Air Bugs

[AlphaMensae]

8 hours ago, Nate Simpson said:

We’ve been working on this issue from different angles for quite a while, with varying results. Currently, engineer Patrick DeVarney is working on a method of invoking entries within the part manager on an as-needed basis, rather than always loading all part attributes simultaneously on PAM deployment. This fix will not make it into v0.1.3.0, but if the experiment bears fruit in the future it will have a significant impact on PAM deployment lag. 

Or you could just use a separate PAW for each part like how it's done in KSP1-type, easy-peasy.  The consolidated PAM may be useful for certain cases (like 100+ part vessels), but for small rockets or small part count craft, where you can see where each part is, it's an unwiedly tool that doesn't allow multiple part info windows to be open at the same time.

[asmi]

6 hours ago, Nate Simpson said:

Excellent question. Actually, there is an analogous system in KSP1 that works similarly. Off the top of my head, I don't know how it handles decoupling or other non-propulsive physics events. This may require a scalable solution that can be expanded to include edge cases (for example, the effects of stage separation), but the current effects of which are so profoundly game-impacting that a simpler approach gets us to more stable footing sooner. My short-term goal for this feature is KSP parity. That said, I'll bring up your concerns the next time I chat about this with an engineer.

There is a rather simple solution to this problem - when nothing departs or arrives to the vessel, it's orbital parameters should be locked. Because physics (REAL physics, not buggy physics engine).  Orbital parameters shall only change when something impacts the vessel (collision), or something departs it - it can be exhaust (covers cases with thrust and RCS impulses), or some parts (covers the case with decoupling or jetissoning something), or when there is some external force (covers the case with entering atmosphere).

 

Another common (and super-annoying) problem is landed vehicles jumping around when switched from/to or upon loading the save, one of solutions is to temporarily increase physics frequency (by reducing the delta time of physics engine and thus effectively slowing down everything) right after switch/load to give joint system enough time to stabilize calculations and dampen any large oscillation caused by integration errors.

Edited June 10, 2023 by asmi

[regex]

9 hours ago, Nate Simpson said:

We’ve figured out what’s going on here: when an orbiting vehicle is not under on-rails time warp, the effects of minor joint fluctuations within the vehicle rigidbody cause tiny but cumulatively significant changes to the vehicle’s velocity.

Sorry, you guys just figured this out? I could have told you this from the beginning, The same thing was a problem in KSP1 up until about 1.0.5 or so. E: In fact I recall asking several times if you all were going to implement orbit smoothing... Looks like we're going to get it, so that's cool.

Looking forward to the next update.

Edited June 10, 2023 by regex

[FleshJeb]

7 hours ago, S_Coriolis said:

Stop praising me or I'll send Megamaid to remove all the air in your office and I don't think you want to mess with her

QA team, longing for the day when they can be this guy:

[RocketRockington]

1 hour ago, AlphaMensae said:

Or you could just use a separate PAW for each part like how it's done in KSP1-type, easy-peasy.  The consolidated PAM may be useful for certain cases (like 100+ part vessels), but for small rockets or small part count craft, where you can see where each part is, it's an unwiedly tool that doesn't allow multiple part info windows to be open at the same time.

No the PAM also sucks when there's a lot of parts and you have to try to scroll through them all to find the one you need - heaven help you if you have a lot of copies and you haven't memorized all the samey tank names..  Maybe there's a sweet spot at 25 parts, half of them clipped into other parts. :p. 

Mostly it's just a terrible change that I can only imagine is there because it might work better on console, as it can be hard to pick a part.on a craft with a controller.  But given the console release, if it ever comes, is like 5 years away...

What's extra scary is that the flight UI was clearly one of the earliest things they did and iterated on - and this terrible design persisted since 2019. 

