[1.9-1.10] Hangar

[allista]

So I got two questions/suggestions.

I've been fooling around with the inline hanger intending to launch a bunch of sats for remote tech all in one go. Seems like it'll work great for this and I'm really liking how you got this setup. This mod is stellar!

However two things keep bugging me. One is the color scheme. I hate to rag on it because I know it is hard work, but I would love to see a more stock alike look. Maybe just a grey/white texture. It's just that the colors as they are really clash with almost everything I pair them with.

Second thing is two fold. One is it'd be really nice to have attachment nodes on the sides of the hanger. That way I could mount it side ways and have a short fat hanger if wanted. Second part is that the ends just kind of fit awkwardly. For instance let's say you take the inline hanger at its default size and attach a mk1 to the top. It looks kind of odd. But if you attached a larger command podthe white texture of the node that I should probably replace it also looks a bit off. Just like it doesn't really fit. Not really sure how that could be fixed since the hanger resizes on the go. Maybe if the ends could have selectable sizes like in procedural parts?

How this doesn't come off as critical or anything. Just trying to give some helpful feedback.

Thanks for the feedback. I think I'll make a second texture pack after all, as yours is not the first question about them But not in the nearest weeks, I'm afraid, -- too much to do at work now.

As for the attachment nodes:

1. To be able to attach inline hangars radially, with symmetry, but in parallel with the vessel's main axis? If so, I like the idea and will see to it!
   
2. Well, inline hangars are made so that their attachment nodes fit stock parts of the size indicated by the resizer (1, 2, 3 and 4). But they themselves are wider to be able to store vessels of the same size type as they are. For example, smaller hangar by default has attachment nodes of size1 which are 1.25m in diameter as all stock parts of that size. I agree that Pod Mk1 doesn't fit right, but compare this with how it fits with the stock fuel tank (FL-T400 e.g.) and you'll see the same thing. On the other hand, both Cockpits fit just fine. The thing I don't like myself is the texturing of the attach nodes. The rims of the white circles are pain to the eye when you make a hangar bigger a little. So I plan to retexture them. Just don't know how yet.
   

[allista]

Sounds like a very promising mod Unfortunately my first try at implementing a hangar failed. Im using 1.1.0 so not sure if this bug has been fixed as i see 1.1.1 was released.

Anyway I launched a rover lander to the Mun but when i try to launch the rover inside it launches it on kerbin at the height where the lander is located on the Mun.

Wow... That's incredibly strange! I'll test it ASAP!

[merlinux]

Wow... That's incredibly strange! I'll test it ASAP!

No matter what I do (restarting KSP and reloading the vessel at the tracking station) it keeps happening. It was working fine during testing at KSC launchsite... I am using a bunch of other mods so that could be the problem.

[allista]

No matter what I do (restarting KSP and reloading the vessel at the tracking station) it keeps happening. It was working fine during testing at KSC launchsite... I am using a bunch of other mods so that could be the problem.

I have a confirmation from Joshwoo69 and already working on the issue Expect a patch today. And sorry for that stupid bug '

[allista]

The hotfix for the rover-on-mun problem is out.

Here's proofpic:

[spec10]

Great mod!

But I'm a bit confused: What's the maximum for fitting a vessel into the spaceport?

I'm trying to load something with 4.5m x 8.6m x 4.4m / volume 167m^3 / around 36t into it, but spaceport tells me it doesn't fit. (The right click menu on the spaceport says 5.6 m x 18.1 m x 5.3m. I was under the impression that those are the numbers for the cargo bay, but I suppose I'm wrong there?)

fixed it. Must have been some attachement bug or something like that. I removed everything from the outside until it did fit. Then I reattached everything the same way it was fitted before. Suddenly the ship fits into the spaceport.

Edited August 16, 2014 by spec10

[merlinux]

I have a confirmation from Joshwoo69 and already working on the issue Expect a patch today. And sorry for that stupid bug '

Do not be sorry I am Glad I get the chance to test your work. Thanks for your mod and great news about the hotfix! I will try it tomorrow.

[allista]

Great mod!

But I'm a bit confused: What's the maximum for fitting a vessel into the spaceport?

