Tonight, I begin my first serious project on the new machine!

[vitekc45c]

oh my god whack is back O_O ...... with something witch makes my computer scream in lagg agony all the way over here o_o..........

oh and this also reminds me that i have one 2 VAB tall monstrosity to finish

[SkyRender]

With all due respect, Whackjob, sometimes simple is better. I'm not one to tell someone how to do their job, but 3000 parts for the legs is kind of missing the idea here. If you want the tower to shake the heavens, you need to know where to focus your part concentration, and it's not in the feet. My advice: make something simple and clean for the base, and go nuts on the actual tower body for absurd part counts.

This little 72-part darling, for example, is only slightly smaller than what you built and would work just fine as a single foot of a massive tower.

[NecroBones]

Below 60? Yeah I don't think you can even see that. In fact experts say typical human eyes can't see movements faster than 1/30 of a second, so you'd only be able to notice the difference between 30 and 60 if something whizzed past the screen really fast and left a double image.

I myself hardly notice until the framerate goes under about 12.

Actually, human vision threshold is between 60 and 72 hertz. You have to get above that before you will be unable to distinguish flicker or framerate.

Completely false

30 vs 60 is a huge difference. 60 vs 120 is still noticeable.

In a moving scene, especially one controlled by your own mouse or head movements, it's only above ~90 fps where you can't tell much difference anymore. The Oculus Rift (VR headset) is targeting 90Hz for their consumer version because the current 60Hz and the newer 75Hz models still aren't good enough.

Above 72 hertz, you're no longer visually distinguishing individual frames, but you still see sharp edges in a sort of stroboscopic effect (effectively seeing 2 frames at once), which is still noticeably different than continuous, real life vision. This is particularly noticeable when your eye attempts to track a moving object on the screen. You do have to get to pretty high framerates before your eye can't tell the difference anymore.

Edited April 10, 2014 by NecroBones

[Sirrobert]

I don't recall if the Whack uses it, but MechJeb can make launching massive things tolerable. It's not fussed by the slowdown, so just wait for it to do its thing. Once in orbit you'll typically have dropped many of your parts, and once far enough from Kerbin performance can improve further.

I don't think Mechjeb can handle the monstrocities that Wackjob builds.

Non-standart rockets always confuse the poor thing

[cantab]

On framerate, virtually all major movies are produced and shown at 24 fps though with each frame projected two or three times to reduce flicker, despite most cinemas now having digital projection systems capable of showing 48 fps. I think that's reason enough to believe that above a certain point framerate doesn't make much difference.

[Redshift OTF]

What are you going to call this ship? "CPU Burn-in Test"?

[Seshins]

hes just gettin warmed up

i was being facetious....

[Whackjob]

Yeah, the landing gear is going to have to be done over again completely. I'm taking up too much of my parts budget just on bloody feet.

So now the question is... how do I land the biggest thing ever, and have it stay upright and not crush the landing gear? On a limited parts budget? I could cheat and use empty fuel tanks in the lander, but no. Not gonna do it.

[cantab]

I believe asteroids have already been suggested. Other than that, full fuel tanks, at least at launch?

[Whackjob]

Only fuel tanks I'm draining before launch are the ones intended to be purely structural. So landing gear only.

Ah, the landing gear. Needless to say I've spent yesterday and probably tonight doing about thirty different permutations of functional gear. Have YET to hit one that does it for me.

This build may take a while.

[Technical Ben]

Yeah, the landing gear is going to have to be done over again completely. I'm taking up too much of my parts budget just on bloody feet.

So now the question is... how do I land the biggest thing ever, and have it stay upright and not crush the landing gear? On a limited parts budget? I could cheat and use empty fuel tanks in the lander, but no. Not gonna do it.

Re-usability is key is what I've learnt. If it can be re-used, do so. Even in strange and bizarre ways. Like, what about structures? Can the support double as a landing base? Empty tanks?

PS, most rockets will land on the engines if light enough... not sure that's gonna work here though.

Edited April 11, 2014 by Technical Ben

[Whackjob]

Needless to say my first technical challenge has turned out to be a severe one. I have not yet come up with a resolution to the super-large-landing-gear issue.

But it's nowhere near hopeless yet. I've got a few dozen ideas to crank through yet. So! Project, despite lack of updates, is not abandoned; Work continues apace.

[Camaron]

Just a quick tip - The New biggest decoupler is a buggy, ship-wrecking nightmare. Just use the big rockomax one, it works just fine even for Horrifically enormous ships.

[Moar Boosters]

Yeah, the landing gear is going to have to be done over again completely. I'm taking up too much of my parts budget just on bloody feet.