[kanabeach83]

the real question, despite your pseudo-transparency, is why release the game in such a pitiful state? problem n°1 is the most penalizing, is it will still be present after the 3rd update... simply ridiculous. all the work you're doing now should have been done long before the game was released. i can't find the words to express how much you take us for idiots and don't respect your community (at least what's left of it , 22 players on a Saturday at noon, it's safe to say that you clearly killed the license. keep in mind that you are selling this bug compilation to us for 50€. while you attempt this bunch of bugs, there is still no science, and that's unforgivable. selling dreams to finally give players a sandbox without fluidity, without flavor or content, it's very daring. KSP2 will forever be the scam of the last 20 years in the video game world

 

Edited June 10, 2023 by James Kerman
Fixed formatting

[Alexoff]

10 hours ago, herbal space program said:

because KSP2 is trying to increase realism with more complex calculations that go off the rails more easily, or perhaps because whatever physics engine they are using for KSP2 produces errors in those calculations that are not all covered by whatever workarounds they used in KSP1

And in what place is the physical calculation of KSP2 better and more accurate than in KSP1? Both games use almost the same engine, in KSP2 it is slightly newer. Is it fantasy to justify the developers or is it based on some kind of facts?

[Wheehaw Kerman]

11 hours ago, herbal space program said:

The truth is that KSP1 had all kinds of problems with phantom forces, even in the latest version, so that's not really a fair point.  Also, the fact that KSP2 seems to have different problems in  that regard  could perhaps be because KSP2 is trying to increase realism with more complex calculations that go off the rails more easily, or perhaps because whatever physics engine they are using for KSP2 produces errors in those calculations that are not all covered by whatever workarounds they used in KSP1. Either way, fudging the numbers to zero everything out is the only way it is ultimately going to work.

I wonder what the middle and later versions of KSP would have been like if Squad had tried to map and root all those issues out at the outset like IG is doing here.  I remember single-digit framerates on launch and rovers behaving like you were driving on oil-coated iced Teflon…

It’s almost like releasing a buggy EA of KSP2 at its most basic was a deliberate strategy to identify and root out as many physics bugs as possible before layering the more complex stuff onto it and suffering much more pain later in development.  Imagine what it would have been like if they’d released it in full form with colonies, resources, and interstellar layered on top of this foundation back in February.

Edited June 10, 2023 by Wheehaw Kerman

[Kerbart]

1 hour ago, kanabeach83 said:

the real question, despite your pseudo-transparency, is why release the game in such a pitiful state? problem n°1 is the most penalizing, is it will still be present after the 3rd update... simply ridiculous. all the work you're doing now should have been done long before the game was released. i can't find the words to express how much you take us for idiots and don't respect your community.

This has been discussed over and over. While we won't know for sure until someone inside IG spills the beans (unlikely) this looks like what happened:

• The game went through design hell regarding decisions on how it should look like (not the physical appearance but game mechanics)
• Later than wanted, some ambitious Grand Design was envisioned and work towards it was started
• Sugar daddy T2 got tired of missed deadlines and postponed release dates (while paying bills for rent, electricity and wages each month) and set a hard publication date.
• Intercept looked at their lofty design, realized there's no way we'll be able to publish this on time and scrambled to design and build a version they could publish

Intercept doesn't hold us for idiots, they were confronted with an impossible deadline and did the best they could. They're the schoolkids working on an ambitious end-of-year science project who were told "actually it needs to be ready next week."

Take Two isn't the evil bean counter imperium either, they were confronted with a dev team who pursued perfection and kept delaying publication. When confronted with running expenses you can't blame them for saying "we're going to set a hard date now" forcing some kind of product to be released.

Clearly mistakes were  made. We're not happy with the game, and neither are the devs.

"But they say they're proud of the game and like it."

Ok, ask yourself the question: do you want KSP2 to stay in its current state? Because the second the gaming press is publishing articles with headlines as INTERCEPT GAMES ADMIT KSP2 RELEASE IS TOTAL FAILURE I can assure you that Take Two will pull the plug and we're stuck with what we have now.

