Today is Friday, but one day it'll be Fry(your ship)day

[DancZer]

@Dakota @Nate Simpson the pic looks epic. I wonder what is the main goal /vision for re-entry heating compared to KSP 1.

I found the KSP1 reentry sometimes a bit strange. Expecially when parts without fluid disappeared in a big explosion. Eg. Antenna, wing, structures. For visual and UX point of view a melting of the object instead of sudden explosion in this case would be better UX. This could lead to a damaged ship after a rough re-entering or takeoff. 

I know that object morphing is not an easy feature to implement, expecially if there is a lot of models and LOD-s, but improvement on this part of the feature is very welcome! 

Keep up the good work! Looking forward to the Patch Two! 

[Deddly]

13 hours ago, Nate Simpson said:

Kerbal lightsabers confirmed!

[MK3424]

Can we get the maneuver node scroll wheel function? i always find it handy for fine tuning maneuver nodes by using the scroll up as the coarse adjustment and the scroll down as the fine adjustment.

Edited March 18, 2023 by MK3424

[Alexoff]

Why did the plasma turn out to be a fairing at a noticeable distance? It seems that the plasma effect is just an enlarged transparent model of the part, enlarged by 10-20%, on which the fire effect was applied. In reality, the shock wave looks completely different.

[Sitting Duck]

4 hours ago, MK3424 said:

Can we get the maneuver node scroll wheel function? i always find it handy for fine tuning maneuver nodes by using the scroll up as the coarse adjustment and the scroll down as the fine adjustment.

Seconded! This is a very useful feature in the KSP1 maneuver panel, and since we don't have that yet in KSP2...

We are eventually going to get a maneuver panel in KSP2, right?

Edited March 18, 2023 by Sitting Duck
Yeah I know, wrong place to ask, but...

[svistuilkin]

Hi.
I'm playing on a 21:9 widescreen monitor, and when I first launched KSP 2, I was very upset that my monitor's resolution wasn't in the settings. Are you planning to add support for widescreen monitors in the future? :3

[RocketRockington]

On 3/17/2023 at 4:55 PM, Nate Simpson said:

for obvious reasons, we’re holding ourselves to a very high standard of performance

The jokes just write themselves.

Well, I hope at this point you're learning not to over promise and underdeliver, at least, but at the same time I think it'd be useful to have other people with more credibility communicate with the audience.

[Sitting Duck]

1 hour ago, RocketRockington said:

The jokes just write themselves.

Well, I hope at this point you're learning not to over promise and underdeliver, at least, but at the same time I think it'd be useful to have other people with more credibility communicate with the audience.

Rude, unhelpful, spiteful, and counter-productive. Try to remember that there are people on the other end of your commentaries, and that you are not them, are not there with them, and are not subject to the specific challenges, trials, and limitations they are faced with.

[Stoup]

1 hour ago, RocketRockington said:

The jokes just write themselves.

Well, I hope at this point you're learning not to over promise and underdeliver, at least, but at the same time I think it'd be useful to have other people with more credibility communicate with the audience.

Yeah, I take this more in the other direction than you do. He's acknowledging the shortcomings we've been delivered so far, and making it clear that there's attention and effort being made to ensure that things, as it's said,

Will only get better

Like, I imagine that things like reentry heating might be very nearly complete, but maybe not performant, and this is his way of saying they're making a careful effort not to add fuel to the fire

[LameLefty]

18 hours ago, Sitting Duck said:

We are eventually going to get a maneuver panel in KSP2, right?

I hope so, but in the meantime, there’s an excellent little mod that works very well. 

[Sitting Duck]

43 minutes ago, LameLefty said:

I hope so, but in the meantime, there’s an excellent little mod that works very well. 

Thanks! Yeah I have that installed, but it just doesn't have the kind of control I want that the KSP1 maneuver panel has, at least not for what I'm doing at the moment. I'll give it another go.

