Full release notes v0.16.8

Features:

• added Mercury and reworked its textures on solar system map;
• reworked Earth and Moon procedural texturing;
• added ability to collapse and expand stages during rocket assembly and flight;
• added approximate deltaV and TWR calculations for stages, that contains engines;
• payload fairings rework: they are section based now and can be any length;
• payload fairings are present in the rocket staging;
• you can focus camera on surface objects and set them as a target;
• added target markers for surface objects during the flight;
• contracts with “land in distance” goal will now add a surface object marker, if it wasn’t already added (via mods, for example);
• contracts with “reach an orbit” goal will now add a target orbit that needs to be reached;
• added camera exposure compensation settings for flight and map cameras;
• added Venus heightmap to the game, this is a first step to actually adding Venus;
• new solver for hyperbolic orbits, that can handle all edge cases and is much faster;
• improved Earth’s atmosphere colors, making it more physically accurate;
• added Focus button to the map context menu for currently active spacecraft;
• slightly increased a size of planet collision on the Solar system map;
• added fuel depletion sound for engines;
• added 9 new bodies (mostly transneptunian objects) to the Solar system map.

New rocket parts:

• Payload Fairing Base GO-1;
• Payload Fairing Section GO-1 1.4m;
• Payload Fairing Section GO-1 3.5m;
• Payload Fairing Cap GO-1;
• Payload Fairing Base GO-5;
• Payload Fairing Section GO-5 2.1m;
• Payload Fairing Section GO-5 5.25m;
• Payload Fairing Cap GO-5;
• Payload Fairing Adapter GO-1-5;
• Payload Fairing Adapter GO-5-1;
• Circular Extended Unit;
• “Fluffy” Landing Strut;
• Mini Decoupler;
• “Clap” Longitudinal Decoupler.

New content:

• added reach “Molniya” orbit contract;
• added reach “Tundra” orbit contract;
• added land on Mercury contract.

Part changes:

• deprecated Payload Fairing 3x7

Changes:

• the process of destroying a part by dragging it to the parts panel has been improved;
• improved rocket action group visuals;
• spacecraft will no longer create a ton of new spacecrafts if it was destroyed not in main simulation;
• added sounds for rocket stages UI;
• some parts of the game engine were updated to the newer version, which will help to migrate to the new Unity version in the future;
• stage tooltip will now use engines throttle in the calculations for active stage;
• stage tooltip on an active stage will be updated when hovered;
• rockets with broken orbits will not load after game restart;
• improved perfomance of encounter search for spacecrafts;
• imrpoved perfomance of high-value time warps.

Fixes:

• rocket receives incorrect center of mass and could loose control after decoupling parts in some cases;
• if you remove maneuver in the middle of maneuvers chain, following manuvers can become invalid and just disappear, leaving orbit in the incorrect state;
• visible seams on the surface of planets in some places;
• [Control Center] sun light leaks into new buildings at summer;
• sometimes separated parts are positioned incorrectly during rocket explosion;
• [Assembly Shop] connection points are flickering;
• splitted decoupler sometimes explode on deploy;
• payload fairings explode on deploy without any reason;
• forces not applied to the decoupled rocket from docking port;
• context menu appears in the incorrect position when grounded spacecraft is selected;
• contract button stays in hovered state when contract was canceled or completed and the new one was accepted;
• game crashes, when the surface mod editor is loading and the left mouse button is pressed;
• can not scroll camera to Makemake;
• [partial] lens flares could be seen through the planet;
• incorrect space context menu position when you select currently active spacecraft and rotate the camera;
• rocket trigger crash multiple times when time warp enabled and player is in the control center;
• missing some locale strings;
• exception when opened control center launch window and selected rocket were removed before that;
• rare exception when rocket is changing SOI in some strange conditions;
• dark lines in the atmoshpere on a low sun angles and high altitudes;
• rockets that are leaving body’s SOI could accidenetely warp to their sattelites
• Pluto’s sattelites are not hoverable on the map;
• Makemake has no mass;
• splited decoupler receives incorrect positioning after decouple, if it was placed far from rocket origin.