ahappydude Posted May 28, 2013 Share Posted May 28, 2013 Beatiful made dude Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mihara Posted May 28, 2013 Share Posted May 28, 2013 /me looks at the specs of "Cirrus" in the released version.Mass 2 tons? Mwahahaha, I might actually pull off an SSTO airship with this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KhaosCorp Posted May 28, 2013 Share Posted May 28, 2013 Really awesome job as always HL!Looking forward to rebuilding my 2 flagships with the new Cirrus envelope! Gonna look better and save parts (the Goliath had 28 Rays, the Bowheemith had 32 Rays) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kahlzun Posted May 28, 2013 Share Posted May 28, 2013 Those Cirrus things are awesome! Balloon lander dropped 5 tons, and improved performance! Sweet! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mihara Posted May 28, 2013 Share Posted May 28, 2013 Well damn. SSTO on first attempt, 71km orbit, ~380dV left over for docking, and my impression is that if I put enough of these things on it, it'll jump out of atmosphere by sheer inertia. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hooligan Labs Posted May 28, 2013 Author Share Posted May 28, 2013 /me looks at the specs of "Cirrus" in the released version.Mass 2 tons? Mwahahaha, I might actually pull off an SSTO airship with this. Really awesome job as always HL!Looking forward to rebuilding my 2 flagships with the new Cirrus envelope! Gonna look better and save parts (the Goliath had 28 Rays, the Bowheemith had 32 Rays)I want to see screens of the new one, AND those other massive ships! They must look like a sea of silver! Everyone share their ships! Glad you all like the new envelope so far! You beat me to the official post, I have a lot to rant about and open to discussion.First, a modeling rant...Making the Cirrus was very challenging and I feel that I really pushed the limits of what Blender, Unity and KSP can do for such an abstract shape. There were many compromises but I am overall very happy with it, though if I were to redo anything I would redo the shield. The shaders are beautiful and the file structure, when you get used to it, is much cleaner. I was also held up by the changes with the new update, but I feel it was overall a significant improvement.The animation of the "core" and "shield" effects were done using two separate armatures. Both were rooted in the "base" with an inverse kinematic tie into respective empties, acting as the top of each. These began in the same location, allowing for the starting egg shape, but would move and spin to give the unraveling and stretching appearance. Unfortunately, I was limited by Blender to less than 180 degrees of spin, but I still think that looks pretty dramatic.What was most unfortunate was how Unity imported the Solidify which gave the core and shield its depth. While Blender itself can make the stretch look right, with the walls getting thinner as it gets larger, that does not work with Solidify. Perhaps if I were able to apply the armature deform and then the solidify, but that would take away my ability to edit the stretching motion further. Also, Blender originally exported the armature animations separately. I had to edit how it was saving the animations to get them all as one animation that Unity could easily control.To create the transparency effect, it took not one but two double sided ovoid meshes! The first uses a semi-transparent alpha to create the foggy condensation effect. However, this does not work for the overlaying grid pattern because the grid in the back was appearing over the front. If it sounds strange, it looked even stranger. Thus I had to create a second mesh, tucked slightly under the first, which uses the KSP "Cutoff" transparency. That does not allow for semi-transparent, but it is perfect for "solid" and "clear" parts.I apologize in advance to anyone's computer who gets eaten by this monstrosity, but it should not be much worse than an equivalent number of Ray envelopes. As for new code, I found the texture issue was due to a really old thing I had left in the .cfg files. I was telling it to look for a texture that did not exist. That did not matter before, but I guess the new 0.20 parser takes that seriously. Commenting it out fixed it.Also, there had to be a change in the airship plugin code. Previously, I believe the part origin (0,0,0 in the model) was the center of gravity. That was perfect also for setting the center of lift. However, that is now different... It seems that it is using the center of the render box or something. So you can imagine that as the Cirrus would grow its center of mass would move far away from the center of buoyancy. Thus, it would flip upside-down!I tried using part.Renderer.bounds.center with no luck, my guess is that doesn't reference the real renderer being used. But part.worldCenterOfMass did work! So now it floats correctly again. This should also fix the occasional bug where Ray would flip upside down as well.Ok, physics!Unfortunately, I do not have time to hyperlink all this stuff now, but Google is your friend!What is the Cirrus made out of? The stretchy envelope and shield is a sort of artificial muscle. The exterior and interior coating is at least one layer of atom-thick graphene, which is highly conductive, tense and heat resistant. In between the graphene "sandwich" is an elastic substance. When a current is applied the graphene layers are drawn together by magnetic force. The elastic is squeezed together and it stretches like a tendon.Cirrus itself is actually using a vacuum for buoyancy. This has been proposed for Martian airships. Using a vacuum removes the weight of whatever gas you would have inside, like hydrogen, though you need something extremely tough to keep it from rupturing. Thus, graphene.So, how much should the Cirrus weigh? Well, it is as big as an orange tank. Kerosene weighs ~0.8 g/cc, and steel ~1 g/cc. In comparison, graphene weighs only 0.1 g/cc! However, we could not expect to make this large object only a few atoms thick, and graphene must be doped with other materials to give it the properties to make this work. Also you have to consider the elastic as well as supporting electronics and compressors. So, while in theory the Cirrus could weigh as little as 0.4 tons, even less if the whole thing was only one atom thick, I thought 2 tons was a more realistic estimate.What do you think? