KW Rocketry problems anyone?

[CSX_Ind]

Mistake was made, I do request mods to delete this thread. Thank you.

Well I'm currently using two mods: KW Rocketry(KWR) and MechJeb.

MechJeb seems fine, but KW Rocketry, tiny problem with it.

1. It seems SRBs hate decoupler.

Every time I attach one of KWR's SRBs on decoupler and bring it to the launch pad, report gives me that there was structural failure between SRBs and liquid fuel tank. So I tested different types of decouplers.

Both TT-38K Radial Decoupler and HDM had 9 out of 10 structural failure with KWR's SRBs, mostly with Globe X-5 "Thor" SRB.

First thing came to my mind was that it could be collision detection problem, so I changed to TT-70 radial decoupler(To give more space between liquid fuel tank and SRBs). This time, 4~5 out of every 10 launches showed structural failure, and this time, most of KWR's SRBs shared same number of structural failure report.

2. Attachment problem with SRBs.

Way before with SRB's random structural failure on the launch pad, I had problem where I can't attach KWR's SRBs on decouplers.

Nothing overlapping was there, and yet unable to attach. I had to use debug(Part clipping debug) to attach those.

3. Attachment problem with LEs and interstages.

Liquid Engines do attach normally in VAB, however, when I try to launch my rocket, LEs start to cause two problems.

First problem happens right before launch, where LEs start to wobble violently as if they were not attached properly to liquid fuel tanks, or as if they were colliding to some 'invisible' object. This continues after launch, and it messes up entire lift off & climb stage. Quick fix to this problem was to attach struts between LE and liquid fuel tank, as well as SRBs.

Second problem happens mostly during launch & climb phase, where interstages fail to decouple with engines so that decoupler 'debris' are still attached to an engine.

With interstages, I tried to detach them by attaching normal decouplers within interstages, but didn't work out well.

Funny thing is that, if I attach decouplers correctly, LEs starts to wobble, and if LEs were attached properly, decouplers fail to decouple.

Added : I zoomed into climbing rocket and found out that first stage LE was attempting to "attach" to SRBs, and second stage LE was drifting out of interstage.

Those 3 are my problems, and I wanted to know if anyone was having same problem.

+KW Rocketry version is v0.2.3, which, according to Kerbal SpacePort, SpacePort was corrupting mod files so they uploaded txt file with download link in it. But since there was no txt file with download link, I assume they have fixed the problem with it.

+For those who does not know(Just in case I mean) -

-SRB: Solid Rocket Booster

-LE: Liquid Engine

-Interstage is a decoupler with engine cover already attached to it.

Edited May 9, 2013 by CSX_Ind

[Read have Read]

I too find inter-stages and adapter inter-stages to wobble like they aren't connected. Shame, they look so good.

[Synthesis]

Sorry about the thread resurrection, but does anyone know what's happening with the KW pack? There's no thread for it, and a lot of parts have started causing crashes at launch (not every time, but frequently).

[Jas0n]

Sorry about the thread resurrection, but does anyone know what's happening with the KW pack? There's no thread for it, and a lot of parts have started causing crashes at launch (not every time, but frequently).

It is on the spaceport.

[Synthesis]

It is on the spaceport.

I know that, but that version is the crash-prone one. The actual KW thread has vanished, or hasn't existed since the forum went down.

[Frostiken]

It's probably crashing because KW Rocketry has insane RAM requirements relative to the number of parts offered.

Unless we get 64-bit support for KSP, I have to call out KOSMOS, KW, and B9 as being the greediest packs. High-res and good looks is all nice, but your pack shouldn't be offering fewer than the default number of parts while taking three times more RAM to load. KW Rocketry is 400 megs unloaded, and given you only have about 2GB of RAM available for part loading before loading the game itself (any more and you start getting highly unstable), this means KW Rocketry is going to take up almost a quarter of your part memory load.

It's not hard to see why either. The textures are insanely high-res, and the models are unnecessarily detailed. I think if you clip the camera inside the fuel tanks you'll see actual internal tanks that are modeled and textured, tanks you wouldn't see otherwise. I don't know why. Even the fairings are 4 megs apiece, and they're just white. The 3m decoupler shrouds are 8 megs, twice that of the engines themselves. That doesn't make any sense at all. Decoupler shrouds are tubes painted white with some lines, it shouldn't be more than maybe a meg. The entire pack is horribly unoptimized. Switching to lower-poly meshes would be hardly noticeable, and lower-res textures would be able to easily halve the RAM requirements.

If you've added more addons recently that would be why you're suddenly crashing.

Edited May 19, 2013 by Frostiken

[Synthesis]

No kidding, I'd heard such things, but I'd dismissed them since I'd never had problems with K&W Crashing in 0.18, and my actual mod usage hasn't increased since then. That would explain though.

[JeBuSBrian]

It's probably crashing because KW Rocketry has insane RAM requirements relative to the number of parts offered.

...

The entire pack is horribly unoptimized. Switching to lower-poly meshes would be hardly noticeable, and lower-res textures would be able to easily halve the RAM requirements.

One thing you could do is to manually extract the textures and lower the image dimensions. Then edit the .mu to point at your new texture. I won't guarantee that you'll save much memory that way, since I haven't done it on an entire mod-pack like KW. But I've done it on individual parts, and the process works, at any rate.

Question: would it be useful to have a tool which does this for you? Extract the textures, resize to 1/2 or 1/4 of the original size, then edit the parts to use the new textures? Theoretically it might also reduce loading time, since there would be less pixels for the game to have to compress at load time.