[Stephensan]

On 3/17/2023 at 3:55 PM, Nate Simpson said:

Patch One is out, and players have been putting it through its paces for a whole day now! We’ve still got plenty of work to do, but the overall takeaway seems to be that the game has seen some big performance and feature improvements. It has been especially nice to see that even "small" gains are appreciated by our players - rest assured that the devs who work on those features are reading your comments and feeling the love. Our team will soak up all these good community vibes and use them to power us toward Patch Two, which will contain even more optimizations and improvements. Your feedback and bug reports have been invaluable in helping us to determine the frequency and severity of ongoing issues, and that information informs our production priorities going forward.

Performance improvements and bug fixes will continue to take place alongside ongoing development of core features like re-entry heating, thermal systems, and other headline features on the Roadmap. As you can see, progress is being made:

 

 

We can’t yet predict which update will contain re-entry heating - for obvious reasons, we’re holding ourselves to a very high standard of performance. As soon as it’s doing everything we need it to do, in every situation in which it needs to do it, we’ll add re-entry to a future patch.

In other news - if you haven’t seen any of the ExtraKerbicular Activities videos, you should check them out! Our Community Team has put a ton of work into creating bite-sized assets that go deeper into vehicle construction and piloting tips, and there's a new one about wings! They’re fun, they’re informative, and they make a great follow-up to the tutorials.

Let's see, what else? Oh, next Friday, I'll be joining the Community Team to do my first AMA. You can submit your questions via this forum post or directly to Discord. On Friday morning I'll dig into the pile and do my best to answer as many as I can! 

Last but not least, we’ve got another Weekly Challenge! This week we’re building Apollo recreations (though the stretch goals go a bit beyond that). Now that docking, decoupling, and fairings have calmed down a bit since Patch One, this is a great chance to start working on some more ambitious missions.

Happy launching!
 

 

would love to see more photos of it, even if its "not now"

[kicka55]

On 3/17/2023 at 10:15 PM, RealKerbal3x said:

Wow, lovely effects there! Can't wait to see it in game.

But I can't help but feel nitpicky, the big gripe I always had with KSP1's plasma effects (and, judging from that screenshot, KSP2's now as well) is that they simply displayed when you were past a certain velocity threshold without much regard for the context of the situation. I'll allow past me to explain further:

I feel kinda bad mentioning this given how much work has probably already gone into the heating system, but you guys have already shown you're not afraid of making much bigger changes (i.e, the terrain rendering stuff Mortoc went into detail about), so I'll throw this out there on the off chance that you find it worthwhile.

In any case, thanks again guys for your dedication and transparency. Things can only get better

I'm not quite sure how you can asses that from the screenshot? He's just showing off the effect that's probably not properly implemented in the game yet. Just some debug menu toggle to toggle it on/off probably. I also think having nice heating effects like that from an artistic stand point far outweigh any realism aspect. I want my rocket to visibly burn when it's flaming hot. 

Edited March 19, 2023 by kicka55

[Jacob Kerman]

I'm glad it's going to be added, but it still looks...low poly. Kinda. I don't know, it just doesn't look right. Like, you can see the inside of cargo bays, and structural parts when re-entry speeds are reached. It looks all blocky and rough, and it looks overall...not bad, but...odd. Like X-Ray vision. Will this be a problem in KSP2?

[Deddly]

5 minutes ago, Jacob Kerman said:

I'm glad it's going to be added, but it still looks...low poly. Kinda. I don't know, it just doesn't look right. Like, you can see the inside of cargo bays, and structural parts when re-entry speeds are reached. It looks all blocky and rough, and it looks overall...not bad, but...odd. Like X-Ray vision. Will this be a problem in KSP2?

Well, you know, there's a reason they haven't added it to the game yet

[The Aziz]

On the other hand, we don't have any good footage of actual reentry plasma, it's not like at any point in the last 60 years there was someone outside of the returning craft, recording. At best we have results of simulations.

[Jacob Kerman]

1 hour ago, Deddly said:

Well, you know, there's a reason they haven't added it to the game yet

Well thanks, I can put 2 and 2 together and get 5...wait, no 4. But I meant, are they working to fix that. 

[LameLefty]

1 hour ago, The Aziz said:

On the other hand, we don't have any good footage of actual reentry plasma, it's not like at any point in the last 60 years there was someone outside of the returning craft, recording. At best we have results of simulations.