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RoboRay Posted May 28, 2013 Share Posted May 28, 2013 Electro-active ionic polymer–metal composites? Wonderful stuff! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mihara Posted May 28, 2013 Share Posted May 28, 2013 I apologize in advance to anyone's computer who gets eaten by this monstrosity, but it should not be much worse than an equivalent number of Ray envelopes. It's beautiful, and my computer has much more problems calculating physics on a single core of it's aging Core 2 Duo than rendering whatever can be thrown at it with KSP. Cirrus itself is actually using a vacuum for buoyancy. This has been proposed for Martian airships.Random tidbit: Before Tsiolkovsky got interested in jet propulsion and wrote his works on Tsiolkovsky's Rocket Equation, the one where delta V comes from, his first major work was investigating the possibility of metallic vacuum-buoyant airship envelopes. It didn't receive much attention and was mostly forgotten until the 60s or so.Metals are a bit too heavy to make this work particularly well, graphene, however, is just right - and 2 tons is quite sufficiently reasonable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mihara Posted May 28, 2013 Share Posted May 28, 2013 Much closer to practical. Still needs more work and probably more envelopes wouldn't hurt, but the basic idea is clearly sound, adding envelopes compensates for mass increases well enough. Single stage to LKO, ~550dV left over to refuel, can remain perpetually mobile while in atmosphere at ~30m/s. I'm pretty sure a close relative of this design will actually safely get my kerbals off Eve. Why are there so few planets with atmosphere on them anyway... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ahappydude Posted May 28, 2013 Share Posted May 28, 2013 Beatiful shot mihara ^^ I cant think of about all the hard work getting all to work but we salute you (Y) Alongside with the new kas and firespitter we can build bases that floats or flies and rebuild them in air Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ahappydude Posted May 28, 2013 Share Posted May 28, 2013 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hooligan Labs Posted May 28, 2013 Author Share Posted May 28, 2013 Electro-active ionic polymer–metal composites? Wonderful stuff!That's just what has been made thus far! I admit this stuff is a bit near future, while KSP seems to be set in a miniature version of the 60s or 70s. But maybe that is changing now that Bac9 is coming on the team...It's beautiful, and my computer has much more problems calculating physics on a single core of it's aging Core 2 Duo than rendering whatever can be thrown at it with KSP. Great! I have a rather powerful computer, which is great for doing dev work but I could potentially overdesign things.Random tidbit: Before Tsiolkovsky got interested in jet propulsion and wrote his works on Tsiolkovsky's Rocket Equation, the one where delta V comes from, his first major work was investigating the possibility of metallic vacuum-buoyant airship envelopes. It didn't receive much attention and was mostly forgotten until the 60s or so.Are you saying that this is something Tsiolkovsky would have dreamed of? That is something to be proud of!Beatiful shot mihara ^^ I cant think of about all the hard work getting all to work but we salute you (Y) Alongside with the new kas and firespitter we can build bases that floats or flies and rebuild them in air Thanks!Yeah these mods work well together! While I was working on it I imagined you putting kerbals inside or hanging log cabins from it. Thinking of realism, I'm going to take a shot at the amount of energy involved here. I think the volume of the balloon is about 3000 cubic meters. If it were a sphere, its radius would be 9 meters and surface area 1000 square meters. Pressure is force over area which at sea level on Kerbin (or Earth) is 101 kPa. Thus, the amount of force being exerted by the artificial muscle to remain at full size is F = p * A = 101 kN. The collapsed bubble has 1/8th the volume, a 4.5 meter radius and a 251 square meter surface area. The force of air is 101*251 = 25.3 kN.If the Cirrus is 6.4 meters tall undeployed then it is 19.2 meters tall deployed. Work is change in force times change in distance, so maybe the amount of work exerted by the artificial muscle is (101000-25351) * (19.2-6.4) = 75649 Newtons * 12.8 meters = 9,681,267 Joules or ~10 MJ. Assuming this is done in 20 seconds we get 500 kW.Two BES-5 RTG reactors could produce 6 kW of electricity for 2 metric tons of weight. So it could perform the work in 20000 seconds (5 hours). Not bad, but no-one wants to sit around that long in KSP waiting for it to inflate. If the Cirrus' shape memory alloy was driven by heat, transferred by graphene again as it has a higher heat conductivity than diamond, then it would have 200 kW to work with and be done in ~ 45 seconds.At least my mind is at rest knowing that, electricity wise, my design is only off by a factor of a thousand. