[1.0.2] Persistent Trails - record, share and replay track data! (May 14, V1.2)

[little square dot]

SirJodelstein, I'm loving this plugin man.

One of the things that I most disliked about KSP was that I could spend hours upon hours exploring the moons and planets, however the next time I loaded up KSP I would have no idea which craters I had previously explored, and without taking notes I would have no idea how far I'd come on a particular day, what I had come across, etc.

Now every time I begin a new excursion I start recording a new trail, and the visible progression and differentiation between trails motivates me to actually plan my excursions with a set goal in mind, which adds a level of immersion and keeps things interesting.

Although it may just be a bunch of multi-coloured lines, it's nice to finally have something to show for my exploration efforts. =)

One request/suggestion that I have is adding the option to lay the trails along the ground, regardless of what altitude the player may have been travelling at while recording the trail.

When flying, or using the EVA pack to explore low-G environments, the collection of trails can begin to look quite messy from the ground when they're roller-coastering all over the place, both on land and in the sky.

Such a feature could also be used to record a descent/landing trail which could then be laid on the terrain in a relatively subtle colour scheme for ground vehicles to seek-out and use as a bread-crumb trail of sorts with which to find the landing zone. This would allow for more interesting search and rescue/recovery operations in which the player could opt out of using the map and simply use the good ol'-fashioned ocular search method to find the trail and follow it to the lander.

I don't even know if this is a practical suggestion, but that would be my 2 cents. Regardless, thanks for the cool mod.

[SirJodelstein]

Progress in inevitable. Cool stuff is about to happen. This is a preview of whats coming out of cooperation with Snjo.

Yep, thats an actual (geometry-only) model thats flying the recorded track, and no longer a boring sphere. Racing/Dogfighting just got a whole lot more interesting :-)

[Snjo]

[minimuffin]

YEEESSS! I was waiting for that. Just the other day I was doing aerobatics and thought it would be nice to be able to see how close you plane got to crashing afterwards!

This will also open up many new opportunities, such as cinematics! Being able to have many craft on screen at once will be super useful. Imagine a fleet of space craft slowly drifting to, let's say, a "warp gate" and then all warping away. Or even a "army" of rovers! Just amazing! I knew that you would end up working together and making this.

I also am a huge fan of your mod. I have not yet really used it to document a rover journey, but for planes? That is great in in of itself! As soon as I figured out that this worked in .22, I downloaded! Thumbs up.

[rasheed]

Holy crap that is cool

[Malsheck]

Every once in a while someone makes a mod that you either didn't think possible or haven't even imagined. You sir, have done both. Congrats and great job! I do have a question though. Are your previous recordings of your vessels interact-able or are they simply a ghost image on rails? Cause it would be really cool to finally have a means to refuel mid air from a plane in a large traffic pattern.

[Snjo]

There is no interaction yet, but I plan on making it happen. For now you can only choose if the colliders should be on or off on the replay vessel, and how it will behave when the playback ends (stays in place/goes away/falls down)

SJ still has some work to do on updating the front page of this thread with images, links, and some useful text, but if you look real careful on the spaceport, you might just find it's available already.

[therealcrow999]

So you guys are merging the two mods?

[Javster]

So you guys are merging the two mods?

I think so, soon.

[Dilin]

There is no interaction yet, but I plan on making it happen. For now you can only choose if the colliders should be on or off on the replay vessel, and how it will behave when the playback ends (stays in place/goes away/falls down)

SJ still has some work to do on updating the front page of this thread with images, links, and some useful text, but if you look real careful on the spaceport, you might just find it's available already.

Hehe I found it, clever 0 downloads I guess Ill go first.

[Mekan1k]

There is no interaction yet, but I plan on making it happen. For now you can only choose if the colliders should be on or off on the replay vessel, and how it will behave when the playback ends (stays in place/goes away/falls down)

SJ still has some work to do on updating the front page of this thread with images, links, and some useful text, but if you look real careful on the spaceport, you might just find it's available already.

Please leave colliders on- I want to crash a jet into a UFO.

[SirJodelstein]

As Snjo has already indicated, here goes the official release statement:

Snjo and I are very happy to announce a successful code merge of Flight Path Recorder and this plugin. Development will continue on this plugin with joined forces!

