[1.0.5] FASA 5.44

[Deathsoul097]

Too bad you didn't use Ledenko's Pod. It's a really good apollo replica, ad would have fit your rocket perfectly.

[CaptainKipard]

I'm not sure if this has been fixed or not because the pics in the first post still show the same meshes as several months ago, but frizzank have you removed those edge loops around all the conical and cylindrical sections? I've pointed this out before but I don't think you understood my point. Edge loops around cones and cylinders have absolutely nothing to do with adding detail, they just add completely useless triangles.

[Camacha]

Too bad you didn't use Ledenko's Pod. It's a really good apollo replica, ad would have fit your rocket perfectly.

Yeah, I must say I do not like the stock model for this.

[frizzank]

I'm not sure if this has been fixed or not because the pics in the first post still show the same meshes as several months ago, but frizzank have you removed those edge loops around all the conical and cylindrical sections? I've pointed this out before but I don't think you understood my point. Edge loops around cones and cylinders have absolutely nothing to do with adding detail, they just add completely useless triangles.

First up when I say polygon I mean triangles. It's a game industry term transposition I picked up, I know its is not accurate but that's the way it works at most development studios.

They are not useless, they have a purpose. The extra cuts help with UV mapping and my workflow for creating the parts.

If they were not there the quality would suffer some and it would take longer to create the parts.

The overhead of a few extra polygons is extremely low, its almost unmeasurable.

Modern graphics cards handle rendered triangles extremely quickly, much faster than anything else. You GPU doesn't really render polygons it renders the vertices and there could be many times more of those based on how you did your UV's or even the normals of the faces. The days of old where every polygon counted are gone. Now it's draw calls that are the big frame rate killer (how many times the rendering engine has to process the same mesh). This is effected by things like the number of textures, complexity of the shader, light sources, shadow casting and other effects added to the objects. Next to that is physics and collision detection, as far as killing frame rate goes and those meshes are 100 times simpler than the visible mesh.

To sum up:

Does the extra cuts to the mesh effect the speed at which they can be rendered. Yes it does.

Does it effect it enough for me to change it. No it doesn't.

If you want I can show you a 30,000 polygon rocket running at the same frame rate as a 3,000 polygon one.

[SuperWeegee4000]

The LEM hatch is obstructed.

[scorchdestroya]

The LEM hatch is obstructed.

Open it from IVA.

[CaptainKipard]

...

That was a waste of a perfectly good explanation. You just danced around my point never really addressing it.

[frizzank]

That was a waste of a perfectly good explanation. You just danced around my point never really addressing it.

You asked a valid question and I posted a response as to why the extra cuts are there, and why I am not getting rid of them.

I highlighted the portions of my posts of the explanation to explicitly call out why there are, as you called them "useless" cuts.

Edge loops around cones and cylinders have absolutely nothing to do with adding detail, they just add completely useless triangles

They are not useless, they have a purpose. The extra cuts help with UV mapping and my workflow for creating the parts.

If they were not there the quality would suffer some and it would take longer to create the parts.

The overhead of a few extra polygons is extremely low, its almost unmeasurable.

I'm sorry I don't really have time to create a detailed tutorial right now that will go into how adding subdivisions to models can help with mapping and workflow for 3d game models.

To summarize again, they help me with UV's and my workflow. The overhead of the extra cuts compared to the quality and time savings you get from them makes it worth while in my opinion. Just like the reflection shader costs a lot in terms of rendering, but I think it is worth it, as do others.

I am basing my decisions and opinions on 10 years of professional game development experience and several published game titles.

I am just disagreeing with you on how it is best to create certain models. You are free to your own opinions and I will respect that.

I also appreciate the criticism. It only makes me a better artist.

Edited February 28, 2014 by frizzank

[Camacha]

That was a waste of a perfectly good explanation. You just danced around my point never really addressing it.

