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[1.2] Real Solar System v12.0 Dec 8


NathanKell

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29 minutes ago, Sippitous said:

@StarwasterLOL. Why is direct editing a no-no? That's how I did it. I just changed the "atmocurve" in the parts file for each engine. At first, I was very precise rounding to 3 decimal places. note: I also changed the name of the "squad" folder.

Never rename a folder unless you created it or know what the effects are. The configs in that folder may contain references to the folder by name. e.g. 

		MODEL
		{
			model = Squad/Parts/Engine/miniJet/SmallJet
		}

That tells the part config where to find the model(s) for that part. That will prevent the part from compiling and it will no longer be listed in the parts list. And Galileo's advice (as you noted) is correct.

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Just now, Starwaster said:

Never rename a folder unless you created it or know what the effects are. The configs in that folder may contain references to the folder by name. e.g. 


		MODEL
		{
			model = Squad/Parts/Engine/miniJet/SmallJet
		}

That tells the part config where to find the model(s) for that part. That will prevent the part from compiling and it will no longer be listed in the parts list. And Galileo's advice (as you noted) is correct.

That would explain it. 

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@Sippitous Let me also add: I maintain a list of tweaks to the game in a 'zzzMyTweaks' folder. I copy it to every new installation  when the game is updated. So my changes always follow me and I don't have to remember what changes I have to re-create. The tweaks are a collection of Module Manager patches

Edit: Prepending zzz is a recent change. Some modders make use of the keyword :FINAL in MM patches which usually should only be done by the player as that is the only way they can ensure that their changes come last and are not overridden. So that helps me ensure my folder is processed last.

Edited by Starwaster
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  • Real Solar System – Getting Started

    Ever since I heard of the Real Solar System mod (RSS), I’ve always wanted to try it. It essentially turns the Kerbol system into our own solar system, swapping Kerbin for Earth, Jool for Jupiter etc etc. It also makes things much bigger, and therefore harder!

    How much bigger you ask? Well I don’t actually know which is part of the fun! I know everything is scaled up and I’ve seen a few awesome videos like this one that have given me an idea of the scale but that’s all. No wiki or advice reading at all.

    Since I’m making things more ‘real’, I’m also adding a few other mods I’ve always liked the sound of – FAR, deadly re-entry and procedural fairings.

    All in all I’m hoping that these new mods will give me a new challenge and new things to do in KSP!

    So let’s get started!!

     

    The first objective is to get to orbit. Since I have no real idea what I’m in for, this was always going to be unlikely on the first attempt! To give myself an idea of what I’m up against, I started with my bog standard orbiter that can usually quite comfortably get a Mk1 pod into orbit of Kerbin.

     

     

    The KSC as it is on Earth

    The KSC as it is on Earth

    My faithful orbiter on the pad

    My faithful orbiter on the pad

    Blast off!

    Blast off!

    This craft didn’t have any modifications from my stock one. I’m guessing that not making aerodynamic noses for my boosters didn’t help and I was pretty much crossing my fingers that a Mk1 pod doesn’t need a heat shield, it certainly LOOKS like it’s designed for re-entry…right!?

    RSS gravity turnSo FAR so good (Bwahaahahha!). I was afraid the aerodynamics model in the mod was going to tear apart my ship but it seemed fine.

    One problem I did have was not knowing where space was anymore! In stock, the atmosphere ends at 70km and I would start a gravity turn at around 10km. Everything is scaled up here so I started my turn at 30km and kept an eye out for signs that I was in space.

    First stage separates... Still not in space!

    First stage separates… Still not in space!

    screenshot5

    I pushed on until I reached an apoapsis of 150km. Why I picked this number I’m not quite sure, but looking at the map it kinda looked like it was outside the blue haze!

    screenshot6

    As my little craft struggled on, a crew report finally reported that I was in space! And with a decent chunk of the stage’s fuel left too!

    screenshot7

    Another look at the map showed me that the RSS KSC is in florida, on the site of the Kennedy Space Centre (I see what they did there).

