B9 5.0 pre-release (with download)

[Taverius]

Nice! Thanks for the update. I guess my problem (and this is indeed my problem) is that I tend to go crazy with struts. All it takes is for one kraken-like disintegration due to structural failure, and I'll slap 10 struts in a place that could probably just use 2. I've got a few spacecraft with 350 parts, and I'll wager 150 of them or more are struts. This is also with Kerbal Joint Reinforcement installed. Maybe it's my job. I work in aerospace, and we're all about redundancy.

No, I used to do the same in 0.20.

If you check the stock craft you'll see there's tons of struts.

When I tweak them for the updated parts in a few days I'll be taking off loads of them.

[Adyx]

I found I was using a similar configuration of the extensions so often in my large spaceplane designs I welded about 5 or 6 of them together. That way I only needed to strut them at the back, with part-clipping turned on you couldn't even see the struts and with modular fuel tanks you can have any fuel config you want.

[falken]

K3, I was wondering something.

The HL parts are very much "space shuttle" parts, but have rounded bottoms. Do you think it's possible to have a firespitter part varient where the bottoms are flattened, much like the shuttle? Same applying to the HL Cockpit.

[bac9]

The HL parts are very much "space shuttle" parts, but have rounded bottoms. Do you think it's possible to have a firespitter part varient where the bottoms are flattened, much like the shuttle? Same applying to the HL Cockpit.

That would take tremendous amount of time and will kill compatibility with 3.75m parts that HL currently enjoys (you can add HL SAS and many other part to KW part stacks and no one bats an eye), so I don't think that would happen.

[K3-Chris]

A quick sneak peek at some of the new internal props in 5.0: (WIP)

Bars that display resources, throttle and thrust, buttons that toggle action groups, buttons that toggle brakes/gear/sas/lights/rcs, animated flight controls.

[Sufficient Anonymity]

That's looking awesome

[G'th]

Oh myyy.

The new B9 is going to rival NearFuture and and SP+ for purtiest cockpits.

[K3-Chris]

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Integrating the internal lights and action group rockers into the IVAs

[MinorInconvenience]

http://imgur.com/a/ttfFA

Integrating the internal lights and action group rockers into the IVAs

OMG! This is so wonderful. You guys must release it soon. I can't stand the wait!

/Keep up the great job.

//You guys are amazing.

[jonrd463]

Cockpit beeps, boops, and blips.... I *LOVE* cockpit beeps, boops, and blips! And was that an instrument panel fan I briefly heard come on?

[Shad0wCatcher]

Don't forget the fleeps, the sweeps, and the bleeps! *cough* I'll go to my corner now.

[Alewx]

http://imgur.com/a/ttfFA

Integrating the internal lights and action group rockers into the IVAs

The next B9 will be so amazing, for IVA only flights is only an DAI Integration into RPM is missing.

Do you guys aim to get it out before 0.25, or will you take that also, reducing patching time?

[K3-Chris]

Cockpit beeps, boops, and blips.... I *LOVE* cockpit beeps, boops, and blips! And was that an instrument panel fan I briefly heard come on?

The different switch designs and buttons have their own clicks and beeps, after I raised the landing gear you heard the ground proximity alarm (negative vertical speed, less than 130m radar alt), it was designed with rockets in mind so it isn't quite smart enough (yet) to realize you're already contacting the ground, or that you're going horizontally down the runway and you got a tiny amount of negative vertical speed as your landing gear bounce a bit, Mihara of RPM has already fixed it to my knowledge but it will be in the next release of RPM, the mechanical sound you heard was the landing gear retracting, all mechanical parts with an animation now play sounds when toggled (landing gear, cargo bays etc) and there are a slew of other sounds in there as well (Props to Taverious for doing all that legwork).

The next B9 will be so amazing, for IVA only flights is only an DAI Integration into RPM is missing.

Do you guys aim to get it out before 0.25, or will you take that also, reducing patching time?

What's DAI? 5.0 is days away, .25 sounds weeks/months away, we won't wait for it, but rest assured we'll release a b9 update when it's released if it changes something we need to correct for or can make use of.

[Alewx]

What's DAI? 5.0 is days away, .25 sounds weeks/months away, we won't wait for it, but rest assured we'll release a b9 update when it's released if it changes something we need to correct for or can make use of.