That’s …  not true at all.

There is plenty of non-classified imagery of re-entering spacecraft from NASA’s WB-57 aircraft, plus a lot of scholarly data available on re-entry heating and plasma from university, NTRS and DTIC sources.

[The Aziz]

19 minutes ago, LameLefty said:

There is plenty of non-classified imagery of re-entering spacecraft from NASA’s WB-57 aircraft,

That? 

20 minutes ago, LameLefty said:

plus a lot of scholarly data available on re-entry heating and plasma from university, NTRS and DTIC sources.

Like I said, simulations. Based on pure math pulled from testing - but the testing in question was at micro scale ( https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Videos/2015/12/Plasma_wind_tunnel_testing/(lang) ) You can only math your way from that because nobody has ever seen a large air/spacecraft actually getting covered in plasma from up close.

[LameLefty]

1 minute ago, The Aziz said:

Like I said, simulations

No,  that’s actually multi-spectral imaging data.

There’s also reams of data from Shuttle flights (both multi-spectral imaging as well as engineering development test data from internal and skin sensors); as well as USAF/DARPA blunt-body, lifting body and ICBM RV entry imaging and engineering data though most of that has been “sanitized” for ITAR concerns.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but I’m an aerospace engineer by education and early career and not just making stuff up. 

[RocketRockington]

We have this Orion footage of reentry trail.

The FX Nate posted to me look like a tiki torch with a flame shell modelled around the center.  That's not reentry plasma.  There's no shock front, just a a shader expanding a shell around the model.  It's going to look weird around a conical capsule if the flame surrounds the back, and doesn't have an ionization control following it.  But who knows what they end up with, it's just a still shot with little context. 

What I do wonder is what Nate was talking about saying the game was delayed for quality purposes in 2020 and 2021 and didn't ship with even a basic reentry hearing system in 2023.

[Ericwi]

On 3/20/2023 at 8:51 AM, The Aziz said:

On the other hand, we don't have any good footage of actual reentry plasma, it's not like at any point in the last 60 years there was someone outside of the returning craft, recording. At best we have results of simulations.

Also have wind tunnel tests. https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2020/02/Plasma_wind_tunnel_testing . But really in the visual spectrum it just makes things glow white hot, what is not that interesting from a video game point of view. 

[CRYBABY]

I'm a big fan of KSP .. I was waiting and waiting and then finnaly KSP 2 comes out. I'm not bying it with these useless mininem requirments .. I have a Dell g15 amd ryzen 7 6800H, 32gb ram ddr5 , But only a rtx3050ti 4gb. Most games run between high and and xtreme. I ca play star citizen everyting on low duable in cities but on the low sides.. Then in space and everyting else is running pretty awsome. You guys did get so far and now you can suck my rtx . I'm very dissapointed :(I

[Jacob Kerman]

6 hours ago, CRYBABY said:

I'm a big fan of KSP. I was waiting and waiting and then finnaly KSP 2 comes out. I'm not bying it with these useless mininem requirments .. I have a Dell g15 amd ryzen 7 6800H, 32gb ram ddr5 , But only a rtx3050ti 4gb. Most games run between high and and xtreme. I ca play star citizen everyting on low duable in cities but on the low sides.. Then in space and everyting else is running pretty awsome. You guys did get so far and now you can suck my rtx . I'm very dissapointed :(I

I'm a big fan of KSP. I was waiting and waiting and then finally KSP 2 comes out. I'm not buying it with these useless minimum requirements. I have a Dell g15 AMD Ryzen 7 6800H, 32gb ram ddr5, But only a RTX3050ti 4gb. Most games run between high and extreme. I can play star citizen everything on low doable in cities but on the low sides. Then in space and everything else is running pretty awesome. You guys did get so far and now you can suck my RTX. I'm very disappointed. 

 

I read this twice and still didn't understand. So here, I fixed it.

Edited March 23, 2023 by Jacob Kerman

[Blaster]

Three things that would make atmo flight much better:

Airspeed Indicator

SAS Altitude hold (separate from heading hold)

Flaps!

Bonus Round:

Enable turning on lights with the brakes.

Edited March 24, 2023 by Blaster