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[1.2] Procedural Fairings 3.20 (November 8)


e-dog

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It won't work in this version, but it's an interesting idea.

Could you make some picture of what you want it to be? Like a screenshot of some vessel and something to show where the fairings should be.

On that note, I'd love to see procedural interstages. The Squad engines have their built-in interstages, of course, but I don't know of any third-party engines that have them. Not even the KW ones. So to satisfy my completely bonkers OCD tendencies, I either have to use those hollow interstage decouplers that were all the rage back in the day, or use only Squad models for upper-stage engines.

It's kind of hard to imagine how a procedural one would work, exactly. The most naive idea would be to put a thin ring-shaped part on top of the lower stage that would act like a stack separator, then put another similar part between the upper-stage engine and the tank above it, then have the surface part or whatever construct an interstage between the two parts. If the two parts have the same diameter, you get a cylinder. If not, you get a frustum.

But working out the details of that strikes me as very tricky. It'd be a fantastic addition to the game, for me, but it sounds like a lot to ask.

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KW rocketry fairings, AIES fairings, and (I think) NP fairings all work with FAR.

Too bad this doesn't work with FAR yet. I'd love to give it a try. But it's just not worth it yet.

KW fairings don't do anything special for FAR except having "fairing" in the part title.

So, it looks like a problem with generated mesh/colliders and FAR's recalculation of them. I'll look into this.

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I think interstage fairings would have to work a lot more like proceedural wings. where you have different sections you can mouse over, or possibly a text box you can write into to control the radius of the top, radius of the bottom, the overall height of the interstage, possibly the location/number/size of nodes too.

Speaking of which you should try to contact DYJ, he/she/they might know how to solve the problem with the collision mesh.

Edited by betaking
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I am finding when the fairing explode outwards they are tearing stuff of thats inside can the explosive rate be toned down a little

The side.cfg config file has parameters for ejectionDv and ejectionNoseDv, which I assume without actually looking at the source code are in meters per second. Maybe play with those values, see what results?

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First off, this is a beautiful mod.

Tried it out and I found 2 things that would be nice to tweak. would it be possible to apply it at the center of the fairing, or at the base and the nose, so that the halves are blown straight out to the side? Sometimes I had the fairing collide with the lower stage.

Also with some large fairings, I noticed that the two halves would separate slightly and wobble - one strut at the nose fixed it, but it would be nice if it dynamically attached the two halves at the nose.

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First off, this is a beautiful mod.

Tried it out and I found 2 things that would be nice to tweak. would it be possible to apply it at the center of the fairing, or at the base and the nose, so that the halves are blown straight out to the side? Sometimes I had the fairing collide with the lower stage.

Also with some large fairings, I noticed that the two halves would separate slightly and wobble - one strut at the nose fixed it, but it would be nice if it dynamically attached the two halves at the nose.

Simple solution: start spinning your ship in long axis just before jettisoning the fairings (or drop-tanks, or side stages). It will give them enough momentum to fly to the sides, and hopefully avoid collision.

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I had a thought, and I don't really know if its possible. I've been avoiding FAR and Deadly Re-entry for some time, primarily because the payloads were always oddly shaped.

Now, I don't know how realistic this would be but I'll ask it anyway. Is there some way to have a version of the fairing that would work as a heat shield? That can be ejected in the exact same fashion that the fairing works already?

That way we can come in nose first, lose a lot of speed then drop a drogue chute to turn us around then eject the fairing/heatshield.

I think for this 'idea' to be more realistic there would need to be a different shaped nose cone under the pointy one used for ascent. Ie, reach orbit, shed the pointy cone off the very nose but keep the remaining blunt nosed heat shield fairing.

Just a thought :)

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Just..friggin awesome! I always loved the idea of fairings but could never build my payload to fit inside so I just said screw it..now I can put fairings on anything! muahahahaha!...thank you :P

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Beyond awesome.

I've wanted fairings for along time but I don't tend to over-mod so I haven't ever tried any of the alternatives that come in large sets. Today I finally decided to try some and was browsing through someof the known ones when I happened to see this link - perfect timing sir (ma'am?).

I agree with some of the comments here as well, there's a lot more that could be done with this, especially in-line fairings which join from a bottom-plate to a top-plate, bulging outwards to cover whatever payload is in between and allowing the rocket to continue above. Some choices of visuals of course is always nice and perhaps some variation with the ejection angle/velocity to allow for wide loads below and whatever other weird creations people are bound to make.

Anyway, awesome job.

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WOW! This is exactly what I needed to play with FAR. I would've liked to give it a try, but I wasn't going to redesign my landers and everything to fit in other fairings. This is awesome, I'll definitely be looking over this thread for FAR compatibility.

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The FAR problems are a bit of a dealbreaker for me for now. But dayum, this is an awesome thing. I will be keeping an eye on this, and once FAR is playing along, I will use this to launch my ridiculously large ring station sections! Yeehaw! :D

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Is it possible to do some kind of procedural interstage or shroud? Preferably without a decoupler.

I've been trying to build reusable rockets lately and the KW interstages are never quite the right height, same goes for the AEIS ones (they're also often slightly too thin). They also tend to be very heavy when one is not using the decoupler functionality.

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