Returning player struggling with aircraft taxing straight in 1.1.2

[Major SNAFU]

Hi all,

 

My issue is getting aircraft to taxi straight and also to proceed down a runway without having to resort to constant corrections which eventually lead to a departure from controlled progress down the runway.

I do not use FAR or Firespitter or B9.

I never had this problem with building aircraft in 1.0.4 and getting them to taxi and proceed in a straight line.  10s of craft I designed didn't have this problem.

I have sat and fiddled with rotation of parts, etc. for hours and no matter what I tweek or adjust, the A/C always starts to turn to the left or right (a few degrees) which becomes exacerbated as the craft accelerates.  Attempting to make corrective steering always leads to a crash.

I am running our of ideas.  I have strengthen the struts, increased the damping, locked the nose steering (which just means that i cannot correct the inherent drift. 

The craft all act like the nose wheel is just a few degrees off true, but as far as I can tell, through many iterations, I cannot find the actual zero degree to the center line of the craft.

I will also note that carts, buggys, rovers, etc. that I have built do not have this problem, regardless of if they are three, four or more wheeled constructs.  So i know I am able to get the wheels aligned and straight.  It is only aircraft that exhibit this problem.

 

Please let me here your suggestions.

 

 

Edited June 16, 2016 by Major SNAFU

[Grenartia]

I've had this same problem, except also with rovers.

[DChurchill]

Yeah, there's an issue with wheels. Hopefully fixed in 1.1.3. It's a problem in Unity I believe.

[Alshain]

There is indeed an issue with 1.1.2 and wheels, it's pretty well known.  Unfortunately it will not be fixed until at least 2 more versions have been released (1.2)

[legoclone09]

Yep, wheels are pretty much broken. I can't even fly my planes that worked fine earlier, especially early-career ones.

[JWS]

I'm currently using FAR and bunch of other mods. So it might not be a fundamental solution, but in my case, tweaking each gear's 'Friction' value solved the problem.

First, set all gear's friction control to 'Override'. And second, set each gear's friction value somewhere between 2 and 3.

What's important is that always set real gears' friction value higher that that of nose gear. I usually set them 1~2. It will prevent tail-drift when you attempt to turn your plane on the ground.

Also, be careful not to set those values too high. Too much friction will cause your plane to flip, instead of turning.

 

[G'th]

Some helpful tips:

1. Forget the non-retractable wheels exist, don't fly until T3 runway.

2. Use the right wheels for the expected weight, and don't be afraid to throw in more wheels. 

3. Lock steering across the board (if using the small/medium wheels), make sure you're rudders are adequate for your craft. With the in-ability to limit the steering authority, you'll be hard pressed to get steering to not throw you off course. THere is a point where it isn't stupid, but its a very fine line and depends on the mass the wheel is carrying and where its placed. With good rudders, you shouldn't need wheel steering anyway.

4. Forget landing is a thing unless you have both a joystick and time to spend creating a plane that can slow itself down to sub 70m/s and still maintain glideslope. Use parachutes instead.

5. Don't attach rear wheels directly to wings. Instead, attach them to your fuselage and then offset them. This will prevent wing flexing (thats caused by your wheels anyway) which can also contribute to you running off the runway. It will look strange if you lose a wing, but at that point looks shouldn't matter.

6. Use the friction override. Rear wheels should be higher than nose wheels.

7. Don't be afraid to just drop wheels altogether. On the shuttle type craft I've been toying with lately, I don't use wheels, one because they're useless on landing anyway, and also because they just look bad when attached to a heat-shielded underbelly. Instead, I use the Space X legs tweakscaled down as landing skids. Looks neat and doesn't stick out on the heatshielding. 

 

 

[Znath]

The hope is 1.1.3  or, as I'd like to call it, 1.1.1.1.1 fixes it

Otherwise, it's basically "don't use things with wheels for a while" since landing gear barely work and rover wheels are made of plastic now.  It's kind of ruined my game experience for a while, but they'll get it working I'm sure.....

[Overland]

Dial back all dampening and suspension..or try full rock hard suspension with no dampening

 

The above both work on land trains perfectly.. Anything with dampening brings the kraken

[Rocket In My Pocket]

I haven't had any issues flying/landing planes both large and small.

I don't tweak any of the wheel settings or build my planes any differently than I did in prior versions.

Something tells me this is a bug that only affects certain computers/setups. Seems like half the people who play KSP can't use wheels at all and the other half are perfectly fine.

