[Plugin,Parts] 14.3 Katerpillar-Wheels V0.3

[sting_auer]

Could you add wheels that are attached at a 90 degree angle? It would be able to be able to have your rocket land sort of horizontally instead of vertically. It would open up more lander possibilities as well.

[nerdboy64]

Could you add wheels that are attached at a 90 degree angle? It would be able to be able to have your rocket land sort of horizontally instead of vertically. It would open up more lander possibilities as well.

I second that motion!

[Mynorus]

Triple that motion!

[RC1062]

Are tracks possible?

[Awaras]

Did something change with these wheels recently? I remember that when I first downloaded it, if I stopped rotating the wheels in the middle of a turn so that the wheels were not all lined up, the lander would stay in one place, even on a slope. Now, the lander keeps twitching when I try the same thing...

[drewmacrae]

Did something change with these wheels recently? I remember that when I first downloaded it, if I stopped rotating the wheels in the middle of a turn so that the wheels were not all lined up, the lander would stay in one place, even on a slope. Now, the lander keeps twitching when I try the same thing...

I tweaked the friction downward so there would be fewer rollovers, but I\'m not able to reproduce this, can you post a .craft and a .sfs file that demonstrate this?

Are tracks possible?

Do you mean tracks like a halftrack, or tracks like a traintrack?

If you meant like a halftrack,

I\'ve been thinking about that. I\'d like to make some, but the idea is only starting to come together in my head. The real trouble with tracks is that they don\'t turn well (without consuming a lot of energy and sliding in weird ways) This turning would likely prevent their use in larger vehicles even if a good set were put together. Turns would apply dangerous loads to your chassis and require a lot of power. There\'s some coding effort that\'s required to make a system that would angle it\'s track section level to the ground, but I think I know how to do it with a pair of wheel colliders, perhaps with a set of three. Because of the different sets of problems and the limit to vehicle scaling, I think this would be best as an independent modification of the cart plugin to make a treaded cart.

If you meant like a train... It might be, but I honestly wouldn\'t know how to have the vehicle access pieces of the track, which might even belong to other vehicles. (This is a mod I\'d love to see, but I think difficulty-wise it might be right up there with 3rd party docking plugins.) That said, I\'m not convinced either is impossible.

Could you add wheels that are attached at a 90 degree angle? It would be able to be able to have your rocket land sort of horizontally instead of vertically. It would open up more lander possibilities as well.

This can be done with the cart mod or with any of the nodes already

though I\'d love to see someone write a revision of the source where that can be driven properly. I was able to coax it off the launchpad, but only just. Next time I understand the computation of drive direction I\'ll try to keep this in mind to enable proper control of this type of vehicle. I think it\'s just an issue of allowing the other directions to contribute to drive instruction (pitch, yaw, and translate up) by allowing them to contribute to the desired drive vectors, the wheels should then be able to drive properly... fingers crossed. Thinking more on the omni-wheels, they don\'t feel Kerbal, and I haven\'t really been able to draw any omniwheels with convincing suspensions or reasonable animations. I\'m happy I got the plugin to the point where it would support them because I feel that means it supports non-steering wheels, complex friction behavior and pretty much maximises the utility of the plugin, but I don\'t really want to maintain the part. I\'m going to add an archive folder and keep using them to test the plugin, in case anyone wants to build on it, but I\'m not going to maintain the part specifically.

[drewmacrae]

Pushed the V0.3 update to Github and now you should be able to build sideways rovers which drive a bit more intuitively as rovers (less sensible as crawlers). The wheels now apply whatever force best provides the six axis moments commanded of the command module. The omniwheels demonstrate the capabilities of the plugin, but I don\'t like them, so I moved them to an Archive folder. If you like them, you can move them out and use them, or better yet you can branch them off. Activity can be switched on and off too. Don\'t land on inactive wheels though. Hope you like it.

[Awaras]

I tweaked the friction downward so there would be fewer rollovers, but I\'m not able to reproduce this, can you post a .craft and a .sfs file that demonstrate this?

This is what I mean (note that the craft was completely stopped using \'n\' before filming this, and that it is on a slight slope):

http://youtu.be/3zIAHBn6bOg

With the first version of the wheels I was able to prevent the rover from rolling down hill when uncontrolled by partially turning the wheels so they dont all point in the same direction. Now when I try it I get a lot of sliding and twitching.

Basically, I like these wheels very much but I wish that they and the Cart mod would have a way to \'put the parking brake on\' so to speak, so that your rover won\'t roll off into the sunset as soon as you release control of it even if it is on a very small slope...

*edit* Here is my persistent.sfs file, just select the craft called \'landerw\' from the tracking station.

http://www.4shared.com/file/_qlZQA5w/persistent.html

[drewmacrae]

Try the new version. Deactivating the wheels with the ';' key should serve as your parking brake.

[Awaras]

Try the new version. Deactivating the wheels with the ';' key should serve as your parking brake.

