Aanker

It's a French hotdog, going by the way the external stuff wraps around the cargo.

The issue being that the colours cannot be recreated by using paint or computer screens, they are rendered entirely by the retinal colour balancing act. Thats the way neurology textbooks describe it. Just saying. If you know better than that type of literature, sure.

Well, the SR-72 concept (by Lockheed) doesn't.

No 33% drag increases please.

Then again, NASA didn't start out building Mercury. They were using stuff like B-52 bombers and later even the SR-71 for their own purposes. It seems to me, at least, as if atmospheric flight experimentation goes hand in hand with a space program, especially since as speed and performance gradually increase we approach the boundary of space and the line gets blurred. It would also make for an overall nicer transition to spaceplanes than just 'boom! Space!'. But I did also dedicated a (short) paragraph to the prospect of turning this into a mod. I think it would work fine as that. But I don't see the problem with pitching it as a stock suggestion, it's not exactly going to happen with the next hotfix really. Also, I don't think it would be too grindy if you can use props, jets and early rocketry to carry out a variety of early missions... grinding to me implies performing the same task over and over again for some distant goal, here you would have multiple means of advancing in multiple areas.

I think it would then have to start at the point in time where rockets really started to "take off" in conjunction with early jets and the beginning of more advanced props... e.g. the Kerbal equivalent of the late 40s-early 50s. We would get turboprops and the equivalents for long range arctic exploration (more atmospheric aircraft contracts needed), simple jets for record breaking (more atmospheric aircraft contracts needed!), simple rockets for Me 163 Comet record flights/X-something suborbital flights and V2-like experiments and then all the associated wing and air intake parts. It would also require some oval fuselage sections to match the 'era' (something KSP doesn't actually show, even though the buildings clearly get more flashy). Could be good. Then again, turbopropping to places could take a lot of time. The early jets would have a shorter range to balance out their thrust/speed advantages. Advantages, however: - quite a lot of parts to pick from, early game, thus enabling more creativity in how to approach the first few steps. - new atmospheric flight engines. Everybody likes that. - varied tasks and challenges with a few different possible approaches early on - that's kind of what KSP is about. - early rockets. - 'era' progression, reflecting how real space programs evolved from experimental military aviation to civilian rocketry. If I could do modeling and animation, I would totally attempt to mod this into the game. But I am just a humble texturer... I don't necessarily think biplanes would be a good starting point though because there wouldn't be a whole lot of different things you could do that would make for consistently fun and varied gameplay early on. And because the contract and science possibilities (due to range, speed, maximum altitude etc) would be even more limited if you're flying around in Sopwith Camels, you would probably blow through those early tiers so fast that they wouldn't offer much substance anyway.

Of more interest may be the way some 'exotic' or 'impossible' colours may be perceived under certain conditions. By looking at a field of one colour for an extended period of time and then shifting one's focus to another field we may see things like 'bluish yellow' or 'grey-fluorescent pink'. I don't remember the exact examples but with a simple google search you should get the picture... or not

So the unrealistic souposphere is OK, heck even the aforementioned X-W1 NG is OK, because it makes it more difficult to build spaceplanes that look cool and don't just mash together 20 parts? Ok.

Even a KSP shuttle isn't exactly a Cessna though...

Yeah sure, you make good points, but I just think that wing parts right now are subject to way too high drag (I did a comparison in another thread: 16 small wing parts which were basically out of the airflow's way caused more than a 550 m/s decrease in top speed at SL). Your idea of more intuitive craft design and my want for less wing unfriendlyness are not incompatible. In fact, if you want to build a large wing for a large spaceplane right now, the system is very unintuitive - somehow, building a large wing (out of smaller parts) results in unexpected and massive drag.

Well, that's the thing. The x-wing flies perfectly in 1.0.2, but many of my more realistically designed craft do not. And I don't see why, if realism isn't the issue anyway, they shouldn't be able to.

So realistic!

Looks pretty much like every other entry - six or eight wing parts, long Mk2 fuselage section... Yawn, I've seen this already. Now this is creativity bounded by realism!

... Buuuut they all look the same and creativity has been severely limited. Your point again? Seriously? This argument again? How many times must I re-write the statement that the very reason I design planes the way I do is because I want them to look more aerodynamic and more realistic. Airliners look like tubes with wings. High speed aircraft don't (f.e. the F-22, or Lockheed's proposed SR-72). Wherever did I say I wanted 20 air intakes, lol. That was one of the major weaknesses of the previous aero model (0.90) and I don't want to go all the way back to that. The 1.0 model was managable, but the drag changes in 1.0.1 just managed to ruin what foothold we still had. If you put them together, they should realistically be regarded as one wing - so why do individual wing segments add so much drag? If I create a structural shell of wings, the leading pieces should stand for the most drag and the rest of the structure shouldn't be as much of an airbrake. 16 pieces of small wings put along the fuselage shouldn't mean a 500 m/s difference of speed at sea level. No. Any sane aerodynamic system in a game would take into consideration creativity and that people would use different pieces in novel fashions. We have already established that KSP isn't, cannot be and shouldn't be a simulation. Therefore the drag model has to be more lenient, especially towards wings and fuselage sections. Quite frankly you are being too presumptive. I simply don't want to be limited to the shapes provided in the part selection screen, I want to be able to build things beyond that. Yeah, I'm learning more about aircraft and especially realistic spaceplanes by the hour. Mods and changing physics.cfg files are not the answer to improving the stock game, and this argument needs to find some rest. And I am providing suggestions for solutions - revert the drag changes generally, introduce aesthetic structural parts which do not generate lift but in turn have considerably less drag and mass than wings, reduce the drag of the wings and fuselage sections specifically, reduce the drag of stacked wing parts along the angle of attack etc. etc. But it's just impossible to have a constructive discussion when one is being accused of using exploits from one direction and wanting to fly X-wings from the other (which is currently possible anyway so I truly don't get the point).