So now the question is... how do I land the biggest thing ever, and have it stay upright and not crush the landing gear? On a limited parts budget? I could cheat and use empty fuel tanks in the lander, but no. Not gonna do it.

Use S3 KS-25x4 engine clusters as your landing legs. When attached to a fuel tank they're ridiculously strong. I discovered it by accident when I clicked launch on this rocket without attaching any clamps. The central core is slightly lower down than the outer ones, so they're weren't touching the floor -That's over 5000 tons resting on a single part. (I hit launch before taking the screenshot because it was falling over).

The first thing I tried when the update came out was land an entire SLS on the Mun. I was partially successful. The landing site wasn't very good so all I did was touch the floor and take off again........ but IIRC I touched down pretty hard... about 10m/s, and the engine was fine. These things should definitely suffice as your landing feet, I guess it's just a matter of sorting out suspension and stability so it doesn't fall over.

[jfull]

The landing site wasn't very good so all I did was touch the floor and take off again........ but IIRC I touched down pretty hard... about 10m/s, and the engine was fine. These things should definitely suffice as your landing feet, I guess it's just a matter of sorting out suspension and stability so it doesn't fall over.

You have to remember though, he's working with incredibly low frame-rate, so it might be hard for him to have fine control of his landing speed.

[Camaron]

I'm stealing your "Locking Pin" concept, Whackjob. Try and stop me.

Mostly because I just built and orbited a 1438 ton fuel ship, but I'm not satisfied. I want to go even bigger than that, and your linked trusses fit the bill.

[bigyihsuan]

Wow, insane rocketry right here. (In a good way!)

I wonder how you stand the lag that comes with it...

[Whackjob]

Ok, I think I have solved the landing gear issue. I have a design in my head which should be able to bear the weight I must and not take three thousand plus parts. Hard part is... well... the legs themselves will be separate modules. Which means they'll be bound to the primary ship via docking ports. The leg modules themselves will be somewhat... difficult to construct. That's where I am stuck now. Launching and docking them ought to be dead simple.

I'm going to build a 1xVAB height rocket to test this concept.

I'm stealing your "Locking Pin" concept, Whackjob. Try and stop me.

Any of my design techniques are free for the taking! Feel free.

[federicoaa]

Whackjob does not measure his rockets in orange tanks but in VABs XD

[andrew123]

I feel glad I own a gtx 760. Not the rather unusual fx 6300 in my current mobo... weaker than my previous laptop i7.

Should I go for 4k... I have the opportunity to get this for 700 dollars exact... with the 8-10 percent california tax added on top of that. http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-28-Inch-Definition-Monitor-U28D590D/dp/B00IEZGWI2

I probably should have bought a gtx titan in the first place...

Oh well.

Edited April 16, 2014 by andrew123

[Camaron]

Locking Pin has enabled me to build a new Titan Fuel Ship weighing in at around 2,200 tons.

Impossible without the Locking Pin. Thanks for your concept, Whackjob! I would not have thought of that if I had my entire life.

(It's not orbited yet because I'm waiting on my new parts still, but Ive already flown it with some of the inner boosters, and its proven fast and stable.!)

[Camaron]

I must wonder, Whackjob, what hardware you're working with that allows you any level of bearable performance when operating ships like this or the one I saw in a pic a while pack with over 4,000 parts? I know you still lag plenty, but most people wouldn't have a functioning computer trying to load 4k parts at once. I attempted 2K a while ago - it took 6 or 7 whole minutes to even come out from the black loading screen. Forget trying to launch it!

Maybe you posted what your new computer possesses already, but I didn't see it.

[Daddy Cecil]

What is the "locking pin" design anyway? Is it the girders, or what...

[Camaron]

Here's how the honeycomb truss structure works. Well, I was going to do a little ASCII thing, but realized I already have a picture with that setup in it:

Now, the big project here isn't going to be mixing narrow and wide parts like that. That's just asking for more trouble than what I'm already in for. But do you see the large trusses holding them together? They fit perfectly.

Now, I know you already see something questionable. "But Whack!" you say. "... You can't have a closed loop! They don't connect!" And you're quite right. Which is why, if you look really close, the trusses that meet in the middle that would be "open" have a strut connecting them. I find it works wonderfully. Like a locking pin, holding them together.

With seven core columns, six are on the outside. 360/6 = perfect 60 degree angles between each, giving me nice little equilateral triangles that assure a snug truss fit. By using tanks of equal radii, I can assure the trusses still fit nice. It's quite elegant. I think.

I swiped locking pins from this post by Whackjob early on in the thread, explaining the reasoning behind his structure.

Edited April 16, 2014 by Camaron

[Camaron]

Herro? Whackjob dead? Busy with life or cooking up monstrosities?