[1.9-1.10] Throttle Controlled Avionics

[achroma]

Does the hover mode + stop/anchor have collision avoidance? I had two craft hovering very close, and i couldn't get them any closer for unloading cargo :/ Had to use Vertical Velocity + HLA instead.

But on the up side i've been having fun with drone lighting! They behave very well, thanks to your mod!  I'm just a terrible driver!

 

[allista]

7 hours ago, achroma said:

Does the hover mode + stop/anchor have collision avoidance? I had two craft hovering very close, and i couldn't get them any closer for unloading cargo :/ Had to use Vertical Velocity + HLA instead.

But on the up side i've been having fun with drone lighting! They behave very well, thanks to your mod!  I'm just a terrible driver!

Wow, what a beauty! 

Yes, Stop/Anchor (and any other autopilot) use the Collision Prevention System (CPS). It doesn't matter if you're using hover or just vertical velocity control.

But, in "advanced" pane you have the CPS switch that toggles the collision avoidance.

On 11/22/2016 at 3:26 PM, PmThay said:

i had the same problem and found (in my case) that this mod: 

conflicts with TAC. I'll post a log file later.

Thanks, I'll look into it!

[PmThay]

@allista first of all i would like to say that your mod is just awesome!!!
thanks for your amazing work.

and now about the glitches:

On 14/11/2016 at 8:57 PM, Kakorrhaphiophobia said:

-Start TCA as usual, seems to be working. As soon as the craft leaves the runway, the game glitches, the whole Kerbin disappears and I'm left with the skybox and still somewhat responsive GUI. Reverting to launch leaves me with transparent airplane parts. 

I found that it happens not only with Mk2 Expansion but also with Mark IV Splaceplane System. I've been making tests since last night and I've found a strange thing with both mods, if I choose a way point route I see no glitches, nothing bad happens your mod works without problems, but if I choose the "hoover" option and manually drive the craft eventually the glitch happens (in mk2 expansion soon after take of but in mark IV spaceplanes it took longer to happen). I've made a clean install of ksp, your mod and with mk2 expansion (and his dependencies), after that one I made another clean install but with Mark IV (and his dependencies). Here are the logs and the crafts that I used to do the tests:

Mk2 Expansion:
the craft: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwOktgRlclqKMkFYMWhaTkRRMTg
Log file: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwOktgRlclqKRU83eGt6cUJHWWc

--------

Mark IV Spaceplane System:
the craft: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwOktgRlclqKT0I2cmRPazkyOFk

Log file: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwOktgRlclqKWmR6RGJseHZZcEE

I Hope this helps you in any way. 

[Redshift OTF]

Silly question, but is it easy to make a mod? I always fancied making an autopilot mod that could auto land a plane on the runway at a press of a button but I have no idea if I have any kind of skills to do it.

[Denko666]

19 minutes ago, Redshift OTF said:

Silly question, but is it easy to make a mod? I always fancied making an autopilot mod that could auto land a plane on the runway at a press of a button but I have no idea if I have any kind of skills to do it.

There's several skills involved in making mods depending on what you're trying to achieve. 

- C# Software Development 

- writing part files

- writing ModuleManager scripts

- 3D modelling 

- Digital art for texturing the 3D models

In your case you'll need 1 and 3. And a firm grasp on the KSP API. 

I suggest you hop on Github and check out some of the sourcecode of existing mods, and see if you can make sense of it. 

[Redshift OTF]

Wow, thanks! I will have a look around, (and probably get confused and give up).

Edited November 23, 2016 by Redshift OTF

[kcs123]

1 hour ago, Redshift OTF said:

Silly question, but is it easy to make a mod? I always fancied making an autopilot mod that could auto land a plane on the runway at a press of a button but I have no idea if I have any kind of skills to do it.

If you have to ask if it is hard to mod, then answer is: Yes, it is hard.

