[1.9-1.10] Throttle Controlled Avionics

[Jarin]

Hey, @allista, feature request,since you've been so great about responses (the reward for work well done is the opportunity to do more). Could we get a way to collapse or hide the main interface, while keeping all the individual panels open on their own? I'd like to use the heading control as my primary SAS, and the little detached window works great for that, but the main interface staying open covers a lot of screen real-estate. Maybe just have the secondary windows stay open if the main is toggled from the toolbar, and you can just close them with their own "x" if you want them gone too.

[allista]

11 hours ago, Jarin said:

Hey, @allista, feature request,since you've been so great about responses (the reward for work well done is the opportunity to do more). Could we get a way to collapse or hide the main interface, while keeping all the individual panels open on their own? I'd like to use the heading control as my primary SAS, and the little detached window works great for that, but the main interface staying open covers a lot of screen real-estate. Maybe just have the secondary windows stay open if the main is toggled from the toolbar, and you can just close them with their own "x" if you want them gone too.

Good point. Will do.

Edited March 1, 2017 by allista

[allista]

About autopilots and AI.

Who knows tachikomas?

Here's their grandparent! 

 

[stali79]

39 minutes ago, allista said:

About autopilots and AI.

Who knows tachikomas?

Here's their grandparent! 

 

There better be Tachikomas in the movie or i will be sad.

[allista]

Just now, stali79 said:

There better be Tachikomas in the movie or i will be sad.

I'm afraid there won't be any, they're remaking the original GIST movie, not the SAC :(

[stali79]

Just now, allista said:

I'm afraid there won't be any, they're remaking the original GIST movie, not the SAC

Noooooooooooo

[allista]

Just now, stali79 said:

Noooooooooooo

Just look at the trailer. Many moments are almost identical with the original GIST, like the battle in the water, or, for that matter, the scene where Major's body is made. Also in the SAC there's no mystery about Major's history, while in the trailer she says "I'll find out who I was"... So "noooo" indeed =\

[allista]

15 hours ago, Jarin said:

Hey, @allista, feature request,since you've been so great about responses (the reward for work well done is the opportunity to do more). Could we get a way to collapse or hide the main interface, while keeping all the individual panels open on their own? I'd like to use the heading control as my primary SAS, and the little detached window works great for that, but the main interface staying open covers a lot of screen real-estate. Maybe just have the secondary windows stay open if the main is toggled from the toolbar, and you can just close them with their own "x" if you want them gone too.

Like this:

 

[Jarin]

3 hours ago, allista said:

Like this:

Awesome!

[allista]

Calling astromechanic to fix my brain gears! 

After @Jarin's report I'm trying (for several weeks now) to improve the rendezvous trajectory calculation. I've already implemented a semi-greedy conjugate direction 2D search for minimum dV transfer which works much better than the current two-step 1D search. But now I have a problem: if you use the rendezvous autopilot, you know that often it tries to correct current orbit to achieve faster resonance with the target; in most cases after this correction the total dV of the transfer+brake maneuvers drops. But half the time it drops less than the correction itself has costed, so the net dV is increasing instead of decreasing.

Theoretically there are two solutions:

• either perform full 4D optimization for two consequent maneuvers (which is A. much slower, and B. it's harder to get to the global minimum in 4D than in 2D, so it will produce suboptimal total dVs).
• or try to predict from the vessel+target orbits if the correction will be successful.

Currently I'm trying to do the latter; but so far in vain. I'm trying to separate the cases using PCA, but no matter what orbital parameters and in what combinations I plug into it, the best I get is ~30% separation between the "good" and "bad" classes. There're also a number of non-linear transformations I tried beside/along with PCA to reduce dimensionality of the problem. No luck.

I will appreciate any advice/thoughts on this 

Edited March 9, 2017 by allista

[Jarin]

12 hours ago, allista said:

Theoretically there are two solutions:

I say add a silly little "computer is calculating" animation and run the slower method.  ... wait, how much slower are we talking?

Alternately, go all-in on the orbital navigation computer and give it its own option window. Can have the long calculation method for better efficiency, or shorter for less guaranteed results. And maybe other options. Fast transfer (what we have now)? Sure. Lazy method of inclination-match then hohmann transfer? Why not?

