[1.3.1] Ferram Aerospace Research: v0.15.9.1 "Liepmann" 4/2/18

[Amram]

Guys just started seeing this documentary, really cool stuff to learn about the world's only passenger super-sonic craft.

not the only one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-144

in fairness though, barely half its 102 scheduled flights(55) had passengers, still, its enough that concorde isn't alone on the list of super sonic passenger aircraft.

[Gfurst]

not the only one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-144

in fairness though, barely half its 102 scheduled flights(55) had passengers, still, its enough that concorde isn't alone on the list of super sonic passenger aircraft.

Ohhhh its soviet, thats why I never heard of it, like they let anything sovietic be famous as well. Cool though.

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Guys... guys... seriously

While tweaking for the KAX mod, finally made a cool Prop plane

(explaining)

The glide ratio still needs a balancing, but as my suspections, less weight, bigger wings = look at that approach speed.

[Ser]

So. Even a ...... can build stuff that works.. It just takes some time and effort but at least I find it worth it and very rewarding.

Share your secret

[mikegarrison]

not the only one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-144

in fairness though, barely half its 102 scheduled flights(55) had passengers, still, its enough that concorde isn't alone on the list of super sonic passenger aircraft.

I know people who flew on a Tu-144. They were doing testing to help design this plane: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Speed_Civil_Transport

[DuxDucisHodiernus]

What is DCPR?

[DuxDucisHodiernus]

Also i have another question. I've been working on a space shuttle, and switched to ferrram the other day(which ended up making me have to redesign it from the ground up)

now, its starting to approach a point of functional. However some parts of the systems with control surfaces confuse me.

Here's my space shuttle.

For some reason, when i increase the amount of pitch movement on the outer control surfaces of my shuttle, my pitching becomes worse and ends up making me not able to even pitch up from the airfield to get airborne. Why is that? (the otuer being the ones next to the two biggest one, not the one furthest out(since i use that for completely dedicated roll control))

edit: also not sure if it means anything at all but maybe should mention that in this pic my control surfaces are in a relatively balanced setup(i think). Not set up in the example where i cannot even take off. Not that it should change anything.

edit: ALSO does anyone have any good tips to make this space shuttle softer to land? It tends to want to fly downwards and it doesnt have control at low speeds and tend to decend a bit fast. Added some flaps previously, but they disrupted the airflow too much (in the way i incorperated it anyways) and made my control surfaces stall. It used to be utter .... at landing but i've improved it somewhat to be at least possible if you're careful with your speed and approach.

Removed the airbrakes as well, since according to the f12 in flight torque screen they added an undue amount of drag even though they were undeployed. So now i use drouge parachutes for landing instead. You can see the airbrakes on this picture with the red lines going from them.

Edited May 15, 2015 by DuxDucisHodiernus

[Ziw]

I've posted a pre-release version 0.21.3 of InfernalRobotics that includes nuFAR compatibility (IR now informs nuFAR of Servo position changes).

You can find it here: https://github.com/MagicSmokeIndustries/InfernalRobotics/releases/tag/0.21.3-rc

[Crzyrndm]

What is DCPR?

DCPR reduces control inputs based on your current speed and altitude so you don't tear your control surfaces off going low and fast but still have full authority at high altitude/low speed.

For some reason, when i increase the amount of pitch movement on the outer control surfaces of my shuttle, my pitching becomes worse and ends up making me not able to even pitch up from the airfield to get airborne. Why is that? (the otuer being the ones next to the two biggest one, not the one furthest out(since i use that for completely dedicated roll control))

You may have stalled the surface (right click on it, if the stalled % is above 0 you get reduced force output) or it may have been shielded from the airflow by something else.

[DuxDucisHodiernus]

DCPR reduces control inputs based on your current speed and altitude so you don't tear your control surfaces off going low and fast but still have full authority at high altitude/low speed.

You may have stalled the surface (right click on it, if the stalled % is above 0 you get reduced force output) or it may have been shielded from the airflow by something else.

No, no stall or nothing. i mean, normally i can pitch up with my plane very quickly after starting my engine, but with the outer control surfaces on higher power it wont pitch up. No stalling.

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I've posted a pre-release version 0.21.3 of InfernalRobotics that includes nuFAR compatibility (IR now informs nuFAR of Servo position changes).

You can find it here: https://github.com/MagicSmokeIndustries/InfernalRobotics/releases/tag/0.21.3-rc

what is nuFAR?

[Ziw]

what is nufar?

far 0.15+

[FourGreenFields]

what is nuFAR?

nuFar is the new FAR, turning the stock aerodynamics into awesomedynamics.

Works different from oldFAR. oldFAR wasnt meant to replace any aerodynamics either, but add them.

Anyway... Am I right to assume your CoM is relatively far back? Maybe the additional lift from the wings at higher AoA doesnt quite make up for the negative lift from the deflected control surfaces? If that is the case, simply place some canards.

Otherwise it has to be a stall I'd say. Either your elevators, or (parts of) your wings.

