DA299

FAR's easier in some aspects, harder in others. drag is much reduced from stock aero, so building and flying planes with very low TWR is possible. Spaceplane performance is also improved heavily if you know what you are doing: Less drag losses. Ability to climb better even with 0.3-0.4 TWR, which allows you to have better mass fractions and carry more fuel (basically more deltaV in orbit ) However, the learning curve is steeper than stock. FAR models real aero, and so to build planes in FAR that fly well you have to expend more effort in the design phase rather than just slapping wings together and praying. Also, lift is reduced from stock, so landing and takeoff speeds are higher.

Send me the craft files. I'll make it fly and then hopefully you can understand what was wrong with it. (Might have to make some big changes.)

@miklkit I might have some pointers for you. FAR models realistic aerodynamics, and in real life, there are very few planes that can fly at that speed when flying that low (they have to be specially designed for it). Mach 1 should not be breached below 7 kms, Mach 2 requires around 14-16 km, Mach 3 and up should be flown over 20 km for maximum efficiency. Of course these are guidelines only, it is possible to design around them, but you need to have good knowledge of how FAR works. You also need to keep in mind that in FAR, the authority of your control surfaces is diminished quite a bit, so you need to increase their area somehow. Stock SAS is terrible at flying things in stock. Its better to use FAR's own stability toggles, or even better, atmospheric autopilot to fly planes. Lastly, designing spaceplanes in FAR in actually not a trivial task. This is because a spaceplane needs to fly well and be controllable at three very different regimes, low speed(for takeoff and landing), transonic to supersonic speeds (transition, must have a low enough drag to breach the sound barrier), and of course the hypersonic regime to actually reach space and remain controllable in reentry. Aircraft can be made that perform well in 2 out of 3 of these regimes, but one of them has to almost always be compromised somehow. For example, most of my delta-winged spaceplanes take off over 100 m/s when fully fueled, and land at ~80 m/s when empty (with lots of flaps and leading edge slats). They're also quite squirrely and hard to control at low speeds, though they fly really well once over 200 to 250 m/s.

Hello, I was just wondering if the RO configs for the SOCK shuttle work even without RO? I have both FAR and Real-Fuels installed.

Can I get your TUFX configs by any chance?

Hello, I'm having an issue with KSP 1.12.5 and TUFX, namely the profiles apply in every scene except the tracking station view and the map view. Whenever I click on a profile I want to use in these views, nothing happens.

I have the same issue on all of Jupiter's moons. If you ever manage to solve it do let me know.

I bet the Principia devs could have helped out KSP2 devs when it comes to orbital simulations. Their handling of orbital mechanics is far better than stock KSP1, with the exception of thrust under warp. but like K^2 says, that's a very hard problem, likely even harder in true n-body simulations.

Re: X-15 testing with FAR. So as promised I decided to test the X-15 model with KSP 1.12 and FAR "Marangoni". After several tests, I have come to the conclusion that BDB X-15 has severe yaw and roll instability. I'm not sure what exactly is causing this, but I'm pretty sure it has something to do with the wing configs. This is what happens when you try to fly the plane lol: https://imgur.com/a/m1sgqbM Checking out the numbers in the FAR analysis window, you can see that the BDB version has red values for both yaw stability and roll stability. An easy fix for this is to make replica wing surfaces like I did with b9 procedural wings and then comparing the configs. You can see that the 'procedural wings X-15' exhibits no such roll/yaw instability and actually flies really well (Almost too well, I don't think even the IRL X-15s were that easy to fly.) https://imgur.com/a/VgGvOLZ I also went to space with this version https://imgur.com/a/8RpBY8N So all in all, def patch this if you want FAR compatibility. Its not really a big hassle to make your own wings (cuz you can still enjoy the excellent lifted-body model; which you can't make procedurally). So you can also just put a warning that FAR players should make their own wings. (I certainly won't complain )

OK that's great to know but the wings probably need custom FAR configs as those are the one thing FAR can't generate from meshes. I'll check it out and then report back.

I forgot to reply, but if you're building planes like the X-15 you'd likely need a rudimentary config for FAR. That's why I was asking. Really love the mod btw

Is BDB compatible with FAR?

Hello guys, I'm playing with KSRSS-reborn from gitlab and using Volumetric clouds-v4 along with AtmosphericBeats configs. The issue I'm having is that Lightning doesn't show up on Earth no matter what I do. If I remove the AtmosphericBeats configs, Lightning works fine.

FAR really doesn't do anything to Jet Engines afaik. AJE is the mod that changes jet engine parameters. Although I very much doubt you could hit Mach 3 with stock Panthers (without AJE). If you look at the Kerbal wiki for Panther engines, you'll see that it drops off in thrust very quickly after ~Mach 2.7. So maybe try cruising higher but I doubt you could do better than 970 m/s

Hello, I'm playing with KSRSS, and atmosphericbeats volumetric cfg for volumetric clouds version 4, and there's this issue I'm having that both volumetric clouds and 2D clouds show up when flying. Any way to only get the volumetrics?