What happened to the SPH design helper?

[zarakon]

I seem to recall reading about some kind of design helper in the SPH that would assist in making planes that could actually fly. I don't see anything like that though. Am I blind, or did this not make it into the release?

edit: I believe it was referred to as a "stability overlay" in the devnotes

Edited April 28, 2015 by zarakon

[locustgate]

.....never heard of it and I can't find anything other than guide videos in google.

Edited April 28, 2015 by locustgate

[Starwhip]

I seem to recall reading about some kind of design helper in the SPH that would assist in making planes that could actually fly. I don't see anything like that though. Am I blind, or did this not make it into the release?

Huh, I remember something about that too... I guess it didn't make it in?

Or it's buried in the Alt+f12 menu somewhere.

[zarakon]

"Stability overlay" I think was the term used in the devnotes

[wolfedg]

Huh, I remember something about that too... I guess it didn't make it in?

Or it's buried in the Alt+f12 menu somewhere.

You're not going crazy. I want to think it was mentioned in a squad cast but it could've been dev notes.

[musicpenguin]

I remember it...

[Kelderek]

While they may have initially planned on having that available for the SPH, they did at least add most of that to the debug menu. There are lots of cool settings you can fool with to see things like thermal, drag, lift properties and more.

[smjjames]

Yeah, they had talked about it in the devnotes a couple times. It's now in the debug menu.

Wonder if they'll say something about it in the Tuesday devnotes?

[Kerano]

Yeah Harvester made a big post about it a few months back:

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/content/325-Overhauled-Aerodynamics

* Spaceplanes are fiddly to design and build

This doesn't concern the realism of the simulation so much as it does the UI around building spaceplanes. At the moment, there isn't enough information displayed to help players intuitively build aircraft that will fly properly and be controllable.

...the plan here is to come up with an improved UI for the SPH, where a more useful overlay will display this information for you in a way which will (hopefully) be clear enough to help you construct a decently stable craft without relying on excessive trial and error.

I guess they decided they didn't need it after all, or else that it was too much work for 1.0.

Edited April 28, 2015 by Kerano

[smjjames]

Or maybe they couldn't get it to a place where they were satisfied with it, but it works enough to put in the debug section.

[CalculusWarrior]

I believe the Overlay may be included in 1.1 with the Delta-v readouts. I can't recall an official source for this, but that's what I remember someone saying.

Otherwise, it's just gone forever. (it's not really necessary, stable planes aren't very hard to make)

[JacobT11]

Probably just another thing that didn't make it into 1.0. Squad had to release it on the 27th come hell or high water. Tier 0 buildings, this, a ton of bugs, probably other stuff too.