Docking Alignment Indicator

Sounds exciting, I just hope my KSP won't get too close to 4GB at runtime with B9

[K3-Chris]

Docking Alignment Indicator

Sounds exciting, I just hope my KSP won't get too close to 4GB at runtime with B9

It should actually be a bit smaller than older b9 because of all the part integration, part variants including fuel types and size use the same texture.

RPM already has a docking mode, but any RPM mods that are compatible with the KSI MFDs should work fine. (like Vessel View).

[Sufficient Anonymity]

Those are really coming together nicely - I'm guessing you're still planning on doing a bit more work on those IVAs, so a lot of what I'm going to say is probably redundant, but here are a few (very minor) criticisms.

The indicator lights at the front of the Mk27 could do with some kind of frame; they look a bit "floaty" at the moment. In the back seat, I wonder if it'd look better with the throttle/thrust indicators on the mount that currently has the resources bars, which would be displaced to the mount with the action group buttons, which could in turn be displaced to a similar position under the MFDs as they are in the front seat.

Front of the HL cockpit looks awesome; the back I'm guessing is still rather WIP - if you're still looking for ways to smarten it up, have you considered on a board that's the same shade of charcoal grey as much of the front of the IVA, perhaps with some paler grey beading (cf just above the action groups to the right of the pilot)? I think that might help improve the visual consistency within the IVA.

Mk2 front analogue instrument panel still doesn't look quite right to me - have you tried putting it vertically to the left of the leftmost MFD? Doing so might sacrifice some readability on the lowest guage, but that's probably compensated for by the info being available on the MFDs/HUD and by making the area directly in front of the pilot a bit cleaner.

The S2 looks awesome - guessing that there's just a bit of texturing to deal with having moved the keypads off the the outer side of each pilot position rather than having them medially.

Sorry about the wall of text or if this comes across overly critical; it's not meant to be

[K3-Chris]

I'm guessing you're still planning on doing a bit more work on those IVAs, so a lot of what I'm going to say is probably redundant, but here are a few (very minor) criticisms.

None of them are final, some I think are getting quite close (M27), others are a bit further behind (HL, MK2) but yeah they're all short some polish.

The indicator lights at the front of the Mk27 could do with some kind of frame; they look a bit "floaty" at the moment. In the back seat, I wonder if it'd look better with the throttle/thrust indicators on the mount that currently has the resources bars, which would be displaced to the mount with the action group buttons, which could in turn be displaced to a similar position under the MFDs as they are in the front seat.

Indicators are placeholders (but you're right), I'm making my own, and half of them are already covered by the light-up push buttons in the middle. Throttle/thrust bars are also placeholders, I'm making a new throttle with those bars integrated into the base of the prop. I quite like the front and rear having slightly different layouts for the action group buttons, the navball feels a bit floaty where it is though. Ideally I'd like a navball on the front as well, I know the MFDs have one but I feel an analog/manual backup is nice for realism, and if you suffer a loss of power. I might hide them in some fashion and have a manual lever to show them if that makes sense.

Front of the HL cockpit looks awesome; the back I'm guessing is still rather WIP - if you're still looking for ways to smarten it up, have you considered on a board that's the same shade of charcoal grey as much of the front of the IVA, perhaps with some paler grey beading (cf just above the action groups to the right of the pilot)? I think that might help improve the visual consistency within the IVA.

Yeah the rear I've been struggling with for a while, I just copied one of the front's arm rest things and a section of wall to make it, defiantly needs some additional detail to tie it into the IVA as a whole, oh and no one can tell, but the chair is floating in mid air.

Mk2 front analogue instrument panel still doesn't look quite right to me - have you tried putting it vertically to the left of the leftmost MFD? Doing so might sacrifice some readability on the lowest guage, but that's probably compensated for by the info being available on the MFDs/HUD and by making the area directly in front of the pilot a bit cleaner.

I'd prefer to keep the analog gauges in your main line of sight, the MFDs all die if you run out of electrical power, doing a hands-on landing from IVA with no electrical power should be possible to do (and yes I got plans for making forwards visibility enough to land with) I'll basically remove the metal front behind and to the sides of the HUD and make the windows into a more canopy shape in the front, also raise the kerbal a bit to clear nose cone and raise the canopy a bit as well, got similar plans for the S2, I'm keeping those plans on hold to after 5.0, new props and S3 are higher priority.

