[1.2] Real Solar System v12.0 Dec 8

[Starwaster]

Didn't MSL open it's parachutes an roughly 450m/s after entering Mars' atmosphere?

I changed the pressure parameter and I see a glimpse of hope on the horizon. The chute opened, but I was way too fast. I try to work on my maneuver a little bit more.

Thank you very much!

You should also change the altitude of the chute. There's an altitude proprty for it and it won't open above that altitude.

(in fact I wonder what would happen if you removed the pressure prop and just used altitude...)

Also, if you have B9 Aerospace, slap some airbrakes on too. Every little bit helps.

[metaphor]

The stock parachutes open partially at a specific pressure and open fully at a specific altitude above the ground.

MSL landed at a point 4.5 km below "sea level" on Mars. So it had a much thicker atmosphere to bring down its terminal velocity. It was still going supersonic at that point though, and the parachute brought it down to about 100 m/s I think. The fact that it couldn't slow down enough using only heat shields and parachutes is the whole reason for the skycrane maneuver.

Also, the bigger your craft get, the higher their terminal velocity. That's because the mass of an object is proportional to its volume, but its drag is proportional to its surface area. Since volume increases faster than area as you get bigger, bigger crafts have proportionally lower drag and so higher terminal velocity (only true for FAR, not for stock).

[Guest]

Well, that's assuming mass scales with volume, which it doesn't have to. Remember, we're talking spacecraft, not bricks. It also depends on how dense you make your craft. For example, a hydrogen tank might add a lot of surface area while keeping the mass increase relatively low. Non-folding trusses and such can also "inflate" the craft without actually increasing it's mass too much.

[Deejay2000]

Could I get some help on re-entering Kerbin's atmosphere without burning up? (I have the deadly re-entry mod.) I just want to try from a 300 km orbit. I've tried almost every altitude possibility, but I always end up burning up at the 60 km mark with my heat shield exceeding 1500 degrees Celsius[?]. Any help would be appreciated.

[li7in6]

Sorry for the delay, I went to bed the other night then figured I should probably do a better job rebalancing the numbers. Tried to follow stock RT2 balancing as close as is feasible (less going off part descriptions) with less of my personal twist which people might not like. Although this way there is a bit of overlap/redundancy with several of the smaller dishes/antenna. This is balanced current as of the 5.1 RSS mod.

Passive probe ranges upped to 20km to account for distance KSC was moved with RSS.

The antenna ranges are as follows:

DP-10 [RTShortAntenna1] 2,000,000 meters. Communication to the edge of LEO (LKO?)

Communitron 16 [LongAntenna] 45,000,000 meters. Communication to just past geostationary orbit.

EXP-VR-2T [RTLongAntenna3] 54,000,000 meters. Reaches about 20% further than the Communitron 16

Communitron 32 [RTLongAntenna2] 80,000,000 meters. Just under twice the distance of a geostationary orbit. Won't get you to Mun.

DTS-M1 [MediumDishAntenna] 1,250,000,000 meters. About 1/2 the range of the SS-5. Will easily reach Mun.

SS-5 [RTShortDish1] 2,500,000,000 meters. Communication anywhere in the Kerbin SOI and then some.

Communitron 88-88 [CommDish] 400,000,000,000 meters. Interplanetary class. Shorter range than the LL-5 but will still reach to Duna and then some.

LL-5 [RTLongDish1] 650,000,000,000 meters: Interplanetary class. Just under twice the range needed to reach Duna. Can get you to Jool with the right planetary alignment.

CommTech-1 [Gigadish2]: 3,000,000,000,000 meters. Interplanetary class. Should get you talking out to Minmus in all but the most extreme cases.

GX-128 [GigaDish1]: 6,000,000,000,000 meters. Interplanetary class. Should get you talking out to Vall in all but the most extreme cases.

Dropbox Link

Drop configs in RemoteTech2 folder.

Edited November 16, 2013 by li7in6

[MedievalNerd]

Should memory ctd's allways have same error localation?

I'm getting these ctd's every 10-15 min now.

Errors are allways like these.

Can't comment on the specifics of the errors, but it's definitely an out of memory issue. How many mods do you have installed? The best suggestion I can give is to go through them, and delete any parts you don't use. For example, if you use procedural fairings, there are so many fairing parts in KW, NP2, that maybe it'll be just enough to keep you going.

If you use mods that use stock models, make sure that they use the model{} node as opposed to reloading the mesh.

I'm luckly surfing the 3GB line, and haven't had out of memory issues just yet.

The next step i'm doing is getting rid of all the fuel tanks, again another overly done area, with much redundance across mods. If you delete all those, except the ones you like their style, then you can save that much more memory as well. Stretchy fuel tanks can totally help replace so many fuel tanks!

