Mars Analog Sim ISRU Add-on

[Uriah]

Hello all!

I am working on a KSP add-on that will include Mars and its two satellites Phobos and Deimos. My concept is to develop this mod in line with the Real Solar System as part of the Realism Overhaul, and utilize the Visual Enhancements mod for atmospheric effects. I will develop it to be fully compatible with the game first and foremost, but also for these mods. Once the Mars Analog Sim ISRU (In Situ Resource Utilization, more on that later) mod is installed, Mars will replace Duna, and the orbits of Mars and both satellites will be accurate. I am interested producing two versions of the mod, high resolution, and low resolution. This will give players the option to go with detail or performance. In the configuration file I want the user to be able to set variables for ground clutter level of detail, including rocks and boulders. The ground clutter will be important, rocks in the game are normally non-collidable, but I need them to have collisions so they make landing in certain areas dangerous and force players to seek safe landing zones. Also for the ISRU part of the mod, they are necessary for other reasons.

Modeling the planetary bodies and getting them working in-game will be the first phase of the mod, which could be released fairly soon.

The second phase is to develop parts and functionality to conduct ISRU operations. which allows players to explore Mars in search of natural resources such as water and substances which has be made into fuel, as well as metals such as iron for construction. The premise for this part of the mod is to build on the Tac Life Support mod, which of course requires food, water and oxygen to sustain Kerbal life. I really like this because it adds more realism to the game. Recently I stumbled across a spectrometer map of Mars with overlays showing the concentration of various natural resources. This sparked the idea for this mod. What if I could use those real resource maps, and the player can overlay the resource map over Mars on the Main Map Screen so they can for example, see where high concentrations of water are and send out probes to explore and if they find a resource pile, send our machinery to collect and process it. NASA and other organizations have detailed plans for In Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) on Mars.

I thought about how this would work in the game, and I realized it isn't very difficult at all. I would add a part called the Laser Spectrometer, which could be added to any vehicle and would scan the ground. If the laser intersects one of the ground objects which IS a resource, it would record the type of resource, location and concentration level on the Main Map. The player can then send out equipment or fly a mission to the site. This will provide a lot of Mars based game-play, and allow the player to establish a colony and to build and launch rockets from Mars. Resources will be extracted to sustain these operations without resupply from Kerbin, and there are a lot of problem solving situations that will provide exciting flight missions and keep your critical thinking caps on. For example, water is the most precious resource of all, but there might not be much water near where there are other valuable resources. So you would either have to locate the colony/HQ in a location central to many resource sites, or else have multiple sites dedicated to different resources, and then transport them to the colony over greater distances. If you don't play your cards right, and don't stockpile or plan for the future, you will run out of fuel and life support, and that would suck!

Back to Mars and its moons, I already have all of the models and textures for the moons (found here: http://www.celestiamotherlode.net/catalog/mars.php ), but am having difficulty with the textures for Mars itself. The problem is, I have imagery from multiple sensors, the Viking color orthoimagery needs to be co-registered with the Mars Oriter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) elevation map and normal map. I have exhausted manual attempts, and I am now looking into software that performs co-registeration automatically using tracking points to align the images. If anyone has experience in this matter, help would be appreciated. Or else maybe there are all three images somewhere out there already co-registered at this ultra-resolution (at NASA) and I can't find them. :/ The color and normal maps are 23,040 x 11,520 pixels and the height map is 8194 x 4097 pixels. Yes it is beautiful, I'll upload some renders and screen shots from Unity 3D in a little while.

Once I have the imagery registered, the project is GO! I already have everything working in Unity 3D and am starting on a detail/poly count optimized planet model with high poly density around terrain features such as valleys and mountains, and low density in flatter areas. This will maximize visual detail and minimize file size.

TO-DO/PART LIST: which I will continue to expand upon over the course of the project: (the fun and easy stuff!)

Model/Configure Mars, Phobos and Deimos. Orbits, masses, other properties. Phobos and Deimos HAVE MICRO GRAVITY!