The S2 looks awesome - guessing that there's just a bit of texturing to deal with having moved the keypads off the the outer side of each pilot position rather than having them medially.

Yeah Bac9 does an awesome job baking lighting and specular maps into textures etc but the problem with that is that it makes tweaking stuff a bit more work, takes like 1min to fix but it's a different task you need to tackle, I'll do it obviously though.

S2 is also due a forwardvisibilityectomy (technical term) I'm basically going to move the interior window down, though in reality I'll be moving everything else up, because the interior window lines up with the exterior one, the HL cockpit is basically a larger version of the S2 cockpit with that modification. Again post 5.0.

Sorry about the wall of text or if this comes across overly critical; it's not meant to be

No no, criticism especially of the constructive kind I'll always welcome, even though most of it I've already written down in my to-do list.

It's easy turning blind to shortcomings on something you've worked on for a long time because you've filed them into some "need to fix at some point" list which never gets done.

Next props I need to make is a Big Red Abort Button and indicators for the stuff from the indicator panel I haven't turned into buttons (because you can't toggle them yourself) like MECO, Contact, HighG, Heat etc, need to figure out a look for those (I want them to fit with the overall theme, but not be confused for buttons, which is why I didn't just use the same model and code as the buttons), always seems to take longer for me to come up with the look in my head than execute, those rocker switches I've been mulling over for days, took 30min~ to make (textures are still a bit WIP, will bake some directional lighting into the metal parts, some scuffs etc).

Edited August 21, 2014 by K3|Chris

[Alewx]

It should actually be a bit smaller than older b9 because of all the part integration, part variants including fuel types and size use the same texture.

RPM already has a docking mode, but any RPM mods that are compatible with the KSI MFDs should work fine. (like Vessel View).

Cool, sounds really nice, I didn't know that.

[pulp_user]

Hi guys, I finally found the party . I'm so happy that I found this threat. It really is a mess to find some information on B9's release right now. But all of this doesn't matter anymore since i read throgh this thread. AWESOME! I can't wait to construct some space-hangars for my SSTOs! Your are doing an awesome job!

[jadebenn]

Cool, sounds really nice, I didn't know that.

I'd like to add that any raster prop monitor screen should work here and that raster prop monitor compatible plugins should allow you to use variables from them on a custom mfd page.

[K3-Chris]

What would you guys say that is? hint: the 2 beveled rectangles near the front and under the rotating cover are going to be bright red.

[Alewx]

http://i.imgur.com/tLd2L2b.png

What would you guys say that is? hint: the 2 beveled rectangles near the front and under the rotating cover are going to be bright red.

Abort Button?

Selfdestruction Button?

Launch Button?

Must be any of this Kind

[Meltafire]

http://i.imgur.com/tLd2L2b.png

What would you guys say that is? hint: the 2 beveled rectangles near the front and under the rotating cover are going to be bright red.

[K3-Chris]

Yeah it's the abort button, it's a bit too similar to the ASET imo but there aren't that many ways you can design it really, it needs a rotating cover, I considered sliding but that means the prop takes 2x as much space, though I'm using lock release buttons to open the cover not a manual toggle of it.

Been agonizing over it's design for weeks, it's a tricky one because there are no real-life analog really.

Closest I can find in reality is heavy machinery emergency stop:

It's a big red button but because it's supposed to be easy to use it doesn't have a cover.

And the shuttle's destruction system:

Those are just common covered switches, doesn't look nice at all, and it's in the control center as far as I can recall, not in the shuttle.

My idea for the abort button is for it to be easy to hit since it's large, but you need to push both lock release buttons first, during a sensitive stage of flight (like on launch) you can pre-arm it by unlocking the cover and hit the button if something goes wrong. I know a big button isn't hugely realistic but it's a game, we need a bit of a balance between realism and fun. Big red buttons are fun.

[Joshwoo70]

Any updates on the B9 thing?

yay my 150 post

Edited August 22, 2014 by Joshwoo69