I'm trying to load something with 4.5m x 8.6m x 4.4m / volume 167m^3 / around 36t into it, but spaceport tells me it doesn't fit. (The right click menu on the spaceport says 5.6 m x 18.1 m x 5.3m. I was under the impression that those are the numbers for the cargo bay, but I suppose I'm wrong there?)

fixed it. Must have been some attachement bug or something like that. I removed everything from the outside until it did fit. Then I reattached everything the same way it was fitted before. Suddenly the ship fits into the spaceport.

You're right, those numbers are for the cargo bay, so it really should have been fit. If by any chance you have the .craft file of the vessel that was not fitting, I would be glad to test it, because it does smell like a bug for me. Try to check saves_backup folder if it was overwritten in your save folder.

[Dave-In-Texas]

I created and launched an inline habitable hangar intended as part of a station. it works great. I decided to eva Jebediah and look at it from outside, noticed a crew hatch on it and landed and entered the station. fiddled with controls (open close doors, lights etc) and then Jeb started to panic as he cannot figure out how to get out :-p

perhaps i'm missing something obvious.. but how do i get him out? lol

[allista]

I created and launched an inline habitable hangar intended as part of a station. it works great. I decided to eva Jebediah and look at it from outside, noticed a crew hatch on it and landed and entered the station. fiddled with controls (open close doors, lights etc) and then Jeb started to panic as he cannot figure out how to get out :-p

perhaps i'm missing something obvious.. but how do i get him out? lol

If you hover over a hatch (any hatch on any part that has it, that's stock functionality) a label "Crew Hatch" appears. When it does, click on the hatch to summon the window with the list of the crew. In the list there is a button "EVA" alongside each crew member listed. Push that button and your kerberonaut will climb out of the hatch.

Note: 1) the label appears only from a small distance; if you're looking at your station from too far, move your camera closer until you see the label. 2) the label appears only when the ship is at rest, not accelerating or throttled; the check is the same as for saving the game. But sometimes this check doesn't work every frame and you see the label flickering. Then you just have to click repeatedly on the hatch until you hit it at the right moment. That's Squad's bug.

[qnistNAMEERF]

allista:

I just installed your mod (v.1.1.1.1). It's a brilliant idea and so far I really like it. However, I think I may have stumbled onto a bug. Per the dimensions of the hanger and the vehicle, it should have fit, but it didn't. Just figured I'd report it. Here's a screenshot.

Sorry I can't share a craft file of the sedan yet because the other mod is still in testing at the moment.

EDIT: By the way, the sedan does physically fit inside this size rover hanger.

I was also curious if it was intentional whether the X,Y,Z dimensions of the hanger context menu and the vessel info menu were not in the same order. Or is that a bug?

[allista]

allista:

I just installed your mod (v.1.1.1.1). It's a brilliant idea and so far I really like it. However, I think I may have stumbled onto a bug. Per the dimensions of the hanger and the vehicle, it should have fit, but it didn't. Just figured I'd report it. Here's a screenshot.

http://i.imgur.com/ZQ4Zy6x.jpg

Sorry I can't share a craft file of the sedan yet because the other mod is still in testing at the moment.

EDIT: By the way, the sedan does physically fit inside this size rover hanger.

I was also curious if it was intentional whether the X,Y,Z dimensions of the hanger context menu and the vessel info menu were not in the same order. Or is that a bug?

The X,Y,Z dimensions of context menu and Vessel Info are always in the same order: X, Y, Z. And that's what "causing" the problem, I reckon:

Enable "Show Directions" option and see where are Y and Z (forward and bottom) of the Sedan are. Each hangar has its own launch frame of reference, and when a hangar tries to fit a vessel inside, it first rotates the vessel so that vessel's axis are cooriented with hangar's launch frame of reference (as indicated by the arrows inside that hangar). Your Sedan's local frame of reference is probably rotated so its Y axis looking up, through the roof, not forward. So rotated it does not fit the hangar. It's not a bug, it's just a safety mechanism ensuring that when a vessel is launched inside a hangar it does not collide with the hangar's walls.

