[0.90] Lazor System v35 (Dec 17)

[Romfarer]

Also I\'d still like to see mouse flight, the new keyboard trim is great but there are still limitations even when capslock is on, small manoeuvrable craft are still twitchy with the keyboard.

Its a new control system that\'s based on the cyan lazor thing that\'s in the current build. I have eliminated the wobbliness and my test planes are almost scary steady now. It will keep the plane steady in all 3 directions. And it will change direction based on numerical, keyboard and mouse input, separately or all at once ;D. It also comes with a damping function that basically changes the input scheme for airplanes, in stead of full flaps when you hit a direction, this will make the movement start at almost no effect and the longer you hold the button the more effect it gets. And when the desired rotation is reached, the plane will keep that position.

Last night i was doing some test flights where i was flying few meters above the ground between the KSP buildings. Landing on the runway is a breeze too now if i could only figure out how to brake the plane once landed. =P

Changing the cyan Lazor to a hight maintaining system sounds like a good idea, It probably won\'t be useful on orbiting craft but that\'s ok, cyan could just be aircraft specific features such as an altitude hold system (just as you are making) and maybe a Lidar altimeter for correct terrain height (maybe allowing for terrain following), and maybe even a variation of the target cam that can look straight down, like a ww2 bomber

After doing the lazor guided flight system it is clear to me that there will have to be some variation in how the system will function between airplanes and rockets. And also when close to a body as opposed to in space.

Edit: I have found a possible bug with placement of the Lazor crystals, if they are accidently rotated upside down before the emitter is attached, they attach to the craft with the crystal inside it, making them impossible to remove.

This is not a fault with the crystals as such, as it could happen with any part, but as they are a uniform shape it is impossible to visually determine their top from their bottom, if in the next update you can make the top pointy then that should be enough to prevent this until it\'s time to make proper models for the Lazor system.

What i\'d like to do is figure out how to make it possible to attach the currently sized crystals properly. i wonder if i can do anything about this in code? Like changing the size of the attach nodes and the snapping functionality. I had a crystal snap into one of the airplane wings because the collider of the wing was too small, so it dissapeared and i had to delete the wing to get it out.

[sal_vager]

'B' will operate the wheel brakes once you are on the ground

Personally I\'d have loved it if airbrakes had made it into KSP, but wheel brakes are ok, they can collapse if you overdo it though so I tap the B key just in case.

The new wheels don\'t have handbrakes which is a pain, unlike Tosh\'s cart which can hold the brakes on and store their state in the persistence file.

[Romfarer]

Oh right, i have hotkeyed B as the 'change lazor color' button. Guess i have to change those.

[Philpax]

I found another use for this 8)

Orbital destruction has never been so fun!

[Romfarer]

I found another use for this 8)

Orbital destruction has never been so fun!

Explosions NEVER gets old! =P Try to launch a rocket with remote control, and then self destruct it just after it is above the launch tower.

[sal_vager]

Hi Romfarer, I thought of another feature

I have been using your target camera to see around my rockets and planes while in flight, ground and sky don\'t show very well, the water and KSC are fine though.

Anyway I thought it\'d be cool if the camera had a light amplification mode for night flying, as when it\'s night on Kerbin it\'s very hard to fly, even with Alexander.O\'s floodlights.

It\'s a feature that would fit well with the Lazor I think, and would be invaluable for night side Mun landings too where it\'s hellishly dark.

Something else though, I cant find the range meter feature on the control panel anymore, if I wanted to find the distance to where the Lazor has hit how do I do it now?

[Philpax]

Hi Romfarer, I thought of another feature

I have been using your target camera to see around my rockets and planes while in flight, ground and sky don\'t show very well, the water and KSC are fine though.

Anyway I thought it\'d be cool if the camera had a light amplification mode for night flying, as when it\'s night on Kerbin it\'s very hard to fly, even with Alexander.O\'s floodlights.

It\'s a feature that would fit well with the Lazor I think, and would be invaluable for night side Mun landings too where it\'s hellishly dark.

Something else though, I cant find the range meter feature on the control panel anymore, if I wanted to find the distance to where the Lazor has hit how do I do it now?

Isn\'t it the green lazor? Granted, the range seems to be limited to 2.5km.

[sal_vager]

I thought I tried them all, green should scan when scanning has been worked out, but when I looked at it there was nothing there, I think a basic range readout should be part of the base white system that provides the targeting, and then expand from there.

