do to help there, removing programs that require a lot of calls will help even tho windows will try to schedule it somewhat smartly it won't always succeed

increasing the FSB gives the greatest increase in this 'mythical IPC' rating since it increases the speed at which information gets delivered (or rather the bandwidth)

on some CPU you apparently can restrict one core per CU (architecture dependant) it should be a net single core performance increase of over 10% but will ravage multicore (since it basically halves the amount of cores)

also ,

my cpu isn't that much more powerful and I'm running ~65 mods and have yet to run into any performance problems, doesn't matter if I dart through the sky at 1km/s or leave atmosphere while nearly burning up.

Perhaps it's just some bug from 1209 or something completely unrelated, have you opted out of the beta yet to receive the most recent built? Have you had a look at the logs and could just upload them?

If it's using that much cpu there is a high likelyhood at least something will be logged. and there's also the possibility to enable dev version and probably increase log verbosity, perhaps that's even possible without or not.

p.s.

You have to be in space center view to access the physics part of FAR and without these two mods performance is normal?

Also my CPU is by far not strong enough to handle KSP (how I play it) despite outperforming yours by quite a bit.

I'm used to ascending at half frames per second.

I tend to refrain from building bloated ships so I can enjoy a lag-free and kraken-free experience, I rarely exceed 100 parts. I don't know but you're on about but I don't have background programs running and I'm seeing a very high CPU usage in KSP (70-90% so multicore) when FAR is installed, I removed all mods, and only FAR seems to make a difference. And yes I opted out of beta (duh).

[garwel]

Whoa! CKAN has updated!

[ferram4]

@blackrack: I can't reproduce any high CPU usage issues; for me it hovers around 30-40% in flight and 15-25% in the space center view, and I'm using an i5-2540m on a laptop.  Are you using a new save file with a new settings.cfg and physics.cfg in the KSP directory, or did you copy any of that over from the previous KSP version?

[blackrack]

4 minutes ago, ferram4 said:

@blackrack: I can't reproduce any high CPU usage issues; for me it hovers around 30-40% in flight and 15-25% in the space center view, and I'm using an i5-2540m on a laptop.  Are you using a new save file with a new settings.cfg and physics.cfg in the KSP directory, or did you copy any of that over from the previous KSP version?

I think the save file carried over from one of the pre-release versions, but there's nothing interesting going on in. I'll try a completely fresh install.

[jfcomposer]

@ferram4:  In pre-1.1 versions of FAR with procedural control surfaces, I remember being able to set a control surface as a flap or spoiler and adjust the increment angle for each "step."  Two quick questions:

1.  This functionality was added by FAR and not some other mod, correct?

2.  Are there plans to implement it in the newest version?  If those options are still there, I can't seem to find them.

Thanks for all your hard work on this mod! I've really enjoyed it over the past couple of years.

Edited April 21, 2016 by jfcomposer

[ferram4]

1. that functionality was added by FAR.

2. That functionality is still implemented in FAR.

Check to make sure that FAR was installed correctly.  If that isn't showing up, it is likely that (for some reason) FAR did not install correctly, whether it be the mod itself or its dependencies.

[lude]

I'm currently trying to make mm patches for some aerodynamic mods (specifically OPT 1.8)

and I was wondering how I'd best get/estimate the values for MAC, MidChordSweep, b_2, TaperRatio and e

nonSideAttach is probably not for wings, so the new controlsurfaces for the wings in OPT 1.8 would be 1 instead of 0/no? (they're independant of the wings now and have to be placed without node) or is a 1 just for node dependant things?

maxdeflect I guess is the shape of the wing and it's angle towards the plane (or the maximum setting when tweaking the parts in game?) 

ctrlSurfFrac is probably the amount of the surface being used for controlling purposes (pitch/yaw/roll etc)

 

anyway back to flying stuff around kerbin, I like how with FAR you can glide for so long when entering atmosphere again, really great mod

 

--edit--

@PART[i_4m_cockpit_isp]:AFTER[FerramAerospaceResearch]
{
    @MODULE[GeometryPartModule]{%forceUseMeshes = True}
}

why exactly could this be important?

Edited April 21, 2016 by lude

[ferram4]

https://github.com/ferram4/Ferram-Aerospace-Research/wiki/Deriving-FAR-values-for-a-wing-using-Blender-2.7

b_2 is the length from the wing root (where it attaches) to the wingtip, perpendicular to the wing root.

MAC is the average of the wing root chord and wingtip chord.

TaperRatio is the wingtip chord / wing root chord.

MidChordSweep is the angle between the span line (same as measured for b_2) and a line drawn from the midpoint of the wing root chord to the midpoint of the wingtip chord in degrees.

e is calculated internally by FAR, don't worry about it.

nonSideAttach is for differentiating control surface parts intended to be attached to the back of wings from regular wing parts.  Only set it to 1 for those types of control surfaces.

maxDeflect is the total number of degrees that a control surface can deflect by default; this defaults to 20, don't set it higher than 40, and you don't even need to worry about it because it is tweakable.

ctrlSurfFrac is the fraction of the surface that is a control surface for wing parts that are part unmoving wing, part control surface.  Varies from 0 to 1.

Best way to get these values is to open the models in blender and measure them.