Oh, nice. Just found the Github links. I thought that the attachment in the OP were the latest version....

[RC1062]

Yeah, I meant tracks as in tank treads :-[. I just think they\'d make for nice looking rovers.

http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/RT/2006/RI/RIO-greer.html/

From:

[madmat]

Ooh ,I\'ll second the motion on Tank tracks, That\'s what i thought these were when i first read 'Katerpillar' wheels. ;D

[RandomGuy5040]

Woo! Holonomic rovers on the Mun! I am going to have way too much fun making a lander that drops, say, ten rovers at once. ;D

[tziz]

any chance of making some smaller sized wheels? Trying to make some rovers in a similar scale to my munbase but the wheels just dwarf it.

[SOLIDninja]

My crab wheels don\'t work with the satellite relay mod anymore =\ no remote rovers!!

don\'t know if it\'s the relay, your wheels, or the 14.4 update... the wheels seem to work with manned pods but the relay is no-go despite having coverage.

[Nibb31]

These are great, but they really need a version on deployable legs so that they can fit in a shroud and provide some stability when deployed. If you mount them on a 1m stage, it is too top heavy and topples over.

[drewmacrae]

any chance of making some smaller sized wheels? Trying to make some rovers in a similar scale to my munbase but the wheels just dwarf it.

While testing, my experience was that smaller wheels were more dangerous wheels. It\'s unlikely anything much smaller would be likely to be able to roll off the launch pad while still reasonably utilizing unity wheel colliders, but you can cheat and simulate the wheels as bigger than they\'re drawn. I\'m not very talented with blender or with asset design in general. I\'ve laid the groundwork here, and I believe smaller/nonsteering/nondriving/wider wheels can all be made using the wheel plugin. Let me get in touch with NovaSilisko, the prospect of getting them in Probodyne might be sufficient to motivate/inspire me to make a rover wheel.

My crab wheels don\'t work with the satellite relay mod anymore =\ no remote rovers!!

don\'t know if it\'s the relay, your wheels, or the 14.4 update... the wheels seem to work with manned pods but the relay is no-go despite having coverage.

I imagine this has something to do with the way I test to see if the ship is controllable. I\'ll try to debug this if I can reproduce it. I haven\'t used the relay mod yet though I like the concept.

(Thanks for checking again SOLID)

These are great, but they really need a version on deployable legs so that they can fit in a shroud and provide some stability when deployed. If you mount them on a 1m stage, it is too top heavy and topples over.

Everyone will want something different with deployment. Just look at how many different landing leg or solar panel mods are out there. I\'m confident that maintaining 'deploy-able' versions of every part isn\'t the right way to do things when in the end, someone is going to want to deploy everything. These parts are open source, which means anyone can extend them. I\'m happy to provide support if any of the advocates of deploy-able wheels would like to get started on them. I\'d rather spend my time trying to make a general purpose deployment node and possibly failing, than making deploy-able wheels.

[SOLIDninja]

While testing, my experience was that smaller wheels were more dangerous wheels. It\'s unlikely anything much smaller would be likely to be able to roll off the launch pad while still reasonably utilizing unity wheel colliders, but you can cheat and simulate the wheels as bigger than they\'re drawn. I\'m not very talented with blender or with asset design in general. I\'ve laid the groundwork here, and I believe smaller/nonsteering/nondriving/wider wheels can all be made using the wheel plugin. Let me get in touch with NovaSilisko, the prospect of getting them in Probodyne might be sufficient to motivate/inspire me to make a rover wheel.

I imagine this has something to do with the way I test to see if the ship is controllable. I\'ll try to debug this if I can reproduce it. I haven\'t used the relay mod yet though I like the concept.

it\'s fine I just had to update the satellite relay mod to the version compatible with 14.4

the wheels are fine... Just really wish they were smaller and more rover-like... i like to use probodobodyne parts to keep my launching rockets smaller and these wheels are killing me. I can\'t make anything small and stable enough to be happy =(

[SOLIDninja]

Hm. Any way I can make them not fall off when it tips over? I upped the crash tolerance to 1e30 but they still fall off. I tried adding an 'impactTolerance = 1e30' setting to the end but that makes ksp freeze on loading the wheel, and I can\'t find the 'allowCollisions' setting to delete it. Struts don\'t seem to help either.

Help??

[EDF]

One bad thing about these wheels is that it has a tendency of spining out of control quite often. Other than that, it\'s shiny.

[COCOMASTER43]

it that it is not made for my version i have 13.3 help and it says i need wheel.dll

[Nibb31]

it that it is not made for my version i have 13.3 help and it says i need wheel.dll

Plugin parts do not work on the demo version (0.13.x). You need the paid version (0.14.x) to use them.

[Cooly568]

Gotta download this, when my computer is fixed.

[sanderlebau]

Any chance we can get wheels that attach horizontally? Currently, the wheels only work if place vertically.

[drewmacrae]

Update your plugin sander and you should be able to have them work sideways.