Version 1.0.1 is out and delivers a ton of improvements and new cool features to play with:

 - Vessel playback. Boring spheres are a thing of the past. The current vessel geometry is saved automatically upon creating a track, and will be used for replay
 - Physics colliders playback. You can enable physics colliders in the track edit window. This allows you to crash into playback vessels
 - "Off rails" at playback end: Activate this to let the phyisics engine take over the playback vessel at the end of the playback record
 - Playback looping: Enable to automatically rewind and restart playback at the end of the record. Set the "loop closure time" to determine the duration of the interpolated missing link from end to start.
 - Smart node placement. The "recording interval" buttons are a thing of the past. Instead, nodes are placed as necessary depending on change of orientation, velocity or speed. Three modes (high/medium/low precision) for setting the tolerances. Can be changed in-flight or during recording
 - New save file format. Orientation and velocity data is stored with each node, and the header has a new format. Backwards compatibility is in, but vessel replay wont work because of missing orientation information.
 - Moved to Spaceport

Now show us what you can do with this! And stay tuned, because we have a whole lot of plans for the future :-)

[diomedea]

I was waiting for this merge to happen and DL the mod. Good job, congrats to both authors.

I was unable to move the button (opening this mod settings) around in the main flight window: can't find anything in the install dealing with its position, either. I would suggest then to allow for some form of configuration on the button position. Thanks.

[SirJodelstein]

I was unable to move the button (opening this mod settings) around in the main flight window: can't find anything in the install dealing with its position, either. I would suggest then to allow for some form of configuration on the button position. Thanks.

That icons position is hardcoded currently. Waiting for the release of a generalized solution from this promising thread instead of trying to come up with the N+1th custom implementation of this feature.

[greg12]

the updates really promising, I love the new replay button. But!!! you really want to look into fixing struts and some mod compatibility with stretchy tanks. Also some animation for propellers and such would be nice. Thanks

[diomedea]

That icons position is hardcoded currently. Waiting for the release of a generalized solution from this promising thread instead of trying to come up with the N+1th custom implementation of this feature.

Excellent. I'm waiting about that solution too, very happy to know you are on that as well.

[wasmic]

Looks good great awesome!

[Snjo]

A tip for film and image makers

When I made the image with all planes and rovers in the OP, I had a hard time making stock planes and flying them in a controlled fashion through the picture zone.

You can see the stock Albatross 3 in the image, but that's not actually the craft I flew when I recorded the path. Instead I flew the small Sopwith you see in the background, and then edited the track file later.

Here's how it works:

When you start a path recording, the current vessel is saved to disk in the PluginData folder, and that vessel name is referenced in the track file.

I launched a flight with the Albatross, and started recording a new path. That saved a new "Albatross 3.crf" file.

I ended the recording and relaunched with the easier to fly biplane, and after the track was saved, I edited the PluginData\Track\sopwith.trk file, changing VESSELNAME:Albatross 3 to VESSELNAME:sopwith.

Now when I loaded the track playback, the Albatross was flying along the trail instead of the plane I had actually used.

(The Albatross has very flexible wings, and I wanted to capture a little bit of that in the saved vessel. If I had saved the new track after take off, that flex curve would have been stored, but I forgot)

[Spanier]

So you can now launch multiple things synchronously? I mean, you record the launch of a craft, save it, and do a replay of it while launching another craft?

[SirJodelstein]

So you can now launch multiple things synchronously? I mean, you record the launch of a craft, save it, and do a replay of it while launching another craft?

Exactly. If you activate the colliders for replay (track edit window), you can even crash into the on-rails replay vessel. The replay ghost is of course no real "flight", so you can't switch control to it etc. Formation flying, mission NPCs, racing vs. other players ghosts, moving fly-through gates - lots of stuff you can set up with this.

[blizzy78]

Exactly. If you activate the colliders for replay (track edit window), you can even crash into the on-rails replay vessel. The replay ghost is of course no real "flight", so you can't switch control to it etc. Formation flying, mission NPCs, racing vs. other players ghosts, moving fly-through gates - lots of stuff you can set up with this.

Awesome feature, I'll have to try that sometime. Also, I sense lots of good machinima incoming

[blizzy78]

Just noticed something funny when replaying a track: The ghost vehicle spawns with launch clamps still intact, and it will lift off having them on. Looks a bit weird

[Snjo]

Just noticed something funny when replaying a track: The ghost vehicle spawns with launch clamps still intact, and it will lift off having them on. Looks a bit weird

Thanks! Added it to the issues list. For the next version, we will be removing or fixing positions for thing like struts, fuel lines and launch clamps.

The craft saving happens when you press the record button, so you could replace the silly looking vessel by starting a new recording with the vessel sans clamps later, and that would replace the one in the previous clip.

We have also been thinking about updating the vessel used during flight, so it would switch between two saved versions of the craft at some trigger point, like staging. But it's all about finding a smooth way to do it.

[tetryds]

has anyone tried this with KMP or lazor guided missles?

if so, what happens?

i belive you would see your own records normally, but not send them via KMP

but it would be cool if the other's tracks (tracks only) showed up when enabled by the one piloting the ship

would allow everyone to see what other people did

[Snjo]

It's not talking to KMP, but it's easy to send tracks and craft files to your friends and have them show up in your game.