[Devo]

One thing you could do is to manually extract the textures and lower the image dimensions. Then edit the .mu to point at your new texture. I won't guarantee that you'll save much memory that way, since I haven't done it on an entire mod-pack like KW. But I've done it on individual parts, and the process works, at any rate.

Question: would it be useful to have a tool which does this for you? Extract the textures, resize to 1/2 or 1/4 of the original size, then edit the parts to use the new textures? Theoretically it might also reduce loading time, since there would be less pixels for the game to have to compress at load time.

Changing the image dimensions will throw the UV map completely off, I don't recommend that method.

[JeBuSBrian]

That would be a strange behavior, considering any UV coordinate system I've ever seen has used a float range from 0.0 to 1.0. In other words, it's based off percentages, not pixels. Therefore, resizing a texture should have no effect on UV coordinates.

That being said, with all the poor coding I've seen regarding resource usage in KSP, it wouldn't surprise me if Squad somehow managed to muck that up as well.

At least you were nice enough to edit out your snarky opening comment, though be warned, when you subscribe to the thread with instant notification, you get the original message, however much you don't want that to be seen.

[Devo]

That would be a strange behavior, considering any UV coordinate system I've ever seen has used a float range from 0.0 to 1.0. In other words, it's based off percentages, not pixels. Therefore, resizing a texture should have no effect on UV coordinates.

That being said, with all the poor coding I've seen regarding resource usage in KSP, it wouldn't surprise me if Squad somehow managed to muck that up as well.

At least you were nice enough to edit out your snarky opening comment, though be warned, when you subscribe to the thread with instant notification, you get the original message, however much you don't want that to be seen.

Ok Jesus, thanks.

[JeBuSBrian]

The key thing is to keep the aspect ratio the same. So a 1024x1024 texture would map identically to a 512x512 or 256x256. If you start messing with the aspect ratio, things start to stretch oddly. Not to mention, I'm not even sure if KSP supports non-power-of-two texture sizes.

[Joe_Bender]

I didnt realize that KW was such a hog, no wonder I was having CTD with the mod loaded.

Guess its time to pull the parts out and delete and look for something better.

Thanks for the insight.

[Synthesis]

To return to my earlier point, it's surprising that KW's considerable memory use only became an issue (for me anyway) after 0.18. Sad it doesn't look like we'll be seeing an update to the pack, as far as I know.

[Elliptical Orbit]

I believe that the SRBs in the pack do need a few attachment changes for sure. I have tried to use them with some of the vehicles that I have created and they are not quite there. Messing with the cfg files does help a bit but, using them just becomes frustrating. Most of all they need a TVC systems of some sort to be more controllable. As far as the rest of the parts go, I seem to not have any problems with their liquid parts at all. And I have had more success at using them. But then I have done quite a bit of tweaking on the cfg files too, mostly on the small parts. I have a small test video I made so I could have proof of the ascent issue that mechjeb 2.07 has when it gets close to AP, that is known and will be fixed.

File size is about 25 Meg. Please let me know what you think.

Mike

https://www.dropbox.com/s/bwhps7xwysljrzy/Test%201%20-%20Small.mp4

[Fel]

Err, question.

KW Rocketry has a 10:1 compression ratio with ZIP (and similar individually with its textures)

Why should it cause any crashes when the textures get compressed during the load screen?

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/showthread.php/24956-Compressing-mbm-texture-files-pre-run-to-speed-up-load-times-have-some-questions

[JeBuSBrian]

I'm assuming the game itself uses one of the DXT formats. Those are often 30-50% less efficient at compression than zip. KSP has a whole lot of memory issues at the moment, which the devs say they're working on.

[Synthesis]

I believe that the SRBs in the pack do need a few attachment changes for sure. I have tried to use them with some of the vehicles that I have created and they are not quite there. Messing with the cfg files does help a bit but, using them just becomes frustrating. Most of all they need a TVC systems of some sort to be more controllable. As far as the rest of the parts go, I seem to not have any problems with their liquid parts at all. And I have had more success at using them. But then I have done quite a bit of tweaking on the cfg files too, mostly on the small parts. I have a small test video I made so I could have proof of the ascent issue that mechjeb 2.07 has when it gets close to AP, that is known and will be fixed.

File size is about 25 Meg. Please let me know what you think.

Mike

https://www.dropbox.com/s/bwhps7xwysljrzy/Test%201%20-%20Small.mp4

That's interesting--separation is annoying with stock decouplers--but do you get frequently crashes on deploying a rocket?

[Elliptical Orbit]

That's interesting--separation is annoying with stock decouplers--but do you get frequently crashes on deploying a rocket?

Not so much of deploying one as some random crashes that did not happen in 18.2. Not sure if it is me with some of the addons or my crap OS or the hardware itself. But then I do have a 5 year old machine that does SETI 24/7 (inc the graphics card) and using XP 64 on it. It is not the best OS out there and would not have done it had I known that the drivers for the board I have are crap. So now I am just waiting for IB E5 Xeons to come out for a new machine.

[Gaiabladegold]

I thought it was the tanks at first, but seems the attchment nodes are thankfully problematic with the decouplers in the pack, small sacrifice till it gets fixed... I did notice the flat-top SRBs have been getting the sunken node syndrome seeming to be going around, but the radial ones appear fine... All we can do is wait for the modders to update, I suppose... :/