Does KSP simulate the the Magnus effect?

[Drugged Plumber]

I was wondering if KSP simulates the Magnus effect, If you don't know what it is click here.

[technicalfool]

Short answer: No.

Long answer: @ferram4 what's your mod up to these days?

[regex]

In stock KSP no special aerodynamic effects are simulated. You don't even need to worry about area-ruling your SSTO speisplain.

I know for a fact that FAR doesn't simulate WiG effects so I would doubt if it did something like the Magnus effect, which is a fairly specialized sort of simulation.

[Human Person]

Let's find out! Can't be too tricky to test in KSP.

[regex]

3 minutes ago, Physics Student said:

Let's find out!

I always wonder why people don't just build the thing anyway. So what if KSP doesn't simulate the Magnus effect, it's not like it's hard to make things fly in stock to begin with.

[NSEP]

No. These things are the kind of effects are not really neccesary, especially videogames. If you want realistic aerodynamics then i recommend using some kind of flight simulator or maybe getting acces to a wind tunnel or something.

[Gargamel]

Think the game is laggy now? Just wait till it starts simulating boundary layer flow over every surface in an atmosphere....  NASA uses supercomputers for that type of work. 

I guess a gross simulation of the magnus effect might be doable, like how lift isn't actually simulated, just calculated (Or vice versa, whatever).  But it'd be completely pointless, there is little to no use for it in the game.  Of course, other things in KSP being pointless hasn't stopped anybody yet.  

[Archgeek]

On 7/17/2017 at 0:32 PM, Gargamel said:

Think the game is laggy now? Just wait till it starts simulating boundary layer flow over every surface in an atmosphere.... 

Unbounded Navier-Stokes calculations.  For every surface.  *dashes off into the hills, gibbering*

[Curveball Anders]

On 2017-07-17 at 7:26 PM, NSEP said:

No. These things are the kind of effects are not really neccesary, especially videogames. If you want realistic aerodynamics then i recommend using some kind of flight simulator or maybe getting acces to a wind tunnel or something.

X-Plane

Which is why I stick to ballistic rockets in KSP

[Moach]

in games, this kind of effect is VERY rarely ever really needed in the sense of a full technical implementation...

such as you say, the magnus effect - very curious concept, how a spinning object will deflect air and generate lift from this rotation - now KSP does not model this, in vanilla form... mostly because - it's not necessarily necessary that it does....

 

one might argue, in and rather extreme and outright bizarre use case proposition, however:   well, what if I wanna take an empty fuel tank, and spin it around through the air, and make a vehicle out out THAT? (effortfully ignoring the obvious question "why?!") -- does this not make it so that such dynamics would then be lacking?

well, yes - i.e. a mod would be needed...

but also, no - i.e. the full dynamics behind the effect are not actually needed to achieve this...   

 

because, see, simulating every last particle of air in the space around the craft would create somewhat "undesirable" performance issues

this may cause a bit of frustration among users who do not acquire their computers by means of time travel imports from the quantum-powered future (peasants, bah)

 

 

a simpler,  more practical representation could be obtained much more cheaply...

 

if we figure a cross product vector (a direction perpendicular to two given others) - assuming one vector is the object's velocity, and the second one is the axis^(world) in which it's spinning (namely the length end of a cylinder), multiplied by it's angular speed as and an adjustment factor... 

...the result of this operation would be the lift vector, (might require some fiddling with the signs, tho) - and this could simply be applied as a central force upon this rotating body...  for whatever gains one may expect out of endangering Kerbal lives in such a way

this would of course, require fine-tweaking of parameters to correctly approximate the scale of the resulting effects - but it's still substantially simpler than achieving it by "brute force" 

 

so, that's what could be done by <insert mod volunteers here>

thus the magnus effect can be "factored in", rather than "supported by" the (modded) game - this is the difference between a "simulator" and an "emulator", respectively

Edited July 19, 2017 by Moach

[Confused Scientist]

If your question is "Does KSP simulate (insert complicated thing most people have never heard of)" then your answer is no. Sorry. However, if you want to put Jeb in a rocket and get it spinning to see what happens, be my guest.

[Moach]

26 minutes ago, Confused Scientist said:

If your question is "Does KSP simulate (insert complicated thing most people have never heard of)" then your answer is no. Sorry. However, if you want to put Jeb in a rocket and get it spinning to see what happens, be my guest.

...to be fair - the answer is more usually "not yet"

if there's really a need for it - somebody's bound to make a mod... and if nobody starts it, one may always go and learn to make it himself 

remember that all addons for KSP must be open-source when published, so it's very easy to take something for a starting base, and use that as a learning tool as you go about making it into whatever you have envisioned - just mind the licenses and give ppl proper credit (which is most often all they ask)

 

Edited July 19, 2017 by Moach

[Kerbinchaser]

On 7/17/2017 at 8:34 AM, Drugged Plumber said:

I was wondering if KSP simulates the Magnus effect, If you don't know what it is click here.

I wish.

[KerBlitz Kerman]

1 hour ago, Confused Scientist said:

If your question is "Does KSP simulate (insert complicated thing most people have never heard of)" then your answer is no. Sorry. However, if you want to put Jeb in a rocket and get it spinning to see what happens, be my guest.

With some people Jeb has fallen out of style... 

 

[regex]

3 hours ago, Moach said:

remember that all addons for KSP must be open-source when published

No, they don't, they need to be source-visible. There's a big difference there. You can't just go taking people's mod code and doing whatever you want with it, you need to play by the rules that the content creator has set out.

3 hours ago, Moach said:

just mind the licenses

Yes, mind the licenses, some of which don't allow you to do what you're telling people to do.