[qnistNAMEERF]

The X,Y,Z dimensions of context menu and Vessel Info are always in the same order: X, Y, Z. And that's what "causing" the problem, I reckon:

Enable "Show Directions" option and see where are Y and Z (forward and bottom) of the Sedan are. Each hangar has its own launch frame of reference, and when a hangar tries to fit a vessel inside, it first rotates the vessel so that vessel's axis are cooriented with hangar's launch frame of reference (as indicated by the arrows inside that hangar). Your Sedan's local frame of reference is probably rotated so its Y axis looking up, through the roof, not forward. So rotated it does not fit the hangar. It's not a bug, it's just a safety mechanism ensuring that when a vessel is launched inside a hangar it does not collide with the hangar's walls.

Ok, I'll try that out and see what happens. Thanks for the reply!

EDIT: So the directions on the sedan lined up with the ones on the lander hanger. I couldn't get the dimensions so be in the same order if I rotated anything, so not sure what's going on there. But I did find that if I increased the hanger size to 1.32 (instead of 1.3 as before) that it would accept the sedan and I could launch it as well.

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The only thing I can guess on the XYZ thing, is that the Y and Z are swapped on the vessel info panel. The VAB treats Y as height (up and down) and Z as depth (forward and backward), which works on your rover hanger but appears to be swapped on the vessel info in this instance.

EDIT2: Ah I see. The vessel info panel appears to be treating XYZ of the loaded craft as if it were loaded in the VAB pointing straight up instead of laying on its belly in the SPH. At least that's what it looks like anyway.

Edited August 17, 2014 by qnistNAMEERF

[allista]

Ok, I'll try that out and see what happens. Thanks for the reply!

EDIT: So the directions on the sedan lined up with the ones on the lander hanger. I couldn't get the dimensions so be in the same order if I rotated anything, so not sure what's going on there. But I did find that if I increased the hanger size to 1.32 (instead of 1.3 as before) that it would accept the sedan and I could launch it as well.

The only thing I can guess on the XYZ thing, is that the Y and Z are swapped on the vessel info panel. The VAB treats Y as height (up and down) and Z as depth (forward and backward), which works on your rover hanger but appears to be swapped on the vessel info in this instance.

EDIT2: Ah I see. The vessel info panel appears to be treating XYZ of the loaded craft as if it were loaded in the VAB pointing straight up instead of laying on its belly in the SPH. At least that's what it looks like anyway.

I think I understand now what's happened. The Sedan's frame of reference IS correct in that its Y axis is in its forward direction. Which was correctly indicated in Vessel Info window all along:

X (width): 1m, Y (forward, longest side): 2.3m, Z (height or depth): 0.9m.

The same is true for the Lander in its natural orientation (bottom down in VAB, bottom back in SPH):

X (width): 1.8m, Y (height in VAB, forward in SPH): 1.5m, Z (depth in VAB height in SPH) 2.3m.

But this particular hangar launches vessels rotated, so that their Y axis looked in its Z direction (and rover wheels were down when it's standing on its bottom). So indeed, dimensions that are compared become swapped here. But that was not the problem, it's just confusing and I need to think about how to better display things. The problem, as you may already guessed, was simple: displayed dimensions are rounded up to the one decimal digit. So your Sedan is really, say, 2.33m long, while the hangar at the scale of 1.3 was 2.32m long (in its Z direction). That's why the Sedan didn't fit at first and fitted when you increased the size a little. That is again a problem with representation and confusing messages. I'll think how to improve things for such a case.

Many thanks for your investigation and reports!

*about reference frames and VAB/SPH: KSP works on Unity engine, so in the world space as well as in the local space of correctly modelled part the XYZ are always the same: width, height, depth. The only difference between VAB and SPH is that SPH editor rotates any part cloned from the parts panel by default. That means that in SPH world space is still the same: width, height, depth; and the local space of a part is the same. But the transform from the local to the world space has an additional rotation of 90 degrees around X axis. Sorry if I my explanation is unclear. This whole thing with different reference frames and transforms often confuses me myself.

