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Rotorcraft Suggestion - We need stock swashplates!


Mieszko

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With breaking ground we can finally create stock propeller/rotorcraft. However there are a few oversights that I am sure the developers never meant to make.

1. Single rotor rotorcraft cannot function realistically without a cyclic and collective control. We have the ability to adjust blade angle but it is relatively crude. We do not however have the ability to properly control cyclic. A stock swashplate would solve this issue with a dedicated swashplate part dedicated to each size of rotor available.

2. There is no ability to set predetermined blade angles to a function key, or set a limit on blade angle authority. This means you cannot quickly and easily change your blade pitch to course, fine or feather. It also means doing an auto-gyro landing in a rotorcraft is damn near impossible since you cannot immediately set the blade angle to that predetermined setting.

3. The new turboshaft and turboprop engines do not include generators/alternators. This means no electricity, which I really believe was just forgotten.

4. Because there is no way to "link" or sync (with a ratio) rotor motors and engines to one another you cannot properly create a tail rotor to balance torque force on a rotor craft, or phase sync multi-prop aircraft. This is especially terrible for rotorcraft because you cannot balance out the torque on a single rotor rotorcraft without using counter-rotating rotors or by using an ungodly amount of reaction wheels. You can manually adjust blade angle on the tail rotor but this is extremely cumbersome and makes most realistic rotorcraft damn near impossible to fly.

Thanks for the amazing DLC and I cannot wait to see what you guys do with it. The fan shrouds look awesome but if you devs could please look into these issues I am sure the entire community would love you dearly! Cannot wait for KSP2 by the way :)

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My thoughts:

  1. Strong yes! You could even make it so cyclic is a built-in property of the helicopter blade parts, rather than requiring a separate part. 
  2. Not necessary: you can in fact do this with the KAL. Just set the angle to whatever you want in it, give it a short animation time, and key toggle direction/toggle play on it to an action group. I often put presets like this on my propellercraft, see the Kerbules for example: https://kerbalx.com/Brikoleur/BAK-130-Kerbules
  3. No comment, since I haven't ever used the turboshaft and turboprop but yeah that does sound like an oversight.
  4. In my view this would be better addressed by improved SAS.
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1 minute ago, Curveball Anders said:

Is it possible within the current API to change the pitch of the blades (and have the physics engine catch it) fast enough to keep up with the RPM of the rotor?

Or has there be some kind of "cheat" to make it work?

No, you can't sync the pitch to the phase of the rotor. That's what the swash plate would do. It is possible to make a swash plate that does it -- people have! -- but they're mechanically quite complex and bulky.

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1 minute ago, Brikoleur said:

No, you can't sync the pitch to the phase of the rotor. That's what the swash plate would do. It is possible to make a swash plate that does it -- people have! -- but they're mechanically quite complex and bulky.

Good, so the physics engine can keep up.

I'll see if I can restore my modding environment and check what can be done.

If it's doable as a mod it must be doable in stock.

 

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