[1.12.x] Waterfall - a framework for continuous, mesh-driven engine effects (October 9)

[RealKerbal3x]

9 minutes ago, Knight of St John said:

Aha I see now. Yea, I basically looked at the ISP's and matched them with a propellant that makes sense.
But switching to a different fuel just means messing around with the colors a bit :-) And I think I might actually do that.
From what I can find on the interwebs, the Aerozine plume looks clear/white to red-ish at sea level, but clear/white/slightly blue in vacuum.

Yeah, and according to the wiki the Poodle is (loosely) based on the dual RL-10s on the Centaur stage - and the Ariane 5 upper stage engine in the case of the single bell variant - which are both hydrolox engines. So maybe it would make more sense to give the Poodle a hydrolox plume, even if it's technically not as efficient as the Wolfhound might be.

[Knight of St John]

4 minutes ago, RealKerbal3x said:

Yeah, and according to the wiki the Poodle is (loosely) based on the dual RL-10s on the Centaur stage - and the Ariane 5 upper stage engine in the case of the single bell variant - which are both hydrolox engines. So maybe it would make more sense to give the Poodle a hydrolox plume, even if it's technically not as efficient as the Wolfhound might be.

Right. KSP is really inconsistent with these engine stats. On the one hand, the hypergolic engines have ISP's of around 320s irl, a lot worse than hydrolox, but in-game they have a  better ISP than the supposed hydrolox engines.
So it really all depends if you look at the inspiration the devs used for the engines, or the actual stats of them.

Edited February 11, 2021 by Knight of St John

[RealKerbal3x]

15 minutes ago, Knight of St John said:

Right. KSP is really inconsistent with these engine stats. On the one hand, the hypergolic engines have ISP's of around 320s irl, a lot worse than hydrolox, but in-game they have a  better ISP than the supposed hydrolox engines.
So it really all depends if you look at the inspiration the devs used for the engines, or the actual stats of them.

I feel like this mainly comes down to most of the Making History engines being slightly overpowered, even after the balance patch a few versions ago. You're the one making the configs, so it's up to you whether you base the plumes on the real engines' propellant or on their ingame Isp's. Personally I would prefer the plumes to be accurate to their IRL counterparts, but that's just my two cents.

[Zorg]

34 minutes ago, Knight of St John said:

Right. KSP is really inconsistent with these engine stats. On the one hand, the hypergolic engines have ISP's of around 320s irl, a lot worse than hydrolox, but in-game they have a  better ISP than the supposed hydrolox engines.
So it really all depends if you look at the inspiration the devs used for the engines, or the actual stats of them.

 

39 minutes ago, RealKerbal3x said:

Yeah, and according to the wiki the Poodle is (loosely) based on the dual RL-10s on the Centaur stage - and the Ariane 5 upper stage engine in the case of the single bell variant - which are both hydrolox engines. So maybe it would make more sense to give the Poodle a hydrolox plume, even if it's technically not as efficient as the Wolfhound might be.

So while Im not doing stock engines this time around, when I took over RealPlume, I did do them for ReStock and maintained the existing configs for the base stock engines.

You have a slightly tricky decision here. The thing is the actual performance of stock engines do not match their inspiration. Since the stock game doesnt support low density fuels such as hydrolox or methalox you have engines that are visually inspired by real world high efficiency fuels that dont really match that performance. That can be explained away by simply considering KSP is not trying to recreate those engines and is just inspired by them.

Making history makes things even trickier though. In this case we have replica engines including Saturn V parts. The problem is the large tankage for the SII and S4B stages come from the proportions of a real world rocket using low density hydrogen. The only way to even slightly balance that out using LFO is to the make the J2 much LESS efficient than even other engines to counterbalance the high fuel density of LFO. Then the wolfhound when it came out had actual hydrolox stats 410s before eventually being *nerfed* back to Raptor vac level (380s now I beleive). Theres no rationale for this given its a hypergolic pressure fed engine and its not even needed to balance the Apollo.  Then you now have your main big booster engine the mainsail now being a replica of the Ariane 5 Vulcain. 

Thing is no matter which way you go someone will complain  

The approach with restock (which have higher fidelity models that follow the real inspiration better) in RealPlume was to give engines the correct plume based on IRL inspiration. There are no methalox inspired models and all hydrolox inspired ones have optional LH2 configs available via a patch CryoEngines so everything is nice and sensible.

Edited February 11, 2021 by Zorg

[Knight of St John]

7 minutes ago, Zorg said:

Thing is no matter which way you go someone will complain  

Oh I don't see it as complaining. Just "constructive criticism"

But i see your point. I guess I would lean your way too.
However, for the mainsail and skipper, I really dislike giving it hydrolox plumes, given their low ISP, and the fact that otherwise there'd be almost only hydrolox engines in the game.
So I think I'll make them RP1 engines. Aside from that, I'll try to stick to your strategy.

