0.90 Kerbal Weather Systems! Alpha 0.5.3 WIP! (Jan 2)

[silverfox8124]

@Mandelbrot, that means a lot to me, thank you :3 I'm glad to give to the community something that it's been wanting for a while.

[sober667]

@Mandelbrot, that means a lot to me, thank you :3 I'm glad to give to the community something that it's been wanting for a while.

Yaeh weather is something that we waiting i now u dhave slots of ideas abot that mod bud i wold like to shoot another one do u think about adding somethink like jet stream winds?

[silverfox8124]

@sober667, jet stream is something that happens naturally, and should come naturally to the mod. If it doesn't then there's a chance it may not be in the mod at all.

[sober667]

@sober667, jet stream is something that happens naturally, and should come naturally to the mod. If it doesn't then there's a chance it may not be in the mod at all.

Oh yeah i understand...i think

[silverfox8124]

@sober667, the jet streams happen because of law of conservation of momentum and the coriolis effect along with air moving poleward. It's stuff I don't want to get into explaining, because sciency stuff.

[sober667]

@sober667, the jet streams happen because of law of conservation of momentum and the coriolis effect along with air moving poleward. It's stuff I don't want to get into explaining, because sciency stuff.

i mainly understand how jeststrims works

and u plan do manfraim on wich weather will be by itself so if on kerbin will be condictions for jet streams they will be there

your mod is avesome u always have a place in my game for this mode

[sober667]

I dont know if im helping but if is about heating KSP in core game has some heating mechanick wich depand where is your shio maby is any way to use it ?

[silverfox8124]

@sober667 Yes there is a heating mechanic in stock ksp. But it doesn't change over time. If you're on the launchpad and take temperatures every 1 minute, you'll have the same temperatures every day at the same time, forever. Which is a decent start, but weather can't go off of that. My team and I are looking into what it's going to take to bring proper heating mechanics into the game. It's all about crunching numbers and equations until we get it right.

[silverfox8124]

DEV UPDATE! WOO! So over the course of the past few weeks my other team member diomedea, amazing fellow, has been working on an actual weather model for us to run. It's coming along and we're already past wind and onto weather fronts and soon rain and clouds. After the model is complete and running properly, we will work on implementing it into the game so we can run ksp on it. CANNOT WAIT!

[Drew Kerman]

cool, Diomedea is helping out? Rock on. Can't wait to see what you guys end up with

[Skalou]

AHAH!

Nice step, can't wait too!

[sober667]

Coool waiting for that for loooong time

[ThatOneBritishGuy...]

Keep it rolling! Can't wait to see this come to life (again XD).

[silverfox8124]

@AllOfYouGuys, Tbh, with how much the weather model is going to need to be worked on to finish on paper, don't expect a release too soon. I'd say by September we might have the model on paper done. From there it's all trying to get it coded properly to work with ksp, then it's shipping it off to you guys. I'd say that a KSP release for KWS might no be until the end of the year thereabouts :'C Sorry guys, but this is how she is. Don't worry though! It'll come in due time.

[sober667]

i have a Q could be added some things that was in .90? i know its a lot of work but clouds moving with wind was awesome:3

i mean just to make waiting more acceptable

[silverfox8124]

@sober667 the clouds will be back, and will be wind. If anything, I'll try and fit as much of the new model as I can into the next release, and then work on aesthetics from there. The clouds require some special attention that EVE can't give them currently. so the clouds may stay the same, but they are functioning as is in the new model. The new model is all maths and functions, so even if you dont see rain, there could be rain(assuming that at that point I haven't made rain yet). In fact, if it's completely necessary, I'll have to put in the full model, but only a few of the graphical signs(clouds at most, *MAYBE* if the air gods are pleased enough; rain). But storms and snow and such probably won't be shown.

[capi3101]

Just came across this mod today - as a guy with a Bachelors in Meteorology, I'm definitely looking forward to seeing it working with all the bells and whistles some day. Going to be fun trying to land a spaceplane from orbit with a 20 knot crosswind...

Do y'all plan on incorporating some kind of forecast function into the game? You know, say my Duna launch window is coming up in three days but the forecast is supposed to be bad, so I might want to plan for an earlier launch? How about the potential for damage from lightning strikes (ala Apollo 12)?

[silverfox8124]

@capi3101 A bachelors in Meteorology you say? Would you like to join in and maybe lend a hand to the very progress of the mod? We're always accepting people in the climatology/meteorology fields. Yes, there will be a forecast function, And if we can implement it properly, there will be a part which sits on kerbin, acts like a super computer, and predicts the weather coming up for a few days ahead. There will be temp maps and wind maps and all the other map .... you guys can handle (provided we have the parts for it). Yes, I hopefully plan on having lightning strikes explode parts on vessels. I bet you have taken a beautiful look already, but http://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=temp/equirectangular is something I've always wanted to implement.

TL; DR I like your major, so join us maybe? Yes, Yes, annd Yes.

[Ser]

silverfox8124, What you are doing is supercool. Can't wait for release.

But...