[qnistNAMEERF]

I think I understand now what's happened. The Sedan's frame of reference IS correct in that its Y axis is in its forward direction. Which was correctly indicated in Vessel Info window all along:

X (width): 1m, Y (forward, longest side): 2.3m, Z (height or depth): 0.9m.

The same is true for the Lander in its natural orientation (bottom down in VAB, bottom back in SPH):

X (width): 1.8m, Y (height in VAB, forward in SPH): 1.5m, Z (depth in VAB height in SPH) 2.3m.

But this particular hangar launches vessels rotated, so that their Y axis looked in its Z direction (and rover wheels were down when it's standing on its bottom). So indeed, dimensions that are compared become swapped here. But that was not the problem, it's just confusing and I need to think about how to better display things. The problem, as you may already guessed, was simple: displayed dimensions are rounded up to the one decimal digit. So your Sedan is really, say, 2.33m long, while the hangar at the scale of 1.3 was 2.32m long (in its Z direction). That's why the Sedan didn't fit at first and fitted when you increased the size a little. That is again a problem with representation and confusing messages. I'll think how to improve things for such a case.

Many thanks for your investigation and reports!

*about reference frames and VAB/SPH: KSP works on Unity engine, so in the world space as well as in the local space of correctly modelled part the XYZ are always the same: width, height, depth. The only difference between VAB and SPH is that SPH editor rotates any part cloned from the parts panel by default. That means that in SPH world space is still the same: width, height, depth; and the local space of a part is the same. But the transform from the local to the world space has an additional rotation of 90 degrees around X axis. Sorry if I my explanation is unclear. This whole thing with different reference frames and transforms often confuses me myself.

Yeah, I think it would be beneficial to have maybe a couple more digits or probably at least one more digit to the hanger and vessel dimensions. I was just increasing the slider for the rover hanger by 0.005 increments until it would accept the sedan. The inside dimensions for the rover hanger didn't appear to change (although it visually got bigger) in the context menu. So maybe another digit or two would make this more apparent. Would it be possible for the hanger to tell the player which craft files would fit without having to attempt to load them? Or is that necessary for it to check their dimensions?

[allista]

Yeah, I think it would be beneficial to have maybe a couple more digits or probably at least one more digit to the hanger and vessel dimensions. I was just increasing the slider for the rover hanger by 0.005 increments until it would accept the sedan. The inside dimensions for the rover hanger didn't appear to change (although it visually got bigger) in the context menu. So maybe another digit or two would make this more apparent. Would it be possible for the hanger to tell the player which craft files would fit without having to attempt to load them? Or is that necessary for it to check their dimensions?

Indeed, couple of digits should decrease the probability of such confusing moments considerably! But there still will be confusion with rotated frames of reference...

Unfortunately, the only way to measure vessel's dimensions is to actually load it into the Editor. The hangar does just that: loads the vessel, rotates it, measures, and then immediately destroys so the vessel remains unseen. And load ALL of them in one frame... Besides, the window with the list of ships is a stok GUI over which there's little control on the API side. I doubt it's possible to add an additional check there. But I'll investigate.

[qnistNAMEERF]

Indeed, couple of digits should decrease the probability of such confusing moments considerably! But there still will be confusion with rotated frames of reference...

Unfortunately, the only way to measure vessel's dimensions is to actually load it into the Editor. The hangar does just that: loads the vessel, rotates it, measures, and then immediately destroys so the vessel remains unseen. And load ALL of them in one frame... Besides, the window with the list of ships is a stok GUI over which there's little control on the API side. I doubt it's possible to add an additional check there. But I'll investigate.

I'm just thinking out loud here, so bear with me because I don't know if any of this is possible, but say on initial game load, VAB load, SPH load, hanger craft load, or even during craft save the hanger plugin stores vessel dimensions in a file (maybe in the craft file if possible, or a plugin text file, etc) and when we create a hanger and attempt to load a craft file into it, if it doesn't find the dimensions in the saved location then it loads, rotates, saves dimensions, and unloads (just in case the player adds a craft to their ships directory while the game is still loaded) as it currently does to determine if it fits. If that's possible then it could potentially, for crafts that it has stored dimensions for, could tell the player which ones will fit at a glance in the menu. But it also sounds like you'd have to program your own craft loader menu from what you're saying. And I have no idea how much work that would involve.

