Snjo

After some tweaking, my recreation of the Beechraft Starship flies well enough that it's one of the new example craft. Well, it's a recreation of the principles, not so much the cosmetics

v5.6.2 -Removed error message spam on bi-plane wheels

You should all check this out: Basic Aircraft Design Explained Simply With Pictures

When I want to kick back and relax after a hard day of flying planes, I chug down a cool can of Basic Aircraft Design! It's simply the patriotic thing to do! I fully endorse this product!

Right you are! It has been updated!

Most of the node names match what you'd think, but not all. I created this list with all the science titles, their node names and the associated parts: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/22972712/ksp%20forum/tree_trimmed.txt also: full detail tree.cfg from a treedit export Names that are inconsistent: advUnmanned = Advanced Unmanned Tech metaMaterials = Meta-Materials aerodynamicSystems = Aerodynamics advancedMotors = Advanced Motors all other instances of advanced are abbreviated to adv like so: advRocketry = Advanced Rocketry

I have placed most of the parts in the same branch of the tech tree, together with the stock aerodynamic, supersonic and high altitude parts. The custom mod nodes are at the very end of the science tree, meaning they cost a LOT of science to unlock. Since we are mostly dealing with stuff that's less advanced than rocket motors here, I opted out of using that node. The first wheel you unlock is the bi plane gear. since it's bulky and un-retractable, it doesn't compete with the stock landing gear bay. The other wheels are all in the same node as the stock gears. The electric engines and batteries are all in the electric branch, and the trim tools and water launch are in a flight control node. The seaplane floats are in a construction node above the aero branch. There is a plugin in development that lets us define custom science trees, so I can change around the order of the nodes to make a plane-centric tree. I'll probably do one of those as an optional thing.

The 5.6 has been uploaded to spaceport with no changes. For new players, I'd like to remind you that if you have no engine sounds, it's probably because you have placed the older in the wrong place, or renamed it. Sounds must be in the path listed in the part's cfg file. Therefore you are unfortunately not able to name the Firespitter folder freely, and it must reside in the GameData folder. Also, your questions about part usage are probably answered in the Firespitter Parts Guide, which is also included in the zip as a pdf. If you see any new and exciting bugs, please let me know

v5.6 pre-release (if there are no known bugs, it goes on spaceport tomorrow) Download -KSP 0.22 compatibility Parts: -Avro Lancaster Engines. Surface mounted big engines, one variant with internal landing gear, one without. -All parts have been assigned a science node (costs have not been set) Useful tweaks: -FAR fix: if FAR is present, the control surface range module is disabled to fix incompatibility. -Turned Allow Surface Attach on for tail control surfaces. -The bomber cockpit is now less indestructible. (Fixed collider order) -The bomber wings have proper collision detection -Wheel and engine settings in the SPH now affect the whole symmetry group. -VTOL steering can be toggled on and off with an action group (without affecting the steering setup) Minor tweaks you don’t care about: -Tweaks to the default rotation code in multi axis engine and part turner. -atmospheric nerf can be disabled to allow for vacuum operations (the module itself is still required on relevant parts) -FSwheel: suspension overrides can have negative values if overrideModelSpringValues = True -FSwheel: disable collider at a given time during retraction. -VTOL steering supports models with inverted transforms through invertSteering = True

That's starting to look like a proper bomber! Love the tail. edit: The problem with wheel motors according to Taverius, is that a wheel at an angle will have very different torque impact forwards than backwards, because of spring compression and grip. This is wholly due to the ridiculously badly written wheelCollider in Unity. My workaround has been to reduce power backwards, but that only makes sense at the angles I have used. I'll try to even out the power a bit, but in some cases, that will only make it worse, depending on the angle. There may be a spring setting that fixes it though I have some good news and some bad news: Good news, I have found the issue that caused the bomber cockpit and bomber wings to be indestructible (Has to do with the what's the first collider written to the file in Unity) Bad news, a lot more kerbals will die horrible fiery deaths on the runway! I was trying to reproduce that indestructability bug on other cockpits, but was unable to. Have any of you seen this happen in the smaller cockpits at impact speeds above 35 m/s? The first few nodes make for some risky plane experiments

I'm not sure why the rotations went wonky, but if I can suggest a quick patch to make the thing more configurable, it would be to have a KSPField to specify which axis the control surfaces rotate around. My first instinct was to do: [KSPField] public Vector3 controlSurfacePivot = new Vector3(1f, 0f, 0f); and rotate on the gameObject's localRotation using that. However, I see you do a lot of references to the Right vector in other calculations too, but I'm not sure those are actually off. If you want to take a look at this to replicate the problem, the whole Unity project is here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/22972712/ksp%20forum/fighterWing.zip And the wings with cfgs are on spaceport. (The main F-86 wings don't have the FAR module on them, and the rudder/elevator don't have the correct lift values, but I'll look into that if I can get my head around the main visual problem)

I used the one on spaceport.