    Rss out of fuelAs I finally run out of fuel I take a look at my progress.

    Doesn’t look too bad!

    screenshot10Until of course you zoom out and realise I haven’t made a scratch on getting to orbital velocity.

    Dang!

    The craft reached around 3500m/s, clearly this is nowhere near enough for an orbit in RSS.

    Now there was nothing left to do except try out the next mod – Deadly Re-entry.

    screenshot12Normally I would recover the last stage in this sort of situation but I was aware that although the Mk1 pod might have a heat shield, that fuel tank definitely didn’t so off it went!

    RSS deadly re-entry

    Parachute deployment unsafe…. Yep sounds reasonable

    Luckily the craft survived and fell the loooooooong way back down to Earth (well, the Atlantic Ocean).

     

    I’m already enjoying RSS, it’s adding an extra challenge to KSP that I’ve been missing with all my goofing around recently. Hopefully I’ll once again feel that new player buzz of getting into orbit and landing on the Moon!

    Links to the mods:

    Real Solar System

    FAR

    Deadly Re-entry

    Procedural Fairings

     

    Stay tuned for more RSS posts, feel free to share your ideas or experiences below!

 

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Hi all.

I have one probably stupid question about RSS, sorry if this kind of problem was discussed before. I've used RSS for a long time and I really enjoy this great mod. One day I've tried to use KSP Trajectory Optimization Tool to pre-calculate a complex flight plans, but after a while I've noticed that TOT calculations has some error, not large but noticable. I've spend some time trying to find the cause of this discrepancy. While searching, I've faced some strange thing I don't understand. For example, Moon in RSS has a SMA equal to 384308.437770707 km and Earth has a Gm=398600.4418 km^3/s^2, which gives an orbital period equal to 2371000 s. I've checked actual Moon period using KOS and it gave me 2356558 s. The difference is too big to be just numerical error. Then I've put a probe on the Moon orbit by console. As expected, the period of this probe was 2371000 s (approximately). With time acceleration it became visible that this probe indeed has lower speed than the Moon despite the fact their orbital parameters are exacly the same. So this is my question: does orbital speeds of planets in RSS coincides with two-body problem (which means I've made some mistake) or these speeds are a bit different (which could explain the error of TOT calculations)?

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3 hours ago, Stract said:

Hi all.

I have one probably stupid question about RSS, sorry if this kind of problem was discussed before. I've used RSS for a long time and I really enjoy this great mod. One day I've tried to use KSP Trajectory Optimization Tool to pre-calculate a complex flight plans, but after a while I've noticed that TOT calculations has some error, not large but noticable. I've spend some time trying to find the cause of this discrepancy. While searching, I've faced some strange thing I don't understand. For example, Moon in RSS has a SMA equal to 384308.437770707 km and Earth has a Gm=398600.4418 km^3/s^2, which gives an orbital period equal to 2371000 s. I've checked actual Moon period using KOS and it gave me 2356558 s. The difference is too big to be just numerical error. Then I've put a probe on the Moon orbit by console. As expected, the period of this probe was 2371000 s (approximately). With time acceleration it became visible that this probe indeed has lower speed than the Moon despite the fact their orbital parameters are exacly the same. So this is my question: does orbital speeds of planets in RSS coincides with two-body problem (which means I've made some mistake) or these speeds are a bit different (which could explain the error of TOT calculations)?

so that's a ~4 hour difference in orbital periods... maybe a rounding issue or floats vs doubles issue? Vessels usually handle velocity as a double.... maybe we need to check what orbits are using in RSS 

Clarification: What I mean is that if something is being cast to a float somewhere between the orbital configuration and the actual orbits being determined in the game then that could throw things off. I don't know if it would amount to a four hour difference or not...

Edited by Starwaster
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1 hour ago, Alexoff said:

Now Mercury!

