EVA Parachutes

[sumghai]

@StupidChris has expressed interest in allowing Kerbals on EVA to deploy personal parachutes, to allow skydiving or bailout from stricken vessels.

At present, we'll focus on manual chute deployment, although an automatic bailout systems or even ejector seats could be possible in the future.

Typical use case

• Kerbal goes on EVA
• Right-clicking on the command pod allows the active Kerbal to grab a parachute pack ("Get Personal Parachute"), which appears as an orange backpack
• Kerbal manually lets go of hatch ladder and falls away from vessel
• Parachute manually triggered ("Deploy Personal Parachute")
• Parachute canopy and risers are auto-cut after landing, or manually ("Cut Personal Parachute")
• Kerbal can then manually discard parachute backpack ("Discard Parachute Harness")

Personal Parachute - Specifications

• Pilot-main combo
• 7.24m diameter circular main canopy
• 6 m/s landing speed (2 m/s is more realistic but too slow; Kerbals are probably okay with rough landings)
• One model with one full-deployment animation (no reefing) that plays uninterrupted
  • t = 0s: Pilot chute appears, fully inflated
  • t = 2s: Pilot chute pulls main canopy and risers out; pilot chute disappears
  • t = 4s: Main chute canopy fully inflated
• Main chute risers will converge on a single point from the backpack
  • Having the risers converge on two points would look more realistic, but because KSP cannot simulate proper rope physics, parachute transforms always pivot around a single point
• New combined textures with separate areas for pilot and main canopies
  • RC_canopy_EVA.png: white pilot + main (default, "civilian")
  • RC_canopy_EVA_mil.png: white pilot + "military" green main (military variant)

Parachute Backpack - Specifications

• Fits on Kerbal model
• Consists of a main chute backpack that partially covers the Kerbal jetpack, a spare chute bag in front of the chest
  • The existing harness on the Kerbal EVA/IVA suit model will suffice.

Notes

• There shouldn't be a dedicated parachute container part in the VAB/SPH part list; instead, a ModuleManager patch should just add the chute container PartModule directly to crewed pods
• Some crewed pods should not include chute containers (e.g. FusTek)
• A Kerbal can only grab one backpack at a time (but can discard the current one and grab another one until the pod's chute container runs out)
• Transferring parachutes between Kerbals/vessels is probably too complicated
• Each parachute pack should come with two sets of pilot/main parachutes (one primary, one spare)
  • If the primary set is cut whilst the Kerbal is falling, the user should be able to manually trigger the spare
  • Maybe a simple counter for number of chutes remaining will suffice
  • The number of spare chutes cannot be changed (for obvious reasons)

[sumghai]

It should be chute_attach_point.

[sumghai]

Refined UV mapping and AO bake for the backpack textures (8b21d7b).

The grid lines are just guides to help me with painting the final textures, and will be gone in the final version of the backpack.

Also, a quick reminder:

[ChrisViral]

Awesome. I'll need to finish the implementation of #31 before I can have test out the backpack correctly, but thank you very much!

[ChrisViral]

Accidental close was accidental <.<

[sumghai]

Reserve chute bag texture 80% complete (TODO: hem lines and reserve chute ripcord handle):

[sumghai]

Finished texturing reserve bag chute (added metal ripcord handle) and side doohickeys*:

*I have no idea what the two side cylinders on the actual ACES suit backpack are for :P

[ChrisViral]

Doesn't quite matter :P Awesome work! As soon as possible I'll try to load them up in game and see how they behave :)

[sumghai]

Backpack should be pretty much done, other than any minor tweaks I might retroactively think of.

Over to you for plugin implementation now :)

[ChrisViral]

Small bump on this. I've been trying to add the backpack to the kerbals, and well it partly works. Because it spawns at about 20m up and in front of the kerbal. Think you could reexport the model or whatever shenanigans should be done so that it's just it's own object or whatev centered on it's own? I asume you built it with the Kerbal's model in mind but apparently that does not work at all :P

[sumghai]

I can certainly re-export the models with adjusted part origins, but this might take longer than usual.

I recently uninstalled all my modding-related tools in anticipation of buying a new laptop and passing my current one down to a relative, so I'll need to set everything up again for this job (if only temporarily).

[ChrisViral]

It's not a highly presing matter, RealChute2 is still a few weeks away from release. I'll work on the GUI in the meanwhile. Just got extremely confused to why the backpack wasn't showing properly when I very clearly was instantiating it correctly... until I saw it floating a few dozens of meters away.

[sumghai]

Okay, just had a crack at this.

It seems that, for whatever reason, the Unity Gameobjects were offset by 21.xx meters up and some other distance to the size. I reimported the Blender model, reset the part origins and reexported to .MU.

Let me know if this is still broken.

[ChrisViral]

Good news is it works beautifully:

Bad news is that while it does move around with the kerbal, it does't move as if it was actually on the kerbal's back, it's just pinned in the air behind it, so I'll have to figure that out :P Thanks though, amazing work as usual!

[ChrisViral]

On this matter, while looking up why it wasn't moving along, I found this Unity answer. Can you verify that the objects arent marked as static or anything that could be causing a problem??

