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Procedural Airships development thread

RadarManFromTheMoon
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RadarManFromTheMoon

RadarManFromTheMoon

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And that is the issue. Parts like the Hub and Cap get a more complicated and deployable ones are right out because of the animations.

I see.

Well, the inflatable parts are complicated, but hey, you don't need to tweakScale everything. For the other parts I think there is no need to be overly precise. Just approximate the volume by using geometric shapes that resemble the part and are easy to do the calculations with. After all it's just a game and games cheat all the time. If it feels believable to the player, it's good enough. You could use a hemisphere for the cap and I think it's totally legit to treat the hub like a normal envelope and just add a certain percentage of mass, since building such a thing would require additional structures to hold the stuff that is attached to the sides.

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JewelShisen

JewelShisen

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I see.

Well, the inflatable parts are complicated, but hey, you don't need to tweakScale everything. For the other parts I think there is no need to be overly precise. Just approximate the volume by using geometric shapes that resemble the part and are easy to do the calculations with. After all it's just a game and games cheat all the time. If it feels believable to the player, it's good enough. You could use a hemisphere for the cap and I think it's totally legit to treat the hub like a normal envelope and just add a certain percentage of mass, since building such a thing would require additional structures to hold the stuff that is attached to the sides.

Oh I agree on that. I meant that going to ProceduralParts means no deployable ones and that has been the big part that my users call for. You can tweakscale those, as proved by IR, but they can't be made procedural as far as I know.

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RadarManFromTheMoon

RadarManFromTheMoon

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Oh I agree on that. I meant that going to ProceduralParts means no deployable ones and that has been the big part that my users call for. You can tweakscale those, as proved by IR, but they can't be made procedural as far as I know.

I guess you are right. But I don't have any experience on animated parts so it's really just a guess. :D However I have this vague plan for a baloon part. A procedural envelope that gets bigger and bigger while ascending into the upper athmosphere until it bursts due to too much pressure. Like a weather baloon. Not sure how (and if) it could be done though. I assume it's possible but probably just in a simple shape, like a sphere, and without radial attachment.

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RadarManFromTheMoon

RadarManFromTheMoon

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Just released version 0.4 - you can get it here

This is a beta release. That means I will implement no more major features and focus on balancing and bugfixing until I'm sure everything is stable and ready for a real release.

Changes:

-Feature: FAR compatibility

-Feature: procedural cost handling

-Feature: Parts are no longer controllable without a pod or probecore

-Feature: Center of Buoyancy marker in editor (activates with Center of Lift marker)

Feedback is highly appreciated. If you run into problems or incompatibilities, please let me know.

Edited by RadarManFromTheMoon
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RadarManFromTheMoon

RadarManFromTheMoon

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Here are a few hints on how to build a good airship.

  • Keep your net. Buoyancy close to zero. It is a good Idea to even start a bit heavier than air. Then create lift with your engines by pitching your ship upwards.
  • Try to get your center of mass as close as possible to your center of buoyancy. To display the center of buoyancy, activate the center of lift marker in the editor.
  • The thrust vector should go through your center of mass. Be aware that your CoM moves while you are burning fuel.
  • Use the ballonets to pitch your craft and to finetune buoyancy. More ballonet volume means less buoyancy.
  • Pressure Control automatically inflates your ballonet to stabilize your envelope pressure.
  • A good starting point is to build your envelope like this (pointy front)(cylindric middle)(pointy rear) then adjust your pitch by inflating and deflating the ballonets at the front and the rear. Do this symetrically (front -1%, rear +1%) Actiongroups are your friend. It's a good idea to activate pressure control in the middle envelope.
  • Avoid high vertical speeds. Try to stabilize your ship so that it keeps a certain altitude.
  • If you are using FAR, make sure your center of lift (not center of buoyancy) is slightly behind your center of mass. Envelopes are huge lifting bodies and control surfaces also create lift.

Edited by RadarManFromTheMoon
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RadarManFromTheMoon

RadarManFromTheMoon

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I'm actually working with somebody to redo the whole code for HL to add both toolbar support as well as adding in possible resource use.

Thats cool. Please keep me up to date about your future plans. Don't get me wrong, It's not my intention to be competitive. I'm aware that our mods more or less do the same thing. But it would be nice if our mods, in the end, complement each other rather than competing. Maybe it would even be sensible to merge the two projects to some kind of "single point of service" in airship engineering needs :) in the future. What do you think?

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RadarManFromTheMoon

RadarManFromTheMoon

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If you are using Procedural Airships, place this file into your GamaData folder to enable procedural costs for the ProceduralParts mod. It only works when ProceduralAirships is installed. The costs are inspired by strock values, but with a little penalty for being custom products. Please delete this file as soon as ProceduralParts gets updated and supports procedural price generation by itself.

note: the prices will be displayed as 0 in the editor. This is intended. right click on the part to see how much it costs.

Please keep in mind that Procedural Airships is still in beta stage. Bugs may occur.

have fun with it!

Edited by RadarManFromTheMoon
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AngelLestat

AngelLestat

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This looks nice. I dint test it yet (no much time to play KSP lately), but I wonder how you calculate lift?