By the way, doesn't realplume have methalox configs for the rapier too? or does it just have the methane plume in airbreathing mode?
my config has them both being methane/air and methalox.

[Zorg]

2 minutes ago, Knight of St John said:

Oh I don't see it as complaining. Just "constructive criticism"

But i see your point. I guess I would lean your way too.
However, for the mainsail and skipper, I really dislike giving it hydrolox plumes, given their low ISP, and the fact that otherwise there'd be almost only hydrolox engines in the game.
So I think I'll make them RP1 engines. Aside from that, I'll try to stick to your strategy.

While I mostly stayed out of the stock configs I did update them when new engines were added and I did give the mainsail a kero plume in the end after soliciting advice on the thread. Opinion was divided but leaned more towards kero. I think thats reasonable.

On the restock side again that wasnt a problem as their mainsail remained an NK33 inspired engine even after squad added their ariane engine.

4 minutes ago, Knight of St John said:

By the way, doesn't realplume have methalox configs for the rapier too? or does it just have the methane plume in airbreathing mode?
my config has them both being methane/air and methalox.

Oh yeah I guess its methalox inspired. I dont fly spaceplanes so I always forget about it  (the config was done by someone else)

[assimo]

Hello, are you going to fix the Waterfall FX Editor? The menu is empty atleast for me.

[RyanRising]

34 minutes ago, assimo said:

Hello, are you going to fix the Waterfall FX Editor? The menu is empty atleast for me.

You're going to have to be more specific than that if you actually want support, but I have a feeling your problem is that you're opening it without having any engines configured for Waterfall on your craft. Take a look at the first post on this thread and the Github wiki section for more information.

[assimo]

@RyanRising I want to make a plume on my own engine i made and i didnt knew a engine have to be configured for waterfall. Do i have to add any cfg files for it? I am amateur at it.

[Spaceman.Spiff]

1 hour ago, assimo said:

@RyanRising I want to make a plume on my own engine i made and i didnt knew a engine have to be configured for waterfall. Do i have to add any cfg files for it? I am amateur at it.

Read the Wiki

[KeaKaka]

On 2/12/2021 at 1:25 AM, RealKerbal3x said:

Yeah, and according to the wiki the Poodle is (loosely) based on the dual RL-10s on the Centaur stage - and the Ariane 5 upper stage engine in the case of the single bell variant - which are both hydrolox engines. So maybe it would make more sense to give the Poodle a hydrolox plume, even if it's technically not as efficient as the Wolfhound might be.

Actually, as far as I'm aware, the dual nozzle RE-L10 "Poodle" and the LV-T91 "Cheetah" are based off the LR-91 engine used on the Titan series of rockets, therefore they should have a Aerozine 50/UDMH plume. The single bell variant of the poodle should have a Hydrolox plume though.

[Zorg]

These are all now available on the BDB github master

 

 

Left to right: Alcolox, Kerolox, Hydyne, Kerolox film cooled, hydrolox ablative, hydrolox, Aerozine50/NTO, hydrolox alternate. (I seem to have forgotten to picture the kerolox vernier).

Still some work to be done (Alcolox and Aerozine looking too similar in daylight etc).

And some vac plumes

L to R: Aerozine 50+NTO (with generic hypergolic vernier), IRFNA+UDMH, HDA+UDMH, hydrolox, kerolox (and vernier), hypergolic white (for various combos including MMH+MON etc).

Edited February 13, 2021 by Zorg

[Knight of St John]

2 hours ago, Zorg said:

These are all now available on the BDB github master

Looking extremely H O T.
You did a great job those hypergolic plumes. It's pretty hard to nail that almost transparent color. It looks just like the Titan II plume.
And again, them vac plumes are simply the best. I've downloaded all the plumes you made 2 days ago and went through them to see how you did the vac plumes. very creative. I'm now using the same technique for mine.
also: sorry for the post in realplume earlier. I meant to post in BDB, but I misclicked on the realplume side of your banner

[Starhelperdude]

On 2/13/2021 at 12:17 AM, KeaKaka said:

Actually, as far as I'm aware, the dual nozzle RE-L10 "Poodle" and the LV-T91 "Cheetah" are based off the LR-91 engine used on the Titan series of rockets, therefore they should have a Aerozine 50/UDMH plume. The single bell variant of the poodle should have a Hydrolox plume though.

the poodle is supposed to be a double RL-10, so it should have a hydrolox plume in stock (without restock/+)

[KeaKaka]

2 hours ago, Starhelperdude said:

the poodle is supposed to be a double RL-10, so it should have a hydrolox plume in stock (without restock/+)

I don't see why a dual LR-91 should have a Hydrolox plume, maybe a dual LR-87 LH2 but I doubt that's what it was modelled on. Just because it says on the wiki that it's based off dual RL-10-A4s  doesn't mean that it should be those, it just means that it was inspired by them, so two LR-91s makes sense. With AZ50/UDMH plumes.

