Hodo

I have to ask, what plugin is that for those cockpits and engines? But it looks like your CoL is shifted to far to the rear of the craft.

Now that there are pictures, it is exactly as I expected. The gear are out of alignment. The other issues with that craft are, your CoM is behind your CoL, which is going to make the craft unable to fly. It will to backflips wonderfully though. I highly suggest the OP read the post that a previous poster linked. Here are a few pictures of some of my older Real Solar System aircraft, the same principle applies to them as they do in KSP when it comes to landing gear, CoL and CoM.

While that is true, without seeing the craft in question it is all speculation.

If you are having poor performance across the board hit ALT-F2 and bring up your debug screen, and see what errors are coming up. Or check your output.log, it sounds like you have a mod or something that is throwing a bunch of errors.

I know what he was saying, I just cut it down, and left the important part. It is an alignment issue, doesn't matter if it is due to flex or poor placement. If they are out of the correct camber or caster or even have the toe alignment change then they are out of alignment.

In FAR if you design an aircraft with no way of slowing down and is actually pretty clean as far as drag goes, it will maintain its energy level for quite a while, but if you design in drag systems, like air brakes it will help slow the craft down, just not like in stock KSP where you open an air brake and it will stop the craft in flight. Real aircraft don't work like that. Show me a high performance aircraft that with the engines off that will lose speed as fast as half of the designs in the stock KSP. The F-16 Fighting Falcon will glide for over a 70miles from 30kft! In FAR you can do the samething if you set up your glide slope right and it will bleed of energy at about the same rate. Most people are not used to that when coming from the souposphere of stock. I did some tests last night for the 30min I did manage to play and got a high perfomance single engine fighter, that tops out at 23km at mach 3.8. And lands at 175kts, which is 90m/s. So again, this question by the OP was in regaurds to FAR, not stock, so don't come in to a place where someone asked a question that had nothing to do with your style of play and bash his.

This is the answer right here, the gear are most likely out of alignment.

With FAR you will experience pretty rapid deceleration just nothing as great as the souposphere in the stock KSP. You have a realistic glide slope as in real life. Unlike the stock KSP where you can put wings on a brick and get it to fly faster then the speed of thought. If you know nothing about how FAR works or even care to try it you should not talk about it.

I understand.... On the note of slowing down, I have had issues with it also. Some of my more "sleak" designs just don't bleed off energy like I would like and thus seem to retain speed like they are greased lightning. All I can say is airbrakes and drag chutes after landing, I keep forgetting about those, but they REALLY help with high landing speeds without dealing with the insta-lock brakes.

With the current design it wouldn't be much of a factor, but if he were to move his CoL further back it would become quite a problem. Ideally you want the CoL just kissing the back of the CoM, this is what I have found to be the perfect position for any of my SSTO space planes, and I have built plenty of them probably far more than anyone else on these forums. All of them use FAR+DRE and have since I started playing KSP. I found that if you have the CoL to far back, it just makes the pitch up control that much more difficult at higher speeds. If it is to far forward you will find the craft impossible to control at any speed. Like this craft, that I built for a challenge and used as a test craft for most of .24. Note its CoL possition is right behind the CoM. Also take note that at the control information on the bottom left of the screen, see how little actual pitch effort is being exerted on the craft to maintain its ascent angle. That is one of my smallest SSTO space planes and cheapest, I built it for a test craft and used it for pretty much anything I didn't feel like using my bigger more expensive SSTOs for. I have no pictures of anything I have created this version yet. But I havent had a chance to really play much.

I hate to say this but this would not be that big of a deal seein as FAR also emulates the mach affects, where you CoL will shift back towards the rear of the wing at supersonic and hypersonic speeds. So that craft would be quite stable at the speeds needed to achieve orbital velocities. His position is actually pretty much perfect for that style of SSTO. If he were to move his CoL further back away from the CoM he would run into a serious mach "tuck" affect where the nose would become extremely heavy at supersonic speeds, and quite possibly impossible to get any pitch up authority once the canards stall out do to the high speeds and high angle of attack required to bring the nose up at those speeds.

Most real life counter measure systems actually deploy flares and chaff at the same time. Or at least are capable of doing that. Like the F-16C can deploy flares and chaff in a set interval set by the pilot during or before the flight, and there are several pre-set settings in the counter measure computer. Some of the settings, like a "dogfight" counter measure setting is set to deploy 1 flare every .1 seconds for 2 seconds and 1 chaff every .5 seconds for 1.5 seconds. The flight computer on most modern fighters can even deploy counter measures for you if they detect a hostile radar lock.

I honestly don't think the mass increase of Jupiter would have the affects that some people would think. Yes it would change a bit in our solar system but it would not be a sudden change. The biggest thing would be that most of the planets closest to Jupiter would have their orbits affected first. The asteroid belt, often forgotten here in KSP, would actually be the biggest threat to Earth, as most of the rocks in that field would have their orbits disrupted by the new gravity field, sending them in an erratic orbital pattern if not throwing them completely out of orbit like a giant shotgun blast.

Exactly, that is why I said, it "could". If you were to take the current power output, it is still more than addiquate for something like a probe in space or even a small UAV test vehicle and even a small car. Seeing as you don't need a great deal of power to get a car to roll forward, it doesnt have to be fast, just able to move. Even if you were to able to achieve 1/3rd of the speculated power of 30kn, it could be enough to fly a Cessna, or even a Piper Cub. At 1/6th of the power output rating, or 5kn, it would be able to move a 1000lb object at a TWR 1:1. Seeing as the battery packs in a Nissan Leaf actually weigh less than 500lbs it is more than enough to get a probe or a UAV to move quite well through the air or even underwater. EDIT- NASA's test was at 17W of input power and net an output of 116microN. Which was 2% of the power input of the original test by Shaw, and .7% of the power the Chinese said they did. So if the power scale were consistant, it is concievable that you could with current setup max out at 6800-7000micro Newton when 1kW is applied.

I was reading about this on CNN, and on a science journal. I find this drive fascinating for so many levels. If it does not require a thrust exit port, and can be placed at the Center of Mass of the craft you could truely build a "flying saucer". If the claims are correct, that you could generate 3kN of thrust from 1kW of power, you could conceivably have a vehicle the same size as a Nissan Leaf, which weighs in at 1500kg, that could fly for 48hrs on its on board battery, which is rated for 24kW/hours. Pretty amazing if you think about it just from a transport standpoint.

To give you a simple answer, I have gone back and looked at what you posted. Those are better then what most people post, but the whole output.log is more useful. Upload it on a file sharing site and post a link here for NK or DJY to look at it. But I tested the latest P-wings myself and removed my FAR from the install, it booted up fine for me. Launching KSP32bit not 64bit.

Do you mean they are side slipping in flight or sitting on the runway? If it is in flight and you are going with a tailess design, then that is pretty normal if your thrust gets out of alignment just a bit. The B-2 uses some minor thrust variations to control the yaw and side slip of the aircraft inflight. You may have to do the samething. Do you have a picture of the craft?

I don't think anywhere in the OP does it say this requires FAR or NEAR. Next, FAR doesn't make designing rockets or planes a pain, unless you are building bricks with engines and trying to launch them to space then it would make you suffer. But if anything FAR makes designing planes easier, why because all you have to do to design a decent plane in FAR is make a paper airplane or GOOGLE what a plane looks like and copy that design. FAR is not the problem with craft designs, it is often the designer. There is a difference between requires and fully supports. Requires, means you NEED to have it. Fully supports, means if you have it, it will not cause any problems. So not sure what your problem is there, but I quit reading after the first paragraph. But I am not judging, if you want to fly in the souposphere of stock KSP and pretend that it is anything like real life or even aquatic life, then by all means it is your game.

I run B9, FAR, KAS, RT2, Kerbinite, and a slew of other plugins and mods. I dont come near 3.5gb of RAM, but I also run in OpenGL 32bit with Active Texture Management Basic, and I think I max out at 2.3GB. OpenGL makes a world of difference.

Ok quite simply the craft in the OP is traveling to fast to land, you should look at a longer shallower landing approach at about 2-3deg. You were trying to land at over 460mph! That is nearly .6 mach, F-15s cruise at those speeds. Flaps help with the low speed landing approach and the take off. I know I usually line up for my landings about 10-20km out from the runway. Also you may want to add an airbrake or spoiler of some type on the craft to get it to slow down. Lastly disable the nose gear brakes in your action groups, or it will cause your craft to flip over or lose control under breaking. Note this crafts landing speeds and the use of flaps for slow landing speeds. Aside the fact that it is a swing wing design. Oh and the posting of imgur albums dont put the #1 at the end of the link, just post this.... [ imgur ] 5bj0i [ / imgur] no spaces, that is the code to my album I just posted.

It basically is, with mod restrictions. But seeing as the Machingbird challenge hasn't been updated in months, maybe close to a year now, I think this is fine. But because it is stock only and I loath the stock souposphere dynamics and refuse to use it, at all. That will leave me out of it with my use of FAR.

You could still do something like that but with more of an eye to realism. I made that last version of KSP, it was the beginning of a test line that I was messing around with. I never really kept refining the ideas and just let them drop after a while. But it is possible to do those things, it just takes more work then initially thought. These little things still can achieve orbit, and they are quite small.

I have built VTOLs that work in FAR, like this monstrosity. Or this little thing. Both worked fine in FAR. The problem is you have to many intakes, in FAR you don't need to air hog, it just doesnt work.

I have been making SSTO space planes since I started in KSP and using FAR. And you don't have to go with a more "standard" design. Ferram is right, your craft has to little wing for the mass of the craft. Now this doesn't mean you need to make the U-2 Spy plane sized wings or some other rediculous scaled wings, but you need more lift generating surface vs the mass of the craft. You could honestly get away with dumping half of your fuel and science gear and go for a lighter design. I have put a SSTO space plane of over 400 tons into an 100km by 100km orbit with FAR, it isn't impossible just challenging. Once you figure out what works you will think, "how did I ever not get it?". Stick with FAR you wont regret it!

When posting imgur albums you just post this.... [ imgur ] lHJOd [ /imgur ] no spaces or anything after the #, this will autocrop it for the forum you are on. like this.