Although I am the first to admit that I lack Frizzank's extensive experience in game development, I thought it was an explanation that made quite some sense

[Cdodders]

When was the Scout rocket in service? I know its around your time-frame Frizzank because NASA offered to launch British satellites for free with them, which they 'forgot' about after the UK cancelled its one and only domestic orbit capable rocket.

[frizzank]

I dont know but I am doing this next after Saturn V

Flew in 1966

http://www.diseno-art.com/encyclopedia/strange_vehicles/northrop_hl-10.html

[CaptainKipard]

If you're positive that increasing the number of triangles by a factor of about 10 or more wont slow my 4-year-old laptop down then I have no trouble in deferring to your experience. Just keep in mind not everyone has water cooled 8-core systems powered by a Titan. That's all you had to say. And if that's the case then I'll just leave the following as an exercise in pedantry.

Repeating a bad argument in bold doesn't make it good. Having more complex meshes during development is a neat technique and all and I got that from the beginning but that doesn't justify keeping them especially when you can dissolve those vertices before importing into Unity very easily (In blender at least) without compromising your UVs or the way the model looks in the game *at all*. It may or may not make a noticeable difference, but it would literally take less than a minute to fix. The whole point about development seems to be completely moot anyway. That's your business. I'm the consumer. That's why I said you didn't address my point. You seemed to be arguing against a strawman.

Besides that keep up the good work. I really like the mod, in fact I never use stock pods anymore thanks in part to it, It's just that I noticed a bit of a framerate drop when I started using your parts. Maybe it's a coincidence.

Although I am the first to admit that I lack Frizzank's extensive experience in game development, I thought it was an explanation that made quite some sense

I'm sure it did but it didn't directly address my point.

[Hodo]

That was a waste of a perfectly good explanation. You just danced around my point never really addressing it.

I don't think he danced around anything. He gave you the answer to the question you asked, you may not have liked that answer but it was an answer none the less.

If you wanted a different answer perhaps you should have thought out your question better. I had to read your question 3 times before I understood what you were trying to say.

[Camacha]

I dont know but I am doing this next after Saturn V

A lifting body I like the slight awkwardness about it, as well as that it screams 60's by its design.

I don't think he danced around anything. He gave you the answer to the question you asked, you may not have liked that answer but it was an answer none the less.

I got the same feeling, but hey.

Edited February 28, 2014 by Camacha

[Motokid600]

Im having trouble with the FASA 1.25m nosecone. Is it FAR compatible? Because im trying to take off from Eve and the craft acts like its dragging a parachute. Four outer asparagus boosters are using the nose cone while the center is using a procedural fairing. I noticed that when I decouple these tanks they get sucked back very quickly and the drag disappears. I even tried decoupling the second stage not under power with full tanks and the same happened. They pull away from the center stage as if that nosecone is not working. Idk is this is something I should post in Ferram's thread or not...

[CaptainKipard]

I don't think he danced around anything. He gave you the answer to the question you asked (...)

Well, no. He answered a question I didn't ask, which would be something like "How is a complex mesh useful in development." Right?

I don't care about that and I didn't ask that. I'm *using* the mod, I'm not helping him develop it, am I?

Look guys this is getting a little out of hand. Depending on how computers work my concern may not even be that big of an issue. Also I really have no interest in teaching people about critical thinking and the proper application of logic. If you're curious you'll learn those yourself. You can start by googling "strawman argument" and taking it from there. GG

[SuperWeegee4000]

Having trouble with MediaFire not downloading. Let's try Firefox.

EDIT: Yey it worked.

EDIT DEUX: Hm... how do I close the LEM hatch?

Edited March 1, 2014 by SuperWeegee4000

[Camacha]

Look guys this is getting a little out of hand. Depending on how computers work my concern may not even be that big of an issue. Also I really have no interest in teaching people about critical thinking and the proper application of logic. If you're curious you'll learn those yourself. You can start by googling "strawman argument" and taking it from there. GG

You asked about removing the extra triangles/polygons. Frizzank told you they were useful in making the parts and had too little impact to bother with removing them from the final product - a fair point for someone who is making the most of his limited time. That answered your question - the answer is no, he has not removed those edge loops around all the conical and cylindrical sections - although it is apparently not what you wanted to hear.