What mods are you using there? Is that a full scale RSS or is it SSRSS? I see ground textures that SSRSS use

Edited by Galileo
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3 hours ago, Starwaster said:

so that's a ~4 hour difference in orbital periods... maybe a rounding issue or floats vs doubles issue? Vessels usually handle velocity as a double.... maybe we need to check what orbits are using in RSS 

Clarification: What I mean is that if something is being cast to a float somewhere between the orbital configuration and the actual orbits being determined in the game then that could throw things off. I don't know if it would amount to a four hour difference or not...

Machine epsilon for floats is about 1e-7, so I don't think that would cause a 0.6% variation.

6 hours ago, Stract said:

Hi all.

I have one probably stupid question about RSS, sorry if this kind of problem was discussed before. I've used RSS for a long time and I really enjoy this great mod. One day I've tried to use KSP Trajectory Optimization Tool to pre-calculate a complex flight plans, but after a while I've noticed that TOT calculations has some error, not large but noticable. I've spend some time trying to find the cause of this discrepancy. While searching, I've faced some strange thing I don't understand. For example, Moon in RSS has a SMA equal to 384308.437770707 km and Earth has a Gm=398600.4418 km^3/s^2, which gives an orbital period equal to 2371000 s. I've checked actual Moon period using KOS and it gave me 2356558 s. The difference is too big to be just numerical error. Then I've put a probe on the Moon orbit by console. As expected, the period of this probe was 2371000 s (approximately). With time acceleration it became visible that this probe indeed has lower speed than the Moon despite the fact their orbital parameters are exacly the same. So this is my question: does orbital speeds of planets in RSS coincides with two-body problem (which means I've made some mistake) or these speeds are a bit different (which could explain the error of TOT calculations)?

I've confirmed this with HyperEdit and Kerbal Engineer -- popping a probe into the Moon's orbit, it does lag behind.  Looking at the in-game info window, the rotation period of the Moon is 27d 6h 35m, which is the time that Stract measured, and which is almost exactly 4 hours shorter than the orbital period of the satellite placed in the Moon's orbit (27d 10h 35m).

It turns out that adding the Moon's gravitational parameter (0.0123x GM_E) to the Earth's (as is the case for the true two-body problem) and running the period calculation produces the 27d 6h 35m value that we see in-game.  I see that Kopernicus has a "FinalizeOrbit" method that recalculates a body's orbit using the combined gravitational parameter ("unlike stock KSP", says the comment), but I suspect that spacecraft still get the old central-body-only calculations.  This is a true enough in low orbits, but less so in very high orbits in systems with a large secondary body, where the n-body properties start to matter.

Edited by Kerbas_ad_astra
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1 hour ago, Galileo said:

What mods are you using there? Is that a full scale RSS or is it SSRSS? I see ground textures that SSRSS use

First it was E.T.O., but I decided to steal your textures from SVT for grass and mercury terrain :rolleyes:

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1 hour ago, Kerbas_ad_astra said:

Machine epsilon for floats is about 1e-7, so I don't think that would cause a 0.6% variation.

I've confirmed this with HyperEdit and Kerbal Engineer -- popping a probe into the Moon's orbit, it does lag behind.  Looking at the in-game info window, the rotation period of the Moon is 27d 6h 35m, which is the time that Stract measured, and which is almost exactly 4 hours shorter than the orbital period of the satellite placed in the Moon's orbit (27d 10h 35m).

It turns out that adding the Moon's gravitational parameter (0.0123x GM_E) to the Earth's (as is the case for the true two-body problem) and running the period calculation produces the 27d 6h 35m value that we see in-game.  I see that Kopernicus has a "FinalizeOrbit" method that recalculates a body's orbit using the combined gravitational parameter ("unlike stock KSP", says the comment), but I suspect that spacecraft still get the old central-body-only calculations.  This is a true enough in low orbits, but less so in very high orbits in systems with a large secondary body, where the n-body properties start to matter.