So, we're stuck with IG working hard to make things better, being forced to be upbeat and chipper in their communication, because they have no real choice to do anything else. Last week's Mea Culpa and a strong emphasis on bug fixing in the communication is the best we're going to get, and the fact they gave in to that indicates how serious the community is taken — and not considered a bunch of idiots as you state.

Edited June 10, 2023 by Kerbart

[Alexoff]

21 minutes ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

Imagine what it would have been like if they’d released it in full form with colonies, resources, and interstellar layered on top of this foundation back in February.

And in what form do these colonies and interplanetary parts exist today? As we recently found out, there have been no new frames with the colonies since 2021.

23 minutes ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

It’s almost like releasing a buggy EA of KSP2 at its most basic was a deliberate strategy to identify and root out as many physics bugs as possible before layering the more complex stuff onto it and suffering much more pain later in development.

This is an incredible innovation in the development of computer games! That's a great plan, Walter! (c)

27 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

some ambitious Grand Design was envisioned

Apparently some incredible Design, it’s not clear at what point what changed, I didn’t notice any significant changes in the design from the video of the developers.

[Wheehaw Kerman]

11 minutes ago, Alexoff said:

And in what form do these colonies and interplanetary parts exist today? As we recently found out, there have been no new frames with the colonies since 2021.

The only people who know for sure work for IG, and possibly some play testers, and they’re NDA’ed.  The rest of us are just speculating, in varying degrees of optimism.

Given the close resemblance between the craft in the first videos and what we got in the EA, I expect the art direction is set, though - once we get colony parts, they’ll look pretty close to what we saw in 2021.

As for the EA release strategy being a bug hunt, if so, the current level of transparency would have been nice, but regardless of whether it’s a product of rank evil crossed with malicious incompetence, or just COVID and the reality of greatly exceeding in a year or two what took Squad and an army of modders a decade, we got the EA we have, and it’s in our power to help IG get to the game we’ve been promised.

Edited June 10, 2023 by Wheehaw Kerman

[Alexoff]

6 minutes ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

The only people who know for sure work for IG, and possibly some play testers, and they’re NDA’ed.

Here's some weird coverage strategy for a game with constant cuts in quality and quantity. In 2020, we were shown a large colony from afar (I think this is just a one-piece model, there is nothing working there). There were separate parts in 2021. And now nothing at all, just vague words. Now we are shown intermediate engines that have almost no effect on the game.

12 minutes ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

The rest of us are just speculating, in varying degrees of optimism.

This is a dubious achievement of a PR strategy, this is due to the fact that there is no transparency in the development of the game.

15 minutes ago, Wheehaw Kerman said:

it’s in our power to help IG get to the game we’ve been promised

In what way? Reports of egregious bugs that were already known to the developers? Moreover, it seems to us that they did not promise the same early access, but only without bugs. It seems that somewhere there must be much more that is not shown to us and that is drawn only in the imagination.

[The Space Peacock]

Great Upnate, Nate! Question; do you perhaps have a favorite snack to bring to the office to share with the teams? 

[The Aziz]

5 minutes ago, Alexoff said:

. And now nothing at all, just vague words

Nothing on interstellar, or mysterious second extrasolar system or resources.

Why? Because it's not the main focus. Which is to make the product more stable and prepare for first big addition which isn't colonies.

7 minutes ago, Alexoff said:

Reports of egregious bugs that were already known to the developers?

There's known and there's extensively investigated with enough data. 

Imagine being a dev. You see a bug. QA confirms it. QA won't tell you the cause but can hint a few situations when it occurs. You figure it out, you fix it and send back to QA. QA says it's gone. You release a patch. Everyone is happy, except players who say it's still there. You ask for thorough player feedback. Turns out there's 20 more situations where it occurs, much more niche than the QA would expect before getting insight from players and the causes are elsewhere. You fix it. QA confirm it's gone, so do the players after second patch. This time everyone is happy even though it took longer than anticipated. Conclusion: bug wouldn't be squashed without community help.

[LoSBoL]

Science Milestone is the first Milestone, let communication focus on what's first instead of what we won't be getting for a long time. Why would you even want to know what's in the far future, it will only lead to ' you are hyping the game again' reactions. No sense in that at all.

