Stick to vertical rockets, KSP

[Bill Phil]

Planes are inherently complex. Even in the real world. Getting good control authority is possible thanks to better ways of building planes, and a very good understanding of their mechanics. Add the physics differences, and it's obvious why planes don't behave like they would in real life. Physics is different, and most KSP players aren't qualified to design flight capable aircraft.

[Azimech]

Talking about examples, you can make very nice stuff, even in stock.

 

These are dummy propellers, they just windmill.

But ... you can design your own engines as well (which isn't easy btw) to drive propellers.

Large slow and heavy but ... the larger and more complex they get, the more they start to behave like real aircraft. At least that's my experience.

This is a stock turboprop: single stage turbine with 6 blowers & 8 turbine blades, cooling system and variable pitch propeller. No mods required.

 

[strider3]

My sincere apologies. I let my aggravation get the better of me. No excuses.

I apologize to everyone...you have all been nothing but helpful and don't deserve to have to read my rants.

[RentedTritium]

It's fine. Everyone gets mad. 

Everything about the game is simplified and approximated into inaccuracy so the the final experience feels right to the players. That means if you know too much you can see the errors. 

But it's ok as long as it has a generally truthy feel to it. 

That said FAR is sweet and the update is going to rule. 

Edited December 6, 2016 by RentedTritium

[Matuchkin]

10 hours ago, Victor3 said:

My sincere apologies. I let my aggravation get the better of me. No excuses.

I apologize to everyone...you have all been nothing but helpful and don't deserve to have to read my rants.

I had something much worse, like, situations in which I was openly insulted by high-ranking members of this community. I'm embarrassed about it to this day.

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Well, planes ARE and afterthought. They "work"... kind of. I'm pretty sure rockets also "work" and have no real comparison to real life rockets... But since none of us flies rockets IRL we can't compare.

I don't have a problem with planes, nice to have if you're into that sort of thing, which I'm not, but hey, options. My beef is/was when plane work started to eat development time with new parts and stuff. Chances are it won't happen again, but who knows. At this point in the game's life cycle I think they should concentrate on rockets and space and call it done IMO.

[KerikBalm]

Yea.... planes started out as a series of 3rd party part mods... back when we had the soup-o-sphere.

People wanted them, so they got put it stock. In 1.0, there was a huge overhaul.... lift actually obeyed the V^2 law.... it was really bad when lift was proportional to airspeed, not the square of airspeed.

Since then, they've made massive strides to make aerodynamics much better,

The stupidly powerful reaction wheels make things seem a bit unrealistic... turn them off. Also, poorly designed planes will fly bad, and its hard ot make a well designed plane out of lego parts.

Also, keep in mind that most flight simulators won't let you get over 60,000 feet (I think, I haven't played a dedicated flight simulator in a long time), this is less than 20km. Since KSP is scaled a bit weird, you can basically treat everything occurring in a flight simulator as occurring below 10km on kerbin.

On top of that we have the mass issue... KSP dV requirements are about 1/3 of real world requirements. The devs decided to make parts pretty darn heavy to sort of balance this a bit. The result is that the planes in KSP are often much heavier than a real life plane with similar dimensions, and inertia can be pretty high. Couple the large amount of mass/inertia with flying in air much much thinner than other flight sims, and you'll have aircraft behavior that is very different from a flight sim.

The rovers don't drive as well as cars in a game dedicated to cars (racing games, GTA, etc), the planes don't fly as well as dedicated flight sims... they don't have to, they just have to be good enough, because the combination gives you amazing freedom.

Its sub simulation is really bad, but this is still fun:

Spoiler

Just getting this to orbit on a rocket is a challenge, getting it to laythe, big challenge:

 

So when someone says that the wheel physics suck, or the plane physics suck, I just think about losing stuff like this, and no, I don't want that:

Spoiler

 

Even without combining planes with deployable rovers, its still fun:

Keep planes... they are fun

[JonathanPerregaux]

I agree there are issues with flight control. Using the Atmosphere Autopilot mod proves the game is capable of providing better control, though, even with marginally unstable aircraft.

That said, I built a speedboat that (accidentally) ended up flying beautifully... (it's a hydrofoil)

Edited December 6, 2016 by JonathanPerregaux

[Scarecrow]

KSP is many things to many people.  Just because you don't like flying planes in KSP, that doesn't mean that no one else does.  Besides, KSP is not primarily a flight simulator, and whilst aircraft may indeed be an afterthought, there's plenty of players more than happy to play it as it is.  If you don't like aircraft in KSP, don't build and fly them.  Simple.

[worir4]

22 hours ago, razark said:

Curiosity prompts me to ask: As a real world pilot, do you use FAR in KSP?

Nah, I have in the past but i like to fly totally crazy designs so i usually stick with stock atmosphere. (I only started flying a couple of months ago, i am no expert)

[sal_vager]

I enjoy planes in KSP, even though they are not "right", I have fun with them just as I do with rockets, even though they are both simplified.

I don't have anything to compare rockets to, so my imagination can more easily fill the gaps, but planes in KSP aren't like in real life, but then again neither are the planes in FSX, or X-Plane, or KSP with FAR.

I'm no pilot, I just pay to go up in Cessna's and Pipers from time to time, and get a chance to hold the yoke, steer a bit, that kind of thing.

You can't reproduce that in a game, it's just a facsimile, there's a reason why real simulators cost so much.

But I still have fun, and when I want to feel what it's like to really fly I go to the airfields and take a ride in the real thing.

And I still have fun in KSP, and in FSX, and in X-Plane, despite them just being games.

[septemberWaves]

KSP's simplified plane simulation is actually pretty great, because it allows people who can't make a realistic plane to have fun making planes anyway. The same goes for its rocketry simulation really (though the rocketry simulation is more similar to reality).

[Azimech]

Yes, building huge, wacky things is something you can do with KSP and then it's not so bad physics are simplified a bit.

Crius,  a seaplane for scooping up splashed planes.

 

One the left the EJ_SA class ASF Alenka aircraft carrier, the only aircraft carrier that can sail, drive and fly.

On the right my Pallas, a seaplane for transporting my 75t. luxury yacht and big & powerful enough to transport 228t. cargo.

 

 

Flying them is easy.

Building them, is not.

 

 

 

Edited December 6, 2016 by Azimech

[flywlyx]

Rockets also suffer from aerodynamics,  take this into ur consideration.