1. Hydrogen Fuel Cell. (two sizes) Function: converts liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen directly from stored fuel into two resources, water and electricity. Uses LOX and liquidH2.

2. Laser Spectrometer. Function: scans and detects natural resources, records resource type, location and concentration to map, takes a single image of site which is stored or transmitted. Uses electricity. Can be attached to any vehicle.

3. Data Recorder. Function: used with the laser spectrometer to record data to be recovered later so power does not need to be used to transmit. Uses electricity, data uses storage capacity (Ker-bits?).

4. Autonomous Nav Computer. Function: flies probe in search patterns scanning for resources, so the user does not have to do it manually. Uses electricity, controls flight, flies way points, flies search patterns. (RemoteTech mod)

5. Excavation Arm. (animated) Function: digs loose resources and loads it into container for transport to processing station.

6. Robotic Drill. (animated) Function: breaks up hard resources into useable ones. Uses electricity

7. Resource Containers. (animated) (multiples shapes and sizes) Function: to hold and transport resources to processing station. Can be loaded on and off vehicles. Contains X amounts of resource A, Y amount of resource B and Z amount of resource C, depending on mass and density, etc. Animated at different levels of capacity, different textures for different resources. Lid opens and closes to secure resources.

8. Frozen Water Resource. (animated) (multiples shapes and sizes) Function: water cannot exist on Mars in liquid form, frozen ice lies just beneath the surface, once exposed evaporates quickly if not collected and stored. Requires Excavation Arm to collect. Animated becoming smaller as it evaporates or is collected.

9. Iron resource. (multiples shapes and sizes) Function: iron is found in abundance on Mars, contained in metiorites and natural deposites, it is everywhere, but in higher concentration in some places in the equatorial belt. Models includes small red rocks, and dark shiny meteorites (i.e. hematite and magnetite.). Iron is used with carbon to forge steel. Requires Robotic Drill to break up large piece in to moveable pieces. Requires forge to produce steel.

10. Other Resources include: Carbon, Copper, Silicon, Aluminum, etc... more to be added (please make In Situ suggestions below! What would you like to use/make?)

11. Metal Forge. (animated forging and pouring molten metal). Function: Processing Station, self explanatory: burns fuel like engine, can produce steel from iron ore and carbon, or any other metal or alloy, provided the resources.

12. Water Processing Station. (animated) Water can be collected from large amounts of any material with moisture, even rocks, but frozen water is a better resource if you can find it. Function: self explanatory.

13. Water Storage Tanks. (multiple shapes and sizes) Self explanatory.

14. Resource Storage Containers. (multiple shapes and sizes) Function: Once you process materials into their final form, you need to safely store it before it is used or made into a part. Once it is stored in the containers, it is added to the Resources List and is available for use, but still must be transported. The rest is self explanatory.

15. 3D Printer. (animated) Function: It is difficult to build machines, without machines. When humans arrive on Mars they will need to build infrastructure and develop the capability to manufacture equipment. Small additive manufacturing units can be sent to Mars to print small parts from in situ resources. Not your typical glue gun printer, this Laser Sintering process builds up layers of a part from fine metal or composite powders and melts them together with a high power laser. High tech processes allow systems such as electronics and sensors to be integrated right into a material, allowing new high tech parts to be manufactured such as engines which cool faster and weigh less. In sum, you will be able to print parts for rockets and assembly that are more advanced than their Kerbin equivalents. Many complex functions and dependencies, described later in detail. Requires powdered resource(s) and electricity. Produces parts below max size, given correct resources, (i.e. small engine requires 30 steel and 50 aluminum) or (solar panels require 50 Silicon and 5 Copper), etc.

ADDITIONAL PARTS INCLUDED FOR MARS EXPLORATION:

Wind Turbine. (three sizes). Function: uses wind speed (pseudorandom function) to generate electricity.

Solar Tracker. Function: stand onto which solar panels are attached, rotates AND tilts to track sun, generates and uses electricity. Those pesky sun tracking solar panels only have one axis of rotation which limits thier sun exposure considerably.

