Test of continuing KER developments [0.24.2]

[Padishar]

Everything looks to be working to me, I don't do maths so I can't tell you if the calcs are correct, but at least it's making calcs. It's getting the staging correctly for the most part, but it still combines two separate stage engines if there is no separator. You can see the TWR and Time, just not the Dv. The Dv gets combined into the next stage up.

IE, if you place a stage 6 SRB on a stage 5 SRB then tweak the thrust limiter on stage 6, you see the TWR and time on stage 6 but no Dv. The Dv gets added to stage 5. I don't remember if it was doing that on the last version.

I'm not sure I understand what you are describing. I can't try it right now but it would be very helpful if you could supply a craft file that shows the problem...

[AndersW]

From your description you may just be seeing the difference between atmospheric and vacuum deltaV. Can you post your craft file?

Sure, my craft file is here.

[Godot]

Addendum to my previous posting about problems with the display of dV for separated Landers (that were part of Apollo style missions)

My second lander version has all necessary fuel lines ... nevertheless, the Flight Engineer for the Lander has problems, displaying the dV for the Lander

(of course it has fuel and the engines are correctly supplied with it, else I couldn´t have landed on Mun )

The lander alone (which I previously created as subassembly, before uniting it with the Apollo style spaceship) however correctly displayed the dV values ...

so it seems to have something to do with the combination and separation of spaceship and lander, I guess

[Padishar]

The lander alone (which I previously created as subassembly, before uniting it with the Apollo style spaceship) however correctly displayed the dV values ...

so it seems to have something to do with the combination and separation of spaceship and lander, I guess

Basically the staging is weird. You have activated engines in a stage with a decoupler and there is a known problem when the craft has a decoupler as the root part. Basically, the simulation code is assuming the engines will be decoupled from the craft as soon as they are activated. As a workaround, try modifying the staging in flight to move the decoupler from the stage with the engines. E.g have the decoupler in stage 0 and create a new stage 1 for the engines...

[Padishar]

Sure, my craft file is here.

Yes, this is just the difference between vacuum and atmospheric isp/deltaV. If you switch to atmospheric stats in the VAB then the total deltaV drops from 9036 to 6976 m/s. This uses the atmospheric pressure at sea level to calculate the isp and deltaV. When you go to the launch pad the deltaV is 7038 m/s because you start at 122 m altitude (~70m for altitude of the pad and the rest from your rather tall launch clamps) and the air is a little thinner (the isp shows as 320.971s, slightly higher than the sea-level value). As you ascend the air gets thinner and the deltaV of the stages that aren't firing goes up quicker than the deltaV of the first stage is going down so the total increases for a while. The rate the first stage goes down depends on the throttle, at full throttle from launch the total deltaV goes down right from the start.

[AndersW]

Yes, this is just the difference between vacuum and atmospheric isp/deltaV. If you switch to atmospheric stats in the VAB then the total deltaV drops from 9036 to 6976 m/s. This uses the atmospheric pressure at sea level to calculate the isp and deltaV. When you go to the launch pad the deltaV is 7038 m/s because you start at 122 m altitude (~70m for altitude of the pad and the rest from your rather tall launch clamps) and the air is a little thinner (the isp shows as 320.971s, slightly higher than the sea-level value). As you ascend the air gets thinner and the deltaV of the stages that aren't firing goes up quicker than the deltaV of the first stage is going down so the total increases for a while. The rate the first stage goes down depends on the throttle, at full throttle from launch the total deltaV goes down right from the start.

Thanks for the info. I thought it was a bug because my delta-V was going up in flight and logic said that shouldn't happen.

[quantumpion]

I have a problem with my relatively simple ship design. The calculated delta-V is only 2000 and is counting up as I burn (should be more like 8000). For some reason KER is not taking into account the fuel of the central feed tank which has 4 fuel pumps going to the outside tanks.

[Padishar]

I have a problem with my relatively simple ship design. The calculated delta-V is only 2000 and is counting up as I burn (should be more like 8000). For some reason KER is not taking into account the fuel of the central feed tank which has 4 fuel pumps going to the outside tanks.

http://i.imgur.com/RTGymLH.jpg

What makes you think the deltaV should be ~8000? Have you done the maths yourself? Any chance you can post the craft file?