However, don't let that answer discourage you. Try with small thing at first. MM for KSP is good start, to figure out how to make small tweaks for existing stuff in stock game and other mods around. If you want to crate new parts - meshes, animations, textures and such you need to learn how to use applications for that type of work, like 3d studio max, blender or similar tools. Blender is freeware software, start with that first to find out is that kind of work is appropriate/fun for you before you go to buy something more powerfull. If you want to do some awesome mods like TCA, you will probably need to learn a bit more of coding, mostly with C#, learn how to create plugin dlls, follow specific rules, so KSP can properly recognize them, so features from it can be used to tweak stok game in a way you want to do it.

That is just basic, essential knowlage about tools and means of usage. While I was writting this @Denko666 have already provided shorter summary. What is more important is to know in real life, how stuff works and you want to accomplish. Knowlage how to recognise problems(goals), disect big problem(goal) in smaller chunk, solve smaller issues one at a time. Once you figure out how to deal with small stuff it is easier to put everything together in one more meaningfull application.

 

Now, for your question, to figure out how to create autopilot that is capable to land a craft somewhere, there is already quite nice mod for this in KSP. Look at kOS autopilot mod.

I assume you are beginer with coding. Such mod is quite good to start learning about programming. It is simple enough to get started and learn how to do stuff with kOS and yet quite powerful programming language that share some similarities with more powerful programming languages like C#, visual basic, LUA, phyton and such. Similarities are in terms that it have triggers/events, more complex structures for objects, functions for subroutines and such. All that packed for stuff you want to do in game.

Possible things you learn playing with it can be easy applied later on in real life with more powerful languages. And if you don't, at least you will have some fun with it. Anyone can learn commands/keywords for any programming language. Thing that is more difficult to learn is to observe things and figure out how to write code for it, so machine can replicate desired steps. Bolded part of this post.

kOS can also be too much if you never do coding, so you would also need to start with some small stuff before going to write full autopilot capable of landing on it's own. Before you are able to land, you need to figure out how to hold steady altitude, velocity and heading.
Once you figure out that, solve thing how to steer your craft to different direction without crashing and holding same velocity and altitude at same time.
When you solve this, you need to figure out how to gently lower altitude and velocity while still having steady craft heading, so you can actualy land on runway and not on some random spot. Although, you will probably need to learn how to land safely on some random spot first and when you figure out that, next step is how to land on exact desired spot with controled exact velocity and slope.

Final thing for your desired autopilot is to put everything together and create several waypoints to follow, so your craft have proper heading when descend for final land spot on runway and it will touch down at desired safe speed.

Once you find out how to do it with kOS, you will be more ready to create full pledged plugin in C# for it.
Now you get some idea what is needed, I will let you to figure out for yorself is it easy or hard to do it.

EDIT:

You may also llok at this thread, it is similar topic as your own question:

 

Edited November 23, 2016 by kcs123

[Redshift OTF]

@kcs123 Thanks for the detailed reply! You know, I never even thought of kOS as an option. I've seen it a bit in some videos but I thought it was just a simple way to carry out a bunch of instructions, not to actually write programs in. I will have a look at it. I have a bit of coding experience from 16 years ago and what little I did I was quite good at so maybe I can come up with something. My motto when writing a program was to do something very simple, get that right and then continually add to it.

[Core]

15 hours ago, achroma said:

Does the hover mode + stop/anchor have collision avoidance? I had two craft hovering very close, and i couldn't get them any closer for unloading cargo :/ Had to use Vertical Velocity + HLA instead.

But on the up side i've been having fun with drone lighting! They behave very well, thanks to your mod!  I'm just a terrible driver!

 

I got a kick seeing how those drones just backed off once the cart crashed, as if to say "Show's over, were done here."