[Alexoff]

1 hour ago, The Aziz said:

Why? Because it's not the main focus. Which is to make the product more stable and prepare for first big addition which isn't colonies.

Now the main focus is on new orbital thrusters? If serious bugs are the main focus of developers, then in 4 months the progress is not too impressive. What about things that are out of focus?

1 hour ago, The Aziz said:

There's known and there's extensively investigated with enough data.

KSP2 is just a whole universe with mysterious laws, no one seems to know what is happening in the game.

1 hour ago, The Aziz said:

Imagine being a dev. You see a bug. QA confirms it. QA won't tell you the cause but can hint a few situations when it occurs. You figure it out, you fix it and send back to QA. QA says it's gone. You release a patch. Everyone is happy, except players who say it's still there.

And with what bug in KSP2 did this happen?

And once again - we say that the promised game is the same one that was released in February 2023, but without bugs, or is it about something more?

[DeadJohn]

17 hours ago, LunarMetis said:

That release date's not too far away at least. Are you guys planning on speeding up update cadence once KSP2's on a more stable foundation?

Several weeks ago Nate said that they are deliberately slowing down the update frequency. I forget his exact reasoning but it was rational.

Blending in my own work experience, any release, no matter how small the changes, has to go through a lot of the same testing and other overhead work. It's often more efficient to do fewer but bigger updates.

Edited June 10, 2023 by DeadJohn

[RocketRockington]

27 minutes ago, DeadJohn said:

Several weeks ago Nate said that they are deliberately slowing down the update frequency. I forget his exact reasoning but it was rational.

Sure the stated reason was it was more efficient.  But given the progress they're demonstrating with these updates, the actual reason is that they would have had virtually nothing in a patch of it was released 4 weeks after the previous one.  10 weeks later and they're only patching half the big bugs and have a few engines in as a consolation prize.

You have to remember that virtually everything Nate has said or written except very close to an actual release has turned out to be a huge upsell.  He's marketting when he speaks to us.

[The Aziz]

17 minutes ago, RocketRockington said:

10 weeks later and they're only patching half the big bugs and have a few engines in as a consolation prize.

they're only showing the process of top 10 of the bugs*

FTFY.

[Nate Simpson]

17 minutes ago, RocketRockington said:

You have to remember that virtually everything Nate has said or written except very close to an actual release has turned out to be a huge upsell.  He's marketting when he speaks to us.

It is my job, both within the team and outwardly to the public, to create and communicate goals. Another one of my jobs is to look at the current state of the game and talk about where we stand with respect to those goals. Those goals have not changed. 

We have shown footage and screenshots of as-yet unfinished features for years. That is a part of the goal setting and communication process. Have I sometimes thought we were closer to the finish line than we really were? That's a matter of public record.

Given that I'm both a fan of KSP and an enthusiastic person, I often can't wait to share a cool thing I've experienced with other fans. Is that marketing? If "marketing" means "misrepresenting for profit," I don't think it is. Is it unwise to show off something before it has reached a shippable level of polish? Sometimes it might be, but when I think back to how much I enjoyed hearing about upcoming features back in the HarvesteR days, it's hard not to err on the side of oversharing. It is very nice to be the bearer of good news.

As I've mentioned here before, the parts and environment art teams are always ahead of the other teams, just by virtue of how the pipeline works. That means that some updates will include new parts. This is not meant to obscure any uncomfortable realities. Those who have the expertise to fix trajectory or decoupling bugs are fully devoted to fixing them. Those who have the ability to design and implement parts are putting their hearts and souls into that work.

One thing I do not have direct control over is velocity. Our team has learned quite a lot over the years, and I think both our production processes and our ability to communicate with one another have improved tremendously. But it is a learning process, as you've seen from the evolution of these forum posts.

