Wind Tunnel

[Domus Ulixes]

Hello All,

More and more frequent I have problems with developing spacecraft for extrakerbestrial atmospheres. To minimize the weight I like to keep my probes and craft to a minimum with proper weight distribution. However the atmosphere's and gravitational pulls on other planets make testing things sometimes hard. I cannot develop something, send it to eve, only to discover that once there it cannot make the liftoff, of that my angle of re-entry is either too high, or too low. Especially spaceplanes really need the ability to model/simulate in a windtunnel to see how they will behave.

I'd say that a good and realistic addition to Kerbal would be a wind-tunnel, alike actual aerospace uses all the time. It would be a new building which can simulate physics depending on size of the craft and atmosphere's etc. Maybe some manual constraints, but preferably pre-set conditions of atmosphere's. An additional function could be that you would need to have atmospheric data and temperature first before you can simulate a planet (from a probe or something)

Either way, it would be a great help to my missions.

[Tex_NL]

 

[Gaarst]

A wind tunnel to simulate missions in a game where you can create as many saves as you want, some of which with unlimited resources, have a cheats menu available, the ability to teleport wherever you want and can literally revert time?

I'd say it's not necessary.

[p1t1o]

On 2/25/2017 at 2:48 PM, Gaarst said:

A wind tunnel to simulate missions in a game where you can create as many saves as you want, some of which with unlimited resources, have a cheats menu available, the ability to teleport wherever you want and can literally revert time?

I'd say it's not necessary.

So neither are the map, manouvre nodes, colour, 3d graphics etc. KSP could entirely be played by watching numbers change on a spreadsheet.

None of this is *necessary*

This isn't the "Suggest only the absolute necessities" thread!

***

It would take time and many, many clicks to first leave your career save, load up another save (sandbox, unlimited resources, cheat mods/modes enabled) build your craft, cheat it over to your target, design/re-design your craft, exit sandbox save, load career save, import the craft file you just finished, and then fly the mission only to fail and require another round of all of that.

Far better (quicker, more intuitively useful to the design process, more immersive, and potentially more educational) to be able to click a button in the editor to load your current craft into some sim environment that will show you what will happen when you do different stuff.

At the very least, it will simulate a real part of an aerospace design process. Plus, as we all know, there is already a wind tunnel at the KSC...

[Domus Ulixes]

3 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

So neither are the map, manouvre nodes, colour, 3d graphics etc. KSP could entirely be played by watching numbers change on a spreadsheet.

None of this is *necessary*

This isn't the "Suggest only the absolute necessities" thread!

***

 

At the very least, it will simulate a real part of an aerospace design process. Plus, as we all know, there is already a wind tunnel at the KSC...

My point exactly. Eventually I want to be able to play this game realistically without the need to cheat my way through editing savegames out of bare necessity.

I've spend 2 weeks doing this testing different prototypes trying to get off of planets alike Eve, only to go back to the drawing boards again and again and again. It wasn't even fun anymore. The need to be able to test your crafts is dire, and highly useful for the experience. I'm quite sure it will also lead to better and more realistic design experience.