[Bit Fiddler]

14 hours ago, Redshift OTF said:

@kcs123 Thanks for the detailed reply! You know, I never even thought of kOS as an option. I've seen it a bit in some videos but I thought it was just a simple way to carry out a bunch of instructions, not to actually write programs in. I will have a look at it. I have a bit of coding experience from 16 years ago and what little I did I was quite good at so maybe I can come up with something. My motto when writing a program was to do something very simple, get that right and then continually add to it.

another good autopilot mod that is superb at landing aircraft and space planes etc. is Kramax Autopilot Continued.  currently maintained by @linuxgurugamer I have used it quite extensively in my latest campaign along side this one for my VTOL needs.  it will fly your plane in a very stable flight and near flawless landings.  usually if the flight or landing is less than perfect it turns out to be a design flaw on my part.  sure this does not fulfill your desire to make a mod, but it will give you the auto land you desire right now.

 

[BadLeo]

Hey, hum... having a bit of a weird behavior with TCA while trying to put VTOL crafts into hover mode. Here are the error logs and crash dump:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/n623l9zurl0q6vh/hover error.zip?dl=0

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Edit: Oops, forgot to take the SS to show what weird behavior I'm talking about. Will take it and come back with Imgur's post.

Edited November 24, 2016 by BadLeo

[allista]

On 11/23/2016 at 8:19 PM, PmThay said:

@allista first of all i would like to say that your mod is just awesome!!!
thanks for your amazing work.

and now about the glitches:

I found that it happens not only with Mk2 Expansion but also with Mark IV Splaceplane System. I've been making tests since last night and I've found a strange thing with both mods, if I choose a way point route I see no glitches, nothing bad happens your mod works without problems, but if I choose the "hoover" option and manually drive the craft eventually the glitch happens (in mk2 expansion soon after take of but in mark IV spaceplanes it took longer to happen). I've made a clean install of ksp, your mod and with mk2 expansion (and his dependencies), after that one I made another clean install but with Mark IV (and his dependencies). Here are the logs and the crafts that I used to do the tests:

Mk2 Expansion:
the craft: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwOktgRlclqKMkFYMWhaTkRRMTg
Log file: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwOktgRlclqKRU83eGt6cUJHWWc

--------

Mark IV Spaceplane System:
the craft: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwOktgRlclqKT0I2cmRPazkyOFk

Log file: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwOktgRlclqKWmR6RGJseHZZcEE

I Hope this helps you in any way. 

I've looked through the logs and tested the Mk2 craft (Mk-IV is next).

Results so far:

The Test-Mk2exp craft flies flawlessly (but to be honest, it's a little hard to control being upside down in the cockpit ).

Log does not contain any errors related to TCA (except the one reported earlier by @Denko666, which is non-fatal GUI stuff), but has a bulk of error messages about compilation of internal spaces of Mk2 pack. Then again, my log contains all the same messages with no effect on the game. The other error that the logs are spammed with is "Look rotation viewing vector is zero", which appears out of nowhere right after the flight begins. This, I suppose, corresponds to the glitch with the camera.

So it seems that something else is causing this trouble. But I have no idea as to what it could be 

14 minutes ago, BadLeo said:

Hey, hum... having a bit of a weird behavior with TCA while trying to put VTOL crafts into hover mode. Here are the error logs and crash dump:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/n623l9zurl0q6vh/hover error.zip?dl=0

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Edit: Oops, forgot to take the SS to show what weird behavior I'm talking about. Will take it and come back with Imgur's post.

Something is wrong with these logs. According to them it's an absolutely clean KSP install without any mods. 

[BadLeo]

33 minutes ago, allista said:

Something is wrong with these logs. According to them it's an absolutely clean KSP install without any mods. 

Waaa?? It is definitely not, I have a lot of mods installed and I'm pretty sure I took the right log, since its the only one on my folder! I'll try to generate new ones. In the meantime, here are the pics:

http://imgur.com/a/vo6RZ

Edit: Weird, crash logs are being generated as if it was a clean install, indeed. Not only that, it doesn't detect the GPU I am actually running the game with. 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/7g9llyyes0b1bvq/crash.dmp?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/v6f06554pi7mt3t/error.log?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/sui3zhj1x8i4dj7/output_log.txt?dl=0

Also, here's the list of mods I'm currently running:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dzqsvu97bz1lq2y/installed mods.csv?dl=0

Edited November 24, 2016 by BadLeo

[PmThay]

@allista first of all thank you very much for taking the time to look at this. Sorry for the up side down command pod

Its a shame because Mk2 Expansion as 4 or 5 engines that would be great to work with your mod

What BadLeo is describing is the same as me (the camera glitch).

