[WIP] RealChute parachute systems - development thread v0.3.3

[JakeGrey]

Quick question. Can I install the latest version over an older one with the old part models without making any saved ships unuseable?

[stupid_chris]

Quick question. Can I install the latest version over an older one with the old part models without making any saved ships unuseable?

Yep you can, the names are the same! However, I reccoment waiting before downloading, I'm about to update to .23 with a bunch of new parts and stuff.

[schoff123]

Yep you can, the names are the same! However, I recommend waiting before downloading, I'm about to update to .23 with a bunch of new parts and stuff.

let us know how that goes!

[sirkut]

Any luck on that issue we talked about earlier?

[OrbitalSolutionsLtd]

Damn, I'm getting an issue with that mod (which is awesome though) Because a picture is worth a thousand words, here are the screenshots

http://imgur.com/a/Ltmk2

Why ?

Edited January 3, 2014 by OrbitalSolutionsLtd

[stupid_chris]

Damn, I'm getting an issue with that mod (which is awesome though) Because a picture is worth a thousand words, here are the screenshots

http://imgur.com/a/Ltmk2

Why ?

Yeah, it'S a problem with applying forces to the whole vessel, will fix when I push 0.3.3 in a few days.

[Ruedii]

Is there a way you could get this compatable with Vanguard EVA Parachutes?

Just curious. Don't make it higher priority than other issues.

[stupid_chris]

Is there a way you could get this compatable with Vanguard EVA Parachutes?

Just curious. Don't make it higher priority than other issues.

No there is not with config files solely, that would require some code to make compatible, and I'm not seeing the need to spend some time on this since EVA parachutes are not something that is usually problematic on deployment.

[Minty]

Just reached the "Mainchute 1.25m stack" in the tech-tree, which is grand. Except that it seems to disassemble my ships when travelling at high speed through the atmosphere. I'm using Ferram and Joint Reinforcement as the two mods that may possibly be interfering.

I also can't add the Mainchute 1.25m Stack to actiongroups in the VAB. Which is REALLY wierd, as I can assign all the other chutes (stacks, radial, or caps) to actiongroups no problem.

No idea if these are known bugs, but advice on troubleshooting would be appreciated.

[stupid_chris]

Just reached the "Mainchute 1.25m stack" in the tech-tree, which is grand. Except that it seems to disassemble my ships when travelling at high speed through the atmosphere. I'm using Ferram and Joint Reinforcement as the two mods that may possibly be interfering.

I also can't add the Mainchute 1.25m Stack to actiongroups in the VAB. Which is REALLY wierd, as I can assign all the other chutes (stacks, radial, or caps) to actiongroups no problem.

No idea if these are known bugs, but advice on troubleshooting would be appreciated.

Will take a look for the action groups, but I don't think I can do much for them ripping your vehicle if KJR is in the deal.

[Minty]

Thanks for the update, Chris. It seems to have solved the rapid unintentional disassembly syndrome my craft were subject to. So that's good.

Less good was the fact that the same part, the 1.25m mainchute stack was arming fine, but when it fired, nothing came out. I did a little digging in the configs, and fixed the issue in my own build:

In large_chute_stack.cfg, the RC_main_large_stack had two single canopies set in the models and the module, yet the anims in the modules were for two triple-chutes. I swapped both caps to use chute and chute2 anims respectively, and it seems to be working as intended now.

Hope this helps, and thanks for creating what's rapidly becoming a must-install mod.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Hi. I've been using your RealChute mod since I got around to reinstalling KSP recently. I love it, I love it a lot.

I just have a suggestion, though. It doesn't even have anything to do with the physics or anything.

Since getting the first RealChute part in career mode, I've come to associate the orange stripes with Drogue chutes and blue stripes with Mains. But the combo parts have gray stripes. It makes them hard to differentiate in the editor from stock parts at times.

Simple suggestion, really, if potentially a bit eye-searing: for the combo chutes, use a combination of orange and blue stripes? I'm not a graphics artist or I'd see about tweaking that myself. But it simply occured to me as I was looking through the editor, given that I realized I'd been trained to look for green, orange and blue for RealChutes, and to know which was which.