Spoiler

Well actually they could have Kerolox plumes if you based them on the ones flown on the Titan I but that wouldn't really work.

 

EDIT: The restock poodle is modelled after the RD-0124 so it should have a Kerolox vac plume.

Edited February 14, 2021 by KeaKaka

[Starhelperdude]

1 minute ago, KeaKaka said:

I don't see why a dual LR-91 should have a Hydrolox plume, maybe a dual LR-87 LH2 but I doubt that's what it was modelled on. Just because it says on the wiki that it's based off dual RL-10-A4s  doesn't mean that it should be those, it just means that it was inspired by them, so two LR-91s makes sense. With AZ50/UDMH plumes.

  Reveal hidden contents

Well actually they could have Kerolox plumes if you based them on the ones flown on the Titan I but that wouldn't really work.

 

...

[Nertea]

Mapping most stock engines to reality is really a fool's errand, people. You can't do it off stats (lol Wolfhound), and you can't do it off looks - the Poodle is about as much a RL-10 as my kitchen stove is (though at least the RL-10 has been described as a kitchen appliance before). The exception is the MH engines and I guess the Mainsail now, which is weird and what 

The approach I took with the (non-waterfall) Restock plumes was instead to create exhaust looks that map to engine role, which I'd say if you were developing a game you'd probably do. Helps the player further understand how they should use each engine. If you look closely you can see the following 4 categories

• Booster engines, energetic kero-like stuff
• Sustainer engines, somewhat based off the RS68
• Vacuum engines, mostly based off... eh, can't recall. 
• 'Advanced' versions of these with hydrolox plumes for the size3 engines

[assimo]

Is there tutorial how to configure a plume ?

[lrd.Helmet]

9 hours ago, assimo said:

Is there tutorial how to configure a plume ?

On the front page there is a link to the documentation.

[KawaiiLucy]

My bad for posting in the ReStock thread. Tested only with waterfall and no realplume, but still getting the offset plume for the .625 torch engine:

[Starhelperdude]

15 minutes ago, KawaiiLucy said:

My bad for posting in the ReStock thread. Tested only with waterfall and no realplume, but still getting the offset plume for the .625 torch engine:

me too

[EnderKid2]

4 hours ago, KawaiiLucy said:

My bad for posting in the ReStock thread. Tested only with waterfall and no realplume, but still getting the offset plume for the .625 torch engine:

You should be able to fix that. I believe the steps involved are to enable the plume editor, offset the plume to the correct location and scale, then copy those values to the config patch for the torch in WaterfallRestock

Edited February 19, 2021 by EnderKid2

[RyanRising]

8 hours ago, EnderKid2 said:

You should be able to fix that. I believe the steps involved are to enable the plume editor, offset the plume to the correct location and scale, then copy those values to the config patch for the torch in WaterfallRestock

If you've done this successfully, will you submit the fixed configuration as a pull request to the WaterfallRestock Github? That way it's a pretty simple affair of just checking that fix and pushing it for the dev, and gives the bug a better chance of getting fixed sooner.

[KawaiiLucy]

3 hours ago, RyanRising said:

will you submit the fixed configuration as a pull request to the WaterfallRestock Github?

I have no experience with pull requests, should it have a specific structure or anything I should know about? I've fixed the offset with the editor and would like to submit it.

The Offset Config:

position = 0,0.11,0.14
rotation = 0, 0, 0
scale = 0.3, 0.3, 0.25

 

Here is the result:

 

Edited February 20, 2021 by KawaiiLucy

[RyanRising]

1 hour ago, KawaiiLucy said:

I have no experience with pull requests, should it have a specific structure or anything I should know about? I've fixed the offset with the editor and would like to submit it.

The Offset Config:

position = 0,0.11,0.14
rotation = 0, 0, 0
scale = 0.3, 0.3, 0.25

 

Here is the result:

 

As I understand it, you fork the WaterfallRestock repository on Github (make a copy of it bound to your account so you can make changes, it's the button on the top right), implement these changes on your fork, then go back to the main WaterfallRestock repo, and create a new pull request from the Pull Requests tab comparing your branch to the base (post-kerbin-mining-corporation) dev branch. You'd describe what the change is when submitting that pull request, and then it'd be up to the developer to merge those changes.

I haven't actually done this, so I might be out of place asking others to, in which case I'm sorry for imposing. This just seemed like the best method to get a fix in. Speaking of which, who did those Twitch and Spark plumes a while back? I wouldn't want to submit their work as my own, but as far as I can see they haven't gone through this process either, so I should probably bug them about it too if I'm bugging you. And see if I can't attach the light beams to the new Restock Mk1 and Mk2 illuminators so I can say I've done this myself.

Edited February 20, 2021 by RyanRising