New Beta - Version 0.9.500

Wow, this update spent a long time in the oven, but we hope it was worth the wait! Thank you for your patience. Really, if it wasn't for Nathan and his light bulbs we would have had this thing out the door yesterday or maybe even last Friday.

We've done so many sneak peeks that I'm honestly not sure what is still left to the imagination, but please allow me to set the record straight with a long list of bullet points. We are starting the beta off on Steam and hope to get the beta started on mobile this Friday. Now, let's see some bug reports!

FEATURES

• Animated waves with physics with underwater visual effects
• Added part transparency. This is super powerful, but at times it can make your craft render a bit unexpectedly so use with a pinch of caution.
• New space capsules
  
  
  
  • Space Capsule - Visual overhaul of previous Command Pod
  
  
  • Komodo Capsule - Sleek capsule which includes a small amount of fuel and built-in engines. Includes a neat rotating nose cone.
  
  
  • Patriot Capsule - Space capsule that has a bit more leg room than the alternatives. Great capsule if you love your country and if you have the money.
  
  
  • Vroz Space Capsule - Soyuz inspired space capsule.
  
  
  • Vroz Orbital Module - Spherical space capsulse that fits quite nicely on top of the Vroz Descent Module in case you want to bring more people into space.
  
  
• Cockpit with glass canopy
• Added a new Label part. Now you can slap custom text onto your craft and it can even dynamically update to display craft properties. It's intended to be used in the cockpit, but we know that players are going to use it everywhere, so be forewarned that it doesn't conform to the geometry it is attached to. It is always flat and you can't change its mind.
• Added Multi-Function Display part that can execute Vizzy programs so now you can provide custom, interactive user interfaces in your crafts.
• Other planets should now be visible through the atmosphere of the current planet during the day.
• Added ability to zoom the camera when in first person view with the astronaut.
• Added a physics distance quality setting.
• Added Occlusion spinner to Tinker Panel to allow specifying that a part should never be occluded, always be occluded, or automatically calculate its occlusion state (the default setting).

TWEAKS

• Reworked the way terrain physics are loaded. The new approach should be better optimized and more importantly, it should prevent craft from falling through the terrain in some cases.
• Planets in flight and map view now have geometry resembling their shape rather than showing up as perfect spheres.
• Better LOD logic to reduce polygon count of distant planets in flight and map view.
• The sun flare now fades out when the camera goes underwater.
• Command pods now have an option to automatically default to the suggested pilot orientation whenever the part is rotated.
• Added Customize button for stock themes to allow copying them to the Custom theme.
• Changed default fuselage radius to 1m
• Reorganized part list into new categories: Command, Control, Structure, Propulsion, and Electronics.
• Added some crash detection logic and crash-loop prevention when starting the game.
• Large GPU optimization when image effects are enabled and the water exit effect is not active.
• Added water quality setting options to disable underwater blur, underwater distortion, and the water exit effect.
• New space capsules support surface attachment
• Added transparency to part shape tool outline

VIZZY

• Added several instructions and expressions for creating and working with UI widgets on a Multi-function Display part.
• Added instruction to pop an input dialog to get text input from the user and store that in a global variable.
• Added instruction to play a beep sound at a specific pitch.
• Allow changing the name of a for instruction's iterator variable by tapping on it, which makes it easier to support nested for instructions.
• Added "Lock Heading on Vector" instruction. Added tooltips to "Lock Heading" dropdown list.
• Added support for broadcasting lists.
• Added Dry Mass and Fuel Mass properties to craft performance expression.

PLANET STUDIO

• Added Noise flyout
• Added planet studio support for changing water reflection/transparency/foam/texture strength, transparency depth scale, and wave amplitude scale per biome.
• Terrain/Water now support HDR colors, smoothness, metallicness, and emissiveness
• Added a water flyout to planet studio with many water related settings
• Added subtitles to Sub Biomes in the Biomes Flyout to display the calculated range.
• Added Start text input to define the starting point for the first sub-biome.
• Automatically add a planet's launch locations when adding or replacing a planet in the Planetary System Designer.
• Allow clicking on a slider's value to open the input dialog and manually enter the value.
• Added terrain quality in celestial body properties.
• Added view for the equirectangular map.
• Support for biome-based water colors
• Added support for previewing planets from Load Celestial Body list view.
• Added planet studio HDR color picker support for terrain biomes and underwater colors
• Updated the TextureData2 planet modifier to always set a value to the output, even if no texture is applied to a position (value of zero in that case) and values are now accumulated when multiple textures within a single modifier overlap. This is likely a breaking change for any celestial bodies TextureData2 modifier.
• Added ability to scale the size of the atmosphere beyond the default 2.5% larger than the planet's radius via XML.