[BadLeo]

2 hours ago, PmThay said:

What BadLeo is describing is the same as me (the camera glitch).

But to me it happens even with vanilla crafts. It could be an incompatibility with some mod. Would you be so kind to upload your mod list on a .csv file?

[PmThay]

1 hour ago, BadLeo said:

But to me it happens even with vanilla crafts. It could be an incompatibility with some mod. Would you be so kind to upload your mod list on a .csv file?

The first time I came across this bug was the very first time I tried TCA, in my original game that has around 50 to 60 mods installed (as you do), I thought it would be a nightmare to look for incompatibilities with all of this mods installed. So I tried a clean install of KSP, TCA and a 2 mods (one at a time) that have VTOL engines.

I tried KSP, TCA and Mk2 Stockalike Expansion (and his dependencies), and I tried KSP, TCA and Mark IV Spaceplane System (and his dependencies). the bug happened with both of them and i gave the result log files to allista. I've looked at your mod list and I think that the only ones common between your list and this two mods and their dependencies are:
CommunityResourcePack

ModuleManager
 

I think there's no need for me to make a list of my mods because a made the tests with only the ones that I've told you.
I hope this will help because I would really like to use TCA.

[allista]

10 hours ago, BadLeo said:

But to me it happens even with vanilla crafts. It could be an incompatibility with some mod. Would you be so kind to upload your mod list on a .csv file?

7 hours ago, PmThay said:

The first time I came across this bug was the very first time I tried TCA, in my original game that has around 50 to 60 mods installed (as you do), I thought it would be a nightmare to look for incompatibilities with all of this mods installed. So I tried a clean install of KSP, TCA and a 2 mods (one at a time) that have VTOL engines.

I tried KSP, TCA and Mk2 Stockalike Expansion (and his dependencies), and I tried KSP, TCA and Mark IV Spaceplane System (and his dependencies). the bug happened with both of them and i gave the result log files to allista. I've looked at your mod list and I think that the only ones common between your list and this two mods and their dependencies are:
CommunityResourcePack

ModuleManager
 

I think there's no need for me to make a list of my mods because a made the tests with only the ones that I've told you.
I hope this will help because I would really like to use TCA.

Well, this does look like TCA is the culprit somehow. The problem is, there's nothing in the logs; and, frankly, I've no idea how it could be happening, as TCA does nothing with cameras, at all.

@BadLeo, these are definitely not the logs from the game you're running. The real ones must be somewhere else. Are you on Win/Mac/Linux? And using Steam, as I see. Try to google about where the logs might be, please? 

Another difference between you and me is the 32/64 bit systems. I'm still running 32...

[BadLeo]

Found this one somewhere else. Data and time matches, as the output errors. And it seems to be accounting for mods, so, I guess it is it.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/aaq3gqq6ufoynrn/output_log.txt?dl=0

Didn't found the dump and the error log, still...

[allista]

Just now, BadLeo said:

Found this one somewhere else. Data and time matches, as the output errors. And it seems to be accounting for mods, so, I guess it is it.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/aaq3gqq6ufoynrn/output_log.txt?dl=0

Didn't found the dump and the error log, still...

Thanks! And no matter: the output_log.txt contains all the information there is. 

[allista]

20 hours ago, BadLeo said:

Found this one somewhere else. Data and time matches, as the output errors. And it seems to be accounting for mods, so, I guess it is it.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/aaq3gqq6ufoynrn/output_log.txt?dl=0

Didn't found the dump and the error log, still...

Unfortunately, still nothing; your logs looks exactly like the ones @PmThay provided: almost no errors, then suddenly the camera is screwed... 

And I cannot reproduce it.

Need to think more...

