[1.12.x] Mark IV Spaceplane System (August 18, 2024)

[AntiMatter001]

The cargo ramp does have occlusion. Do you have any wing parts or anything else lift providing inside the cargo ramp that could suddenly start applying lift when you deploy it?

uhm... this being in the editor... i guess not...? i do have wings on the tail but that shouldn't make the lift move back an inch...

EDIT1:and since the winglets don't actually move during deployment or retraction of said cargoramp i can't see it making a difference unless it was the actual part itself...

EDIT2: huh... i just picked up the pieces and put them back on and now it doesn't happen... strange...

oh well at least it's fixed... i guess...

Edited August 14, 2015 by AntiMatter001

[alphaparrot324]

I've got another aspect of the occlusion bug to report. I'm finding that even when wings aren't attached to the tail cargo ramp, if they're just near it (specifically near the top), and the cargo ramp has been opened and then closed, the wings are occluded and produce no lift. I've been able to reliably reproduce this with both B9 procedural wings (how I first noticed it) and stock wings. I'm use stock aerodynamics. At first I thought it might be related to the weird thing where when you have a closed tail ramp, and switch focus away to something else (KSC, another craft, etc), and then switch focus back, with the craft in question leaving physics range, the tail ramp is magically open and needs to be "opened" again and then closed, but I've been able to determine that this happens even if you only open and then close the ramp, without doing anything else. And when those rear wings are occluded, they produce no lift (of course), which leads to Bad Things. Opening the ramp while in flight results in the rear wings once again producing lift. The wings in each case are not attached to the tail ramp--they're attached to vertical wing pieces that are either attached to other wings, or to the cargo section to the fore of the tail ramp. Not sure what can be done about it, or if this is something that will pretty much always be a problem and I just shouldn't have rear over-craft wings sitting so close to the fuselage. I've attached an album of screenshots documenting my experimentation with this.

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I'm also attaching my .craft files if anyone wants them for reproducibility reasons.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xw00ld8wohiqfts/KFC%20Osprey%201.craft?dl=0 (requires B9 procedural wings)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/1vshehml5ad8peb/MKG%201.craft?dl=0 (stock + MkIV) Note that this one doesn't really fly well, it was just to see if I could get the stock wings occluded. You have like 10-15 seconds on the runway to experiment before it hits something and things blow up.

[Captain Sierra]

-megasnip-

I think you just found empirical evidence as to the shoddyness of the stock occlusion code. Please go make a bug report so we can get this fixed (because I'm not sure if this is fixable on Nertea's end).

[alphaparrot324]

I think you just found empirical evidence as to the shoddyness of the stock occlusion code. Please go make a bug report so we can get this fixed (because I'm not sure if this is fixable on Nertea's end).

Will do. First I'm going to see if I can reproduce this phenomenon using only stock parts in a totally clean install. I'm betting I probably can, but if we're going to pin this entirely on the stock occlusion code, I want the evidence to be rock hard​.

[gilflo]

No one of the MK IV fuselage parts in the Fuel tank parts show any fuel when I mouse over, nor when they are connected.....

[Grumman]

No one of the MK IV fuselage parts in the Fuel tank parts show any fuel when I mouse over, nor when they are connected.....

In the SPH or VAB, right-click on the part. Does it day "Structural"? If so, the problem is that you haven't set it to what type of fuel it's meant to carry.

[gilflo]

Right clicking on the part in the SPH show that

Once the part is click on another one, here, the cockpit, she looks like glittering and right click shows nothing

[Gryphon]

Right clicking on the part in the SPH show that

http://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/198370screenshot146.png

Once the part is click on another one, here, the cockpit, she looks like glittering and right click shows nothing

http://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/861188screenshot147.png

Did you install all four directories that come with the Mark IV install? All those are needed to enable all functionality. For instance, Mark IV parts rely on the InterstellarFuelSwitch to manage fuel types and texture switching for each of those fuel options.

Note that each provided mod directory needs to be directly in your GameData folder, as it appears in the download. As far as KSP is concerned, they are separate mods.

[gilflo]

OK thank you for advise! I didn't install all four directories!!

[gilflo]

Hi, it works fine, thank you!

What means "toggle RW" on mark IV cockpit?

[blowfish]

Hi, it works fine, thank you!

What means "toggle RW" on mark IV cockpit?

Reaction Wheels

[bartof]

Please fix CKAN version. I have exactly the same problem as posted above. Textures + no fuel in tanks

[Gryphon]

Please fix CKAN version. I have exactly the same problem as posted above. Textures + no fuel in tanks

I don't know if Nertea supports CKAN. I do know that I've seen other mods with included dependencies that were not properly handled by CKAN (such as FAR). I also know that, because of that issue, I suggested to pjf that they add a field showing who is maintaining the CKAN metadata for a mod. If they have added that, I'd check for that info, and if it's not Nertea, then bug that person to update the CKAN metadata for this mod. If it's not any person, then maybe it could be you?

If pjf hasn't added that information to the CKAN display yet, I'd suggest poking him about it.

Anyway, if CKAN isn't installing this mod correctly, I'd suggest manually installing it for now.

[Streetwind]

I can take a look at the CKAN config later today.

