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

[Van Disaster]

I'm also noticing I'm getting flameouts with 150%+ Air Req, but I'll have to investigate that a bit more I think.

[ferram4]

@Climberfx: It works perfectly fine; it stays at about 20 degrees off of retrograde until it drops below Mach 1, at which point it goes retrograde. I made some changes to the lifting characteristics of blunt objects this update, that might have fixed it.

@pwnedbyscope: The CoL issue is a known bug (see my post regarding the latest update) and is acknowledged in the readme. The second issue is likely that your CoL is too far behind the CoM. Put the wings a little further forward than they currently are and everything should work out fine.

@Van Disaster: It might be getting partial flameouts; the engine doesn't completely go out, but its thrust does decrease as air runs out. I've noticed this myself.

[localSol]

@Van Disaster: It might be getting partial flameouts; the engine doesn't completely go out, but its thrust does decrease as air runs out. I've noticed this myself.

I noticed this too, [... removed to prevent confusion] Hard flameout happened at 100%, [...] It's fun anyway!

Edited May 5, 2013 by localSol
hypersonic blend-tec dust in my ram air intake

[NonWonderDog]

The new readme says "FAR Control Sys module automatically applied to all command pods." How is this supposed to work? It doesn't seem to add the control system to the Mk3 cockpit at least if it isn't in the part config.

[ferram4]

It automatically adds the flight control module to the part when the vessel loads... it searches the parts in your vehicle and adds the module to every single command pod. There's really nothing to explain here. Try clearing out everything for a command pod and see if the GUI loads properly.

[o_O]

Great work!

Regarding the imbalanced CoL problem, for what its worth on one of my spaceplanes a standard control surface on the outer rear end of the left wing (the one with an inexplicably much higher lift) would come flying off right after the spaceplane was loaded onto the runway. It would shoot off at such high speeds as to disappear, leave two huge clouds of smoke and rattle the whole gigantic space plane. The truly odd thing was it would only happen when I hit "restart flight", when launching from the hangar building nothing of the sort happened.

Also, the imbalanced lift only seems to happen to me when mk3 fuselages are involved.

[NonWonderDog]

Tested it again with a very simple plane, and it looks like it's just the GUI that isn't working. It seems to fly properly and add "isShielded" to each part when relying on the automatic behavior; it just doesn't load the GUI. I got rid of all my compatibility edits when I read that line in the readme, but it looks like I'll add them back in until the GUI works.

It looks like my biggest plane isn't really flyable any more with the latest update, though. I guess I'd misinterpreted that because the GUI was missing. It has barely enough lift as is and had kind of a biplane configuration to try to simulate a lifting body, so I guess I'm not surprised.

[Van Disaster]

Ferram, it starts spitting ( the actual spitting animation ) enough that twin engined planes spin out, so it's a fairly drastic loss of power. I don't particularily mind, I'll just transition to pure rockets a bit earlier but it did seem like it might be a buglet.

localSol; over 1460m/s-ish (ground) in Kerbin orbit the turbine sound will start spooling down irrespective of inlet air, which I always assumed was a transition to pure ramjet. I didn't notice any spooldown noise coinciding with my flameouts but there's a lot of transitions going on at that point for spaceplanes.

[zzz]

In 9.0.1 it's fly, more or less, straight. In 9.0.2 it's have Col shifted in SPH and turn right drastically. I put away kspx adapters, but you still need B9 aerospace pack for this(90% of it is B9)

Forget it. I test it more and it's work actually better then before, sorry for confusion. You are god of aerodinamic.

And I finaly place into orbit(and land it back) my gigant cargo ssto.

Edited May 5, 2013 by zzz

[Climberfx]

@Climberfx: It works perfectly fine; it stays at about 20 degrees off of retrograde until it drops below Mach 1, at which point it goes retrograde. I made some changes to the lifting characteristics of blunt objects this update, that might have fixed it.

20% of retro inclination could be acceptable, but is not the correct manner things work. Back is a lot heavier, it should go straight backwards. For me, this is not fine. Much less perfectly fine. I had tried with the 0.9.2

But thanks by your effort.

