Drag calculation question

[Jarin]

Does the angle of a faring nose (or general pointyness of any leading part) contribute to amount of drag? I was under the impression that KSP used the slope of the part model to determine drag amount, but I'm not sure where I read that. How is drag determined?

Related, is there a way to get a detailed readout on drag-per-part? The F12 overlay is great for huge draggy things, but not so great for actually fine-tuning. 

[Rodhern]

I think it was in one of the Developer Tuesday notes that it was mentioned that pointy things would benefit from aero changes in ver. 1.2.

I don't know how to get part forces numbers; if anyone knows that would be great for debugging various issues.

[DrLicor]

In 1.1.3 and below, the drag model was crap. For the realistic drag model you need to install FAR.

However, in 1.2 (as stated above), there is a new drag model, with a new aero system like a more realistic one.

 

[Val]

10 hours ago, Jarin said:

I was under the impression that KSP used the slope of the part model to determine drag amount.

This is correct, since 1.0.

In 1.2 they are tweaking it a little, so pointy things have even less drag and blunt objects have more drag, than in 1.1.3.

But it's not a new aerodynamic system or drag model. It's just a tweak.

 

[fourfa]

23 hours ago, Jarin said:

Related, is there a way to get a detailed readout on drag-per-part? The F12 overlay is great for huge draggy things, but not so great for actually fine-tuning. 

You want the AeroGUI.  Activate it from the Alt-F12 cheat/debug menu.  There's one window for a global aero display, and another for a per-part aero display in that part's right-click menu.  You'll probably want both up.

[Jonfliesgoats]

Can we get drag values for parts in console KSP?  No debug menu is available to me, but I would love to be able to get some data for trajectory planning.

[DrLicor]

http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Atmosphere#Drag

Here are some formula's for drag in ksp. This page was last modified on 5 February 2016, at 02:45. So it's not for 1.2

[bewing]

On 9/30/2016 at 1:06 PM, Jarin said:

Related, is there a way to get a detailed readout on drag-per-part? The F12 overlay is great for huge draggy things, but not so great for actually fine-tuning. 

Go into the debug menu/Physics/Aero and select "display aero data in action menus". Then open the context menu for the part -- it may not work for all parts, but it works for most of them.

One of the numbers displayed is drag for that part. It works for fairings.