[WIP Plugin] Extraplanetary Space Centers!

[The Lone Wolfling]

...What long loading times? 0.21 starts up faster for me than 0.20 did.

Glad to see that.

I believe we're talking about scene transitions though, if Benie is talking about the same thing I am.

From <5s from VAB to launch in 0.20 to >15 in 0.21, and growing.

And SOI transitions also have pauses.

[Benie]

If you absolutely need an 0.20 version, you can clone an earlier version off of Github and paste in the debug mode lines.

I know nothing about coding, sorry. Nor do I got the tools to do so. If you could help me with that, that would be awesome of you.

I believe we're talking about scene transitions though, if Benie is talking about the same thing I am.

From <5s from VAB to launch in 0.20 to >15 in 0.21, and growing.

And SOI transitions also have pauses.

This is what I was talking about. Sorry for not making it clear.

Edited July 30, 2013 by Benie

[GenaTrius]

This probably shoudl be posted here, not in the main thread.

I was able to spawn one ship and fly it. The game didn't switch focus to it without me telling it to, and when it did focus on it the staging was messed up. I was able to correct the staging and take off.

Everything I spawned after that spontaneously exploded on the pad. Everything from the Kerbal-X to the stock ion-probe. I spawned it, it exploded.

[skykooler]

This probably shoudl be posted here, not in the main thread.

I've isolated the exploding issue; for some reason it is spawning two copies of the same ship, which intersect with each other and therefore explode. I'm still trying to figure out whether this is because of the button being triggered multiple times or some loop I missed, but I have found that you can launch things without exploding, although maybe only like 3 times out of 10 (this may depend on your framerate).

[strongest_2hu]

Today when I finally got a ship to spawn without exploding, it spawned with full fuel tanks even though I had no fuel connected in any way to the pad (I was testing the explody-ness of the ships and just had a pad with a rocketparts container that I filled with hyperedit). The rocketparts cost was around 8 tons as expected for the fuel-empty vessel, although the fully-fueled vessel weighed closer to 25 tons. Additionally, the staging didn't work and I had to decouple the clamps and light the engine by hand before buzzing around KSC. It sounds like you've got the exploding thing under control, I mainly wanted to let you know about the fuel thing (unless it's just me).

[gl0ryh0und]

I finnally got something to spawn without an explosion, and noticed that what was happening is the ship spawned on top of my launchpad initially, then when the scene updated the game placed the spawned vehicle on the Mun surface.. under my launchpad, which as you can well imagine resulted in spectacular fireworks. but it did remove the one spawned onto of the pad first, so I'm just guessing from observation that the issue is not duplicate vehicles in the exact same space, but that when the vehicle mesh is spawned it shows on the launch pad and then when physics and game rules are applied it is placed on the planet surface, directly under the original spawn point. Or perhaps I'm wrong, just an observation I thought worth mentioning.

[KhaosCorp]

Today when I finally got a ship to spawn without exploding, it spawned with full fuel tanks even though I had no fuel connected in any way to the pad (I was testing the explody-ness of the ships and just had a pad with a rocketparts container that I filled with hyperedit). The rocketparts cost was around 8 tons as expected for the fuel-empty vessel, although the fully-fueled vessel weighed closer to 25 tons. Additionally, the staging didn't work and I had to decouple the clamps and light the engine by hand before buzzing around KSC. It sounds like you've got the exploding thing under control, I mainly wanted to let you know about the fuel thing (unless it's just me).

turn debug mode off?

[strongest_2hu]

turn debug mode off?

That's the debug line in the "exlaunchpad" module for the launchpad part.cfg, right? It's set to false, which I can only imagine is default, and has never been touched by me.

When the ship spawned there were violent explosions and everything that wasn't the ship either shot off into the distance or disintegrated, including the launchpad, leaving a perfectly intact vessel sitting on its docking clamps. Is it possible that when the launchpad is double-spawning one spawns properly and the other spawns completely full, and the one that wound up winning the clipping battle happened to be the full one?

[GenaTrius]

I've isolated the exploding issue; for some reason it is spawning two copies of the same ship, which intersect with each other and therefore explode. I'm still trying to figure out whether this is because of the button being triggered multiple times or some loop I missed, but I have found that you can launch things without exploding, although maybe only like 3 times out of 10 (this may depend on your framerate).

Ahhhh, I see! It did sort of seemed like it spawned two copies once. That is, one of the times it seemed like that, and the other times it just seems like there was a serious malfunction in the fueling system.

Incidentally, "I've isolated the exploding issue" is an excellent quote in any context.

[skykooler]

So, I've been working on the large detector. The main problem I had was to figure out how to make it realistic. What do you detect ore from space with? Kethane is liquid or gaseous, so it makes sense that there would be something in the air that you could see with a spectrometer or something, but how do you detect ore?

Well, ore is dense; denser than plain rock. So, you need a way to detect extra-dense rock from space. My solution is based on NASA's GRACE mission, which detects gravitational anomalies using two satellites some distance apart. As the first satellite approaches a mass concentration, it speeds up due to the extra gravity, and there is a sensitive laser measuring the distance between them. Because KSP doesn't have a simple way to deal with multiple satellites, my detector instead has a mirror (made out of hexagons, like that of the JWST) on a tether that is extended in space; the mirror is unfolded and a laser calculates the distance.

Javascript is disabled. View full album

[Scotius]

Magnetometer is another tool used in finding metal (ore) deposits.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluxgate_magnetometer#Fluxgate_magnetometer

[Cypherwraith]

The drill doesn't seem to be working for me. The other components are good (if a bit unwieldy, but I understand that is the intention) and work properly. The drill animation doesn't play, no power is drained, and most notably, no ore is mined. I've checked, and the spot I'm trying to mine is right on top of a deposit. The spot is an ore and kethane-rich region on the Mun.