[sumghai]

I'm at work at the moment, but looking at the troubleshooting steps listed in the link:

1) Make sure there is no rigidbodys on the items (You have said this but I thought I should say for others).

No rigidbodies/colliders defined in the backpack model meshes AFAIK

2) Look to see if there is any animations on the model, animations should be fine and will work relative to the parent but if they are broken you will see the problem.

No animations defined.

3) Use (new) unity primitives to block out the same scenario and see if the problem is still there ( this will show you if it is your gun or something else that has broken).

???

4) Look at the flags on the game objects, are any static?

Will check once I get home - I suspect this is the most likely cause

5) Are the transforms non-uniformly or reverse scaled? (This is more often an issue with colliders and physics)

All meshes are 1:1 scale, no scaling.

6) Make very VERY sure that no other scripts are messing with your game objects, remember you don't need to have a script on a object for it to modify it, other scripts can drive game-objects by references. This step is why we do step 3, with new objects blocking out the issue there won't be any scripts acting on them.

The only script used is the KSP PartTools exporter script for Unity, and without that, I wouldn't be able to export the .MU files in the first place. The script is also attached to the top-level Gameobject, so I doubt this would affect the component meshes.

[ChrisViral]

The static flag was also my guess, as many other answers/questions mentioned it :)

Though don't worry about it, I'm not in any rush once more, take your time, I'll wait for your update on this.

[ChrisViral]

Oh also, while were at this, a very low priority thing: adding the sort of "caps" we talked about for the backpack. Essentially parts of the model that would be hidden when the parachute is deployed. Since parachutes burning up is now a thing, having a spare chute in case of failure would be good, so maybe a cap and an attach point for the spare bag in front too :) But then again, this is very low down the list of priorities, release is still weeks away and I can test everything without those changes.

Also, I'll take this opportunity to talk about this: special container parts for parachute spares and EVA chutes. For most needs, pods will do, but the fact is there will be a limited amount of space on each part that can contain chutes. So if a vessel has many very large chutes, additional storage could be needed. This would also be useful for stranded kerbals. Say a mission went south and that the parachutes either burned up or were wasted, and that the vessel has none to get home. Well you could launch an unmanned craft carrying spares or EVA chutes to the stranded missing to allow it to repack it's stuff. Once again, this is of the lowest of priorities, a release could be done without those and they could be added in a later patch. A bit like the original RealChute parts two years ago :P

[sumghai]

Oh also, while were at this, a very low priority thing: adding the sort of "caps" we talked about for the backpack. Essentially parts of the model that would be hidden when the parachute is deployed. Since parachutes burning up is now a thing, having a spare chute in case of failure would be good, so maybe a cap and an attach point for the spare bag in front too :) But then again, this is very low down the list of priorities, release is still weeks away and I can test everything without those changes.

At the moment, the main backpack itself does have a cap, but not the spare bag.

I can definitely modify the spare bag model to include its own cap, and add the second attachment point for the spare chute.

Also, I'll take this opportunity to talk about this: special container parts for parachute spares and EVA chutes. For most needs, pods will do, but the fact is there will be a limited amount of space on each part that can contain chutes. So if a vessel has many very large chutes, additional storage could be needed. This would also be useful for stranded kerbals. Say a mission went south and that the parachutes either burned up or were wasted, and that the vessel has none to get home. Well you could launch an unmanned craft carrying spares or EVA chutes to the stranded missing to allow it to repack it's stuff. Once again, this is of the lowest of priorities, a release could be done without those and they could be added in a later patch. A bit like the original RealChute parts two years ago :P

Let me get back to you on this one.

[ChrisViral]

At the moment, the main backpack itself does have a cap, but not the spare bag.

I can definitely modify the spare bag model to include its own cap, and add the second attachment point for the spare chute.

Good, I'll print the transform tree and figure it out, but if you one for the second that'd be great :)

Let me get back to you on this one.

As I said no rush here don't worry.

[sumghai]

Quick question - given that there will soon be two attachment points, how would you specify the direction the chute would deploy from in both cases? Am I correct in assuming that the main parachute set would deploy out the back, while the spare parachute set would deploy out the front?

[sumghai]

Just got home and checked the meshes - none of them have the static flag enabled :/

[ChrisViral]

Yes the main would be in the back and spare/safety from the front.

And dammit, I dont have a goddamn clue why its not animating properly

[ChrisViral]

Got it, trick was to set the new model's transform to be the jetpack's collider! It looks great now :)

[sumghai]

That's a huge relief!

I'll get to adding the spare chute bag cap and transform this weekend.

[sumghai]

I think this should do for now.

Ideally, I would have preferred the spare chute bag to unfurl like a four-leafed clover before releasing the spare chute, but I could never get mesh deformation animation to work properly, and that would probably add unnecessary complications to what you're doing anyway.

Anyways, the updated transform tree:

[ChrisViral]

awesome, thank you :)

[harrypotterwiz]

I have made an ejection seat that fully functions however the kerbals personal parachute auto-deploys, even when i have set the max on the min pressure. is there a way for me to hotkey this so i can ensure that the kerbal is safely away from the craft before his parachute opens?

edit this is for a mod i was refering to the ksp udate that installed parachutes on the kerbals