[1.9-1.10] Hangar

[Kerbas_ad_astra]

[W]ho would send a rover on a trip to the other side of a planet?

I might...probably not on Kerbin, but Moho and Tylo each have biomes that are widely separated, so depending on how the Regolith RNG turns out, I might need very widely distributed operations. (Being without atmosphere and having high gravity, a suborbital hop isn't very practical either.)

In any case, those are interesting results! I see that some of your test cases are failing because the walker is trying to go in the wrong direction and "times out" -- maybe it could be given some kind of bias to walk towards the target after it's gotten about halfway there (i.e. enough time to get clear of any obstacles in the immediate vicinity of the starting point).

[allista]

I never doubted your genius mr. Allista! If this pathfinding calculation took only 3 seconds - I'd certainly go with it. From my user point of view I'd stick with usability. I suggest basing the transfer time on simple distance between two vessels.

I can't bear SCANsat's big map rendering time, but i have no choice if i want finer details.

As MCMC is essentially a random walk, you never can tell how much time it will take. But statistical average is bearable -- several seconds in coroutine for 100-300km with obstacles.

But we're talking not only about time calculations: if the pathfinding works, we can move the real vehicle on the surface, so you can see it in the map and switch to it. I mean real transportation, not just emulated.

What I'm thinking is that we can forbid a vehicle to travel more than some distance (say 500km) without maintenance in another hangar (which is perfectly reasonable). This will cover dispersed bases, but transfer to another corner of the world will require a network of hangars; this, among other things, will deal with the problem of looong searches of looong paths. And, IMHO, this should be interesting to implement in game.

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I might...probably not on Kerbin, but Moho and Tylo each have biomes that are widely separated, so depending on how the Regolith RNG turns out, I might need very widely distributed operations. (Being without atmosphere and having high gravity, a suborbital hop isn't very practical either.)

In any case, those are interesting results! I see that some of your test cases are failing because the walker is trying to go in the wrong direction and "times out" -- maybe it could be given some kind of bias to walk towards the target after it's gotten about halfway there (i.e. enough time to get clear of any obstacles in the immediate vicinity of the starting point).

I see. But if you're building the network of bases anyway, you could place several intermediate hangars along the route. I know, this is harder, but I feel it should be more interesting, shouldn't it?

Nah, the walkers time out because they try too hard to go straight to the target: if a walker meets an obstacle, it "tries" (no AI, just probability) to search the neighborhood, but if it walks too far away from the course, its lure to the target overcomes its side-searching and it starts to whirl in ever increasing loops. Given enough steps it eventually should find a path, but not in the reasonable time.

I see several possible solutions here:

1) dynamically change the temperature of the walker (i.e. its tendency to walk absolutely randomly) when it is stuck; the hard part is to define the 'stuck' state numerically.

2) create an in-map interface to add virtual waypoints; in difficult cases a user could just tell path-finder to not walk straight to the target, but through several intermediate points.

3) as I said earlier, implement a recursive walker that will first reach the target using huge steps, and then will use that path as a set of waypoints to reach it with the needed resolution.

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I see that some of your test cases are failing because the walker is trying to go in the wrong direction and "times out"...

Oh, I see: the pictures are somewhat misleading! The path you see is a final path, all loops removed. Loop removal is a part of the algorithm that keeps memory of visited locations. So you don't see all the steps here.

Edited March 8, 2015 by allista

[Kerbas_ad_astra]

You're right, a base network could be interesting, especially for planets with segmented surfaces (e.g. impassable craters or canyons) -- I've been thinking about ways to put bases on either side of, say, a crater rim, so I can have a rover pop into the hangar at the rim, manually drive it (or fly it) up and over the edge, and then put it back in a hangar on the other side so it can join the network on the other side.

And thanks for the clarification on those paths!

[Enceos]

Isn't it a very explosion prone path we're trying to take? The rover on the move will spawn right on the surface or in the air when switching to him?

[Thorbane]

So once the pathfinding is done you can run a calculation how fast the rover can go over the path's terrain and get a function of where the rover will be at a given time, and use that like an on rails orbit?