 

Edited March 9, 2017 by Jarin

[allista]

4 hours ago, Jarin said:

I say add a silly little "computer is calculating" animation and run the slower method.  ... wait, how much slower are we talking?

Alternately, go all-in on the orbital navigation computer and give it its own option window. Can have the long calculation method for better efficiency, or shorter for less guaranteed results. And maybe other options. Fast transfer (what we have now)? Sure. Lazy method of inclination-match then hohmann transfer? Why not?

I hate to write UIs 

That aside, I was thinking of adding some UI to configure rendezvous for a while. The problem is: if I provide the choice, I need to provide some guidance on how to make it in particular situation. And if I can't guarantee that the double-maneuver transfer is more efficient, why bother with it at all, except that it can be somewhat faster? I mean, configurable or not, the use of initial correction should be justified.

BTW, surprisingly, plane-shift+Hohman transfer is not fuel-efficient; it is also resonance-sensitive and is definitely slower than direct transfer.

How much slower: currently, full 2D optimisation takes approx. 1 to 5 seconds to converge, 5 iterations per frame. But as dimensionality goes up, the timing becomes less and less defined due to the increasing flatness of the landscape of the objective function. So in "good" case it still could be a second, but in a "bad" one could take tens. And on a flat hypersurface there's less chance that a semi-greedy algorithm will actually converge near the global minimum, not in a random local valley.

[Jarin]

1 hour ago, allista said:

BTW, surprisingly, plane-shift+Hohman transfer is not fuel-efficient; it is also resonance-sensitive and is definitely slower than direct transfer.

I did not say faster or more efficient, I said lazy.

[m4inbrain]

Hey,

got a question, how do you guys get TCA to work with other mods like MKS? I don't use CKAN, installed all my mods manually, but if i install both TCA and MKS, one of them will not work properly. If i install TCA first, and then MKS after, TCA doesn't even show up at all? Maybe i'm too stupid to figure out the toolbar, but there's no way to get the TCA UI to show up. On the other hand, if i install MKS first, then TCA, i do have a TCA button in the toolbar - but the MKS ground stuff button is gone. I reinstalled the game (and mods) twice now - i'd really like to play with both. Is there a (very simple) way (i'm old) to modify/edit the toolbar? I tried installing the toolbar mod, but i can't get the TCA button to show up there either.

Halp, please.

 

[Tarheel1999]

1 hour ago, m4inbrain said:

Hey,

got a question, how do you guys get TCA to work with other mods like MKS? I don't use CKAN, installed all my mods manually, but if i install both TCA and MKS, one of them will not work properly. If i install TCA first, and then MKS after, TCA doesn't even show up at all? Maybe i'm too stupid to figure out the toolbar, but there's no way to get the TCA UI to show up. On the other hand, if i install MKS first, then TCA, i do have a TCA button in the toolbar - but the MKS ground stuff button is gone. I reinstalled the game (and mods) twice now - i'd really like to play with both. Is there a (very simple) way (i'm old) to modify/edit the toolbar? I tried installing the toolbar mod, but i can't get the TCA button to show up there either.

Halp, please.

 

Works fine for me. My best guess is that you are having problems with conflicting versions of AT Utils which is a helper dLL for Allista's mods (present in both TCA and MKS). Try installing KSP-AVC to make sure you are using the most current version of all mods and their helper DLLs. Next compare the folder structure in the downloaded zips to the folder structure in your KSP GameData directory. Be on the look out for duplicate folders-- you shouldn't have any. If this doesn't work I would start by doing a clean install. Clean version of KSP, no mods.  Then add whatever USI mods you are using and then add TCA.

Edited March 14, 2017 by Tarheel1999

[m4inbrain]

Actually, both MKS (0.50.17) and TCA (3.3.3) come with an AT_Utils folder, which overwrite whichever comes first. 

Downloaded AVC, didn't update anything, so i guess that's fine. Downloading KSP for the third time now, will try to install MKS, then TCA. Question is, do i use the AT_Utils of MKS, or do i use the one out of TCA? I'm asking because they are different in size, so something seems to be different there. On the old installation, whichever AT_Utils i used, made the corresponding mod work, but "disabled" the other. 