[Snark]

10 hours ago, legoclone09 said:

Yep, wheels are pretty much broken. I can't even fly my planes that worked fine earlier, especially early-career ones.

Be careful about saying "they're broken" unless you can supply specifics.  The mere fact that "this plane worked and now it doesn't" does not necessarily mean there's a bug:  the rules have changed, and plane designs have to change accordingly.

There are two kinds of issues that people run into:

1. Actual genuine bugs (for example, due to Unity problems).
2. Problems with aircraft that happen because the rules have changed but your design hasn't.

I've seen a lot of threads from people who are complaining that they've been bitten by #1... but when pressed for screenshots etc., it turns out that actually there's no problem with the game at all, and they're really #2-- usually because they haven't realized that gear isn't infinitely strong anymore, so you need a lot more of it than you used to.  A 20-ton plane can't just sit on three tiny gear anymore.

3 hours ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

I haven't had any issues flying/landing planes both large and small.

I don't tweak any of the wheel settings or build my planes any differently than I did in prior versions.

Something tells me this is a bug that only affects certain computers/setups. Seems like half the people who play KSP can't use wheels at all and the other half are perfectly fine.

I seriously doubt it's a computer/setup issue.  Much more likely is that it has to do with play style.  For example, I also haven't had any problem whatsoever with the landing gear, at least not once I got the memo and realized that "gear can only handle finite stress" and "size matters".  I just put bigger gear on my planes and they were fine.  But then, I'm not really an airplane guy, and the few planes that I fly tend to be small and lightweight, so it may be that I run into fewer issues that way.

To the OP:  I'd say the same thing that I say to anyone with a "why won't this work" problem:  post a screenshot of your airplane, please, and include the relevant statistics (including, vitally, how much does it weigh).

As for the recommended solutions that folks have mentioned:  another one to do is to make sure that the wheels are perfectly aligned, by turning on "absolute snap" mode in the editor.  Without doing that, then depending on where you're mounting the gear, there could be a tiny alignment error that's invisible to you but causes problems in practice.

[Gojira1000]

If I get wiggle I go to heavier gear and, poof, problems largely gone. Try going up to the next size of gear, or add more.

[klesh]

3 hours ago, Rocket In My Pocket said:

I haven't had any issues flying/landing planes both large and small.

I don't tweak any of the wheel settings or build my planes any differently than I did in prior versions.

Something tells me this is a bug that only affects certain computers/setups. Seems like half the people who play KSP can't use wheels at all and the other half are perfectly fine.

Same. I dont really use the non retractable gears much, but I've been fling and landing everything from shuttles to huge cargo planes without much issue at all.  

No tweaks to the wheels other than 150% breaks in the back, and no steering.  The usual steering and normal breaks for the front gear.  

Heck, I even loaded up BDArmory and have been flying around rediculously overloaded planes, taking off and landing with no unusual behaviour.  

I use a kb and mouse, on a terrible laptop with onboard graphics. 

[Ozymandias_the_Goat]

could a moderator move this to gameplay questions and tutorials section please? Would fit better there.

[Major SNAFU]

Thanks for all of the feedback and ideas.

I am considering everything said. 

 

The one point I would like to make to those you said use heavier gear.  When you are in career mode (which is the only way I have ever played KSP) then you only have what you have and you have to make it work to satisfy the contracts to make the money to get to the next levels.  So right now the airplane contracts are pretty useless to me since I am having problems getting the aircraft to take off.

I have to figure out how to use absolute snap again.  I probably knew at one point - but no longer.

 

[Rocket In My Pocket]

On the off chance that it's something simple and silly...

Have you tried resetting the trim? (Alt+ X) Perhaps you accidentally trimmed the yaw?

Do you have any controllers plugged in? They could be sending unwanted signals to the game.

[Major SNAFU]

I didn't alter the trim and II have no other controllers attached.

 

[Rocket In My Pocket]

1 minute ago, Major SNAFU said:

I didn't alter the trim and II have no other controllers attached.

Alright, I figured it was worth mentioning, It's certainly happened to me before!

A picture of an example aircraft that you made that suffers from this problem would be really helpful.

As someone else stated above, make sure all the gear is attached to the body of the aircraft and not the wings, the wings tend to flex at the joint and cause problems. Best of luck!

[SickSix]

Well I guess it's a bit of a consolation to see that it isn't just me. I was thinking about getting a modded Tech Tree with horizontal flight first but screw that. If wheels are borked what's the point?