You said that you fix the gas temperature to 20c, how this work before and what was the problem?

I would love to see a blimp and hot air ballons mod with close aproximations to the real behavior (taking into account the limited atmospheric data avariable in the game).

I guess there is not need of many mathematical formulas to calculate lift taking into account (type of gas used, gas-atmosphere temperature difference, gas temperature change depending outside atmosphere temperature or a electric/nuclear/combustion burner.

Which takes me to the next question, why you give special names to the lifting gasses? (Combustrogen and Liftium)

It does not matter where is located the Kerbol System, helium or hydrogen are the same elements in the whole universe.

The Kerbal language it does not matter either, because all parts in the game stock are in english.

If you use the same names, maybe we can use in the future similar resources found in other mods (with some cfg modifications). Also by changing the names of the lifting gasses you are removing the educational trait that this may add.

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JewelShisen

JewelShisen

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Thats cool. Please keep me up to date about your future plans. Don't get me wrong, It's not my intention to be competitive. I'm aware that our mods more or less do the same thing. But it would be nice if our mods, in the end, complement each other rather than competing. Maybe it would even be sensible to merge the two projects to some kind of "single point of service" in airship engineering needs :) in the future. What do you think?

Well once the plugin redo is finished I'll find out if making a few procedural parts are able to be added.

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RadarManFromTheMoon

RadarManFromTheMoon

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This looks nice. I dint test it yet (no much time to play KSP lately), but I wonder how you calculate lift?

You said that you fix the gas temperature to 20c, how this work before and what was the problem?

I would love to see a blimp and hot air ballons mod with close aproximations to the real behavior (taking into account the limited atmospheric data avariable in the game).

I guess there is not need of many mathematical formulas to calculate lift taking into account (type of gas used, gas-atmosphere temperature difference, gas temperature change depending outside atmosphere temperature or a electric/nuclear/combustion burner.

Which takes me to the next question, why you give special names to the lifting gasses? (Combustrogen and Liftium)

It does not matter where is located the Kerbol System, helium or hydrogen are the same elements in the whole universe.

The Kerbal language it does not matter either, because all parts in the game stock are in english.

If you use the same names, maybe we can use in the future similar resources found in other mods (with some cfg modifications). Also by changing the names of the lifting gasses you are removing the educational trait that this may add.

Maybe I have expressed that in a confusing way. I used a constant temperature variable in a previous relese to reduce complexity a bit for testing. However temperature handling is implemented and working in the current release.

The naming is just because, in a very early release, Envelopes were more or leass just "containers" for gas using the KSP resource system. I gave them those silly names just so I don't have to worry about compatibility with other mods that may already use hydrogen/ helium as resources. Maybe I will change them in the future. Maybe not. Mainly because I find them funny. :D The buoyancy of an object equates to the weight of the gas that it replaces so lift is Air density * volume * geforce at the position of the envelope.

this is the approach that in real life seems more usefull of all:

http://aeroscraft.com/technology-copy/4580412172

Interesting. Maybe in the future. At the moment I focus on making this ready for release, and new features tend to mess things up :D

Edited by RadarManFromTheMoon
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RadarManFromTheMoon

RadarManFromTheMoon

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are you planning on eventually making procedural submarines?

Nope. I don't like submarines. I would give my little finger for a trip to space, but even wild horses couldn'g drag me into a submarine. I've seen Das Boot. :D Anyway, you could ask JewelShisen, he is maintaining the HL Submarines mod and might be interested.

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bs1110101

bs1110101

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I've built an airship and it keeps blowing up very shortly after physics loads, right clicking before it blows up shows a very low temperature and rel. pressure, how do i fix this?

Is deadly reentry to blame? I have it installed and i know it messes with temperature.

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RadarManFromTheMoon

RadarManFromTheMoon

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I've built an airship and it keeps blowing up very shortly after physics loads, right clicking before it blows up shows a very low temperature and rel. pressure, how do i fix this?

Is deadly reentry to blame? I have it installed and i know it messes with temperature.

Hello bs1110101, thank you for your report,

the low temperature at startup should be normal. For some reason KSP spawns parts with an unsensible low internal temperature. They then heat up to room temperature relatively quickly. But I will do some tests with deadly reentry to get sure there are no incompatibilities. To see what causes the explosions could you please check the following?

  • Ckeck the flight log after an airship explosion. It will give you some informations on what causes the blowup. If the flight log doesn't show up by itself. Press F3 to open it.
  • Make sure there is enough lifting gas in all the envelopes. You can do that by selecting autofill in the editor on every envelope part.

I will need some more informations if this doesn't help, if you can, please send me your output.log. You can find it in the KSP folder under KSP_Data.

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bs1110101

bs1110101

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I checked the F3 thing, it says that it exploded from to high/low pressure, and i made that stop happening by disabling it in the config. The temperature thing still persists, though can be fixed by pointing jet engines at it, heating it up. I still haven't made anything more then a single probe core and an rtg take flight, and even then it took like a 3 by 6 meter blimp or something. Is it supposed to take that much or is it still bugged somehow? I like it if it does need that much, but then you run into the problem of huge zeppelins being very unstable because the parts don't work well when 20 meters across.

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