[BadLeo]

I'll thinker with it as soon as I have some time, to see what different mod combinations do. For the record, the problem, as far as I know, only happens when trying to input altitude on the TCA panel with the "hover" mod turned on. No other TCA functionalities ever caused any trouble for me.

[kcs123]

I just recalled that I was having similar camera glitch in the past. Previous KSP releases, 0.90 or lower.
I was installing and removing mods with CKAN. Didn't know at that time that CKAN does not remove completely mod folder if there is some files inside created after mod install. Usualy some settings files created when game is launched for the first time with mod.

IIRC I was using Universal Storage mod and uninstalled it. Folder for it was remained though, due to mentioned issue.
DMagics science mod was also used, showing science parts for universal storage in SPH/VAB while it should not and attaching removing those parts were glitched in VAB/SPH.

In flight scene everything was fine at first. Then after couple of minutes it looked like someone throwed pilot(camera) outside of craft and craft goes away on it's own.

I descibed behaviour long time ago somewhere in SETI thread, within first 50 pages or so as much I can recall.

@BadLeo, try to inspect your folders that you don't have some empty ones there that cause similar issue.
It can be some completely different mod folder than Universal storage.

 

[PmThay]

3 hours ago, BadLeo said:

For the record, the problem, as far as I know, only happens when trying to input altitude on the TCA panel with the "hover" mod turned on. No other TCA functionalities ever caused any trouble for me.

ya, it was the same with me. only when i used the " Hover" function did the glitch happened, when i used functions like "waypoint route" nothing bad happened.

3 hours ago, kcs123 said:

I just recalled that I was having similar camera glitch in the past. Previous KSP releases, 0.90 or lower.
I was installing and removing mods with CKAN. Didn't know at that time that CKAN does not remove completely mod folder if there is some files inside created after mod install. Usualy some settings files created when game is launched for the first time with mod.

IIRC I was using Universal Storage mod and uninstalled it. Folder for it was remained though, due to mentioned issue.
DMagics science mod was also used, showing science parts for universal storage in SPH/VAB while it should not and attaching removing those parts were glitched in VAB/SPH.

In flight scene everything was fine at first. Then after couple of minutes it looked like someone throwed pilot(camera) outside of craft and craft goes away on it's own.

I descibed behaviour long time ago somewhere in SETI thread, within first 50 pages or so as much I can recall.

@BadLeo, try to inspect your folders that you don't have some empty ones there that cause similar issue.
It can be some completely different mod folder than Universal storage.

 

I think this issue, of folders and such staying behind because of incomplete uninstall,  doesn't apply because the 2 tests i made were with a complete new install of KSP, TCA and other to mods (one at a time) and their dependencies, as i described to allista some posts above in this page. And as I don't use CKAN (I install manually), i know exactly witch folders are in the data folder.

[ss8913]

15 hours ago, allista said:

Unfortunately, still nothing; your logs looks exactly like the ones @PmThay provided: almost no errors, then suddenly the camera is screwed... 

And I cannot reproduce it.

Need to think more...

At least you're not hitting a hardware-destabilizing Unity bug.  Apparently there is one.  Using a certain combination of parts in the SPH *only* (can't replicate in VAB or in flight), i'm hitting some kind of Unity bug that's causing a hardware lockup and either the nvidia driver can recover from it or it can't, and I have to hard-reset my PC.  I wouldn't be surprised if there's a Unity patch forthcoming.. I have a feeling the most recent Unity is the *cause* though, since this is a new problem for me since 1.2.1.

 

Also, with TCA, can I mount regular engines like RCS, and set them to 'maneuver' only, and have them act like RCS?  ie, if I want to make a 15000t starship, regular RCS is.. not going to help much.

[allista]

10 hours ago, ss8913 said:

Also, with TCA, can I mount regular engines like RCS, and set them to 'maneuver' only, and have them act like RCS?  ie, if I want to make a 15000t starship, regular RCS is.. not going to help much.

Yes, this is exactly what 'Maneuver' mode is for.