[vrga]

@vrga: I didn't look into fixing that this time around; hopefully next update.

it only derped out on the pre-existing planes that i built and stuck at 829.something degrees. the planes flew just fine tho. Did shake apart later one due to the up and down swirly shaking apart the ship.

[Camacha]

It automatically adds the flight control module to the part when the vessel loads... it searches the parts in your vehicle and adds the module to every single command pod. There's really nothing to explain here. Try clearing out everything for a command pod and see if the GUI loads properly.

So, just to be clear, from this point forward (or until further notice) there is no need to add FAR code to command module configs?

[ferram4]

There shouldn't be any reason for you to add it. Unless I messed up.

[earth]

i found whats the problem!! The mk3 parts have slightly offcentered colliders. and parts clip to colliders, so they are offcentered! You can notice that after looking a bit when you radially attache the largest 1m fuel tank with symmetry. The difference is very slight though.

[Laphtiya]

@Climberfx: I'm not returning the TurboJet engines to their previous performance; there is no engine on Earth that can possibly come anywhere near that kind of broken performance and they should run out of steam long before they reach 1600 m/s (which is about the fastest you can go on those engines). It still makes more thrust than it really should and is far more efficient than it should be. I'm not changing a currently still OP part back to more-OP.

And the "fix" you made on the command pod has it suffering from stock drag and FAR drag. With FAR installed all parts end up having those drag values set to zero, though most of them have it done in-game and not in the part.cfg; this is because if I don't do that then stock drag still acts on the part. Your "fix" is, frankly, a terrible idea and will cause unexpected and unrealistic aerodynamic problems to occur.

@Laphtiya: You need to account for the aerodynamics of your rocket design with FAR installed; if your rocket is unstable a quick fix is to put fins at the bottom. Consider delaying serious staging events until you're out of the lower atmosphere and try to keep the rocket from overspeeding, since that will allow aerodynamic forces to overpower your control authority. Make sure to start your gravity turn much lower than you're used to and keep the rocket pointed fairly close to prograde so that you stay in control. Those suggestions tend to fix approximately 99% of all the problems people have with transitioning to FAR. If you need more inspiration, take a look at real life rockets and design yours to look more like those than the abominations that most people build.

@vrga: Possibilities:

1. You need more struts; essentially, your plane is so flexible that it's undergoing aeroelastic flutter prior to takeoff; that's a very rare thing, but a possibility.

2. You're overspeeding on the runway; you might need to push your CoL or main landing gear forward to make rotating and taking off easier.

3. Your landing gear aren't perfectly straight; check to make sure they are and then strut to prevent hopping around on the runway.

If you need more help, post a picture, since that's far more useful than a description.

Awesome I'll give it another try, I just wanted to make sure that I didn't mess up the install thats all. Thanks for the feedback to both you and Camacha, I know it adds realism thats why I installed it ;D

[Cinocal]

So how do I fix the CoL problem. It's always off center and or twisted, making my planes un-flyable? I've pressed the update CoL but it's still not correct.

[ferram4]

The CoL problem is only a problem in the editor; in-game the physics are accurate and will function properly. Don't treat the indicator as absolutely correct, instead use it as a guideline. Your planes being difficult or impossible to fly is due to poor plane design, not a bug in a visual overlay.

[apoch1999]

You might be able to adjust those designs. A while ago in a ferram thread, somebody mentioned to keep the center of lift behind the center of mass (going away from the command pod). For me this works nearly every time in keeping this from happening to me. But if you put the center of lift too far behind the center of mass, the plane will be difficult to pitch up (pull up) at all. Planes that have the center of lift nearly on the center of mass , just a barely visible bit behind it are very easy to pitch. Keeping in mind that the center of mass can move in flight as you burn up fuel, and that could cause instability later while you're going kerbal at mach 7. The total mass changes this too and also the shape of the plane and thrust to weight ratio, which you can get by using Flight Engineer or Mechjeb's in-editor window. If there is a way to fly a plane with the center of lift in front of the center of mass in FAR, I haven't really tried with that, planes tend to go crazy on takeoff in that case.

well my save file kinda got glitched out the other day because of a virus but i built a new plane and even with the center lift way in front of center mass the damn thing wouldnt lift off the ground at all..but then when it got to end of run way it shot straight up...ill try with the centers more lined up and see...it was a pretty nice design too...

