[Devnote Tuesday: Joe was censored!]

The way wheel landing detection works is different from other parts: wheel colliders don’t actually touch the surface. Rather, the wheels raycast downwards to ‘feel’ for it, and based on what they find, and the known wheel parameters, they compute the appropriate reaction forces for each wheel to simulate forward and lateral friction, drive/brake torque, slip, etcetera. That in turn means that wheels need their own logic to detect when they’re landed

Where in here does it say why the wheels need their own logic to detect when they're landed? Shouldn't raycasting in the direction of gravity projected onto the perpendicular plane of a parts movement be enough to detect if a part is landed? Or is it just done differently for different parts for efficiency reasons?

[Official FAR Craft Repository]

You've got some pretty significant wing loading going on there - good for high speed flight, bad for pretty much everything else. What's the takeoff mass of the plane, and what is the FAR analysis telling you about your wing area? How about the AoA at 0km and Mach 0.35?

An SPH screenie with your CoM and trans-sonic curves visible wouldn't go amiss in helping to diagnose any potential problems.

I might suggest swapping out that Terrier for something with moar oomph (an Aerospike would do well if you've got access, but even a Thud or two would do well - something that gives you more thrust). Just a thought.

EDIT: More craptastic advice from the nugget. If you go to try adding more wing, start with a strake, maybe a Wing Connector C or D aft, and then put your Tail Fin ailerons there; you'd wind up with a cranked arrow wing, which shouldn't affect the overall shape too terrible much but will give you some more wing. Start with that, and expand it out more if it's still not enough. Myself, if I was designing the plane, I'd take its mass and divide it by the wing area; in my experience, you're generally "good enough" if the result is between 0.3 and 0.5, favoring the low end of that range.

Thanks for the advice. I ended up removing one of the rocket fuel tanks and vertically doubling up the "tail fin" aileron at the end of the plane. It still falls like a rock at speeds too high for my computer to let me safely land it anywhere, but at least it works on the runways now. Though getting it on the runway early enough that it can slow down can be a challenge, but that's part of the fun! Overall I think it's the best spaceplane I've built in terms of stability in FAR; certainly the best since nuFAR.

http://imgbox.com/FZuKHuTC

http://imgbox.com/FFMBlEP5

Another question: What is the reference area of a plane? I assumed it was the surface area of the wings; but it increases and decreases dramatically whenever I add new parts. Or is FAR just removing a lot more area from what it considers wings than I would expect? If so, is there a simple heuristic I can use to guess at how it will change by adding a new part?

[Official FAR Craft Repository]

Hi,

I've created the following craft for FAR and am having trouble landing it. I believe my problem largely lies with the high AoA requirement at lower velocities I think, as it basically falls like a rock below 150 m/s; which is rather high to land at for someone who's never been good at landing in the first place. Having the craft fall through the landscape glitch at high velocities doesn't help the landing experience, either :/.

http://imgbox.com/RMw8ZYYZ

http://imgbox.com/Dh8QAzQr

http://imgbox.com/7BNTkM2e

http://imgbox.com/dkh3F8PK

http://imgbox.com/cWK0cK7r

Other than that, so long as you don't exceed structural tolerances, it flies quite well. Ironically, it even flies well in stock as well except for taking off.

Would anyone have suggestions on how to improve its handling at low velocities? Or am I just a terrible pilot?

Ideally it would retain it's overall shape and ability to reach orbit; I am able to reach orbit if I remove one of the rocket fuel tanks, though it's much more difficult.

Thanks

[I Forgot A Ladder?]

It depends on your design, but I'd say it's unlikely from my own past experience :'(

[More Orangesuits!]

Hi all,

I was wondering if anyone knew how one might add in more orange suit kerbals to an existing save? The save file itself doesn't seem to contain the information, at least as far as I could tell, so I was wondering if either I missed something or if I might be able to do it by writing a plugin to do it for me.

This isn't really a big deal, just a personal preference I'd like to satisfy , so if anyone happens to know, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks!

[[1.8] PersistentRotation 1.8.6]

A hundred years ago this year, a physicist named Emmy Noether did some groundbreaking work in the study of continuous symmetries. She was able to prove, mathematically, that wherever a continuous symmetry exists there also exists a conserved quantity and vice versa. The various observed conservation laws, in other words, were not empirical and arbitrary laws of nature, but rather unavoidable consequences of symmetries in various geometries that are present in the universe. The conservation of angular momentum, for example, is not a thing in and of itself, but rather a consequence of the fact that there is no directional bias to the universe. Because the universe looks the same from every direction  because it's rotationally symmetric  angular momentum must be conserved. Emmy Noether's theorem proves this conclusively.

So I think this should be called Emmy's Mod.

It was brilliant of Squad to advertise this mod today of all days (her birthday).

Or it was today a half hour ago...