Power Cable. Function: to deliver power from Solar Panels and Wind turbine. Connects to two outlets up to a certain distance apart.

Power Outlet. Function: to connect Power Cables to vehicles, structures.

I know this first post is very extended, but if you made it this far you must be interested. I am open to suggestions, feedback, critisiscm, and hopefully some encouraging support! It is always good to know you are doing something that people will enjoy! If anyone wishes to collaborate, or is already working on parts of this PM me.

"Earth, we've landed on Mars!"

Best Regards,

Uriah George

[SpannerMonkey(smce)]

Hi, re suntracker it is possible to make sun tracking panels over two axis, I'm involved in another project for which I have just made some of the same, my initial thoughts were that it'd be ideal for ground and exploration bases, as you say, if you are not on the equator the standard tracking is a bit limited.

I have not considered how to do this on a ground based unit, but have some ideas that require investigation

Always been slightly annoyed that although the ksc flags blow in the breeze and the clouds move apparently in response to wind forces, that we've never been able to feel or utilise it's effects.

[Uriah]

Quite right, the pan/tilt axis setup shouldn't be too hard, I could whip it up and rig the animation in a few minutes. For a ground based tracking unit it no different than a vehicle, the ground is your attachment point, than you have your pan axis rigged to that, and tilt axis rigged to that. It is a three piece assembly, but nothing particularly difficult. That's at the bottom of my list currently though. I'm still learning the Unity---> KSP end, so there is that learning curve, but once I am off the ground I catch on fast.

As to the wind, no I don't believe there is wind that has any effect in the game. Once there is a part requiring wind, such as a wind turbine, just have an algorithm generate a string of random numbers, and then randomized periods of time with zero wind speed, and a simple algorithm to determine wind direction, put the result through a smoothing filter, wa' la, fake wind force. I am sure there is a sophisticate way to do it, I am sure you could even make the wind interact aerodynamically with the game, but that is unnecessary for this purpose, nevertheless it would be a great feature but complicated to code.

Everything I have discussed is actually fairly simple to code. Adding new classes of resources, easy. New parts, done. Configuring the parts, painstaking, but not difficult. Testing the parts, might need some coffee.

The real difficulty is programming the Laser Spectrometer, resource detection and locating to work seamlessly with the rest of the game modules. All the complicated sounding In Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) stuff, is really just simple math and ratios, nothing complicated about it once you figure out a good system for doing so. I haven't sat down with those numbers yet. Literally everything except the Laser Spectrometer functionality is already built into KSP.

One game play angle I am shooting for is you have to set up and fine tune your ISRU infrastructure to produce at capacity, but then it all operates remotely. If you expand you resource demands, you must increase your production by adding more machines or finding new resource sites.

I am going to work on designing a small proof of concept mod that demonstrates the ISRU in a really simple way, kind of a hack really. In fact there is already mod similar, I'll have to look into it. I saw it used on Duna in a YouTube video.

-Uriah

[physicsnerd]

KSPI does something basic with this concept, though it's nowhere near as complicated as what you have proposed. Perhaps you could work with FractalUK on this?

[Uriah]

I had seen KSP Intersteller in passing, but the name didn't peek my interest because of the real world times involved at those distances. On second glance they have done a lot more than make a distant star system to travel to.

"KSP Interstellar is a plugin for Kerbal Space Program, designed to encourage bootstrapping toward ever more advanced levels of technology as well as utilising In-Situ resources to expand the reach of Kerbal civilisation."

Booom bang! It has already developed many of the necessary components. Thanks for the tip!

Here are a few concepts I drafted from some sketches earlier. Trying to design the parts to look like they belong in space, and not on an airplane. The green lens is the scanning laser with internal beam steering mirror, (mirror visible when lens is transparent, animated scanning), the blue lens is the optical receiver which picks up the returning signal, and the yellow lens is a color camera. I am picking apart the config files for the Lazer mod, trying to figure that out so I can get this in the game and start testing. Although this isn't the final model by any means, it will suffice for development and testing. I find people get hung up on the details before they grasp the big picture.

Edited July 17, 2014 by Uriah

[Claw]

You can fix your links like this below...