But really, Romfarer has already created something I thought wasn\'t possible in KSP, and I am very impressed with his abilities, I wouldn\'t be surprised to see the Lazor become as big as Mechjeb eventually, it\'s just got so much potential.

[Romfarer]

I have been using your target camera to see around my rockets and planes while in flight, ground and sky don\'t show very well, the water and KSC are fine though.

Anyway I thought it\'d be cool if the camera had a light amplification mode for night flying, as when it\'s night on Kerbin it\'s very hard to fly, even with Alexander.O\'s floodlights.

Ground and sky does actually not show at all I believe it is possible to fix that but i need to investigate it more.

So you just want some buttons on the target cam that changes the display mode? I can make the whole screen light up if you want to you know =P I was thinking to add some ground marking lazors or something that shoots down a grid on the ground marking its elevation etc.

Something else though, I cant find the range meter feature on the control panel anymore, if I wanted to find the distance to where the Lazor has hit how do I do it now?

It should be as Philipax noted, on the green lazor. However it will only show range for objects you are hitting and l.o.s is implemented here. I did remove all restrictions on the targeting and tracking displays, perhaps i should add some more readouts to them. I generally think the GUI needs more displays, and i\'m very interested in hearing exactly what kind of readouts you would like to see.

I think i\'m ready for a little showcase of the lazor guided flight system later today.

[sal_vager]

Ok I\'ll have another look, I was trying to get the distance to the tracking station and the ground, the first as a test, the second to see if I can use the Lazor as a basic altimeter, the ground has a mesh so it should have worked.

I had all 4 crystal combinations fitted, I think what I did was I forgot to move the green beam, and just had the white beam hitting the tracking station.

Edit: I found a bug, I repositioned the primary Lazor and when I launched all the crystals were emitting white beams, I had to remove and replace each of the crystals to fix the problem, it seems the Lazor is sensitive to the build order, I\'ll add my craft for you to check.

Also I have found the range meter, It was just me having a derp moment.

Full screen night vision might be cool, I while we are testing have a button to switch between just the camera and fullscreen, so we can see which is best for the Lazor system, the ground grid idea is sounds good as well.

Shame about the land and sky, I hope this is fixable as it\'d be a killer feature, threads asking for cameras pop up fairly frequently.

[Romfarer]

Edit: I found a bug, I repositioned the primary Lazor and when I launched all the crystals were emitting white beams, I had to remove and replace each of the crystals to fit the problem, it seems the Lazor is sensitive to the build order, I\'ll add my craft for you to check.

I\'ll check out the .craft when i\'m done wasting time at my dayjob ???

Usually when this happends it\'s caused by an exception. If you encounter this again, it would be helpful to see both the .craft file and the output log. I haven\'t yet seen any .craft that cause exceptions on launch so this will be interesting. Nice find

[Romfarer]

Nice find indeed. I am able to reproduce the error. I can see what is causing it but i can\'t figure out why it is causing it.

Did you assemble the .craft in an earlier version of lazor system? and then saved it in this version?

Edit: Problem identified and eliminated! 8)

Simply put, the bug was caused by a inconsistency in the C# type system.

This works...

foreach (Part p in children)
   if (p is IColorable) //check if the part implements the interface IColorable
      //do something

While this doesn\'t work...

Part[] l = gameObject.GetComponentsInChildren<Part>();
foreach (Part p in l)
   if (p is IColorable) //check if the part implements the interface IColorable
      //do something

In the latter case the part we are looking for is contained in the list \'l\', but it fails the compatibility check.

[sal_vager]

Well done Romfarer, if I find anything else I\'ll let you know

[Romfarer]

The new build is out. Hopefully the new Lazor Guided Flight system will make flying airplanes in KSP a lot more enjoyable.

[sal_vager]

Cool I\'m going to try it out

[DrBurst]

epic plugin is epic

[Taverius]

This is pretty awesome. 8)

There\'s a number of things that come to mind about it ... first two being

[list type=decimal]

[li]Need a manual!!!!!!!!1111one.

What do all these buttons do? ???

Even a pointer that the easiest way of assembling a crystal is on the guidance system nosecone would be great [/li]

[li]Should be able to save UI position like MechJeb [/li]

But non-wobbly fine control is already pretty darn sweet.

The only thing I really miss is the ability to keep at a set pitch relative to the planet below me, its not a lot of fun to do three hour flights to and back to the poles, the fun bits is when you get there, flying there is just one and a half hours each way of engine whine.