[bartof]

I don't know if Nertea supports CKAN. I do know that I've seen other mods with included dependencies that were not properly handled by CKAN (such as FAR). I also know that, because of that issue, I suggested to pjf that they add a field showing who is maintaining the CKAN metadata for a mod. If they have added that, I'd check for that info, and if it's not Nertea, then bug that person to update the CKAN metadata for this mod. If it's not any person, then maybe it could be you?

If pjf hasn't added that information to the CKAN display yet, I'd suggest poking him about it.

Anyway, if CKAN isn't installing this mod correctly, I'd suggest manually installing it for now.

That's what I did and its perfect. I think CKAN was lacking InterstellarFuelSwitch mod.

[peachoftree]

Has anyone gotten an MK4 ssto working under FAR? Everything I try to build needs way too much speed to take off or has wings that are just way too huge.

[Streetwind]

Revamped the CKAN metadata completely. Was actually missing not one, but two dependencies. Surprised it worked before at all, or that there weren't more reports of errors

As usual, give this until tomorrow or so for the changes to be pulled into the repository and finish filtering down.

[jackal40]

Has anyone gotten an MK4 ssto working under FAR? Everything I try to build needs way too much speed to take off or has wings that are just way too huge.

No. In fact, every attempt to take off when FAR was installed resulted in the complete disintegration of my SSTO - necessitating the removal of FAR. Using stock aero, my 700+ ton mk4 SSTO can reach orbit with about 1000 m/s of fuel remaining. More than enough to link up with my LKO refueling station.

[Sufficient Anonymity]

Has anyone made a fuel switcher/model switcher config to put hydrogen in these? Would love to put together some interplanetary vessels with this and either NFP or cryogenic rockets.

[UnusualAttitude]

Has anyone gotten an MK4 ssto working under FAR? Everything I try to build needs way too much speed to take off or has wings that are just way too huge.

Yes, but with B9 procedural wings and KJR....

UPDATE:

Edited August 18, 2015 by UnusualAttitude
pics or it didn't happen...

[Kobymaru]

Yes, but with B9 procedural wings and KJR....

UPDATE:

http://i.imgur.com/wnd9dLm.png

Are you trying to tell me this monster needs only 2 air intakes?

[jackal40]

Are you trying to tell me this monster needs only 2 air intakes?

In addition to the two on the fairings, there are two heavy precoolers in front of the broadswords in the tail. Should be enough from my experience.

[Gwincraft]

@Nertea: Thank you so much for this great mod. Building spaceplane with this kit of parts has been a blast. I've searched back through the thread, and found another post dealing with strangeness in RPM for the MK4 Cockpit. I've run into the same thing. I was wondering if you'd made any progress on this bug.

[alphaparrot324]

So I've got good news and bad news related to the wing occlusion I reported with regards to the tail cargo ramp. The good news is that erroneous wing occlusion does also happen with entirely stock parts. The bad news is that with stock parts, the wing parts have to be flush against the cargo bay, such that the wing centroid is likely to be computed as being inside the bay or something. I've posted a report on stock wing occlusion in the master thread for parts not activating while stowed (which is the exact same phenomenon--parts occluded by the cargo bay get flagged as being stowed or occluded, and engines don't fire, intakes don't work, and wings don't produce lift).

With Nert's tail ramp, I don't have to have the wings touch the cargo bay at all--which suggests that something is a bit wonky with the part geometry or the raycasting through and within the part, and that's exacerbating the cargo bay occlusion issues--making it happen when it otherwise wouldn't. From what I understand of Harvester's explanation of the new cargo bay occlusion, parts whose centroids are within the spheroid enclosing the bay are considered, and if the part centroid (the visual center of the part, unrelated to part mass or density) lies within the bay (computed by raycasting--if the ray from the centroid to the cargo bay centroid hits a wall or a trigger, it's outside the bay), then it's occluded. So either somehow the tail ramp centroid is being computed in a weird way, or, more likely, the raycasting computation isn't detecting the wall of the tail ramp for parts that are close enough to the bay. With the stock parts, it seems that the centroid actually has to have a chance of ending up on the other side of the bay wall (for wings--intakes and engines don't have to be so close). Not so with the Mk IV tail ramp.

I experimented a bit more (as shown below), to see at what point the occlusion goes away, and it is related to the distance from the tail ramp. If I give a bit more clearance, the wing parts on the edges are not occluded, but the central one, which is closer, is still occluded. If I give a lot more clearance, as I did with the B9 wings, then the wings work fine. So for whatever reason, the maximum distance at which a part centroid is computed to be within the cargo bay is, for this part, further than the edge of the cargo bay. So it seems that while the occlusion bug is a stock bug, there might be something wonky going on with the Mk IV tail ramp that's making the problem worse.

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Edited August 20, 2015 by alphaparrot324

[UnusualAttitude]

In addition to the two on the fairings, there are two heavy precoolers in front of the broadswords in the tail. Should be enough from my experience.

Yes, precoolers on the tail. It's not actually that massive: I can't remember the exact take-off weight but well below 200 tonnes. I built heavier ships than this back in 0.90 with the Mk3 parts and stock wing panels, it was just a nightmare for part-count.

It needs a lot of improvement but the eventually the goal is to have an interplanetary spaceplane with ISRU (in the ventral cargo bay at the rear), lab, etc. and I reckon I can get more than 4 km/s of dV from the nukes.