This:

[noparse][/noparse]

Turns into this:

You can get the link to the picture itself by right-clicking on the picture and "open in another tab" or similar option. Then use that link.

Welcome to the forums.

~Claw

[Dr. Jet]

Well, I don't want to disappoint you, but most things of what you wrote about is already there.

1. Hydrogen Fuel Cell.

Universal Storage addon.

2. Laser Spectrometer.

FASA addon.

3. Data Recorder.

Tarsier Space Technology addon.

4. Autonomous Nav Computer. Function: flies probe in search patterns scanning for resources, so the user does not have to do it manually.

ScanSat addon (latest version).

Uses electricity, controls flight, flies way points, flies search patterns. (RemoteTech mod)

IRL (and in KSP too) you actually never fly probes "in pattern" - stable orbit with high inclination is all you need to scan the whole planet surface. It can be reached with RT2, KOS, MechJeb or manually.

5. Excavation Arm.

Scoop-o-Matic (science excavation arm).

6. Robotic Drill. (animated)

Bahamuto Dynamics resource drill.

7. Resource Containers.

Kethane addon. Interstellar addon.

8. Frozen Water Resource.

9. Iron resource.

Other Resources

I don't think this game engine will allow you to implement animated resource nodes or ANY resource nodes as objects. I mean even Squad themselves had to make asteroids as actual rocket parts! OpenResource mod is the way to go - just add configs and resource maps for what you want.

11. Metal Forge.

Extraplanetary Laucnhpads addon.

12. Water Processing Station.

Interstellar addon.

13. Water Storage Tanks.

Interstellar addon. TAC Life Support addon.

14. Resource Storage Containers.

Same as p.7. Just converting resources from one form to another.

15. 3D Printer.

Interstellar Launchpads addon. BTW it's impossible to do complex animations in KSP. You'll need a deep knowledge of Unity internals to write a plugin that would allow that.

Wind Turbine.

Yes, I know there are many designer concepts, but IRL Mars atmosphere density (ridiculously low) would not allow it to be anywhere near effective. Small nuclear generator like Toshiba 4S is a way to go for a long-term colony.

Solar Tracker. Function: stand onto which solar panels are attached, rotates AND tilts to track sun,

Pretty simple. You may take an example from KOSMOS pack ("Balka") or from my mod. Just remember - local Y of subpart is the pivot rotation axis and local Z is subpart's suncatcher.

Power Cable.

Power Outlet.

KAS addon.

---

P.S. I forgot to mention Modular Kolonization System addon. It's about the whole colony complex building.

---

But don't be disappointed! Noone yet have made the Mars itself, you'll be the first! And don't forget to add CustomBiomes support for your model.

BTW. Realistic Venus would be welcome too. Current purple horror is... well... purple and horrific. Internet have plenty of american real Venus heightmaps and soviet real Venus landscape photos to work with.

Edited July 17, 2014 by Dr. Jet

[Uriah]

Dr. Jet the Kerbal encyclopedia, nice to meet you!

Awesome, well that takes care of a lot of the functionality I had proposed for the infrastructure type parts. I was familiar of some of those modules, many I wasn't aware of. Thank you for itemizing that all for me!

In terms of Mars itself, my only real concern is I won't be able to work with the high resolution textures and maps. Right now I am stitching together the entire MOLA normal map data set from 512x512 pixel tiles, a total of 2048 of them! Because the data set was not provided with a geospatial reference system, there literally is no way to automatically do it. In each column there are 32 tiles, and there are 64 columns, so the final image will be 17920 x 32768 pixels. It is worth the effort, maybe ten or so hours of work, but the result is simply spectacular! Instead of using a high poly terrain mesh, I can use a sparse distributed one, and normal map in all the details.

I am still working my way into the KSP game structure, so I don't yet understand if it is even possible to use these massive texture files. From what I have read so far, it seems big textures are better because thousands of small ones can bog down the game, but how big is too big? The color orthoimagery I am processing with a co-registeration program, is the same size. How is the game going to handle that? Unity can handle it, but can KSP?