[stupid_chris]

Hi. I've been using your RealChute mod since I got around to reinstalling KSP recently. I love it, I love it a lot.

I just have a suggestion, though. It doesn't even have anything to do with the physics or anything.

Since getting the first RealChute part in career mode, I've come to associate the orange stripes with Drogue chutes and blue stripes with Mains. But the combo parts have gray stripes. It makes them hard to differentiate in the editor from stock parts at times.

Simple suggestion, really, if potentially a bit eye-searing: for the combo chutes, use a combination of orange and blue stripes? I'm not a graphics artist or I'd see about tweaking that myself. But it simply occured to me as I was looking through the editor, given that I realized I'd been trained to look for green, orange and blue for RealChutes, and to know which was which.

I'll poke sumghai about perhaps making such a texture

[kalizec]

Great mod!

Would it be possible for the chutes to come with more realistic minimum deployment altitudes.

Somehow it comes across as unrealistic to have chutes with minimum deployment occurring around 40km up.

I'm aware I can both tweak this in the config-files and in the VAB. I'm just not sure what the correct altitude should be.

Just that 40-45km is still the area in which DRE is trying to burn up my rocket and that chutes would be ripped, baked and burnt all at the same time.

Probably it's something like 2-5km for normal chutes and 5-15km for drogues.

[stupid_chris]

Great mod!

Would it be possible for the chutes to come with more realistic minimum deployment altitudes.

Somehow it comes across as unrealistic to have chutes with minimum deployment occurring around 40km up.

I'm aware I can both tweak this in the config-files and in the VAB. I'm just not sure what the correct altitude should be.

Just that 40-45km is still the area in which DRE is trying to burn up my rocket and that chutes would be ripped, baked and burnt all at the same time.

Probably it's something like 2-5km for normal chutes and 5-15km for drogues.

The default altitudes have been bumped down to 25 and 30km for mains and drogues respectively, to reflect the stock standards. And they'll stay there, since they can be tweaked, it's up to the player to change it if he needs to do so.

[Godit]

Thanks for your awesome mod. It gave me an idea of my own for a Ram Air parachute. I think having a steerable system would be a great option for all sorts of cool reasons (Think precision airdrop and precision recovery systems) I am not a programmer but I figured out how to add a forward force to one of your chutes and even gave it a flare like braking feature using the throttle.

I'm very pleased with my result as a proof of concept, its actually quite fun to fly it like a real chute and I even landed on the VAB helipad! I know it has all sorts of issues they way I coded it so I'd love to see somebody who knows what they're doing take up this idea. I work with aerial delivery systems in RL so I'd like to help in someway. Do you think this is something you would consider to add or should I propose this on the "Requests" thread?

Check the link for screen caps of the result.

http://s205.photobucket.com/user/jared82ct/slideshow/Experimental%20Ram%20Air%20Chute

Edited February 14, 2014 by Godit
added link

[DasBananenbrot]

Thanks for your awesome mod. It gave me an idea of my own for a Ram Air parachute. I think having a steerable system would be a great option for all sorts of cool reasons (Think precision airdrop and precision recovery systems) I am not a programmer but I figured out how to add a forward force to one of your chutes and even gave it a flare like braking feature using the throttle.

I'm very pleased with my result as a proof of concept, its actually quite fun to fly it like a real chute and I even landed on the VAB helipad! I know it has all sorts of issues they way I coded it so I'd love to see somebody who knows what they're doing take up this idea. I work with aerial delivery systems in RL so I'd like to help in someway. Do you think this is something you would consider to add or should I propose this on the "Requests" thread?

<a href="http://s205.photobucket.com/user/jared82ct/media/screenshot2-1.png.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/bb204/jared82ct/screenshot2-1.png" border="0" alt=" photo screenshot2-1.png"/></a>

<a href="http://s205.photobucket.com/user/jared82ct/media/screenshot3.png.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/bb204/jared82ct/screenshot3.png" border="0" alt=" photo screenshot3.png"/></a>

<a href="http://s205.photobucket.com/user/jared82ct/media/screenshot6.png.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/bb204/jared82ct/screenshot6.png" border="0" alt=" photo screenshot6.png"/></a>

<a href="http://s205.photobucket.com/user/jared82ct/media/screenshot9.png.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/bb204/jared82ct/screenshot9.png" border="0" alt=" photo screenshot9.png"/></a>

<a href="http://s205.photobucket.com/user/jared82ct/media/screenshot12.png.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/bb204/jared82ct/screenshot12.png" border="0" alt=" photo screenshot12.png"/></a>

You ****ed up your images....