I understand that the community would like all of these planned features to arrive as soon as possible. Everyone on this team is doing everything they can to improve efficiency so that we're able to take the most direct path to those big roadmap goals. But we also are learning to measure twice and cut once, to reduce tech debt, to improve our testing protocols, and to improve communication between feature teams - all with the goal of making sure that when those roadmap features go live, that they are stable and performant.

The goals remain the same, and the thing that keeps me going is the thought of one day driving a resource collection rover out of a colony VAB on an extrakerbolar planet. On the day I finally do this, I'll probably sublimate into a gas, my work on this planet finally having been completed.

[Alexoff]

4 minutes ago, Nate Simpson said:

Given that I'm both a fan of KSP and an enthusiastic person

It would be interesting to see how you enjoy playing KSP1/2 on the stream.

5 minutes ago, Nate Simpson said:

I often can't wait to share a cool thing I've experienced with other fans. Is that marketing?

Yes, it is

6 minutes ago, Nate Simpson said:

Is it unwise to show off something before it has reached a shippable level of polish?

And where is the line where something is ready for release? If this line passes at the level of KSP2 0.1.0, then what about the rest of the features that are not yet ready?

[The Aziz]

19 minutes ago, Nate Simpson said:

On the day I finally do this, I'll probably sublimate into a gas, my work on this planet finally having been completed

Please don't, we need you post-1.0 in solid state

[herbal space program]

14 hours ago, PDCWolf said:

Jointed stacks don't wobble in real life. Try making a really tall stacks of blocks, books, whatever, and even without a joint they won't slide, as the friction of flat surface against flat surface pretty much prevents that. At some point, they might slide off each other and fall, but not wobble. Wobble is not an analogous to real life structural integrity, much less that of a vertical stack of equal elements.

To be clear, I'm only defending the general concept, not how it has been implemented, which clearly still needs a lot of work.  I would also  say what you said above doesn't really apply to the structural behavior of rockets either, because the elastic modulus  of the elements you use as an example is so high relative to the forces acting upon them that they will behave like perfectly rigid bodies. A rocket is not like a stack of solid blocks. It is more like a stack of thin-walled beer cans with heavy weights suspended inside them, held together by a few tack welds. Each of the cans is both elastically deformable to some small degree and prone to buckling completely if the forces get too large. But modeling that accurately is pretty much out of the question, so they are instead making the parts themselves perfectly rigid and trying to represent their real-world properties with spring-like attachment points, which I gather from the posts above is what Unity gives them.  However, why they ever thought they could get acceptable behavior from making it just one such attachment point per joint is a mystery to me, especially if they are trying to model shear forces. For a stack of cylindrical objects it should be at least three per joint, and those should have both a very high elastic modulus and a very high damping coefficient so that they act much more like shock absorbers than plain springs. However unless Unity doesn't actually support multiple attachment points and/or dialing those parameters up and down for same, it is kind of weird that they didn't spend more time tuning this critical element before dropping the game.

[herbal space program]

7 hours ago, Alexoff said:

And in what place is the physical calculation of KSP2 better and more accurate than in KSP1? Both games use almost the same engine, in KSP2 it is slightly newer. Is it fantasy to justify the developers or is it based on some kind of facts?

I didn't say they made them more accurate, I said maybe they were trying to make them so.  An that's not a fantasy to defend the devs, it's pure, neutral speculation on my part,  based on certain assumptions I consider reasonable, which as far as I can tell is not against the forum rules. Thinking about it more, I suspect that rather than making the calculations more accurate, they're actually trying to make them simpler, because somewhere down the line there are going to be these gigantic ships with so many parts that you're going to need 500 processor cores and 10 GPUs to get above 2FPS the way it was before.

[Alexoff]

15 minutes ago, herbal space program said:

maybe they were trying to make them so. 

and looks like thy failed

15 minutes ago, herbal space program said:

because somewhere down the line there are going to be these gigantic ships with so many parts that you're going to need 500 processor cores and 10 GPUs to get above 2FPS the way it was before.

More recently, we found out with other KSP fans that no one promised gigantic ships with thousands of parts, even as in KSP1.