And if it has bad low speed handling I'd move the CoM closer to the CoL (or other way round). Still needs to be stable ofcourse. That way it'll be less stable, improving your elevator authority.

Or just increase the wing surface/decrease weight.

[DuxDucisHodiernus]

nuFar is the new FAR, turning the stock aerodynamics into awesomedynamics.

Works different from oldFAR. oldFAR wasnt meant to replace any aerodynamics either, but add them.

Anyway... Am I right to assume your CoM is relatively far back? Maybe the additional lift from the wings at higher AoA doesnt quite make up for the negative lift from the deflected control surfaces? If that is the case, simply place some canards.

Otherwise it has to be a stall I'd say. Either your elevators, or (parts of) your wings.

And if it has bad low speed handling I'd move the CoM closer to the CoL (or other way round). Still needs to be stable ofcourse. That way it'll be less stable, improving your elevator authority.

Or just increase the wing surface/decrease weight.

Yeah its center of gravity is far back, since these wings cannot hold rocketfuel like much of IRL space shuttle did, so i put the cargo in front and the fuel stuff in the back with the engine(to ensure a relatively consistent center of mass)(if the fuel tanks were at the front, the center of gravity could change by a problematic amount as i run out of fuel.)

[tetryds]

Just a last reminder for everybody:

Please, keep sharing your crafts to the Official FAR Craft Repository.

From now on, I will start moving any post which contains crafts that are simply being shown off to that thread, regardless of what else is on the post.

So, if you are not asking for help, trying to show a bug or something else that is very relevant to the discussion about the mod, you are not adding anything the discussion on this topic posting your stuff here.

[DuxDucisHodiernus]

My shuttle airbrakes don't work half the time for some reason.

Here

(Red arrows are drag) as you see in this picture here the airbrakes refuse to provide any drag/braking. No difference acceleration/deacceleration is noted either.

When it works, it looks like this(and deacceleration is clearly noticed).

For being such a highly regarded mod it has some regular issues with drag/aerodynamics that vanilla doesn't have that are pretty bad. Anyone knows why it does this? An airbrake that just works half the time(and at complete random) is no use.

edit2: it just frustrates me so much to have worked on this junk so long to work with ferram and it turns out ferram randomly refuses to give a .... about smaller aerodynamic surfaces vital to my shuttle, surfaces that would have worked with vanilla with its allegedly less precise and discerning stock aerodynamics.

edit3: Increased voxelcount to 400000, not sure if it should help. It didn't make my airbrakes work consistently yet.

lifting my gears up and then switching the airbrakes on and off again seem to make it work some of the time. Still, this is far from fixed for me. Does anyone have any ideas why this happens and how to fix/avoid it? Besides me wanting everything to work relatively realistically, lifting my gears up doesnt work as a good solution since i like to use the airbrakes when landing.

Edited May 15, 2015 by DuxDucisHodiernus

[DianonForce]

One question, i dont know if this is a bug and if it is form far. I have an interstage fairing wich protect some antenas and solarpanels. When i jetison the fairing in atmosphere the solarpanael are extendable, if i jetison the fairings in space KSP tell me that the solarpanels are stowed. Do i somthing wrong?

EDIT:

OK it's a Far Bug, i make a fresh install. In stock, jetisen the fairings in space the solarpannels are extendable. With FAR, jetison the farings ins space make the solarpanel stowed.

Edited May 15, 2015 by DianonForce

[BigNose]

My shuttle airbrakes don't work half the time for some reason.

Here

http://i.imgur.com/jnx8WUR.jpg

(Red arrows are drag) as you see in this picture here the airbrakes refuse to provide any drag/braking. No difference acceleration/deacceleration is noted either.

When it works, it looks like this(and deacceleration is clearly noticed).

http://i.imgur.com/E1CIGl9.jpg

For being such a highly regarded mod it has some regular issues with drag/aerodynamics that vanilla doesn't have that are pretty bad. Anyone knows why it does this? An airbrake that just works half the time(and at complete random) is no use.

edit: anyone?

edit2: it just frustrates me so much to have worked on this junk so long to work with ferram and it turns out ferram randomly refuses to give a .... about smaller aerodynamic surfaces vital to my shuttle, surfaces that would have worked with vanilla with its allegedly less precise and discerning stock aerodynamics.

Dude, you posted this at 16:10, then edited "anyone?" very shortly after and edited it again at 16:35 about how frustrated you are. Man. 25 minutes and you already needed to show how impatient you are twice? Really?

Now regarding your problem: I have similar airbrakes on many of my craft, and they all work flawlessly and 100% reliably (well, if they don't rip off over Mach 2, that is). My first thought was that they are somehow shielded by the cargo bay, but they are behind it, so that shouldn't be the problem. I can suspect a problem with the update of the voxel model of your vessel, as if it doesn't get notified about the extension of the airbrakes. Try to download the lastest Dev build on Github (I use it too), ferram4 mentioned he had "removed the very last voxelization artifacts", so maybe that helps:

https://github.com/ferram4/Ferram-Aerospace-Research/archive/master.zip

[DuxDucisHodiernus]

Dude, you posted this at 16:10, then edited "anyone?" very shortly after and edited it again at 16:35 about how frustrated you are. Man. 25 minutes and you already needed to show how impatient you are twice? Really?