Thanks again,

Uriah

[Uriah]

If Mars goes well, ALL the others shouldn't be a problem. If people want to help with some of configuration work for each planet, I could knock out the whole solar system. Gas giants such as Jupiter can be covered by a very artistic application of the Visual Enhancements mod, because landing under those pressures and temperatures is impossible.

Last but not least, Earth. The Real Solar System mod got everything right, but the terrain and texture maps need much higher because the resolution is degraded by the increase in scale. If it is possible with Mars than I'll start digging for a detailed world texture in the same resolution range. One factor I was considering is that if Earth is respectively twice the diameter of Mars, the same sized texture on both planets would have different levels of detail. If I want to keep it consistent on each planet, I can scale down the size of textures on the small planets, but still, it would be nice to scale it up on the bigger planets.

I would basically like to merge the planetary work with the Real Solar System mod, because it already has nearly everything else completed. That is my goal. As far as the in situ stuff is concerned, it is integral to Mars, and applicable to a number of the other planets. I just feel there isn't much point of being on the planet except for the sake of driving around like you could in any other game and then taking off again. There needs to be a SINGLE mods which integrates all of these various planetary exploration components into a single package which works cohesively. Such an effort could be organized.

By the way, the Open Resource System, is exactly what I had in mind but I wasn't sure if it would work so I thought ground objects would suffice. THAT IS AWESOME!

Hematite Surface Texture Map: YES ITS REAL! (Maps from the TES Instrument on the Mars Global Surveyor)

YOU SAID SOMETHING ABOUT BIOMES?!

Edited July 17, 2014 by Uriah

[Dr. Jet]

Yeah... Looks very similar to biome map. However TOO MANY biomes will be pain in the ass to manage. 6-10 per stellar body is gamewise optimal IMHO.

As for giant textures... RSS addon manages them somehow, so that shouldn't be a big problem, especially with 64bit KSP 0.24.

[Uriah]

That is great news, because I have been testing all levels of map detail using Real Solar System and I can't get a texture to load over 8192x4096! I'll need help with the RSS addons if we can rally some people power!

Welcome to Mars!!!!!!!!! Still working on fine tuning the parameters for displacement of the height and normal maps, but I am going to attempt to land and see what happens! If they did the atmosphere correctly and the elevation of the mesh didn't change significantly, I should be alright!

[Uriah]

I knew I was coming in too fast but I got distracted by the "Giant Wall", some kind of mesh bug...

...which appeared right before I hit the ground at 13,000 m. So the elevation is off, but what about the "Wall" below.

ON THE GROUND! Except for everything I came with...

[Uriah]

I've already made a lot more progress, here is where I am at. I got rid of the mesh glitch experienced in my first attempted landing, as well as got a working normal map which was my problem, as KSP requires a RGBA normal map, and not the standard RGB map. I am also experimenting with PNG/TGA and getting mixed results. I am still not able to load a texture of any format above 8192x4096 without crashing.

Some of the properties are not configured yet, but now the texture maps are working, along with accurate collisions. The only probelm is the 3d model itself and I am at a stand still until I can figure out how to replace the Duna model with my custom OBJ model for Mars. There is nothing wrong with my model/files, I tested that possibility using another planet file from KSP to make sure it was not the case. I can only assume the game is over riding my model, or else the Real Solar System add-on is not implementing the 3d models that come with it, and I though that was the whole point.

Help... anyone... please?!

In the mean time I have plenty of work to do on Phobos and Deimos.

-Uriah

Above. Phoboes and Deimos being sized and verified before texturing.

Below: (left to right) Earth and the Moon, new Mars model and on the far right, Duna.

Edited July 18, 2014 by Uriah

[Dr. Jet]

Huh! There IS a KSP 3D-printer already.

However BahamutoD got to write his own animation plugin for it to work.

[Uriah]

Nice! I thought the animation could be contained completely within the 3d model, and you just jump between segments of the animation. I'll have to look into that to.

Still no luck replacing the Duna Model with Mars.

[Uriah]