[Romfarer]

Thanks for your comments. I have added some more information including, assembly details and a manual to the OP.

Persistence features will be added to the system when it is more ready for release. Right now the focus is to complete the first version of lazor system so it can be released in the main plugin thread.

I\'m working on ways to improve the lazor guided flight including the option to keep the pitch relative to the planet. And im also investigating ways to display the grass, horizon on the target cam.

If you have ANY comments or ideas about what you would like to see added to the system, i really want to hear it. As i hope sal_vager can attest to, most suggestions will actually be implemented

[sal_vager]

Hi Romfarer, how are you getting on with the Lazor?

I get the feeling you aren\'t far away from prime time with your mod, and I\'m looking forwards to seeing it.

I had fun with the Lazor steering system, though it is limited by the camera to where the beam can be pointed, so I was thinking, when the red beam is moved to the edge of the screen, is it possible to move the camera behind the craft so the aim point stays in sight?

Also, with the move towards EVA\'s coming in 0.16, we need to think of ways the Lazor can stay current as new features develop, one thing that just came to mind is laser tweezers, so if we lose Kerbals while on an EVA we can pull them back towards the ship, they are small and light so it\'ll work

Catch you soon mate.

Edit:

I think the suggestion here would be good as part of the green scanning Lazor

[Romfarer]

At the moment my focus is to improve the features that\'s already implemented such as lazor guided flight, scanning, target cam and remote control. The tweezers you mentioned is something i have thought about too, and i want to implement that but i think it will have to wait until the existing systems are working properly.

For the most part, what\'s stopping progress is 'what goes where' decisions. For example i know i want readouts for various vessel parameters (speed, altitude, etc. etc.) but then i have to decide where to put it. Also the target vessel should have similar readouts and those also needs a location. And of course, the readouts should depend on what systems you have activated. And in the end it all has to make sense for the user. :-X

I am also stuck trying to find a value for the pitch required to achieve level flight. Something like (atm.density * velocity^2 * v_lift) - weight. :-X

Gonna see what i can do about the camera thing you mentioned. For the moment you can use the right mouse button to pan the camera while in mouse-look mode. But it doesn\'t move the camera as much as it should...

[sal_vager]

The pitch problem may be too dependent on the design of the aircraft unfortunately, and it may be easier to monitor the aircraft’s altitude, and adjust pitch accordingly as the craft rises and lowers by a meter or two.

As for the user interface readouts, it can easily become cluttered, maybe a lot of the vessel parameters can be displayed as if it were on a HUD, with the targets speed, altitude and angle next to the target itself?

[Taverius]

I am also stuck trying to find a value for the pitch required to achieve level flight. Something like (atm.density * velocity^2 * v_lift) - weight. :-X

Don\'t forget not all wings maybe at a 0 AoA with respect to the main aircraft body. Maybe different wings have different AoAs - I have some planes like this. Maybe the engines don\'t point straight back - I have some crafts that do this too.

Add to that that all of those values are changing on you all the time (wings are flexing! engines stuck on the wing! fuel getting burned up! speeding up so engine efficiency goes up) ??? ... You need so much smoothing and adjusting over/under that pitch value to stay at that altitude that in the end that doing the pitch heuristically as-you-go in the first place is simply easier.

Edit: Romfarer, I attached the edge case plane I was talking about.

[Romfarer]

I\'m pleased to inform you that i have solved the 'remote control from a distance' problem. It is now possible to see and fly any vessel from 'any' distance. Any is in quotation marks because the distance is now only limited by floating point errors in the physics engine and it remains to be seen what true distance it is possible to remote control vessels from.

Another problem is that this PROBABLY sets the visible and physics enabled distance for all vessels in the game, and this will PROBABLY cause lag proportional to the amount of vessels you have active within the remote control distance. Hopefully it will be possible to limit this effect to only one vessel at the time.

I have to do more testing, i was just so excited i had to write this up immediately :-X

[sal_vager]

You sir are a genius when it comes to plugins, and I have noticed more people are starting to talk about, and recommend, your work

[Romfarer]

Thanks Your kind words inspired me, so earlier today i set out to make the first fully remote controlled flight around the world. And after 9 hours of intense programming here is the result.

This is my test rocket returning from the trip. It reached a maximum distance of 1,9 million meter. And i discovered that the safe distance for the system is approximately 100.000 meter. But i will leave the unlimited distance in the system as a toggle button so you guys can try to copy this mission. I dare you....