You mean, build more ultra realistic X-, Y- and B-wings? That's your subjective opinion. See, what I suggest is that we should be able to build successfully like that - if we like it - but that maybe yes, the marginally or clearly optimal solution should be a more clean design as demonstrated by a multitude of builders at this point (basically a bunch of Mk2 fuselage sections and two wings). I advocate increased creativity, I advocate more choice in design and I believe that the player should have more liberty in deciding what their spaceplane looks like, not just "follow the shape of the parts". By doing things the way I suggest, we can have both what you like and what I like. Isn't that better? EDIT: to truly see the effects of wing drag on an airframe, I decided to slightly modify one of my standard atmospheric (non-spaceplane) aircraft and compare the new version against the old one with respect to sea level speed. The two aircraft can be seen below, the differences between the (new) FA-2B on the left and the original FA-2 on the right being a reduced wing piece count on the former (16 smaller wing pieces were used, above and below, on the FA-2 to hide the cleavage between the two engine and fuel sections, whereas these were removed on the B version) and that the two engine-fuel fuselage sections were moved closer to the centerline on the FA-2B (with only cosmetic effects, this did not impact sea level speed). In both images, the aircraft have payload, but this was dropped immediately after takeoff for the speed test. The result? The FA-2B, with its 16 fewer small wing pieces (which overall do not cover a very large area and have been put in such a way that they are not hit by the airflow) has a sea level top speed at least 550 m/s higher than the FA-2. Why do I say 'at least'? The reason is that the B version eventually burns up as it accelerates beyond 950 m/s. The FA-2 struggles to hit a speed above 400 m/s. So, that is the difference that 16 small wing pieces can make - now imagine if we try to build with larger wing pieces... to achieve larger wings...

So if I make a relatively sleek looking design protected by an aerodynamic shell, I cannot make orbit. See below. However, if I remove parts, and make a more realisticâ„¢, clearly real world inspiredâ„¢ and less exploitativeâ„¢ design, I can easily achieve orbit by just aiming at 45 degrees. See below. Enjoy the boundless simulator-esque nature of the X-W1 NG:

You are using four wings. See the problem is, us people who like to build larger wings run into trouble because it's either lego the wings together (=massive drag) or use the flashy new large wing parts - which don't look good at all. Furthermore, wings have long been used for creative purposes to build aerodynamic shells around engines and other components. Obviously your small spaceplane wouldn't need that, it doesn't look too bulky what with only two externally placed fuel tanks along the sides, but for larger designs we can no longer cover up the ugly bits. This patch caters to simple spaceplanes which conform strictly to the stock parts. That's fine for simple builds (which will then, inevitably, look like sausages with wings), but if I want to construct something that looks the way I want it to, I run into serious trouble now because creativity has been severely restricted. *** What I'm considering doing as an emergency solution is to create structural versions of the current wings, massively reduce their drag and mass, but also remove their lift capability completely. I'm not a modeller, so aesthetics wise the only way to distinguish them from the real wings would be a different texture, but at least we would have some aesthetic parts that don't interfere too much with the performance of the spaceplane.

Yeah, I'm fine with this as a design option, heck I would be fine actually with this design being the optimal solution, but the problem is that currently it seems to also be the only solution.

So why can't we creatively build realistic looking planes, but it's fine that it's possible to build riddiculously broken stuff?

And then the thread goes and confirms my description again with the latest entries. lol.

Again, plain wrong, most of my old designs look more realistic and aerodynamic than what I have to build now.

They can't leave it as it is now - it's broken for about every spaceplane enthusiast. That said, it's not exactly a mutually exclusive thing, SQUAD could just easily revert the 1.0.1 drag changes or reduce the drag of spaceplane fuselage and wing parts and I'm sure they'd have time to work on rocketry, planets and everything else.

I'll post this image here too Yeah I could agree with that. The problem is however still that if you want to build larger wings, it's either lego many wings together (which adds drag) or use the insane new wing parts which aren't really compatible with anything else. It also happens to look much more realistic than the currently most efficient designs.

If you want to go in circles, I suggest building an Mk3 spaceplane. It won't be much more productive, but hey, at least nobody is wasting time right? I won't debate the same arguments with the same people ad infinitum. This is too presumptive, borderline judgmental again. Not once have I mentioned that I want to build 'unrealistic' X-wings - even though I don't see why people should be bothered by that, in stock. The argument is about multiple designs and approaches being viable. See the image below to understand what I mean. The "get mods" argument. No. I want to actually improve this game, because I care about it and because I think stock deserves better than this blunt hatred towards the spaceplane hangar.