Thought on Fairings

[Matuchkin]

Is it possible to create procedural fairings that have non-circular cross sections? If so, how feasible is it to have fairings which alter their cross section throughout their length?

Why am I asking? Picture this: You create the internal skeleton of an aircraft out of structural girders and i-beams, place small fuel tanks, SAS systems, science, etc (even weapon storage) into this skeleton. Then, all you have to do is place a modded "fuselage nosecone" on the nose of your aircraft, and a structural fairing is stretched over your aircraft skeleton, creating a fuselage with a distinct shape and making your aircraft a bit more realistic and less made of digital Lego. This can also be applied to space vehicles such as landers.

[Titandesdieu]

seems like a goos idea but I think that the game physics did not allow that because I think it will to much demanding on the computer performance

[Shadowmage]

On 1/16/2018 at 10:20 AM, Matuchkin said:

Is it possible to create procedural fairings that have non-circular cross sections?

Stock? No.

Modded?  Sure.  Tons of code.

The real problem is -- it won't work well for an aircraft body because KSP depends on the lego setup in order to derive the aircraft lift/drag properties.  It doesn't do any real vehicle analysis like you might thinkl; rather it just sums up the precomputed 'drag-cubes' for the parts, taking into account their position and orientation (and occlusion for stack-mounted parts), and applies however much drag the drag cube specifies for that setup.

Single part fuselage = single drag cube = no dynamics = going to fly weird, if at all.

 

Would it work?  Sure.  Would it work well?  No.