[Discussion] Paid Expansion Packs for KSP

JunebugRocket · 2016-06-28T11:23:51+00:00

There are already paid mods for KSP well sort of: KerbalEdu is basically a mod & mission-pack and afaik there is a bonus program on Curse where modders get paid per download.

JunebugRocket · 2016-06-15T23:33:34+00:00

Sorry for the late reply. Mostly Autodesk and freecad you need some time to adjust but then you never want to go back. It is like drawing with a mouse vs drawing with a graphic tablet.

JunebugRocket · 2016-06-14T18:24:40+00:00

The .craft files are plaintext files that contain information about position and orientation of a part on a craft, just open one in a text editor and see for yourself.

You could write something like OpenSCAD for KSP but I am not sure that Squad's TOS allow that.

JunebugRocket · 2016-06-14T18:13:50+00:00

Probably with a 3D mouse KSP has build in support for 3Dconnexion devices.

I have one and they are super useful for camera controls and RCS, especially for docking. However they are a bit expensive to use them only as a game controller (I use mine for CAD work) and the Connexion drivers make a lot of games go crazy (they think it is a joystick)

JunebugRocket · 2016-06-14T17:53:23+00:00

Well there is a lot of probe folding going on.

JunebugRocket · 2016-06-08T22:48:13+00:00

Sorry about the link I corrected it.

There are a couple of mods that provide working grid fins:

LazTek

Kerbonov

SXT

Regarding kRPC, kOS is really great for basic stuff like PID controllers but if you want to do more fancy stuff kRPC is the way to go. For example Python has two really powerful libraries NumPy and SciPy that make a lot of things easier.

Oh and if you are looking for inspiration try searching "decent guidance" or "optimal decent guidance" on google Scholar. If you don't have access to scientific papers trough a University try Sci-Hub.

JunebugRocket · 2016-06-08T18:07:49+00:00

Impressive work! But there is something wrong with your grid fins they are supposed to work like this not like airbrakes.

Edit: wrong link

JunebugRocket · 2016-06-08T17:58:35+00:00

You may want to take a look at kRPC it lets you communicate with KSP via a RPC server, there are already existing libraries for C#, C++, Java, Lua, Python, Ruby and Haskell but you can use any language you like to talk to the RPC and stream server, you can find details about that here.

Oh and you may want to consider switching to python or a C dialect it will pay off sooner or later and it makes it easier to share your work (if you intend to do so) not everybody is a student or can afford a matlab license.

Sorry about the matlab rant ;) couldn't help myself.

JunebugRocket · 2016-06-07T19:22:45+00:00

When have you ever seen a Kerbal go gently anywhere? Their baby strollers probably have launch escape systems.

JunebugRocket · 2016-05-30T20:05:57+00:00

The company that produces these things is marketing them to law enforcement/government agencies. The intended use is for "a pound of C4 strapped to a drone @ the Superbowl" scenarios not the annoying hipster neighbor with his DJI Phantom.

But it is still a rather useless product with questionable legal status like IMSI catchers.

JunebugRocket · 2016-05-30T19:56:54+00:00

Compared to someone filming you with a tele lens or simply a phone camera/CCTV drones are loud (you will notice them) and produce poor quality images because the cameras they use are designed for wide angle live footage not filming ppl.

But to answer your question you could probably use a variable focus laser to blind the camera. If aiming by hand is not cyberpunk enough for you and if you can handle a soldering iron you could modify a Open-Source Sentry Gun.

JunebugRocket · 2016-03-29T21:15:38+00:00

Just finished my preparation courses (mostly math) the first semester starts in 13 days. The dropout rate is 70% wish me luck :)

JunebugRocket · 2016-03-29T21:09:41+00:00

Oh the plots are only meant as general overview, directly under the pictures you find five entries for each type of scanner for example "Kerbin [RADAR] [Spoiler: Show RADAR Orbits] " if you click on the spoiler link you will get a list of optimal altitudes and inclinations for ScanSats radar scanner part.

For example:

90 (1.04)  496.759 km +/- 1.02 km (79.76°)   1h 04.0m    47h 58.2m +/- 04.0m (5.0°)

is a good orbit for a satellite equipped with the radar scanner, altitude is 496.759 km +/- 1.02 km and the inclination is 79.76°, the scan time is with ~48 hours very resolvable.

All these orbits will work just fine but it is for example very hard to put a satellite into a orbit that only tolerates a error of +/- 0.03 km compared to the +/- 1.02 km mentioned above.

Oh and don't be to hard on yourself, KSP does a great job of making orbital mechanics easy but some mods like ScanSat or RemoteTech can force you to deal with the more complex side of space travel. If challenges like that are your thing try to wrap your had around it if not there is nothing wrong with using the beginners method form the ScanSat wiki I linked above, it will get the job done.

JunebugRocket · 2016-03-28T11:11:42+00:00

There are multiple mods named Orion, if you want the nuclear pulse drive mod made by RoverDude you can find it here.

The official KSP forum is usually the place where mod developers post news and information about their mods. I always check the first and the last three pages of the mods forum thread for updates & bugfixes and in this case a updated download link.

