Swapping Mesh & Material in Flight Scene

[cyberKerb]

Context:

I plan to have single part with a metal plate and glass dome over the top. Inside the dome there will be a hidden primitive mesh/transform so I can use to swap with objects I want in the dome.  This swapping will be done via EVA interaction using the parts PAW

I'm looking to code  a mod that will programmatically take meshes / materials already loaded into the game and have them displayed inside the dome. Those object doesn't  require a collider as nothing can be mounted the the mesh in the dome. The dome with have the collider, so I'm not worried about any interaction with the object in the dome as it  would just be a visual change.

Note: Only the dome model will be mentioned in the part file. The swappable materials/meshes will not be loaded / referenced within the part, so I'm not looking at a part variant here. During gameplay, what goes in the dome will be directed by the dll and it will reference meshes loaded separately, but it will all be done in the flight scene.

 

So...with that context, I've been looking at the forums and read a lot about how it doesn't seem possible / hard to swap meshes in the flight scene. @Shadowmage had a few threads mentioning the difficulties due to not being able to reinitialise the part in the flight scene.

 Is this still the case? Are there alternative ways to make this process easier in the current game version?

Or do I have different situation where the part is not needed to be reinitialised as I'm "only" changing a child mesh and associated material and not the entire part?

Edited November 24, 2020 by cyberKerb