Yes, really. I don't see why me being impatient at the moment is any real issue though. It's not like i made multiple posts

Now regarding your problem: I have similar airbrakes on many of my craft, and they all work flawlessly and 100% reliably (well, if they don't rip off over Mach 2, that is). My first thought was that they are somehow shielded by the cargo bay, but they are behind it, so that shouldn't be the problem. I can suspect a problem with the update of the voxel model of your vessel, as if it doesn't get notified about the extension of the airbrakes. Try to download the lastest Dev build on Github (I use it too), ferram4 mentioned he had "removed the very last voxelization artifacts", so maybe that helps:

https://github.com/ferram4/Ferram-Aerospace-Research/archive/master.zip

I will try checking that out, thanks.

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Nope still doesn't work with my gears deployed. I think its due to flawed "moderate area drag" smoothing(which afaik only applies in subsonic speeds, so if your crafts are mostly supersonic you wouldnt have this issue afaik) or whatever its called. In any case, that stuff should probably skip control surfaces.

[Shnyrik]

I think there still are some CoL problems in FAR v0.15.1. For example, I build a simple arrowlike rocket with large winglets at the tail. But FAR decides that it is aerodynamically unstable.

[futrtrubl]

I think there still are some CoL problems in FAR v0.15.1. For example, I build a simple arrowlike rocket with large winglets at the tail. But FAR decides that it is aerodynamically unstable.

http://s43.radikal.ru/i101/1505/14/9533a6e31df4.jpg

Is it actually aerodynamically unstable or are you just basing that on the visual CoL point? Ferram has said that he hates the CoL and is considering removing it entirely and that you should instead use the stability derivatives and Cm graph slope.

[Shnyrik]

Is it actually aerodynamically unstable or are you just basing that on the visual CoL point?

No, I just show that CoL point as a good visual example. And yes, in stock + FAR this simplest rocket actualiy _is unstable_, FAR tries to turn it tail first, which is strange and which never happened in previous versions (I mean oldFAR).

Edited May 15, 2015 by Shnyrik

[Svm420]

I think there still are some CoL problems in FAR v0.15.1. For example, I build a simple arrowlike rocket with large winglets at the tail. But FAR decides that it is aerodynamically unstable.

IT IS NOT Center of Lift with FAR. It is Center of Pressure. They are not the same. Check the graphs and other tool he provides you not the stupid little ball if you are looking for stability readouts. If all you want it simple building maybe FAR isn't for you.

[ferram4]

@DuxDucisHodiernus: Considering that this craft is obviously such horrible issues, maybe you could post the craft file so I can diagnose it. Obviously, something is wrong, but without the actual test case I can't do anything.

Now, I think what might be happening is that the voxel isn't properly recognizing that that particular surface is actually on the outside, but until you post the craft, all I can do is guess.

And finally, the drag settings only affect transonic and supersonic speeds, and don't do jack to control surfaces. So no, it's not that.

@DianonForce: An issue related to this was fixed with Fanno. You are running Fanno, correct?

@Shnyrik: That is because oldFAR didn't recognize just how blunt and draggy the front of that rocket is. Also, the fins on the second stage make it much, much worse.

CoL issues are only related to the CoL displaying where it shouldn't be. AFAICT, you've got a very tail-heavy rocket with a really draggy front end. Of course it's gonna flip.

[Amram]

For being such a highly regarded mod it has some regular issues with drag/aerodynamics that vanilla doesn't have that are pretty bad.

maybe because it does many things stock doesn't even consider, and while its at it, ferram ripped its guts out for this version and replaced it with something vastly superior to both stock and previous versions.....of course its going to have issues. Its damned near a 1.0 release of a new mode this update was so significant. Thats a big part of why it took as long as it did after the update, and why it still has teething problems, find me a 1.0 release for something this complex that didn't have issues.

Stock started with not even knowing how drag worked..... to still not really knowing how drag works. Far has issues because it's not running full fluid dynamics, be happy, it wouldn't be a slide show, it'd be a picture frame that might update hourly if your machine is powerful. Approximations have costs, usually in the form of things they ignore, and sometimes you have to build those things in a less intensive manner, which means improperly, but close enough, and that means more edge cases. Edge cases mean problems, and look what we have here....

And be patient, impatience doesn't get you an answer faster, we are here to post or we are not, your editing in anyone? doesn't coerce us to sign in any sooner, check this thread, and answer it. Its simply wasted, sometimes grating, at worst annoying.

[Shnyrik]

the fins on the second stage make it much, much worse

They were supposed to make the second stage stable after separation

That is because oldFAR didn't recognize just how blunt and draggy the front of that rocket is. AFAICT, you've got a very tail-heavy rocket with a really draggy front end. Of course it's gonna flip.

Thanks.

[blowfish]

They were supposed to make the second stage stable after separation

They don't have to go away - you just need to either put more/bigger fins on the first stage and make the top less draggy (smoother and pointier).