Hope this helps a bit,

[Yargnit]

Could I get some help on re-entering Kerbin's atmosphere without burning up? (I have the deadly re-entry mod.) I just want to try from a 300 km orbit. I've tried almost every altitude possibility, but I always end up burning up at the 60 km mark with my heat shield exceeding 1500 degrees Celsius[?]. Any help would be appreciated.

What did you set the DR multiplier at? I set it at the recommended 12 for a 'gameplay' experience and it's not too bad from LKO at all

[Deejay2000]

What did you set the DR multiplier at? I set it at the recommended 12 for a 'gameplay' experience and it's not too bad from LKO at all

It is currently twice that, but thanks for pointing that out. I didn't think of changing it. I'll change it around a bit.

[FanaticalFighter]

@DeeJay: Are you using stock values on DRE? The stock values only work for normal Kerbin, for the Rescaled version, the velocity is a lot higher. Try setting the heatmultiplier to 12 (press alt+d+r in game to change settings)

[NathanKell]

li7in6: very cool!

Would you be interested in doing another version of the configs for when (I fix it and) Cilph releases the next version of RT2 with my new range model? It has multiple antenna support (total omni range = strongest + 1/4 * sum(all other omnis' ranges) ) and a new range model, where max range for a connection is shorter_range + sqrt(shorter_range * longer_range). It's somewhat more complicated to use, but IMO leads to a much better feel--you can have a large base station antenna and only a few small ones on your satellite, for instance, or you can have a small dish on your Voyager-alike and a BIG dish at home.

Hey, yargnit, you're using DRE now!?

Regarding DRE and RSS: FlowerChild and I have been playing with heat shield values. The correct solution to RSS is not to nerf heating (which is actually at its realistic level) but to better model real heat shields. Until I get detached shockwaves working, that'll be by tweaking heat shield values.

[ferram4]

I know that for DRE I simply copied the dissipation and loss curves from the Real Gemini capsule over to the other heat shields; I was able to manage a non-lifting lunar return with a periapsis of 58km by burning off 893 / 1000 ablastive shielding. It seems to work, but I doubt that it's very realistic.

If you need any aero help regarding modelling shockwaves, just PM about what you're trying to do / trying to model. Aero stuff is my specialty after all.

[p3asant]

Can't comment on the specifics of the errors, but it's definitely an out of memory issue. How many mods do you have installed? The best suggestion I can give is to go through them, and delete any parts you don't use. For example, if you use procedural fairings, there are so many fairing parts in KW, NP2, that maybe it'll be just enough to keep you going.

If you use mods that use stock models, make sure that they use the model{} node as opposed to reloading the mesh.

I'm luckly surfing the 3GB line, and haven't had out of memory issues just yet.

The next step i'm doing is getting rid of all the fuel tanks, again another overly done area, with much redundance across mods. If you delete all those, except the ones you like their style, then you can save that much more memory as well. Stretchy fuel tanks can totally help replace so many fuel tanks!

Hope this helps a bit,

Yeah, i have most those things already done.

My gamedata folder is only 800mb.

The strange thing is that my .21 version has 1400 mb gamedata, and it never crashed.

Hence i thought it had something to do with this.

Current mods are: BoulcerCo, UnicerseReplacer, FASA, FAR , KJR, F1, ProcFairings, KWRocketry, Novapunch, Mechjeb, ModularFueltanks, StretchyTanks and realsolarsystem

Texture reduction packs have been aplied and all tanks removed (excluding stretchy ones, ofc).

Edited November 15, 2013 by p3asant

[Starwaster]

Yeah, i have most those things already done.

My gamedata folder is only 800mb.

The strange thing is that my .21 version has 1400 mb gamedata, and it never crashed.

Hence i thought it had something to do with this.

Current mods are: BoulcerCo, UnicerseReplacer, FASA, FAR , KJR, F1, ProcFairings, KWRocketry, Novapunch, Mechjeb, ModularFueltanks, StretchyTanks and realsolarsystem

Texture reduction packs have been aplied and all tanks removed (excluding stretchy ones, ofc).

let's take a look at your output_log.txt file and see if there's any other errors before this happens.

[iVG]

Have you hgot asmi's life support? I think v1.002 was problematic.

[wasmic]

Would it be too much to ask that you create a "lite" version, where the planets and distances are rescaled, but the planets are not rearranged? That would be really cool, as I dont really want my Kerbin system to be rearranged.

[Starwaster]

Would it be too much to ask that you create a "lite" version, where the planets and distances are rescaled, but the planets are not rearranged? That would be really cool, as I dont really want my Kerbin system to be rearranged.

Considering that it's all configurable, I suggest that something like that would best be crowd-sourced.