[allista]

Isn't it a very explosion prone path we're trying to take? The rover on the move will spawn right on the surface or in the air when switching to him?

When a vessel is Landed or Splashed, it is automatically positioned right above the surface in the correct orientation when you switch to it. So changing just latitude and longitude should be enough for it to be correctly loaded afterwards.

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So once the pathfinding is done you can run a calculation how fast the rover can go over the path's terrain and get a function of where the rover will be at a given time, and use that like an on rails orbit?

Exactly!

[Thorbane]

Awesome. You could use this to set up a supply chain as well, just tell the rover to go to Base A and pick up some resources, then follow the route to the other base and deliver it, and repeat. I like the idea of letting the player pick waypoints and only running the MCMC if there is an obstacle.

[allista]

Awesome. You could use this to set up a supply chain as well, just tell the rover to go to Base A and pick up some resources, then follow the route to the other base and deliver it, and repeat. I like the idea of letting the player pick waypoints and only running the MCMC if there is an obstacle.

Idea is a little the opposite: you put waypoints to speed up the pathfinder and help it navigate in a complex terrain.

Anyway, virtual on-map waypoints or real ground hangars for maintenance?

[Thorbane]

Virtual on-map waypoints, having to place down a ship every 5 km in rough terrain would suck. Why run the MCMC program if the straight line path doesn't hit any obstacles? Kinda pointless to run MCMC if you're just going from say, one end of Minmus' Greater Flats to the other.

[allista]

Virtual on-map waypoints, having to place down a ship every 5 km in rough terrain would suck. Why run the MCMC program if the straight line path doesn't hit any obstacles? Kinda pointless to run MCMC if you're just going from say, one end of Minmus' Greater Flats to the other.

Because there's no easy way to know if there's an obstacle; you can't raycast, as even the "flat" is actually a segment of a sphere, and there will be scatter objects and small folds and all. Besides, a random walk is the most general way to get from point A to point B on a fractal, procedurally generated terrain. We have no predefined tiled map, so conventional path-finding algorithms are not applicable.

Don't worry, objects on a straight line without obstacles are connected by random walk in an instant, even if far apart. So waypoints, virtual or real, are needed only in cases where start and end points are disconnected by, for example, a huge gulf or a mountain range; something that forces the walker to go very far around. We're talking about several hundreds to thousands kilometers, not 5 or 10 (look at the pictures on the previous page).

And don't forget, it's only the first test of the algorithm. I'm working on the improvement. So maybe the waypoints will not be needed after all.

[Thorbane]

I still like the idea of having waypoints to spare us some lag, and give the player some options if the algorithm starts doing weird things. Which it will, because KSP.

[smjjames]

The Cake Hangar mod is a lie (either that or KSP info is a lie). No, I wasn't planning on putting that in a hangar, I was just making an observation since I use it sometimes to get a quick set of dimensions.

[allista]

The Cake Hangar mod is a lie (either that or KSP info is a lie). No, I wasn't planning on putting that in a hangar, I was just making an observation since I use it sometimes to get a quick set of dimensions.

I don't know how KSP measures dimensions, but does this look like 85m long to you?

Try to build it gradually from scratch and see how dimensions are changed in both windows, how the dimensions are added up.

I'm pretty sure of the accuracy of my calculations.

[Shadowmage]

I believe it is the tracks that are causing the dimension discrepancy. Check out the issue in the KF thread regarding the render / mesh bounds that are calculated for those tracks. Not sure if there is a fix for it or not, but fairly certain that is the issue being encountered.

[Frostea]

Hello allista! I'm loving your mod for the part count reduction. It goes really decently with B9's HX parts as well

Pictured: A mere 30-ish parts with about 18 of that being lighting. Approx 10,000 m/s of dV

My question: Is it possible to implement a 7.5m size to the hangars? It'll make it much easier to deliver those huge round probes and it will go in-line with the HX parts.