[ExEvolution]

Something doesn't seem right with the latest build, I'm getting nearly 0 Gs of deceleration at 33k, I descended from 280k down to 35, and it has taken 3 revolutions so far just to get my apoapsis below 70k. I don't remember it being this thin in previous versions.

https://imgur.com/RGEWDPp

Edit: Still going 1200m/s at 3k meters high

Edited April 21, 2016 by ExEvolution

[matko1990]

@ExEvolution I had the same issue. Reinstalling FAR fixed it for me. May be that ckan did something wrong during the installation. Btw I also had the high CPU load issue, but it was also fixed by the reinstallation  

[Spenzor]

Had the same "slippery air" issue - fixed by installing manually, rather than through ckan. Pretty clear that the issue is caused by the ckan installation, rather than FAR proper.

[tetryds]

Just a reminder for everyone, if you have installed FAR through CKAN this is not the place to discuss any issue you have with it, regardless of what you think is causing it.

If you use CKAN head over to the FAR CKAN support thread: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/127492-FAR-via-CKAN-Support-Thread

It is known to cause a lot of problems with FAR and that is not of ferram's concern.

Before reporting anything here make sure it also happens when installing manually with as few mods as possible, and post the list of the mods you are using and proper reproduction steps, otherwise it just becomes noise rather than something that would help fixing the problem.

[ExEvolution]

I did not install with CKAN, I did a manual install of all my mods.

So I reinstalled the archive and I'm about to test again, but I ran a difference tool on the freshly extracted folder vs the one that was causing the slippery air and saved any files that did not match between the old and the reinstall.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B6XmL37AFRVGNkpzV0pldTlzUmM

It seems like the config files may have been generated incorrectly the first time.

 

Edit: So even after reinstalling, same problem. Must be an interraction with another mod. Here's my mod list, if you know any mods that are known to cause issues with FAR

KSP: 1.1 (Win64) - Unity: 5.2.4f1 - OS: Windows 10  (10.0.0) 64bit
USI Tools - 0.7.1
B9 Aerospace Procedural Parts - 0.40.2
Better Science Labs Continued - 0.1.7.1
Community Resource Pack - 0.5
Connected Living Space - 1.2.0.9
Contract Configurator - 1.10.4
Contract Pack: Field Research - 1.1.7
Contract Pack: Bases and Stations - 3.2.1
Contract Pack: RemoteTech - 2.0.2
Contract Pack: Tourism Plus - 1.4.2
CustomBarnKit - 1.1.7
DMagic Orbital Science - 1.2.3
CapCom Mission Control On The Go - 1.0.2.1
EditorExtensionsRedux - 3.2.1.9
Ferram Aerospace Research - 0.15.6
Firespitter - 7.2.1
Docking Sounds - 2.1
Kerabl Optical Alignment System - 1.0
Interstellar Fuel Switch - 1.21
RasterPropMonitor - 0.25
Kerbal Engineer Redux - 1.1.0.2
Kerbal Joint Reinforcement - 3.1.5
KSP-AVC Plugin - 1.1.6.1
KW-Rocketry-Community-Fixes - 0.4.12
Lithobrake Exploration Technologies - 0.3.4
Infernal Robots - 2.0
MissionController 2 - 1.3.4
ModularFlightIntegrator - 1.1.3
Docking Port Alignment Indicator - 6.3
PlanetShine - 0.2.5
RCS Build Aid - 0.8
RCS Sounds - 5.0
RemoteTech - 1.6.11
SafeChute - 1.9
SCANsat - 1.1.6
ShipManifest - 5.0.9
StageRecovery - 1.6.4
Strategia - 1.2.1
TweakScale - 2.2.6.1
USI Core - 0.2.1
Karbonite - 0.7.1
Karbonite Plus - 0.6.1
KSP Interstellar Extended - 1.8.9
Waypoint Manager - 2.5
Wider Contracts App - 1.3.2
[x] Science! - 4.15

 

Edit again: Ok so it seems that by simply restarting the game, the thin air problem seems to have gone away. Is it possible that the configs are broken on first launch and relaunching it fixes it? Also, I noticed I was getting "Updating voxel" spam in debug when I was having the issue.

Edited April 22, 2016 by ExEvolution

[ferram4]

There are no config files that need to be generated and then reloaded for anything to function correctly.  I notice from your mod list that you are missing both ModuleManager and ModularFlightIntegrator; this will horribly break FAR.  I suspect that is your issue.

[ExEvolution]

This was a copy and paste from AVC which for whatever reason does not include module manager. I have ModuleManager.2.6.22.dll in GameData

[ferram4]

Well, then I don't know what the issue is.  Without you personally making changes in-game, the Custom*.cfg files are the exact same as their non-custom equivalents.  I have been unable to reproduce the issue.

[Cairol]

Same procedure as every update: Is the "heating exaggeration bug" that caused parts to overheat and explode spontaneously no longer happening with KSP 1.1 and FAR?

That nasty KSP bug which was made apparent by using FAR was the reason for me to abstain from using FAR since a couple of versions ago.
And I'd love to be able to use it again...without having my stations blow up.

Edited April 22, 2016 by Cairol

[ferram4]

That bug was fixed quite a few FAR versions ago.