[iVG]

Someone with opinion about Remotetech+batteries? Are they underpowered with the resized Kerbin?

[wasmic]

Considering that it's all configurable, I suggest that something like that would best be crowd-sourced.

It's all configurable??? Sadly, I don't have time to try it out right now, I'll have to wait a few days.

[Starwaster]

It's all configurable??? Sadly, I don't have time to try it out right now, I'll have to wait a few days.

Well, the important bits. Soon even atmo color will be.

[NathanKell]

ferram: will do!

wasmic: as starwaster says everything is configurable. Every single change is based upon the values in the RealSolarSystem.cfg file (or the RealSolarSystemSettings.cfg file for non-planet-related stuff). I barely have the time to breathe right now so I'd rather not maintain two versions of those settings, but it's not at all hard to create an alternate config; remove all the referenceBody = lines, change the orbital parameters, and that should do it for now.

iVG: Remotetech2 antennae should draw 1/10 to 1/100 what they do now. For batteries and solar panels, a few pages back I posted my Realism Tweaks zip that fixes them all. I'll start a new thread on that.

[Sternface]

I came across a rather entertaining bug this evening trying to see if I could get something out to Dres-Saturn. Turns out that solar panels that far out not only do not produce power as it should be, but they actually drain power. A gigantor panel in orbit around Laythe-Titan will drain approx 2 charge/second when properly oriented. Thought you might like to know.

I had the same issue. Being too close or too far from the sun caused my solar panels to drain power instead of produce. I don't know a lot about coding, but I managed to solve the problem by changing the power curve settings in RealSolarSystemSettings.cfg.

This is what I changed it to:

I made a mistake, see [url="http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/55145-0-22-WIP-Alpha-Real-Solar-System-v5-1-HOTFIX?p=783928&viewfull=1#post783928"]this post[/url] for the correction.

Solar panels worked properly from 500km above the sun, all the way out to pluto (I think it's Vall in-game). I believe I removed the logarithmic scaling (I think), and I know I multiplied the last two distances by 10. The results are not ideal, but it works. I believe I was getting ~+3% charge out at pluto, and ~+80% around Earth.

Edited November 16, 2013 by Sternface

[li7in6]

li7in6: very cool!

Would you be interested in doing another version of the configs for when (I fix it and) Cilph releases the next version of RT2 with my new range model? It has multiple antenna support (total omni range = strongest + 1/4 * sum(all other omnis' ranges) ) and a new range model, where max range for a connection is shorter_range + sqrt(shorter_range * longer_range). It's somewhat more complicated to use, but IMO leads to a much better feel--you can have a large base station antenna and only a few small ones on your satellite, for instance, or you can have a small dish on your Voyager-alike and a BIG dish at home.

Sure, I definitely like the sound of the new model. Let me know.

Also, a note. RT2 with RSS causes some problems with stock probe bodies not being able to communicate "home" from the launch pad. Stock RT2 they have 3km range but it seems KSC is 15-20km away from where RT2 thinks it is. I think I read you moved KSC closer to the ocean so it's probably just that. I included the RT2 probe config in my dropbox link with their values moved up to 20km so that should fix any problems you might have had with your probe being uncontrollable on the pad without the passive antenna (DP-10). I also changed the launch clamp range to 20km so it should work as intended now too.

Dropbox Link

Edited November 16, 2013 by li7in6

[iVG]

ferram: will do!

wasmic: as starwaster says everything is configurable. Every single change is based upon the values in the RealSolarSystem.cfg file (or the RealSolarSystemSettings.cfg file for non-planet-related stuff). I barely have the time to breathe right now so I'd rather not maintain two versions of those settings, but it's not at all hard to create an alternate config; remove all the referenceBody = lines, change the orbital parameters, and that should do it for now.

iVG: Remotetech2 antennae should draw 1/10 to 1/100 what they do now. For batteries and solar panels, a few pages back I posted my Realism Tweaks zip that fixes them all. I'll start a new thread on that.

A new thread with various tweaks is a great idea. Would love to see it soon!

[Starwaster]

Solar panels draining power... looking at the numbers in these power curves and they're quite a bit higher than Int32.MaxValue

Exceed that value and you're going negative.

If the solar panel code is using Int32 somewhere that could be why.

Edit: Another thought (because I'm not sure I buy that they are using int32 in there) is it possible that the panels are just not producing enough at extreme range and we're just seeing normal drain from components?

Edited November 16, 2013 by Starwaster

[asmi]

If you need any aero help regarding modelling shockwaves, just PM about what you're trying to do / trying to model. Aero stuff is my specialty after all.

That's actually the question I've always wanted to ask you - why don't you add heat modelling to FAR directly? The heat during supersonic flight is not just about reentry, it just make sence to me. Does it for you?