[Angvar]

Found out the flight computer for Kerbal Engineer is creating a surging lag while I am in flight mode on the launch pad. It's fine when I use it in VAB but once I take it outside the surging starts and won't stop till I take the chip off in the VAB. Then I can create the lag just by putting it back on and stop it by taking it off again. I can then shut down normally.

Don't know if this is helpful at all but thought I would mention it.

Edited April 6, 2014 by Angvar
Decided my post was a mess and made it more concise

[quantumpion]

What makes you think the deltaV should be ~8000? Have you done the maths yourself? Any chance you can post the craft file?

Ahhh I found out what the problem was. When I checked out the craft in the VAB, the fuel pump lines (which were sort of hidden) were not connected to the tanks for some reason. Apparently KSP causes fuel to move to radially mounted tanks without fuel pumps which I was unaware of. I guess that is why KER was confused?

[Padishar]

Found out the flight computer for Kerbal Engineer is creating a surging lag while I am in flight mode on the launch pad. It's fine when I use it in VAB but once I take it outside the surging starts and won't stop till I take the chip off in the VAB. Then I can create the lag just by putting it back on and stop it by taking it off again. I can then shut down normally.

Don't know if this is helpful at all but thought I would mention it.

What CPU do you have? I recently changed how the delay between runs of the simulation is handled to improve the update rate but this may have had unwanted side-effects. Does the lag also disappear if you use the toolbar button to hide the KER window (assuming you are using the toolbar)?

[Angvar]

What CPU do you have? I recently changed how the delay between runs of the simulation is handled to improve the update rate but this may have had unwanted side-effects. Does the lag also disappear if you use the toolbar button to hide the KER window (assuming you are using the toolbar)?

Very sorry, it wasn't these files that made the lag. The lag started when I installed the new update and tried to play using the old KER. I was pretty tired when I made that post and obviously I was confusing.

In any case my computer specs: 6x AMD Phenom II 3.2 ghz processor with 10 gb ram and a Nvidia Geforce GTX 570 video card.

Basically if I put the Ker computer part (Any of them not just flight computer ones) on my rocket and leave the VAB it begins surging the game. It won't go away until I go back into VAB and remove the part. So basically I can sit there in VAB and put it on and make it lag and take it off and watch it stop. If I use the part to check my numbers and take it back off before I head to launch the surging never starts.

I have two rovers on Mun with the KER flight computers on them and when I did a quick check the surging doesn't seem to be there. But they have a very small amount of parts and the surging is always very tiny with a simple rocket.

Who knows maybe you can find what is doing that, but I'm pretty sure I am going to just stick to old school launching or maybe even learn to use Mechjeb.

Yet again sorry for the confusion, if anything this .dll helped things by pin pointing my problem and I'm pretty sure the surging would not stop when I pulled the part off my rockets before.

P.S. I forgot, yes I used tool bar and updated it then removed it and this did nothing to help.

Edited April 6, 2014 by Angvar

[Padishar]

Very sorry, it wasn't these files that made the lag. The lag started when I installed the new update and tried to play using the old KER. I was pretty tired when I made that post and obviously I was confusing.

So, are you saying you don't get the surging lag effect with the version in this thread (that says (Pad) in the KER window title bars)? The current official release of KER has various serious issues with the simulation code and doesn't work correctly with 0.23.5 so you really should switch to this test version until the next official release.

[Angvar]

I am getting the lag issue with this version. I can make it go away by removing the chip. I will go check to see if the same thing happens in the old version.

Update: So a the old version does the same thing. I tested my rovers and there seems to be no problem when on the Mun. I broke out an older rocket with far fewer parts and tested it. The lag was still there but the time in between surges was much longer.

It seems that the fewer parts on the machine the longer the time in between surges. So I might not be able to distinguish if it is happening on the rovers.

Edited April 6, 2014 by Angvar

[Padishar]

I am getting the lag issue with this version. I can make it go away by removing the chip. I will go check to see if the same thing happens in the old version.

Update: So a the old version does the same thing. I tested my rovers and there seems to be no problem when on the Mun. I broke out an older rocket with far fewer parts and tested it. The lag was still there but the time in between surges was much longer.

It seems that the fewer parts on the machine the longer the time in between surges. So I might not be able to distinguish if it is happening on the rovers.

How significant are these surges? Can you run fraps (or some other tool that displays fps) and see what the values are? From your description, the most likely cause of this is the .NET/Mono memory allocator garbage collection. The larger the craft, the more objects the KER simulation code will create and this will make the garbage collection run more frequently. I'll add some kind of option to control how frequently the simulation runs (reducing the rate to, say, 2 updates per second max should significantly reduce the amount of work the garbage collection needs to do) and do some tests to work out if this is the cause and try to reduce the amount of memory allocation churn if it is.