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ahappydude Posted May 28, 2013 Share Posted May 28, 2013 Kudos for all the thoughts about the realism of it Hahah i havnt tried it with the logcabin , yet ;=p Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hooligan Labs Posted May 28, 2013 Author Share Posted May 28, 2013 I see that while I was writing that post that you already had put a rocking chair up with the new balloon!Did a quick search on graphene and pressure... Looks like it might be good up to 18 GPa, which is about 180,000 Earth atmospheres. Still not totally unrealistic! http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0038109812005479 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richy teh space man Posted May 28, 2013 Share Posted May 28, 2013 The new balloon is pretty impressive, I like it. I managed to make a Kerbin SSTO with it pretty easily, I should have an Eve capable SSTO soon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mekan1k Posted May 28, 2013 Share Posted May 28, 2013 Umm... Am I the only one who sees this happen?Because I have only been able to play around with this mod for a couple minutes, and everything I make ends up upside-down... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richy teh space man Posted May 28, 2013 Share Posted May 28, 2013 I may have found a bug on the new balloon. I used the altitude control to bring my craft in for landing at a low speed, and now I've found I can't manually set the balloons buoyancy. Whenever I try the altitude control kicks in and overrides me by lowering the balloons buoyancy, even though it's not selected.I've tried restarting the game and it still persists. Other then that it's working great. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hooligan Labs Posted May 29, 2013 Author Share Posted May 29, 2013 Umm... Am I the only one who sees this happen?Because I have only been able to play around with this mod for a couple minutes, and everything I make ends up upside-down...You need to delete the old plugin and use the new one.I may have found a bug on the new balloon. I used the altitude control to bring my craft in for landing at a low speed, and now I've found I can't manually set the balloons buoyancy. Whenever I try the altitude control kicks in and overrides me by lowering the balloons buoyancy, even though it's not selected.I've tried restarting the game and it still persists. Other then that it's working great.I'm sorry, but I can't replicate that. Tapping the + or - buttons at the top or clicking the glowing control button should fix it. Can you share a screenshot or something? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
White Owl Posted May 29, 2013 Share Posted May 29, 2013 Oooooh those new balloons look exciting. I bet they fit inside my shuttle's cargobay! Duna, Eve, Jool... here I come. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KhaosCorp Posted May 29, 2013 Share Posted May 29, 2013 Ive only been playing KSP a couple months, and in that short time Ive only bothered to send a few missions to Eve (only one of those being manned). Why you ask? My KSP consists of two core concepts..industry and colony. Ive kinda over looked Eve due to the difficulty in getting kethane (or anything else useful really) back off that purple beast, so Kerbin and Duna have always been my focus. With the Cirrus envelope I can finally look at Eve as more than a big brakepad for Gilly!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Immashift Posted May 29, 2013 Share Posted May 29, 2013 Flaming lawn dart mode: ENGAGE.Mach 7 entry into EVE's atmo is FUN!Interestingly enough, this one made it to a 100km apo, then ran out of oomph about 10 seconds from circularization. Trying another variant now . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Babalas Posted May 29, 2013 Share Posted May 29, 2013 (edited) Odd, is pitch control working? It seems to affect the overall buoyancy rather than each envelope.Edit: nevermind.. the cockpit I was using faced down rather than forward. Edited May 29, 2013 by Babalas Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mihara Posted May 29, 2013 Share Posted May 29, 2013 (edited) Are you saying that this is something Tsiolkovsky would have dreamed of? That is something to be proud of!Because I have only been able to play around with this mod for a couple minutes, and everything I make ends up upside-down...Envelopes have their center of lift somewhere in the middle of the base, and will rotate if the center of mass suddenly shifts above that.You might, however, have the center of mass itself jumping around, which was a bug that happened most often with pre-0.3 version of KAS, but can happen in other cases when parts are vanishing...P.S.: Those two scale models Tsiolkovsky made were meant to change their volume, at least the one on the right -- it extends kind of like an accordion. Edited May 29, 2013 by Mihara Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richy teh space man Posted May 29, 2013 Share Posted May 29, 2013 I'm sorry, but I can't replicate that. Tapping the + or - buttons at the top or clicking the glowing control button should fix it. Can you share a screenshot or something?Sure, here's a screenshot:The ship's sat on a slight hill on Eve, not sure if that has anything to do with it?I can give you the persistent save too and the craft file, I get the same results even after reloading it. (Uses mechjeb and Kethane mods)https://www.dropbox.com/s/bflcmw2s62y6arz/Eve%20ship.zip Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kahlzun Posted May 29, 2013 Share Posted May 29, 2013 Sure, here's a screenshot:Do you seriously have 'Doodbro Kerman'.dude. Bro. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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