Frankly, I feel your response is a little condescending. If you really feel people are not understanding your question, it would be helpful to clarify yourself

Edited March 1, 2014 by Camacha

[UltraVires]

Can't we all just dig the groovy Space Stuff and get along?

Keep up the Good Work Frizz! I want one of those HL-10's, this Space Cowboy needs another Bronco to bust!

Edited March 1, 2014 by UltraVires

[CaptainKipard]

Camacha I feel like I'm being trolled. Just read the whole thing in context.

[Voidryder]

I dont know but I am doing this next after Saturn V

Flew in 1966

*snip*

frizzank, I have followed you since the first Gemini mod you did. I have expressed my appreciation and sung your much deserved praise on a regular basis. I even have offered to name my first born son or daughter after you because of your beautiful spacecrafts. And then you promise us this...

Only thing I can do now is to change the names of everybody in my family including the pets to frizzank. Grandma might protest a bit, but she'll come around or it will be back to the nursing home for her.

Thank you Sir.

frizzank II formerly known as Voidryder.

[NathanKell]

I dont know but I am doing this next after Saturn V

Flew in 1966 [HL-10 pix

KSP does have a most tragic lack of lifting bodies. Sweet!

[Kerbal01]

can anyone suggest to me ways i could make a project solo remake?

[Guest]

Frizzank, I have a question. Are you interested in including custom particles for the engines? It requires no plugins, and can give really impressive results. Nazari made some for Component Space Shuttle, and as a result the SSME exhaust looks just like launch footage. It'd be really great to see something like that in FASA. While SRBs can't really be made look good with that due to problems with making smoke (there's a plugin in the works for that, though), and small engines are more or less fine, the large engines could really use some diversity. Nazari made a tutorial on making your own effects: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/65754-HotRockets%21-Particle-FX-Replacement-Tutorial

Some reference pictures:

Redstone: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Ham_Launch_-_GPN-2000-001007.jpg

Atlas: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/Mercury-Atlas_3_launch.jpg

Titan: http://www.b14643.de/Spacerockets_2/United_States_6/Titan_II/Gallery/Titan-2_2.jpg

Saturn IB: http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/astp/astp-KSC-75PC-422.jpg

Saturn V: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/Skylab-73-HC-440HR.jpg

For upper stages there are no pictures, but I've got some guesses.

Titan 2nd stage: much like the first.

J-2: Faint, with blueish core phasing into orange edges. RL-10 (if you make it someday) would probably look similar, too, since they're both hydrolox engines.

Agena: White, quickly dispersing smoke. Much like OMS engines on the CSS (I'll soon release it, in fact, you could probably use the exact same flame).

Transtage: Either fainter, more dispersed Titan exhaust or as Agena, but with a larger smoke.

Gemini: RCS-like white smoke, preferably coming out of all 4 nozzles.

[frizzank]

Im having trouble with the FASA 1.25m nosecone. Is it FAR compatible? Because im trying to take off from Eve and the craft acts like its dragging a parachute. Four outer asparagus boosters are using the nose cone while the center is using a procedural fairing. I noticed that when I decouple these tanks they get sucked back very quickly and the drag disappears. I even tried decoupling the second stage not under power with full tanks and the same happened. They pull away from the center stage as if that nosecone is not working. Idk is this is something I should post in Ferram's thread or not...

I have no idea what is going on with far. I dont use it and dont know how to set up the configs. I did try to do a custom setting for the Mercury pod engine decoupler, and it seemed to help. If anyone would like to help me in this department with the config files and FAR I would greatly appreciate it....

Frizzank, I have a question. Are you interested in including custom particles for the engines?

Yes I just dont have the time to do particles for each of the engines. The job is open if anyone wants to take a crack at it. If they look better than the stock ones I will include them in FASA.