[Angvar]

With a ship of 1k parts the surges pause the game for almost a second. And its not like your typical lag where you have different levels of jitteriness. In between the surges it runs butter smooth. The game will run but its annoying and I miss maneuver nodes if time acceleration is up high. It's bad enough that I don't use the flight computers anymore and am replacing my rovers to get them out of my game. I can still use it for the VAB to check DV numbers but once I need a flight computer for more complicated stuff I'll get another program rather than deal with this.

[Padishar]

Ouch, no wonder it's annoying. I've not seen this myself and my machine is significantly less powerful than yours. I'll try running a few specific tests on big rockets but this sounds more like some of the reports that were being posted just after 0.23.5 was released when people were trying to run with old mods. Are you certain you have updated all of your mods (that use DLLs) to versions that have been compiled against the correct version of KSP?

[Angvar]

Update: Pretty sure I found it. AMD compatibility mode got switched on. Might have hit it sometime earlier in week. Turned it off and everything is good. Also took care of some funky textures on shadows I was getting. Well thanks for the attention and thanks for your work, KER appears to be working wonderfully. The is something still there but it only pulses for like 1/10th of a second every 25 - 30 seconds and that was after I splattered my uber rocket across KSP like 5 times in a row and all settings maxed.

I actually removed all the mods from the game except KER. I only ran AGM and tool bar besides KER. I updated tool bar and don't have AGM back on yet.

I'm still pretty new so haven't cluttered up my game much.

Edited April 7, 2014 by Angvar
Ima Noob

[Padishar]

Update: Pretty sure I found it. AMD compatibility mode got switched on. Might have hit it sometime earlier in week. Turned it off and everything is good. Also took care of some funky textures on shadows I was getting. Well thanks for the attention and thanks for your work, KER appears to be working wonderfully. The is something still there but it only pulses for like 1/10th of a second every 25 - 30 seconds and that was after I splattered my uber rocket across KSP like 5 times in a row and all settings maxed.

I believe the AMD compatibility options refers to video cards rather than CPUs so it could explain why you were seeing odd video effects and the lag if it was trying to do something a bit Radeon specific on an NVidia card... Anyway, I'm glad you've sorted it as it sounded very strange...

[Angvar]

I believe the AMD compatibility options refers to video cards rather than CPUs so it could explain why you were seeing odd video effects and the lag if it was trying to do something a bit Radeon specific on an NVidia card... Anyway, I'm glad you've sorted it as it sounded very strange...

Well d'oh, it's all to do with AMD Phenom CPUs, apparently. I found this in another thread. Wonder why it would be messing with a mod ... Oh well game is still going strong. KER is very happy, my invasi .... um err ... exploration of the Mun is moving along.

Edited April 7, 2014 by Angvar

[blu3wolf]

working great, thanks for making my number one must have mod!

[sarbian]

Padishar I have a problem with MJ simulation and the new engines. I already fixed the strut related problems (and found out you had too, I should have come here sooner ) but the new engines still give me errors.

Did you had to change anything special in your code for them to work ?

[Padishar]

Padishar I have a problem with MJ simulation and the new engines. I already fixed the strut related problems (and found out you had too, I should have come here sooner ) but the new engines still give me errors.

Did you had to change anything special in your code for them to work ?

I'm not sure which change I made "fixed" the new engines. I had substantially changed how the simulation code worked before 0.23.5 came out. One of the more important "bodge" fixes was to avoid using resource amounts of NaN in any calculations (e.g. when calculating the mass of a part) as KSP does do this in some circumstances. Another was to "correctly" support engines with multiple ModuleEngine[sFx] modules (especially where an engine has 1 of each type). If you can give me an idea of what is actually going wrong I might be able to work it out...

[sarbian]

The exception I have is tied to how MJ does its simulation. It seems an object is uninitialized with the new engine, but I find it strange since all the other engine (including the rapier) seems to work fine.

I hoped you had some kind of magic trick related to those engine Back to adding lots of prints then.

Thanks anyway

Edited April 7, 2014 by sarbian

[capi3101]

Figured I'd chime in to give you another "working good" post. I can provide additional information about my system specs if that would be at all helpful to you.