Weird.

edit: sorry, misunderstood. Well there's no dublicate folders except the AT_Utils, which in the MKS zip has some more stuff in it (things like "001_AnisotropicPartResizer.dll) - but both have a 000_AT_Utils.dll - different sizes though.

Edited March 14, 2017 by m4inbrain

[m4inbrain]

Okay, not sure what i'm doing wrong, but same thing. I uninstalled/deleted everything KSP (incl. leftover files etc), reinstalled it clean. Threw MKS in there, including the AT_Utils folder, then TCA without its AT_Utils. Ingame, i have all the MKS Icons on the toolbar, no TCA. Then tried copying the TCA AT_Utils folder over, but without overwriting anything. Exact same thing, MKS buttons on the toolbar are there, TCA button isn't. Then lastly, tried copying over AT_Utils of TCA entirely including overwriting files - now TCA shows up in the toolbar, but the MKS buttons are not anymore?

Nothing else installed. I can't be that dumb, can i?

[Tarheel1999]

You are using an old version of TCA. Current version is 3.4.1 which you need to find on Spaceport (github is behind one version). I would suggest taking a hard look at your install as AVC should have alerted you that you were out of date. 

Edited March 14, 2017 by Tarheel1999

[m4inbrain]

Indeed, didn't know the versions differ between the download sources. I can't tell you why AVC didn't shout at me, i only know that CKAN didn't either (tried installing both mods via CKAN because i thought it'd sort out whatever conflict there is). 

Works now, cheers for that. I thought github would be the "most recent" version, that's why i generally download from there if it's an option.

Thank you.

[Araym]

On 14/3/2017 at 6:24 PM, m4inbrain said:

Okay, not sure what i'm doing wrong, but same thing. I uninstalled/deleted everything KSP (incl. leftover files etc), reinstalled it clean. Threw MKS in there, including the AT_Utils folder, then TCA without its AT_Utils. Ingame, i have all the MKS Icons on the toolbar, no TCA. Then tried copying the TCA AT_Utils folder over, but without overwriting anything. Exact same thing, MKS buttons on the toolbar are there, TCA button isn't. Then lastly, tried copying over AT_Utils of TCA entirely including overwriting files - now TCA shows up in the toolbar, but the MKS buttons are not anymore?

Nothing else installed. I can't be that dumb, can i?

Sorta of my problem too (or a working TCA or a working MKS), so i tried a quick fix: simply changed the AT-Utils dll bound in TCA to "000_AT_Utils2.dll".
Now BOTH mods are working, so probably the one used to code TCA is definitely different from the latest used in MKS (and using only one of them enable only the mod that is compatible)

[Jarin]

Alright @allista, I get to continue being the problem user here. I've got a new weird bug, and absolutely no proper reproduction steps!

 

This is an orbit around the dark side of minmus, about 7km altitude. At the time of the screenshot, I'd *just* clicked "brake near target" approaching some debris I had a contract to retrieve. The instant I clicked, KSP froze completely; looked like another infinite-loop calculation. This the low altitude biting me again, you think?

You might be able to tell from the screenshot that this was a really aggressive rendezvous, since the orbit line is one-way (on an escape vector out of minmus SOI)

Edited March 23, 2017 by Jarin

[stali79]

@allista/ - I haven't gone too deep into TCA yet so this may already exist, but could you enlighten me or add a feature to land at a target point like you can with MJ2? So far all I have seen in TCA is to basically 'land on nearest flat surface' which half the time is useless if coming from orbit. At present I am having to try to MJ it to CLOSE to the target and basically use TCA for the last couple hundred meters, the annoyance of this is its almost impossible to have my planes balanced enough for MJ to be able to use the engines most or all the way down, otherwise its constantly churning up more fuel to maintain its attitude and course correctly.

[allista]

Sorry for my absence. Will answer everything later.

But right now you can watch the streaming of continuous automatic test of the new Rendezvous Autopilot that should be out soon.

https://twitch.tv/allitau

[allista]

Completely reimplemented search algorithms, improved logic for some hard cases. It now supports multi-patch orbits and can even start from a different SOI than the target.

Plus, two configuration options became available: gravity turn sharpness (to overcome dense atmospheres) and trajectory search modes: pure dV minimization, fast transfer priority, and manual (in which you can choose from a set of possible transfers).

[stk2008]

Cool watching stream now there is no audio though not sure if thats intended or not?