[Snark]

Moving to Gameplay Questions, since at this point it's clear this is a "why won't this work?" thread.  (Hesitated to do that earlier, since it was possible this could morph into a "design discussion about landing gear and bugs", which would belong in KSP Discussion.)

1 hour ago, Major SNAFU said:

The one point I would like to make to those you said use heavier gear.  When you are in career mode (which is the only way I have ever played KSP) then you only have what you have and you have to make it work to satisfy the contracts to make the money to get to the next levels.  So right now the airplane contracts are pretty useless to me since I am having problems getting the aircraft to take off.

Again, it helps to give specific details.  If you don't have the tech for the bigger gear, and your aircraft is too heavy for the smaller gear, then the simple and obvious answer is "make your aircraft smaller and lighter so that the smaller gear are big enough."  However, without seeing a screenshot of your craft, or knowing what the actual contract is, then it's hard to say whether that's an option.

It's also worth noting that gear stress is affected not just by how big they are, but also how many of them you have, and also how they're placed on the craft.  You might be able to make your problems better by putting more of the small gear on, or rearranging them on the plane.  Again... need screenshots to be able to give advice there.

1 hour ago, Major SNAFU said:

I have to figure out how to use absolute snap again.  I probably knew at one point - but no longer.

Put the editor into "rotate widget" mode and select a part to rotate.  Then you can press the F key to toggle back and forth between absolute snap and local snap.  Once you've got absolute snap turned on, the state persists until you leave the editor (or toggle it again).

48 minutes ago, SickSix said:

Well I guess it's a bit of a consolation to see that it isn't just me. I was thinking about getting a modded Tech Tree with horizontal flight first but screw that. If wheels are borked what's the point?

The point is that the wheels might not actually be borked-- it might be a problem with your craft design.  But there's no way to know which it is without seeing a screenshot.

[bewing]

You said you have struts, and I have a bug report proving that struts can sometimes cause veering (but I haven't filed it yet).

I fly planes a lot, and while there is a small issue with airplane wheels, I think they work pretty well, if you just tweak them a little.

Try reducing the friction on your front wheel to .2 to .4 -- you may be surprised at how much this helps. You can also try increasing the friction on the back wheels to 1.3 or so. A little extra drag at the back keeps things going straight, you know.

[Overland]

Friction is not what it sounds like in my experience, dampening also doesnt do what I think it means

 

Firstly suspension..

 Set it either rock hard full or as low as itd go depending on the wheels..find the right one here first

Dampening...please just slide this useless thing off..Itll hurt you and demoralise you dearly like it did with me..

friction in the KSP universe doesnt seem to mean traction/friction nor does it slow anything down...

 

The BEST way to describe it is a ships rudder in water

0 friction will be like driving a boat with a rudder broken off.. Youll spin..slosh around hopelessly.. As if your on ice too while full friction would be like driving a ship with a massively oversized rudder.. At the mercy of any waves that would rip the boat in that direction as the boat pointed another way even slightly..

 

Consider full friction to be invisible guide rails..

If your plane happens to flex even slightly one direction..everything goes there..if you turn the wheel..then your craft will follow it exactly 1:1 where the wheels pointed..

So find a safe middle ground..high enough not to slip but low enough.not to mean any change even tiny changes the course

 

My experience?

I play KSP 100% with wheels..im a KSP land train driver..ive seen it all

 

Its not as broken as some think..its just labeled wrong

Eg

 

Locomotive wheels are set at 2.3 friction at front.. 1.5 for drive wheels (for following authority)

And around 1.2 for the train with some changes on the last wheel set

 

NO dampening.

Max suspension

Edited June 17, 2016 by Overland

[ForScience6686]

I stayed away since the big update due to all the problems I heard people having, and then a failed video card.  Well I jumped in yesterday and everything was normal.  Was surprised to find only one of my interplanetary ships was reduced to one part...  So I started with planes to see if I was experiencing the same issues.  Everything worked fine for me.  All my new builds took off and landed just fine, even taxing was improved.  It makes me wonder if these reported problems are due in part to how people are designing, using, and adjusting them.  

Just like the supposed fairing issues people had, I hate to be that guy, but it all works fine for me without adjusting friction or using unorthodox methods.  Remember how we all had to relearn ascents and reentry?  Maybe we need to revisit proper gear usage and placement.  Spring strength and dampening worked as expected for me.  I'd like to see craft that people are having these issues with.