--EDIT--

Scratch that, I saw my problem in the other thread, as well as the patched solution.

Edited July 31, 2013 by Cypherwraith
Fixed

[skykooler]

Magnetometer is another tool used in finding metal (ore) deposits.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluxgate_magnetometer#Fluxgate_magnetometer

A magnetometer will be the short-range detector, which you'd put on probes or landers.

[BlazingAngel665]

Not gonna lie, your new models are BEAUTIFUL. I already love this mod but the level of professionalism added by your new models is mind blowing.

[MGUARN]

what about some sort of sonar that penetrate the surface ,and goes through the dense ore slowly ,and bounce up to the dish.this might be for rovers/probes landed on planet's surfaces.

[SpaceCowboy]

A magnetometer will be the short-range detector, which you'd put on probes or landers.

They can work from orbit though http://mgs-mager.gsfc.nasa.gov/instrument.html.

[SciMan]

They can work from orbit though http://mgs-mager.gsfc.nasa.gov/instrument.html.

True, and as a matter of fact I can only come up with 2 cases where a magnetometer would NOT work to detect ore.

First, if the magnetic field of what you are trying to detect is being drowned out by another nearby magnetic field, the "signal" field (from the ore) will be drowned out by the "noise" field, kind of similar to how the unaided human eye can not tell if Mercury is eclipsing the Sun as viewed from the surface of the Earth at local noon (because the Sun's brightness is not significantly changed by Mercury being between the Sun and Earth).

The second case is when what you are trying to detect does not have a magnetic field of its own, or it does not change the magnetic field of surrounding objects. This means that plastics are undetectable to magnetometers, unless some type of metal filings were included in the recipe for it. Additionally, it means that an aluminum submarine would be extremely hard to detect with a magnetometer even if it was moving, because aluminum can not be magnetized, and the distortion it causes to surrounding magnetic fields is quite low.

what about some sort of sonar that penetrate the surface ,and goes through the dense ore slowly ,and bounce up to the dish.this might be for rovers/probes landed on planet's surfaces.

This type of geological survey is known as Reflection Seismology, and it's one of the ways Geologists use to choose the location of an oil well.

First, the geologists set up a network of several Geophones, then they drill one or more shallow holes in the ground and place a small amount of explosive (~1 stick of TNT) in each one. When the explosives are detonated, the geophones record the sound that passed thru the ground from each explosion. The geophones are designed to pick up low-frequency (around 10-240 Hertz) sound waves that travel thru the ground, while being nearly "deaf" to any sound that passes thru the air. By manipulating the data recorded from the geophones using a computer, the geologists can make a map of the location of different mineral strata underground. These computer programs can be quite complex from a mathmatical point of view, but the basic principal allowing it to work is that the speed of a sound wave in rock depends on the specific type of rock the sound wave is traveling thru, and the sound wave "bends" when it meets a boundary between two different kinds of rock, just like how the path of a beam of light bends when it meets the boundary between water and air, or air and glass, or glass and water, etc.

A similar technology is Ground-Penetrating Radar. It uses radio waves instead of sound waves, but the math is similar. It can not "see" as far under the surface, but it is capable of much higher resoultion than a seismic survey. The high resolution makes it quite useful in the forensic investigation of a crime scene. For instance, it could be used to scan a crime scene to determine where a serial killer buried one of their victims by detecting the bones without having to actually dig up the whole crime scene, which would almost certainly disturb other useful evidence at that site.

[skykooler]

I know that magnetometers could work in orbit, but if this one did it would kind of defeat the purpose of having a large scanner. So I've made the magnetometer relatively close-range (60km max) - which will still work in low orbit over most bodies, but the main point is to put it on landers or rovers.

Here's the model I made:

[Fyrem]

ok, that is just Perfectly Kerbal.

I am impatiently waiting for v3!

[Blaylock1988]

Sonar can also be used for planes and rovers on planets with atmosphere. If you added that, maybe make it with a large detection area to make up for the slow travel speed down in atmosphere. Just an idea.

[skykooler]

Sonar can also be used for planes and rovers on planets with atmosphere. If you added that, maybe make it with a large detection area to make up for the slow travel speed down in atmosphere. Just an idea.

Unfortunately, the Kethane detector module doesn't have support for checking whether you're in the atmosphere, or having a wider detection area. So until those are added to Kethane there will not be a sonar detector.

[skykooler]

Progress report: I found the bug that caused staging to be broken in 0.21 and fixed it. However, now there is a GUI bug that prevents you from launching more than one ship without going to the space center in between. So, yeah, have to fix that now.

[GenaTrius]

Progress report: I found the bug that caused staging to be broken in 0.21 and fixed it. However, now there is a GUI bug that prevents you from launching more than one ship without going to the space center in between. So, yeah, have to fix that now.

I've compiled what you comitted, and it's worked pretty well for me! The launchpad (or at least my test rig) seems a little more finicky with rocket holders than it once was, but I'm creative enough to design alternative launching methods.

[Atreiu]

Do you have any ideas of when this will be available, at least for testing?

[CheeseGuy]

I can't seem to figure out how to use the Auger to mine ore!

I've sent a probe into Kerbin orbit, scanned, found ore deposits at KSC, then I built a rover with the auger on the back (hooked up to a rototron from DR) and lowered it into the ground and set "deploy drill". Nothing happens though. I have some Ore Hexcans on the rover too.

I then tried just with the auger hooked up to a hexcan and started the drill but again, nothing happens.

Its above an ore deposit, I tried different depths, always keeping the auger vertical, btw theres no animation either...

I have Kethane and the extraplanetary space center mod so it shows ore and kethane deposits