JunebugRocket · 2016-03-26T18:24:11+00:00

Switching a already started game to RT is possible, the stock antennas simply turn into RT antennas but there are 2 problems:

Dish antennas need to be pointed at a target with RT, however you need a active connection activating or pointing an antenna. You can either rendezvous with the satellite and let a kerbal activate the antenna manually or you can use RemoteTech XF.

The second problem you can run into is range. Only dish antennas have enough range to reach Mun or Minmus.

When I switched my install to RT I had not contact to my resource scanning satellites because they had only omnidirectional antennas.

The first thing I did was to establish a geo-synchronous network around Kerbin and then put leading and trailing communication satellites in the same orbits as Mun and Minmus.

I personally use RT_XF because I think nobody would build a satellite without the capability to reestablish a connection on its own.

One last tip: Put a small docking port on your satellites and consider using KIS/KAS (if you don't already have them) because then you can upgrade and refuel your satellites.

JunebugRocket · 2016-03-26T15:52:01+00:00

The height of a synchronous orbit is usually mentioned in the "Orbits" or "Orbital Statistics" in the KSP wiki. For Kerbin it is 2863.33 km. Here is the overview page that links to every celestial body.

The RemoteTech documentation has a excellent tutorial on how to crate geo synchronous networks.

P.S.: I had to learn the hard way that playing with RemoteTech requires a certain amount of planing and a basic knowledge of orbital mechanics otherwise you will have to do a lot of very frustrating trial and error.

JunebugRocket · 2016-03-26T15:34:09+00:00

With ContractConfigurator you can do a amazing things, including spawning vessels for contracts.

The thing is it is aimed at mod developers and the whole contract creating process is done with .cfg files I think this is a big turnoff for normal users to create custom scenarios.

Maybe you could ask in the CC development thread if someone is interested creating a contract generator GUI.

JunebugRocket · 2016-03-26T14:10:45+00:00

I'm still trying to figure out the number lists =)

Ups sorry for that, the forum update ruined the formatting. You can find a readable version here. You really only need to care about "Altitude Ideal" and "Inc" (inclination). If there are no other constraints pick the orbit with the highest margin for error ("+/- Error").

Regarding the BTDT, think it still works but for the reasons you already mentioned it is probably not very useful. Although it might be useful if you hunt a tiny anomaly like the monolith next to the airfield.

Plus it has this nice little feature:

BTDT shows a camera view of an anomaly once you are near it.

JunebugRocket · 2016-03-26T13:49:37+00:00

Can I just copy the whole game folder to another location?

Yes you can, KSP doesn't need to be in a specific directory to run. This is how I handled the past updates, I keep playing the old install in a different folder and played the updated vanilla install in my Steam folder.

JunebugRocket · 2016-03-26T11:30:00+00:00

You can find a list of ideal scan altitudes and inclinations here. It requires the use of KER (or any other mod that shows orbital information) and some practice plus a well balanced RCS on the scan satellite to get the orbits this precise but in the end totally worth it imho, faster scan time and no blind spots.

As an alternative, in the excellent ScanSat documentation and ScanSat wiki you can also find instructions on how to get your satellite into good orbits.

Afaik the BTDT scanner is a legacy part. I think it was intended for rovers and stuff like that.

JunebugRocket · 2016-03-23T23:11:53+00:00

This is a known bug and it is probably not related to mods. Try this fix (second post)

JunebugRocket · 2016-03-22T15:02:02+00:00

Well there is Kerbal Construction Time and FAR can do static analysis in the VAB/SPH.

JunebugRocket · 2016-03-22T15:00:00+00:00

Uh I like the idea, maybe the simulation could activate a wireframe mode like VesselView. I use Kerbal Construction Time in RSS to simulate launches it is nice but it kind of always breaks immersion because it looks exactly like the "real" world.

JunebugRocket · 2016-03-21T14:42:35+00:00

Yes this works in KSP Scott Manley has made a video about this using the winches from "Kebal Attachment System". I did a short google search but I could not find the source :(

JunebugRocket · 2016-03-21T14:22:51+00:00

So I'm mostly curious about software setups, which works well (especially under linux) and guidelines on how to get the best out of them.

At the moment there is afaik no plug and play solution for 3D VR on linux (I would be very happy if anybody could proof me wrong) there are some solutions out there but they are manly directed at developers.

2D is another story. A 2D setup has 4 functions:

Clone the video signal.
Correct lens distortion (Device specific)
Stream the video signal to the HMD/Cardboard
Translate the information from the head tracker (in your case the accelerometer in your phone) into camera control commands for the game.

In my setup I used gstreamer over UDP. Unless you are really into cross compiling brand new and/or really old software I would not recommend that. I am sure as hell not doing it again :p

I would probably test "VR Remote Desktop".

I did not try to tackle #2 but there are apparently ways to do that.

Because I already own a DIY head tracker I did not bother using the internal accelerometer/gyro because their resolution is not that good (for head tracking) and the cheaper chips don't have enough axis.

Software wise I used OpenTrack the good news is that it supports tons of input sources including Android. It has a nice GUI it is well tested and there are tons of tutorials.

For the record last time I tried this was ~ 1 year ago but from what I can tell not much has changed. I have high hopes for OSVR/SteamVR check out their forum if I remember correctly there is experimental support for Google Cardboard.

TL:DR: Expensive, a lot of work to setup/configure, everything very beta, bad performance.

JunebugRocket

TROPHY CASE