Flaps

[Jumpyyoza]

As stated in the title, I feel that flaps would be a good addition to the game. Not flaps as in control surfaces but flaps as in these things:

As far as I know, no mods to add flaps exist, I'm no modeller/artist/programmer so if somebody can make these that would be great. I have a feeling it would make a lot of peoples lives easier when it comes to take-off and landing, after all, that is what they're designed for, isn't it?

Edited July 4, 2015 by Jumpyyoza

[RainDreamer]

Hmm...I thought B9 has some, but it has been a while.

[SchweinAero]

Isn't there an option to make any control surface function as a flap? Click the State button in the part's right-click menu.

[Javster]

Isn't there an option to make any control surface function as a flap? Click the State button in the part's right-click menu.

Correct, and you can use action groups

[Jumpyyoza]

Great, thank you. I'll try it out tomorrow

[Jumpyyoza]

Turns out, when it says 'change state', it means that it will move to the position it would be in if you pitched up normally on the keyboard so not exactly what I'm looking for but thanks anyway

[Alshain]

Isn't there an option to make any control surface function as a flap? Click the State button in the part's right-click menu.

There is in FAR, it has 4 position flaps. There is a weak version of this in Stock that allows full or no deployment, which is actually closer to spoilers. There is however no mod that adds flaps without changing the aerodynamics.

OP: If someone took the portion of the FAR code that creates the flap functionality and added it to stock without changing the aerodynamics that would be ideal, according to a comment by Maxmaps a few months ago (pre release) it should "just work" as far as interacting with the stock aerodynamics, hopefully that hasn't changed. You might even ask ferram4 if he would be willing. If he is not, it's GNU licensed so I might give it a shot for you.

Edited July 10, 2015 by Alshain

[Jumpyyoza]

OP: If someone took the portion of the FAR code that creates the flap functionality and added it to stock without changing the aerodynamics that would be ideal, according to a comment by Maxmaps a few months ago (pre release) it should "just work" as far as interacting with the stock aerodynamics, hopefully that hasn't changed. You might even ask ferram4 if he would be willing. If he is not, it's GNU licensed so I might give it a shot for you.

Well, I know nothing about programming/modding and so if you could give it a shot, that would be great. If not I'll just ask ferram4 about it as you suggested.

[Captain H@dock]

For the record, I've played a bit with using control surfaces as flaps in stock 1.0.4, and you can get significant results, especially if you are putting them in pairs or slats/flaps. Better results are observed when placing them close to the CoG (on the longitudinal axis). Sink the Slat in the leading edge for better results. Most impressive results are with really really heavy planes powered by those weak jets (think 100 tons mk3 planes with airliner wing).

Properly simulated consequences are:

• Higher lift for the same speed (aka, lower take-off and landing speed). (also means you can break your wing by deploying them above the safe speed)
  
• Higher lift for the same AoA (aka, level flight possible at much lower approach speeds, and less rotation needed for take-off)
  
• Higher drag when deployed
  
• Instant 'KSP stall' when retracting the flaps while flying too slow for a clean wing configuration.
  
• Ballooning effect induced by flap deployment
  

Caveats:

• Sunk slats/flaps will still produce lift with AOA, which means they will increase your wing area when then shouldn't.
  
• sunk slats/flaps will still produce drag with speed, which means adding flaps to your design will probably reduce a bit the aircraft high speed performance.
  
• You can't 'stage' flaps (unlike the picture above, no double slot system) since control surfaces attached to another control surface don't move when the parent control surface does. [1]
  

[1] All objects display the same behaviour. Which is really weird visually, and quite a shame when trying to do multi-positions flaps. However you can have several flaps along the wing and have them bound to different action groups. This way you have the desired intermediate lift/drag configurations.

I could provide pictures if someone is interested.