chrisl Posted January 28, 2015 Share Posted January 28, 2015 Yeah, I've tried the torque thing. It certainly helps but these things are still extremely touchy. I was hoping there was something with the suspension or other settings I could adjust that might help further. I know these things will never be graceful. They really only have tracks so I can land the seperate parts and dock them together. Just trying to find ways to make them slightly more stable when positioning them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madrias Posted January 28, 2015 Share Posted January 28, 2015 Increase suspension strength and maybe adjust the damping. That may help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lo-fi Posted January 28, 2015 Author Share Posted January 28, 2015 (edited) Indeed, Kenobi has it nailed. This demonstrates quite well, and it's a cool video: http://youtu.be/40pS_Q63K2MAs Madrias suggests, up the damping a little bit, that may help.Going to take a little work to turn the hitch concept into something really workable, but should be worth it. Edited January 28, 2015 by lo-fi Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madrias Posted January 28, 2015 Share Posted January 28, 2015 Trust me, I can't wait to be able to actually use hitches. Infernal Robotics and KAS just don't cut it. One, you often end up inside your trailer when trying to turn aggressively, and two, you just don't get the feel that you're towing something. You can't feel the weight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lo-fi Posted January 28, 2015 Author Share Posted January 28, 2015 Another cool thing to come out of this is I can now make little tie downs for rovers in transportation. Going to make them aim-able, so once configured, you fire them to create a solid joint between themselves and whatever they're aimed at within a configurable distance. So you can drive a rover onto a ramp of a cargo plane, fire up several tie-downs and fly the plane away with the rover solidly fixed in place, just like in RL. No messing with fiddly docking port alignment, everything stays as a separate vessel and the rover won't fall out. Lots of unknowns like vessel and scene switching, how the on rails part is handled and stuff like that to work through, but that's the plan.Lots to do with the hitch before I even release it to you guys, and still a lot of unknowns there. Switching between tractor and trailer is fine - the joint stays intact - but it will need rebuilding every time focus is swapped away out of physics range, which could be a problem. Needs rebuilding before and physics kicks in too, or things will go out of alignment before the joint is rebuilt. I think KAS and IR can probably point me the way. One cool thing about this method, is that as tractor and trailer are still separate vessels, they actually collide with each other rather than folding into themselves! I'm going to try and create some limits to swivel range of the hitch anyway, but this might be tricky dealing with the orientation not being perfect when hitching. I'd also like to give the option to activate the drive and brakes on the trailer, so maybe I'll have to look at Burn Together or similar. Maybe I can hack around with some of the auto pilot functions.. Oh, and I need to make some nice hitch and coupling models... I'm literally just typing stuff as it comes into my head now, maybe I should stop!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darren9 Posted January 28, 2015 Share Posted January 28, 2015 It sounds great, I really hope you can get something that can withstand timewarp. The closest thing at the moment seems to be the KAS grapple which disconnects at warp or leaving full physics. If you're looking at code for ideas Smart-Parts also has the match throttle/heading in the smart radio, I just don't have slightest idea how useful it may be to you Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lo-fi Posted January 28, 2015 Author Share Posted January 28, 2015 Yes, that's the bit that worries me :/ Still, the only way to find out is to give it my best shot! It's possible there is some kind of intractable issue that the (extremely clever) KAS guys found, or it's possible they didn't feel it was worth it for the grapple. Thanks, I'll have a look at smart parts, not heard of that before. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
riocrokite Posted January 28, 2015 Share Posted January 28, 2015 Love the idea of hitch, it would give many nice options and solve many problems with transportation at the same time Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lo-fi Posted January 28, 2015 Author Share Posted January 28, 2015 Looks like it's one of those things that has to work, one way or another Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eygc Posted January 28, 2015 Share Posted January 28, 2015 Hi, I'm running ActiveTextureManagement basic and it hangs at RepulsorSurface\RepulsorSurfaceDiffuse. As in, no log, the program freezes. Any ideas? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lo-fi Posted January 28, 2015 Author Share Posted January 28, 2015 Hmmm, nothing special at all about that part or texture. I'll need an output_log please, might be able to point you in the right direction for talking to the ATM guys. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eygc Posted January 28, 2015 Share Posted January 28, 2015 ...but there is no log. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lo-fi Posted January 28, 2015 Author Share Posted January 28, 2015 Then I can't help you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darren9 Posted January 28, 2015 Share Posted January 28, 2015 Hi, I'm running ActiveTextureManagement basic and it hangs at RepulsorSurface\RepulsorSurfaceDiffuse. As in, no log, the program freezes. Any ideas?How long did you leave it for? It took ages for me the first time ATM crunched up the new Kerbal Foundries, I thought it had hung and it showed "not responding" but it eventually completed. Check the CPU use, if it remains high leave it longer to complete. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lo-fi Posted January 28, 2015 Author Share Posted January 28, 2015 Odd that it'd be the surface repulsor, though. Unless the progress indicator is lying and it's actually stuck crunching the rover body texture, which is massive and I still haven't got around to fixing. I think it's probably next in the loading order after RepulsorSurface, so that may be it.- - - Updated - - -Alright, I got this: Imposing limits on the coupling is easy, and I can even make it tweakable. Next up is to see what I can do about recreating the joint when the scene changes back to flight or physics kicks in. This will, no doubt, be harder, but after that I'll release it to dev so you guys can do what you do best and break stuff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
riocrokite Posted January 28, 2015 Share Posted January 28, 2015 (edited) Imposing limits on the coupling is easy, and I can even make it tweakable. Next up is to see what I can do about recreating the joint when the scene changes back to flight or physics kicks in. This will, no doubt, be harder, but after that I'll release it to dev so you guys can do what you do best and break stuff That is better than cool, if x y and z limits can be tweakable separately it would be possible to do i.e. all kinds of truck-trailer connectors \o/ edit: It would be sweet if .cfg had some kind of switch like: eva-configurable: true / false, SPH-VAB-configurable: true / false Edited January 28, 2015 by riocrokite Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gaalidas Posted January 28, 2015 Share Posted January 28, 2015 Sweet stuff happening here. I'm a bit out of it right now. Stats class is killing me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lo-fi Posted January 28, 2015 Author Share Posted January 28, 2015 Ewwwww. Stats. Horrible.I'll get back to you on the configurability, still working through how to set it up. All axis of the joint can be independently controlled, though I'm currently dealing with issues related to the joint being created while the tractor and trailer are not perfectly aligned. The limits are relative to how things are when the joints are created, so some measuring and calculation is required to make it behave properly. But it is freakin cool! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madrias Posted January 28, 2015 Share Posted January 28, 2015 That looks like it'd be very much useful! I'm thinking... Kerbal Express... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gaalidas Posted January 29, 2015 Share Posted January 29, 2015 You mean, Kerbal Horrible-fail-with-dismemberment-and-death Express don't you? The development outtakes for something like that could be extremely hilarious. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lo-fi Posted January 29, 2015 Author Share Posted January 29, 2015 Indeed! Though this kind of vector maths is really, really hard Find the angle between two vectors in one plane: Sounds easy, doesn't it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Madrias Posted January 29, 2015 Share Posted January 29, 2015 Gaalidas, when you bring the tracks with the train, you generally don't have as many explosions. That being said, I expect a share of explosions and death and destruction before I figure it out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZodiusInfuser Posted January 29, 2015 Share Posted January 29, 2015 Indeed! Though this kind of vector maths is really, really hard Find the angle between two vectors in one plane: Sounds easy, doesn't it.Yarp it does (bearing in mind that the stuff I do in my day job is far more complex ). Find the magnitude of each vector to the normal of the plane (something dot product related), and subtract it from your vector. Then normalise your vector. Do this for the other vector. Then use another dot product between your two vectors and convert the resulting value into an angle. That's how I'd do it from memory at least.Here's some links:http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/AmountVectorMagnitudeInAnotherDirection.htmlhttp://www.fundza.com/vectors/normalize/http://www.euclideanspace.com/maths/algebra/vectors/angleBetween/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lo-fi Posted January 29, 2015 Author Share Posted January 29, 2015 Well, for us mortals who don't do this kind of thing in the day job Thanks, I'll have a nose through the links and see what I can figure out. I was surprised I could find so little (and damn the joint for not revealing the data to me when I know damn well it must have it), though I was possibly searching the wrong terms! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gaalidas Posted January 29, 2015 Share Posted January 29, 2015 It all sounds a lot more interesting than trying to figure out Stats. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts