EpicSpaceTroll139

Heh! My 56 second lap time didn't last very long! Nice car and driving @prgmTrouble! Currently working on a performance upgrade to my car. Less frame weight and more engine. Gonna take work to get 10 seconds off my time though. Might require a new car This is the version of the car I used for my previous entry. Forgot to upload it when I did the race.

Finally got a lap time down. 56 seconds. Make it 57 if you choose not to believe it got past the finish line before the number flipped over (I took the screenshot a smidge too early). I really wanted to do this as a video, but the lag spikes that OBS produced kept leading to wrecks, and using Better Timewarp to slow down time to compensate felt cheaty, as it gave me more time to react even if there wasn't a huge lag spike, not to mention it killed the feeling of zipping around at 100+mph

Indeed I do have my shocks set quite firm for this particular car. It's been working great for all other parts of the track, allowing the body of the car to be just a little bit off the ground* while not worrying about the car rocking a little and scraping at the corners. It's just this spot that's giving me problems. If I were racing anywhere other than the KSC, I would have softer shock and maybe spring too, as well as more ground clearance, but the KSC terrain on the course was in theory perfectly flat, free of any divots or potholes. Never noticed it wasn't (putting aside the previous versions problems of ridges in the runway) until I cam across this problem with my car. Guess that's what I get for not having thoroughly inspected for such things Anyways I think I've figured out how to get past the divot without problems. Just need to do a little testing. I think I might be able to soften the shocks a bit, but first I want to try this other method I figured out. *Keeping it low to the ground obviously allows a low CG. The stiff suspension also allows the wheel fenders/wheel-wells/whatchamacallits to top out just a few centimeters above the tire, reducing drag... altho the latter may be more for looks bcc the difference probably isn't significant in stock aero

Has anybody else been having problems with tiny, invisible ridges in the terrain of the KSC causing tires to pop? I've been trying to get down a lap time (looks like I could get around 1:10, maybe slightly less with current setup), but there's apparently some ridge/ line between the SPH and the Mission Control that keeps blowing out my front tires. (screenshot taken immediately after tire popped) When put in super-slow motion, I can see the car actually drop a couple centimeters as it falls from the ridge, then the front tires pop. The front tires aren't significantly stressed before this happens, so I don't think the problem is my car design.... Not exactly sure what to do about this...

Tried to go for the Kurburgring Lap time in my Selenium I racer. Made it through most of it, then when I tried to make the last turn, nothing... Turned out my front tires had popped for no obvious reason

Did some experimenting with different control setups for my racecar. It now has what I like to call Advanced Grip ControlTM (different from traction control). Takes corners like a champ! It'll drift, but I have to really try if I want to make it spin out. Same control setup also reduces the number of keys I need to press at any given time, so I don't need to have 3 hands to take screenshots during a race (I've decided I'll probably go with screenshots instead of vid bcc of the lag, but we'll see what happens). Oh yah I added more power. Will probably add the two more junos I have provisions for, because why not? Might go for an official lap time tomorrow.

Yah, dunno what's up with the lag. KSP used to run buttery smooth for me, but it seems to have gotten worse recently. Might be the OBS that's eating up computing power or something. Definitely appears to be more laggy whenever I want to record video. I could double the power and still comply with the rules of the challenge. I might try that in a bit, but I want to actually make it through a lap before adding more power. Heck, it can already take off like a rocket if you manage to get the nose up. Speaking of which, I might attach an extended blooper real to the video whenever I complete the lap. I've had an instance in which both car and Kerbal completely cleared an R&D building after a crash lol.

Been practicing my KSP driving for the Kurburgring Lap Challenge. At first lag spikes were resulting in rather... explosive driving tendencies. So I started using Better Timewarp to slow down time so I would have time to react to the lag spikes. It however results in weird pulsations in the speed of the video . I kind of want to Tokyo drift - parallel park the car now tho.

Might I suggest naming it the "Kagani Zebra"?

Uploaded my car. It can be found here. I hope it qualifies. I put a lot of work into making it look nice and work well. I might make some modifications to the spoiler in the back before I race though.

Would this car qualify for the challenge? I had this thing sitting around in a half-built state and figured I'd spruce it up (even now it's still got some things to add like mirrors, tailpipes, etc) and enter it. I know it has a lot of solar panels there but I think they give it some character. It's not just black and silver.

How so? What problems are you encountering? On a side note: I'm starting to think vortex ring state or something that looks a lot like it might actually exist in FAR, because I've had several instances of flying a heli and descending steeply at a moderate pace, then all of a sudden the heli starts dropping like a rock even at full throttle. Anyways, guess I'll get to work on my FAR turbofighter. Btw @Azimech how large should we be building our turbofighters? As big as the Chakora or tiny 1.25m ish size planes?

