Search the Community
Showing results for tags 'groundeffect'.
Found 1 result
-
More realistic surface interactions
Guest posted a topic in KSP1 Suggestions & Development Discussion
I understand waterskiing or hovercraft are not exactly core functionality for KSP but since I have struggled with this I'm going to list it anyway. Problem 1: Waterskiing When landing something on water, it immediately sinks in, which causes a massive drag spike. In reality, if you're going at all fast, water behaves more like a solid surface to start with: you would skip or ski on the surface until you slow down enough to sink. Consequently, things like seaplanes do not behave like in real life. If this was made more realistic, seaplanes, fast boats, and similar craft would become possible. Conversely, splashdowns might become more dangerous. Problem 2: Ground effect In real life, a plane flying close to the ground experiences a good deal of additional lift from an air cushion that forms beneath its wings. This makes aerodynamic landings easier and vessels like hovercraft or ekranoplans possible. Since KSP does not model ground effect, we can't do this. I think this would be a pretty simple change as you'd only need to adjust the amount of lift generated by distance to the surface up to 15 m or so to get close enough that it felt more or less right. This would significantly expand the range of craft we can make, as well as making planes easier to fly and things more realistic in general.