0.9.501

• Fixed a bug that allowed the player to tweak colors in stock themes.
• Fixed a bug where the MFD would not render when viewed through cockpit canopy glass.
• Fixed a bug with transparency when changing themes.
• Fixed bug where the camera would still move when the game is paused in the FPV camera.
• Fixed issue where when an astronaut gets into a chair/cockpit it would permanently change the existing command pod/cockpit's replication settings (instead of temporarily overriding them).
• Fixed bug where when if first person perspective, trying to adjust the tether length via mouse-scroll would also adjust zoom. FPV Zoom is now disabled when the tether is in use.
• Fixed bug where if the jetpack is running when entering a chair, the jetpack will stay on.
• Fixed issue where when you take control of an astronaut in a cockpit, the throttle/activation groups could change.
• Fixed issue where if an astronaut got into a cockpit, they may not be able to control the craft unless ReplicateActivationGroups is enabled on the cockpit.
• Fixed issue where the activation group names would be incorrect for an astronaut in a cockpit.
• Fixed bug where the activation group panel may not be updated when entering EVA with an astronaut.
• Fixed null-ref when exiting cockpit.
• Fixed issue where astronaut goes into a t-pose when loaded into a capsule. This is only visible if you select the astronaut from the "Search Parts" flyout in the designer.
• Fixed a bug that could cause the Komodo Capsule to fail to load in the flight scene.
• Fixed an error that occurs during upload because the mono theme didn't have enough colors.
• Fixed a bug where the Basic Info program caused the flight scene to fail to load.
• Added expression to check if a widget exists by its name.
• Added get sound frequency expression.
• Fixed material assignments on cockpit bundle.

0.9.502

• Fixed a bug when pulling astronaut out in the designer.

0.9.503

• Added grid lines to background of Vizzy.
• Added instruction to focus the camera on a part of the player's current craft.
• Added expressions to get the terrain color and height.
• Added expression to get the color of the planet's terrain at a specified lat/lon.
• Fixed Vroz attach point radius (for auto-resize).
• Fixed a bug where the player could not interact with some parts of an MFD when in the cockpit and the canopy was closed.
• Fixed a bug where the cockpit would jitter when being placed on a fuel tank.
• Fixed an issue where the Trainer materials could not be customized. Nudged the Trainer MFD into place.
• Fixed a bug that caused the MFD to flicker.
• Fixed issue where zooming while in FPV wouldn't zoom in on scaled-space planets.

0.9.504

• When docking, angular drag is temporarily increased on the two bodies to aid in alignment.
• Decreased time it takes to dock.
• Not being quite so aggressive at reducing waves near shores.
• Added get pixel for texture widgets.
• Disabling waves on iOS due to apparent issues w/tessellation shaders in Unity for iOS/Metal.
• Fixed a bug where the parachute base size property did not affect symmetric clones of the parachute.
• Fixed an issue with tooltips looking strange and extending off the screen.
• Fixed a bug where the contents of an MFD could spill out onto other, nearby MFDs.
• Fixed a bug which could cause the visuals for the waves to not match the physics.
• Revisited a bug fix that was intended to prevent the craft from disengaging a lock on velocity prograde (or any indicator) immediately after the player selects it. I think I got it this time. * Fixed a bug where the get terrain height expression was not using the correct coordinate system and reported wildly different results over time.

0.9.505

• Added Supports Transparency option to Tinker Panel.
• Added ASF - Altitude "Above Sea Floor"
• Fixed a bug where MFD line widgets did not reload correctly after a quick load.
• Added current stage and num stage expressions to Misc block in Vizzy.
• Allow the target node instruction to target a PCI vector if the parameter is a vector instead of a string.
• Fixed a bug where the front of the canopy glass could not be clicked to select the part in flight.
• Planet Studio now supports the ability to change the quad sphere activation/transition distance as part of the terrain quality settings (and thus, they can have multiple settings depending on quality level).

0.9.506

• Allow crafts to be painted with the finger tool.
• Fixed a bug where the label widget font size would not restore properly after quick load.
• The label part should now have lighting that is more consistent with the other parts. It should now support smoothness, metallicness, and emissiveness of part materials.
• Fixed bug where if an astronaut gets into a chair, the activation group names don't update to reflect the AGs of the primary command pod/chip.
• Fixed a bug where the paint colors would duplicate when unlocking transparency.
• New stock Rover with EVA, Lights, and MFDs.

Full change notes are here.