[Netris]

(...)If you need more inspiration, take a look at real life rockets and design yours to look more like those than the abominations that most people build(...)

I quote you on that and put it in my sig ^^

[Ruedii]

I'm not sure if this is the right place to give suggestions, but have you considered using namespaces so that the modifications to the part config files get ignored by the stock KSP binary?

This should be possible. You are doing this in the main code. However, I'm not sure how the config files are loaded, and if different modules can be loaded into different namespaces.

The reason for this is It's a technique commonly used by modders in other games that use Mono/.Net cores in order to reduce conflicts between their mods, and other mods or game updates.

Edited May 7, 2013 by Ruedii
clarification

[DresCroffgrin]

@ferram4: I tested the Dragon capsule going backwards today, to see if that was the problem. I discovered that it was not, the CD nose-first was about half what it was blunt-end-first, for both S = 35 (actual for Dragon) and S = 350 (what I have had success with). Also, the pod has a very strong natural tendency to come blunt-end-first, and will change to that orientation from nose-first with even more force than SAS can generate to compensate. At S = 35, I am getting CDs of 0.022. In an effort to increase drag without artificially inflating S, I multiplied all the values in the CD curve in the cfg file for Dragon by 10, but there was no change in CD in game. These tests were conducted with v0.9.2 (although I only updated the plugin, so if the latest version had cfg changes, I missed them).

[Van Disaster]

I did some tests on the ram intakes ( using the stock ones this time instead of Taverius' ); as expected with one intake and one of your turboramjets, it flamed out completely at 149%. Throttle down a little and thrust reappears, throttle up fully again and the engine flames out completely once more. Either that or the engine info panel is lying about the 0 thrust, but I was losing speed pretty rapidly.

The air intakes are reporting airspeed 100m/s faster than the main UI is reporting surface speed, don't know what that's about. It seems constant with density though.

[Taverius]

I did some tests on the ram intakes ( using the stock ones this time instead of Taverius' ); as expected with one intake and one of your turboramjets, it flamed out completely at 149%. Throttle down a little and thrust reappears, throttle up fully again and the engine flames out completely once more. Either that or the engine info panel is lying about the 0 thrust, but I was losing speed pretty rapidly.

The air intakes are reporting airspeed 100m/s faster than the main UI is reporting surface speed, don't know what that's about. It seems constant with density though.

Its the hack the intake module uses to provide airflow on the runway when youre not moving. It always adds 100m/s to its speed (configurable in cfg), and the speed can never go below 100m/s. This also means they work backwards, btw, while making no extra 'intake' drag.

[a.g.]

About intakes, I'm currently messing with the code trying to add indicators of forces acting on a craft in flight, and in the process found a bug where it counts engines and intakes multiple times. Specifically, every engine or intake is counted once for every part module of any type that it has. This probably throws off the calculation in some way.

[Laphtiya]

Having serious difficulty redesigning my rockets to work with this mod. I've been able to make a 1 seat rocket that will orbit with ease but when it comes to launching a 3 seater command module with a munlander (in a similar set up to the Apollo program), I am running into problems. I can just about get the rocket in orbit but I seem to be lacking the power I need to get the performance I once had. Now I realise this mod adds realism and this is not a complaint I am just looking for some sound advice on how I could squeeze out the maximum amount of power I can get for the most simplistic design. My original Mun rocket had 4 stages, the original ground to space stage, a circular stage, transfer stage and finally command and munlander stage. At the moment I am having to burn all the fuel I have in what used to be the transfer stage to gain a sustainable orbit so its obvious that I am lacking in power in the previous stages. I use all stock parts in my ships if I upload the craft file and some screenshots can anyone lend a hand or give a few tips on what I could try to improve the rocket?