This addon has a lot of potential, but it looks like it wasn't properly tested before release. Here are the bugs I found:
- Periodic frame rate drop. For some reason the frame rate drops from 80 to 20 for a few seconds and it seems to happen periodically, independent of what view I'm in (internal, external) and it happens regardless of what part of the flight I'm in or what object I'm focusing on.
- I can confirm the invisible mesh bug with manned Dragon.
- The autopilot needs a touch. Every time I tried launching with an autopilot, it dumped me in the drink or goes haywire...
- Sometimes the green notification messages overlap. One gets printed over another. I've seen it several times, but I can't figure out the circumstances.
- I found the RCS system somewhat overpowered.
- When the manned Dragon gets ejected during launch (in an emergency), the main engines don't shut down if you don't shut them down manually. The launcher then flies right into the capsule.
How do you get the autopilot to work? The manual and on-screen instructions say press "A" to activate the autopilot but it seems to have no effect. I press "A" and nothing happens and if I then fire the engine manually, the vehicle goes straight up unless I control it manually.
-Autopilot has worked fine for me for every launch.
-Every time I used the LES, the launcher never "hit" the capsule. It does pass close, but doesn't hit it.
Well, it's failed every time for me. Launching from KSC, if I specified inclination lower then 28°, it just went haywire. It launched into heading 180 into a nearly polar orbit. First stage went fine, but second stage turned some 50° relative to velocity vector and wasted the fuel. The stage reached some 4.5 km/s and then it hit the drink.
If I specified inclination higher then that, the launch went better, but still it didn't reach orbit. The closest it came if I specified inclination 30° and apogee altitude 150. It flew to about 300 km altitude and perigee was 7 km below the surface.
I even tried separating the payload fairing at 30 km altitude, so I wouldn't have to lug all that weight to orbit. Didn't work...
Hum, you do know you can only get an inclination of 28 or higher degrees from KSC, right?
Also quick question about the 4-seat dragon: I'm assuming it's for BEO operations, is there a heavier heat shield fudged into some of that mass reshuffling?
Still having problems with this addon, orbiter log still saying textures aren't showing up. I thought it was because I didn't have the VC++ 2010 Redistributable package, but I downloaded it and there is still crashing.
(the reason is that NTR core stage is alas limited to maximum 7 gees at launch time, and explodes near 1st stage burnout )
In the launch autopilot, there has to be some kind of G-limiting throttling down even in cargo versions.