[stupid_chris]

Thanks for your awesome mod. It gave me an idea of my own for a Ram Air parachute. I think having a steerable system would be a great option for all sorts of cool reasons (Think precision airdrop and precision recovery systems) I am not a programmer but I figured out how to add a forward force to one of your chutes and even gave it a flare like braking feature using the throttle.

http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/bb204/jared82ct/Experimental%20Ram%20Air%20Chute/screenshot9.png

I'm very pleased with my result as a proof of concept, its actually quite fun to fly it like a real chute and I even landed on the VAB helipad! I know it has all sorts of issues they way I coded it so I'd love to see somebody who knows what they're doing take up this idea. I work with aerial delivery systems in RL so I'd like to help in someway. Do you think this is something you would consider to add or should I propose this on the "Requests" thread?

Check the link for screen caps of the result.

http://s205.photobucket.com/user/jared82ct/slideshow/Experimental%20Ram%20Air%20Chute

Hmm, a few people have asked for this. I'm a little reluctant on the idea because of the simple fact parachutes that generate lift are pretty much unprecendented in spaceflight. This kind of thing is for use on humans. But that's some nice work. I'm not handy with lift myself, so I cannot help you a lot on that side, and I'm not sure I would be able to bring a mod including this to it's full potential, so you might want to drop this in requests :/

[Godit]

. I'm a little reluctant on the idea because of the simple fact parachutes that generate lift are pretty much unprecendented in spaceflight. This kind of thing is for use on humans.

Actually guided parachute recovery systems have come a very long way in the last decade and are making their way into the space domain. JPL has tested a guided parachute for Mars

The Navy Post Graduate school is studying how to use them to return payloads from the International Space Station.

They're already in use in small scale rocketry and scaling them up to larger payloads has already been proven with conventional airdrop of payloads up to 10,000 lbs

But I understand this would be a big project so I'll go ahead and start a thread in the request section. I'm pretty sure your license will allow someone to do a mod based on your RealChutes plugin so long is credit is given, correct?

[stupid_chris]

But I understand this would be a big project so I'll go ahead and start a thread in the request section. I'm pretty sure your license will allow someone to do a mod based on your RealChutes plugin so long is credit is given, correct?

Yep, anyone is free to fork the plugin, assuming attribution is given to me

[macdjord]

Hey, I think I found a bug. When a parachute that is already partially deployed goes to full deployment, speed actually increases for a moment before going down again. I think what is happening is that the drag of the chute is being reset to zero then gradually increased to its maximum value over the deployment period, instead of starting at its semi-deployed value a growing from there.

Note: I only just today updated from V0.3.3.2 to V1.0.2, so it's possible that this has already been reported and fixed.

[stupid_chris]

Hey, I think I found a bug. When a parachute that is already partially deployed goes to full deployment, speed actually increases for a moment before going down again. I think what is happening is that the drag of the chute is being reset to zero then gradually increased to its maximum value over the deployment period, instead of starting at its semi-deployed value a growing from there.

Note: I only just today updated from V0.3.3.2 to V1.0.2, so it's possible that this has already been reported and fixed.

I can't reproduce that, and my code has it set to start from the predeployed area, so I'm not sure this should be happening. Perhaps a video could show me what's wrong?

[B787_300]

hey Chris i dont think that you are on v0.3.3 anymore....

and what is your idea for making the chutes separate?

[stupid_chris]

hey Chris i dont think that you are on v0.3.3 anymore....

and what is your idea for making the chutes separate?

This thread is rather dead. But basically it would involve detecting all the parachutes on the part and pushing them away depending on how far they are from each other

[DuoDex]

Hello, just a random question. Can you add KAS support for these? If you want me to, I will do it myself* and give them to you for the next update. I just think it'd be nice to have the ability to move chutes around on the ship or grab some from containers.

*May be slightly glitchy. Not very skilled with mods.