Now they are not smoothly controlled by FAR at all of course. To answer your question, yes I am doing odd stuff, simply because the stock code is super bad, as you know. The setup in unity: the base of the part is at the odd angle too, to make it work at all in ksp.

Ah, found it! someone had given me some FAR values they had developed, they were on the messed up parts, but not on the working wings. When I removed them, they started acting normally (but probably with less FARiness?). The modules on the rudder were: MODULE { name = FARControllableSurface MAC = 1.0 e = 0.9 MidChordSweep = 30 maxdeflect = 15 b_2 = 1.5 TaperRatio = 0.53 } MODULE { name = FARWingAerodynamicModel S = 8.33 MAC = 1.0 e = 0.9 MidChordSweep = 30 b_2 = 1.5 TaperRatio = 0.53 } Do you have any suggestions for correct values on these odd angled wings?

Actually, the hinge is already on X, but the part is still rotated around Z in FAR. I see in the code that you are calling on -MovableSection.right, but the whole logic isn't super readable, so I'm not sure that's all that's going on.

I got firespitter updated so it will disable the FSwingletRangeAdjustment if FAR is active, which was casuing issues. But I notice you handle control surface rotations differently than stock, which becomes apparent on angled wings: Do you have a quick fix for setting the intended axis a control surface should pivot on? It's only a visual thing, seems to fly just fine. (Stock control surface rotation is based on the axis of the part base, not the control surface inside it, which is a very very bad idea, so I can understand you changing it)

This is a release to get some important code fixes out while we are still at the current KSP version, more parts will follow in the full version. v5.6 pre-release Download Changes -Avro Lancaster Engines. Surface mounted big engines, one variant with internal landing gear, one without. (I think I turned down their bounciness, but if you bounce too much on landing, let me know) -FAR fix: if FAR is present, the control surface range module is disabled to fix incompatibility. -Turned Allow Surface Attach on for tail control surfaces. -Tweaks to the default rotation code in multi axis engine and part turner. -atmospheric nerf can be disabled to allow for vacuum operations (the module itself is still required on relevant parts) Known bug the f-86 tail control surfaces will rotate on the wrong axis in FAR, but it flies fine.

There's now a new setting in the upcoming version of the dll to disable atmospheric nerfing. The module itself needs to be there, as it's the end point for a few different thrust calculations. The new setting is "disableAtmosphericNerf = True" to always use full thrust regardless of atmosphere. This will be needed on any rocket engine or similar with VTOL/hover module that's supposed to work in a vacuum.

It removes unneeded info from the engine context menu: if (engine != null) { engine.Fields["fuelFlowGui"].guiActive = newState; engine.Fields["realIsp"].guiActive = newState; engine.Fields["statusL2"].guiActive = newState; engine.Fields["statusL2"].guiActive = newState; } if (intake != null) { intake.Fields["airFlow"].guiActive = newState; intake.Fields["intakeDrag"].guiActive = newState; intake.Fields["status"].guiActive = newState; intake.Fields["airSpeedGui"].guiActive = newState; intake.Events["Deactivate"].guiActive = newState; intake.Events["Activate"].guiActive = newState; }

Well, those kinds of big oblong fuselage and cockpit sections are a requirement if I do the whole Lancaster bomber, which I want to. But I'm doing it whenever I'm in the mood, so no timeframes The engines are done though, if you check the last few pages, there are some early shots. Got some code going for some exhaust effects on those too. The floating hull section should be easy code wise, it just means making yet another cockpit, which is time consuming. On the other hand I do love seaplanes... The aerodynamics on that high wing+engines looks... challenging.

Source here: https://github.com/snjo/Firespitter/blob/master/Firespitter/engine/FSengineSounds.cs It's compiled into a dll using Visual Studio Express 2012.

Great work on the video Bubba! Love seeing those two planes flying in formation. The mail about your post was what told me the forums were slowly coming back up.

What does the nose art say? Looks cool. My guess: "The Short Bus"

The engine mounts are allowed to collide with other parts, but the engines and wings are not. Is it possible you have it set up so that the engine and wing are in contact, or very close to each other? Default mounting of the engine with the mount on my wings has never been a problem for me, but maybe you have mounted them closer together on those Mark 3 wings? Hard to say without a craft file. I don't know if this happens for you if you were to load one of the example craft like the K-17.

Mekanik, I can't really make that module right now, but I will help you in any way I can, and feel free to steal from my code. It's all at github.com/snjo There are examples there of many or most of the thing you will need, if you know where to look, which admittedly will not be easy