I hopefully plan on having lightning strikes explode parts on vessels

Are you sure it is needed? Having lightning would be cool and the need to pay attention for incoming low pressure areas to avoid thunder storms would be awesome but AFAIK in real life lightning is about to cause everything but explosion. Every day a civilian airliner gets hit by lightning but it doesn't explode. The reason is that an airliner, a car or whatever metal vessel is a closed circuit with zero electric field inside no matter how much current is on its hull. That's why everything inside it, e.g. crew, passengers or fuel doesn't get harm from a lightning strike.

Edited July 31, 2015 by Ser

[pingopete]

@sober667 the clouds will be back, and will be wind. If anything, I'll try and fit as much of the new model as I can into the next release, and then work on aesthetics from there. The clouds require some special attention that EVE can't give them currently. so the clouds may stay the same, but they are functioning as is in the new model. The new model is all maths and functions, so even if you dont see rain, there could be rain(assuming that at that point I haven't made rain yet). In fact, if it's completely necessary, I'll have to put in the full model, but only a few of the graphical signs(clouds at most, *MAYBE* if the air gods are pleased enough; rain). But storms and snow and such probably won't be shown.

FYI Rbray has included a new 'wave' feature to his clouds in the latest Overhaul build that dded undulating clouds (controllable in every way) that also give the effect of rain see here:

And...

..There are also a whole bunch of other huge improvements over the original EVE mod that he's made in his new Overhaul series, one being a higher poly count for 2D layers (though this in particular is probs only really noticable on RSS sized planets)

[Errol]

Are you sure it is needed? Having lightning would be cool and the need to pay attention for incoming low pressure areas to avoid thunder storms would be awesome but AFAIK in real life lightning is about to cause everything but explosion. Every day a civilian airliner gets hit by lightning but it doesn't explode. The reason is that an airliner, a car or whatever metal vessel is a closed circuit with zero electric field inside no matter how much current is on its hull. That's why everything inside it, e.g. crew, passengers or fuel doesn't get harm from a lightning strike.

Not to mention there are already two viable part failure mods doing the exploding of random parts on your vessel, that you can download and run along side this one if that is what you are into. No need to re-invent the wheel here, however if you somehow integrated with Dangit! to increase probability of a failure if in flight during a storm....that would be really cool.

[mysteriosmind]

Not to mention there are already two viable part failure mods doing the exploding of random parts on your vessel, that you can download and run along side this one if that is what you are into. No need to re-invent the wheel here, however if you somehow integrated with Dangit! to increase probability of a failure if in flight during a storm....that would be really cool.

I would argue in the exactly opposite direction. Having completely random part failures (happening without a reason) in a game that aims to be a physics simulator seems way off. Testflight does its thing a bit better in the way that the chances of part failures are at least better connected to the time it is in use. But it is still totally disconnected from what is actually happening to it. So an actual physical event (weather) leading to part failure seems like so much of an improvement over both Dangit and testflight that it would seem like a big missed opportunity to not go for it.

By the way silverfox, I am really looking forward to seeing your weather systems in use eventually!

[silverfox8124]

@Everyone, Wow this thread just BOOMED up over night. I'd like to say that while yes, cars and planes are engineered to take lightning strikes, but you have to ask yourself, are kerbals that prepared for it? Lightning in the least damages what it touches in some way or another. The bolt itself is quite hot and packs a ton of punch. Having parts explode and break would encourage the player to not fly in storms.

On the topic of Rbray's clouds, rbray and I have been talking a tad more since he's picking back up on EVE. One problem we're facing is having individual cloud segments and controlling each separately. It's a tad harder than you all may think, as even the both of us are stumped for ideas.

On the topic of the current progress on the weather sim, we did a cleanup on it and are prepping it for it's final writings. We've hit some bumps on some formulas but we hope to get that sorted out soon.

As I tell my team, it doesn't matter how long it takes(within reason), as long as it's done right. I want to give you guys (and myself) a proper sim and not something crudely thrown together for visual effect. This mod has potential to be BIG, and we're making sure that KWS can withstand that pressure (haha get it ;D) as it gets nearer to it's goal. We don't want the project collapsing on itself from lack of foundation.

Another great thing we realized is that there aren't any reliable weather patterns for Mars. The climate isn't as studied as Earth's, same with Jupiter and Saturn. So we're going out on a limb when we try and simulate those, sadly we can't guarantee how accurate those planets(Eve and Jool) may behave in game.

To add to that, Laythe is an entirely new planet with no IRL analogue, we'd be tackling that salty water ball with blind eyes.

Also note that Kerbin != Earth. It's close, but it's not there, it tries to be, but it's not there. Kerbin's geographical layout is also MUCH different than Earth's. So don't go into KWS expecting to get Earth's weather(excluding RSS because that's a whole other bucket of worms).

I love it when the forum booms like this, keep up the discussions and suggestions!

Sincerely,

~SilverFox8124

[wasml]

So we're going out on a limb when we try and simulate those, sadly we can't guarantee how accurate those planets(Eve and Jool) may behave in game.

You have it backwards - your mod will BE the baseline!

[silverfox8124]

@wasml, We at KWS *could* just tell stock ksp that it's wrong and just go with whatever we want, but that would mean generating our own base data for the planets, and that'd take up time and resources to do. We'd much prefer to grab stock temps and then go from there, but we need to find out what Eve is like as a planet, same with Jool and Laythe.