I think you can move a little beyond suspicion on that. Vessels only use their reference body to determine their orbits and gravitational influence.

The question is, is it really worth it to use a method like that when vessels still are affected by stock?

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8 hours ago, Kerbas_ad_astra said:

It turns out that adding the Moon's gravitational parameter (0.0123x GM_E) to the Earth's (as is the case for the true two-body problem) and running the period calculation produces the 27d 6h 35m value that we see in-game.  I see that Kopernicus has a "FinalizeOrbit" method that recalculates a body's orbit using the combined gravitational parameter ("unlike stock KSP", says the comment), but I suspect that spacecraft still get the old central-body-only calculations.  This is a true enough in low orbits, but less so in very high orbits in systems with a large secondary body, where the n-body properties start to matter.

Thanks for the answer, Kerbas_ad_astra!

Yes, you are right, FinalizeOrbit indeed adds the masses of two bodies to calculate the orbital period. But honestly I don't understand the purpose of this. It makes sense to consider a Mass of the Moon if you want to calculate a gravitational force between two bodies, but force itself does not determine the orbit, the acceleration does, which is the force divided by mass (Moon mass in our case). Orbital period should not depend on the mass of secondary body as far as I know.

Addendum: ah, sorry, I understand now. Yes, if we consider a problem of two bodies moving around common center of masses then orbital period is determined by sum of masses. I'm not sure this rectification makes sense since central body in KSP is not moving anyway but at least I see the logic. Thank you.

Edited by Stract
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6 hours ago, Stract said:

Thanks for the answer, Kerbas_ad_astra!

Yes, you are right, FinalizeOrbit indeed adds the masses of two bodies to calculate the orbital period. But honestly I don't understand the purpose of this. It makes sense to consider a Mass of the Moon if you want to calculate a gravitational force between two bodies, but force itself does not determine the orbit, the acceleration does, which is the force divided by mass (Moon mass in our case). Orbital period should not depend on the mass of secondary body as far as I know.

Addendum: ah, sorry, I understand now. Yes, if we consider a problem of two bodies moving around common center of masses then orbital period is determined by sum of masses. I'm not sure this rectification makes sense since central body in KSP is not moving anyway but at least I see the logic. Thank you.

As you say, it makes sense if they are moving around their common center of mass, which is not possible for them to do in KSP. All I can see this doing is creating a difference in physics between the planets and physical objects such as ships.

It CAN be disabled though. Each body configuration has a finalizeOrbit field. Set it to false and they behave as in stock. It can even be done with a Module Manager patch

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Removing that correction for planets and moons would in time cause their orbit phases to deviate from reality. Although KSP cannot accurately represent the Moon's orbit anyway, and maybe the orbital period could be corrected by fudging the semi-major axis a little.

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2 hours ago, cantab said:

Removing that correction for planets and moons would in time cause their orbit phases to deviate from reality. Although KSP cannot accurately represent the Moon's orbit anyway, and maybe the orbital period could be corrected by fudging the semi-major axis a little.

It's going to deviate anyway. The 'correction' only represents a small measure of additional accuracy and can put every planet and their moons out of phase with physical objects in space around them. 

Edit: And oh look! It also affects other mods/tools that we use :)

So what's really gained here? It doesn't seem like anyone has compared that to what's being lost. You can't just think about our own reality, you have to consider the reality created within the game itself and by all the many different mods and tools interacting with each other.

Edited by Starwaster
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3 hours ago, Joseph Kerman said:

Can you get me the unzipped file?

What? Just download the mod and unzip it. Very simple. If you don't know how to do that, google it man. Nobody will upload an unzipped mod, guaranteed.

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Hello!

 

I install this mode, but nothing change :(  Ihave Kerbol system :^( The mode was installed to KSP\GameData....  I have Kopernicus, RSS texture, module manager and Real Solar System

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