[allista]

I'm just thinking out loud here, so bear with me because I don't know if any of this is possible, but say on initial game load, VAB load, SPH load, hanger craft load, or even during craft save the hanger plugin stores vessel dimensions in a file (maybe in the craft file if possible, or a plugin text file, etc) and when we create a hanger and attempt to load a craft file into it, if it doesn't find the dimensions in the saved location then it loads, rotates, saves dimensions, and unloads (just in case the player adds a craft to their ships directory while the game is still loaded) as it currently does to determine if it fits. If that's possible then it could potentially, for crafts that it has stored dimensions for, could tell the player which ones will fit at a glance in the menu. But it also sounds like you'd have to program your own craft loader menu from what you're saying. And I have no idea how much work that would involve.

What you're suggesting have much sense, but in addition to the apparent need of rewriting the CraftBrowser (I'll burrow into the disassembled code of the CraftBrowser to know for sure) there's another problem: it's not enough to remember which crafts you already measured, you need to know somehow if the files have changed since, because you can't guarantee that the user, say, didn't changed them by hand, or some other plugin like MM didn't changed them on the fly. But again, these are two separate problems, and if I could add this additional check into the CraftBrowser, well even loading and measuring 20-30 craft files would take no more than a second of freezed Editor. That's bearable.

[qnistNAMEERF]

What you're suggesting have much sense, but in addition to the apparent need of rewriting the CraftBrowser (I'll burrow into the disassembled code of the CraftBrowser to know for sure) there's another problem: it's not enough to remember which crafts you already measured, you need to know somehow if the files have changed since, because you can't guarantee that the user, say, didn't changed them by hand, or some other plugin like MM didn't changed them on the fly. But again, these are two separate problems, and if I could add this additional check into the CraftBrowser, well even loading and measuring 20-30 craft files would take no more than a second of freezed Editor. That's bearable.

Would it be possible for the system's "modified date" of the craft file to be a sort of checksum for whether to update the dimensions for the plugin? Say, if value for modified date is not exactly equal to value X, then load craft and save dimensions?

[allista]

Would it be possible for the system's "modified date" of the craft file to be a sort of checksum for whether to update the dimensions for the plugin? Say, if value for modified date is not exactly equal to value X, then load craft and save dimensions?

If it comes to that, using a hash function on a file would be more robust.

[Endersmens]

This....This is simply amazing. I will be sure to try this out when I get KSP back. (store issues) If this functions half as well as the description says, I'll be overjoyed. I'm tired of having to send two identical rovers to the moon so that its balance. And i'm tired of the complexity of cluster sats. This will help everything, and make space so much cooler.

[bonesbro]

I love the hangers. Not a fan of the colors on the textures, though I see you have an issue open on github to create stockalike textures. I took the inline hanger textures and desaturated/lightened the green and orange areas and they look pretty decently stockalike. Want my version?

Also opened a pair of issues on the project hub - upping the attachment size on the nodes to 2.5m, and flattening the top and bottom of the inline hangers so they're flush with other 2.5m parts.

[allista]

I love the hangers. Not a fan of the colors on the textures, though I see you have an issue open on github to create stockalike textures. I took the inline hanger textures and desaturated/lightened the green and orange areas and they look pretty decently stockalike. Want my version?

Also opened a pair of issues on the project hub - upping the attachment size on the nodes to 2.5m, and flattening the top and bottom of the inline hangers so they're flush with other 2.5m parts.

Oh, that's fantastic! I do want them! Anyway I was going to do just the same thing with the textures, but after 10th of September, when I will again have time to work on the project. So it'll be nice to release an alternative texture pack before the vacation.

As for the issues, I've answered and will think about your proposition.

[allista]

Announcement

I'm going on a vacation and then on a conference, so I wont be able to work on the Hangar till 10th of September or so. I will however monitor (albeit less frequently) the forum and GitHub issues.

Thank you all for your support and testing! With your help the mod will become STABLE in a couple of months.

I hope ==

[Endersmens]

Have fun on vacation!