Indeed, the E-50 is a coaxial type. Looking back on it, I think what might have been happening was that the two rotors were not far enough apart vertically, so the extended high-aspect-ratio blades whipped into each-other as the aerodynamic forces of high speed flight caused them to flex up as they got more lift, and back down as they got less.

Bet it could go even faster if you sealed up the windows with say, static solar panels. (Currently as far as FAR is concerned, that's an open cockpit with some struts around it) We might be able to get some decently performing attack helicopters too, because I remember testing out my E-50 Triton (by no means designed for performance) with modified rotor blades (high aspect ratio is a must on heli blades in FAR) and it got up to some quite impressive speeds even without any forward motion jets. I believe claw articulation might be important though to relieve the stresses induced on the blades however, as the rotors were quite prone to wrenching out of the bearings. Edit: I didn't test for it, I wonder if Vortex Ring State can be produced in FAR?

Whether building a turboprop or a jet, I generally go for trimming down the airframe to be as light and aerodynamic as possible, so as to take full advantage of the installed powerplant, and then add more engine if it's not fast enough for my liking. But that's just me, others might just go for more power. Because more blowers --> more redundancy --> greater survivability. BTW @Azimech I propose that we use FAR for the aero during competitions because I recall that it allows much better speed retention in turns than even modified stock aero. It's no fun decelerating to 50% speed every time a turn is made haha.

Ok so the clock runs under gravity power now. The trick will be getting the anchor escapement to work. Gonna be a lot of trial and error... lots of error...

Did some testing on my clock. It turns out that it wasn't spinning simply because the gear ratios were reducing the torque produced by the weight drive to nill by the point it reached the minute hand and escapement. With a reaction wheel attached to the escapement end of the gear train, and trimmed just a weee bit, the whole thing spins perfectly fine. So I need to add more weight. The question is: Can I give it enough weight while not breaking the thing?

When mirroring engines and props, the radial symmetry property has to be removed to be able to mirror it without glitching. I think editor extensions has a "strip symmetry" tool, but I haven't been able to find it. What I end up doing is building the engine on its own, then go into the craft file and manually delete all the "sym = blah blah blah" lines. It's tedious, so I tend towards making my engines coaxial or (best for helicopters) with few blowers and snappable blade angles, so I can reproduce them with negligible differences.

@eloquentJane I love it! Chibby Sputnik for the win!

Even if props don't work underwater, it should easily be possible to make a paddle steamer.

Shaft-driven tail rotor now works reliably enough to fly on a helicopter, at least for a few minutes before it goes kaboom.T The biggest problem is dealing with the lateral forces that the pseudo-bevel gears put on the bearings. I'm not having too much problems on the engine end of the shaft, but at the part where it transfers power to the tail rotor, it has significant strain, and is ready to shoot out towards the left if I make too hard a turn. If I can figure out a gear system there that induces less stress, or a bearing that can endure it indefinitely, I should be able to work on making it useful. Currently the tail rotor spins at the exact same rate as the main rotor, so I'll have to change the gear ratios to make it spin faster if I want to get reasonable thrust out of it. For now it just kind of looks cool.

This is the vid I remember: Made by the genious @Aphobius! Here's his youtube channel: Bogdan Pirsen, where you can find several other clocks and contraptions!

I've added a rack & pinion weight drive mechanism for testing purposes, though I'll try switching to a version using that chain later. Currently, even with the pendulum + anchor escapement disengaged from the rest of the gear train, the whole thing grinds to a halt a few seconds after being set going. I'm trying to figure out where the problem is. It's probably messed up tooth spacing on a few of these gears generating resistance, but with the complexity it's hard to tell. If only kerbpaint was working I could color code all the gears and bearings so I would know at a glance what's attached to what.

@NoobTool I'll have to search around for where I posted it, but my collective kOS script should be able to manipulate the blade pitch on those prop/rotors so that they can transition moderately well to forward flight. It won't be able to compensate if they simply don't have enough torque for forward flight though. Anyways, having been getting experience with gears making my clock, I'm trying to adapt them to helicopters. The trick is making the gears turn smoothly. This shaft stays on at full throttle (need to determine what rpm that is), at least for a few minutes, but at low speed it can be seen to be fairly rough. I'm thinking that by increasing the number of teeth to 5, 6, or more, the meshing can be smoother, thus allowing better operation at all speeds. I'm hoping this could be useful for driving a tail rotor from main engine power. Also this could be useful on inter-meshing rotor and tandem rotor designs. While so far my own tandem rotor helis haven't needed a geartrain, since the height difference is enough to keep rigid rotors from colliding, if I add articulation to their rotors, a method of synchronizing the rotors would be useful. (It also might just look nice in screenshots to have the rotors lined up)

Not exactly sure how I didn't see this until. Gosh I love the way we build things in this game completely unrelated to the title of the game xD. "Kerbal Space Program" Then here we are making cars, helicopters, and freaking combine harvesters! Nice work! I love it!