For the past few weeks I have been working on a major physics upgrade, updating Lyra Engine and Gravity Engine to their latest versions. This has been a demanding process with a lot of moving parts, and almost everything related to orbital mechanics has been affected in one way or another. A significant amount of functionality has been re-implemented, and several post-migration issues discovered during testing have been resolved.
The goal of this upgrade is first and foremost to improve overall stability and reliability of the physics engine. It brings in important bug fixes from the latest engine versions and lays the foundation for more advanced physics, trajectory calculations and orbital mechanics as we move toward version 1.1. In short, this update is about making Reentry more robust and opening up for more features for orbital maneuvering.
This has been a costly upgrade in terms of time, and it will likely require a few additional iterations to address quirks and edge cases that may not yet have surfaced during testing. The build has been in the hands of the Test Pilots and available on the public alpha-floor branch for the past two weeks. Since this is a major underlying change, you may notice differences in behavior compared to previous versions. If you encounter issues that were not present before, please report them and your feedback is highly appreciated.
You can always revert to a previous version via the Steam Betas tab if needed. The latest previous version is: 1.0.30. The rollback option is there to ensure smooth user experience in case something does not behave as expected.
I have tried to keep this update primarily focused on the physics engine upgrade. However, some critical mission updates, checklist updates, content fixes and minor bug fixes are also included to ensure consistency.
Patch notes
Lyra Physics and Gravity Engine (orbital mechanics) version update
Fixed typos in the new CM Academy lesson 9A (Earth Entry)
Updated the CM Academy lesson 6 (SPS) to reflect the latest SPS electricity and logic changes
Fixed the collider of the O2 HI RATE switch in Gemini
Fixed the Highlight Handler transparency as it made it hard to see the panels through it
Fixed an issue where the CM SM/RCS jets can correct rates even when AUTO RCS JET sw is in OFF
Made fixes to the CM RCS powered jet Ring 1&2 logic circuits
Tied the CM optics star identification helpers to the UI labels showing what star you are looking at
Fixed an issue where the SIVB had the potential to overwrite V49 auto maneuvers (roll to 180)
Iterated on the CM SPS logic
Fixed an issue with the Gemini Retroburn Planner that prevented input if previous retro time was in the past
