Kerbals Spawn at Incorrect Heights

from: https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/129208-contract-pack-giving-aircraft-a-purpose-gap-129-air-flights-tours-coast-guard-sts-oct-28-2016/&do=findComment&comment=3100680

I frequently have problems with the contracts that are supposed to spawn tourists at the runway that you have to pick up (rather than ones you pre-load into the airplane).

The problem? It spawns them about 200 meters up in the air. So they die from the fall before I have anything to do with them. I hacked my way around it with the "hack gravity" cheat. I make gravity 0.02% of normal, let them slowly fall and live, then set gravity back to normal before I pick them up.

But it seems weird for them to be spawning that high up instead of on the ground.

from:https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/129208-contract-pack-giving-aircraft-a-purpose-gap-129-air-flights-tours-coast-guard-sts-oct-28-2016/&do=findComment&comment=3104309

I had a look inside the .cfg files for GivingAircraftAPurpose and I noticed it's hardcoding the kerbal spawn altitude with an 'alt = nnn.nn" type of line.

It's not using ContractConfigurator's option to spawn at ground level by omitting the alt = nnn.nnn line.

The altitude given for things like Charter-Flight-4 (which is supposed to spawn 4 kerbals at the SPH for you to taxi over to to pick up), is 133m. I'm pretty sure the terrrain altitude is nowhere near that high.

I commented out the "alt = " line from all the contracts where kerbals are meant to spawn on the ground to see if CC's defaulting to ground is working and if that fixes it. I'll report more later when I get those contracts again and see if that fixes it.

I know CC had some trouble in the past with spawning on the ground and I suspect that maybe the maintainer of GAP may have resorted to the hardcoded altitudes to work around it... then perhaps SQUAD changed the terrain so it's no longer at the same altitude?

from: https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/129208-contract-pack-giving-aircraft-a-purpose-gap-129-air-flights-tours-coast-guard-sts-oct-28-2016/&do=findComment&comment=3104879

Okay here's another useful data point: for the contract where passenger kerbals spawn next to the runway. They did spawn on the ground at first. Then I taxi'd toward them from the plane spawn point. They were clearly at ground level...

...until I approached within 300 meters of them. At the very point where their distance marker registered a number < 300 meters they suddenly teleported from the ground to a point a few hundred meters in the air above where thy had been and started falling from there.

That number, 300, is suspicious to me. It happens to be the "unpack distance" for landed objects on Kerbin. (The distance when a vessel goes from merely being visual renderered to also having all the physics applied to it).

inigmatus / GAP

Kerbals Spawn at Incorrect Heights #206