[allista]

Hello allista! I'm loving your mod for the part count reduction. It goes really decently with B9's HX parts as well

Pictured: A mere 30-ish parts with about 18 of that being lighting. Approx 10,000 m/s of dV

My question: Is it possible to implement a 7.5m size to the hangars? It'll make it much easier to deliver those huge round probes and it will go in-line with the HX parts.

What a beast!

Well, with this particular hangar you first need to add the HangarPartResizer MODULE into its config, because I made it just for Mk3 parts and thus didn't think it should be resizable.

Look at other configs and at these two posts:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/88933-0-90-0-Hangar-v2-2-1?p=1772233&viewfull=1#post1772233

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/88933-0-90-0-Hangar-v2-2-1?p=1772821&viewfull=1#post1772821

And to increase the max size of the resizable hangars (e.g. inline ones), you need to change the size limits in Hangar/Common.cfg; names there are self-explanatory, I hope.

[Frostea]

Thanks! I just wanted to resize the inline hangar so the Common.cfg file is exactly what I was looking for. Incidentally, I was thinking if the rover landing hangar should have some way to resize the height; I think most folks would prefer flatter rovers to increase stability. Just throwing this idea out.

[allista]

Thanks! I just wanted to resize the inline hangar so the Common.cfg file is exactly what I was looking for. Incidentally, I was thinking if the rover landing hangar should have some way to resize the height; I think most folks would prefer flatter rovers to increase stability. Just throwing this idea out.

Changing height is not compatible with its swinging animation (the model space becomes anisotropic and the animation distorts).

So I decided to make it closer to cube as a more general approach.

[smjjames]

The inline hangar only seems to be able to relocate vessels if the hangar extension is on the bottom, using the radial adaptors don't work either.

[allista]

The inline hangar only seems to be able to relocate vessels if the hangar extension is on the bottom, using the radial adaptors don't work either.

True. And that behavior is described in their part info cards in editor:

"Vessels can pass through:"

[Shaman]

Hi Allista!

Great mod...actually great mods! I'm just now starting out using the hangers mod and it is awesome, however I'm not sure if I found a bug or if it is just something conflicting for it, but the dimensions don't seem to scale right with the MK2 cargo bays. As I scale up the CB the dimensions do not change as they do with the Inline Hanger.

Also, the inline hanger when maxed out with a scale size of 3 the width maxes out at 2.94 while the hanger extension maxes out at 3.60.

Is this a bug or do you think this is a conflict between some of my mods like tweakscale?

Thanks!

Shaman

[allista]

Hangar v2.3.0 for KSP 0.90 is released

All download links are in the main post of the thread.

This the major update featuring the long wanted Fairing Hangar and more.

Edited March 15, 2015 by allista
Added a screenshot

[smjjames]

Fairing hangars, hm, interesting.

[allista]

Hi Allista!

Great mod...actually great mods! I'm just now starting out using the hangers mod and it is awesome, however I'm not sure if I found a bug or if it is just something conflicting for it, but the dimensions don't seem to scale right with the MK2 cargo bays. As I scale up the CB the dimensions do not change as they do with the Inline Hanger.

Also, the inline hanger when maxed out with a scale size of 3 the width maxes out at 2.94 while the hanger extension maxes out at 3.60.

Is this a bug or do you think this is a conflict between some of my mods like tweakscale?

Thanks!

Shaman

Did you scaled the Mk2 bay with the TweakScale? If so, no wonder: Hangar currently does not support TweakScale (and provides its own scaler, for a reason). There are two possible solutions: either to add the HangarPartResizer module to Mk2 bays (this is simple, I haven't done it because they are match only to the stock Mk2 parts); or implement TweakScale support, which is not so easy and, again, I use my own scaler for a reason. Don't know what's best, honestly.

--

It's because the storage space of the Inline Hangar is a hexagon, but the storage space of the extension is an octagon; these are real meshes and they are scaled with the parts. So yes, the extension has a little more room.

Here, I've just written a short explanation about hangr dimensions and vessel storage.

[smjjames]

Would it be possible to make a fairing hangar that works like the structural fairings in the Procedural Fairings mod?