Does anyone actually use the first level runway?

[swjr-swis]

Russians: "These poor westerners and their flimsy planes. We make our planes take off plowed potato fields as a rule."

[Armisael]

Y'know, this raises an interesting question: what if the level 1 runway was just a rectangle painted on the grass - ie, white lines on the ground?

Edited April 7, 2016 by Armisael

[Alshain]

I rarely, if ever, use the Level 1 Runway.  The bumps are not a good way to symbolize a lower level runway IMO, it's not that it is unrealistic, quite the opposite, it's just that the game simulation doesn't work well with it.  The way the planes bounce off the ground at every little bump is unrealstic.

Edited April 7, 2016 by Alshain

[damerell]

10 hours ago, Deddly said:

But surely you can't deny that deliberately steering to the side and using the grass alongside what is obviously meant to be the runway is an exploit?

I surely can deny that. It's a workaround for a bug (or a misfeature if you want to say it can't be a bug if it's working as designed).

If the level 1 runway was shorter not bumpier I'd have more sympathy for the idea that using the grass was an exploit.

[Ser]

2 hours ago, Yemo said:

Works fine for take-Off. For landing i can hardly be bothered to align with any Runway so Even if i have the upgraded One and i Happen to land around KSC, i do Not Ami for it.

You can use NavUtilities mod to line up precisely.

 

People, just a thought: would a mod that creates "virtual" bumps for an active vessel (just makes it jump randomly depending on velocity) while not on runway help us all feel better and say "at least I can land on lev 1 and hope to stay alive"?

Edited April 7, 2016 by Ser

[Stoney3K]

56 minutes ago, Ser said:

You can use NavUtilities mod to line up precisely.

 

People, just a thought: would a mod that creates "virtual" bumps for an active vessel (just makes it jump randomly depending on velocity) while not on runway help us all feel better and say "at least I can land on lev 1 and hope to stay alive"?

It would be more realistic to have the landing gear apply massive amounts of drag once they're touched down on grass and have the plane burrow its nose in the ground, snapping off the front gear.

Less weight on the wheels means less drag on rough terrain so if you want to land on the rough, add plenty of wheels, think Antonov 225.

[Deddly]

5 hours ago, Jhawk1099 said:

wouldn't it be flatter?

Flattery will get you nowhere.

[Jhawk1099]

4 hours ago, Deddly said:

Flattery will get you nowhere.

Well played sir. If only I could give that post two likes

[KerbMav]

12 hours ago, Armisael said:

Y'know, this raises an interesting question: what if the level 1 runway was just a rectangle painted on the grass - ie, white lines on the ground?

Arent we still missing the level zero buildings anyway?

[Rath]

But if we have bumpier ground, still make it possible to land with a specially designed stol, please.

 

I like to grab my crew with airplanes once they land.  

[monophonic]

Oh I use it with my early planes all right. In fact those planes could barely get in the air if not for the helpful bumps giving them a nice... bump up into the air. Of course this works for take-off only, but honestly, rarely if ever those planes have enough fuel and/or stability to make it back to anywhere near the KSC. Let alone attempt landing on the runway. 

[Kertech]

I use the lemming approach to getting airborne (driving off the end of the runway) so the level 1 is a taxiway till the last 30odd meters...

[Pixel of Life]

On 4/6/2016 at 8:13 PM, cantab said:

If I'm feeling masochistic.

IMHO it wants a revamp. Since we're already getting a wheels overhaul, maybe make it vary the friction rather than the bumpiness. Grass would be quite high friction and potentially hard to take off or land from. The dirt runway would be less, and the paved runways less still.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't grass actually have less friction than asphalt and concrete? You'll know this if you've ever ridden a bicycle over a patch of long grass and braked hard, or watched any motorsport that takes place on a paved circuit and seen a driver go off the track and onto the grass. The problem with taking off from a grass surface isn't the friction, it's the fact that the landing gear will sink into the soil a bit (or a lot, depending on the number of wheels and the mass of the aircraft) and that creates a lot of extra resistance because soil is extremely viscous.

Edited April 9, 2016 by CaptainKorhonen

[Draco T stand-up guy]

23 minutes ago, CaptainKorhonen said:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't grass actually have less friction than asphalt and concrete? You'll know this if you've ever ridden a bicycle over a patch of long grass and braked hard, or watched any motorsport that takes place on a paved circuit and seen a driver go off the track and onto the grass. The problem with taking off from a grass surface isn't the friction, it's the fact that the landing gear will sink into the soil a bit (or a lot, depending on the number of wheels and the mass of the aircraft) and that creates a lot of extra resistance because soil is extremely viscous.

Grass is slipperier than asphalt or concrete. In other words, yes concrete's (edit) got more friction. But it's harder to drive through the grass than it is to drive over asphalt/concrete. And, of course, you'll also be sinking into the dirt and thus driving through that as well.

Displacement of the grass and dirt is much harder to over come than the riding across a hard surface with no give in it.

Edited April 9, 2016 by Draco T stand-up guy
grammar

[Pixel of Life]

2 minutes ago, Draco T stand-up guy said:

Grass is slipperier than asphalt or concrete. In other words, yes it's got more friction.

Wut? I think you made a mistake there. A slippery surface has LESS friction than a non-slippery one.

[StrandedonEarth]

On 4/7/2016 at 7:14 PM, Nich said:

I believe I have heard someone say the level 1 runway is the most uneven surface in the know universe

Apparently you've never tried to land near the south pole of the Mun. I never did get him home, and that pic is from 2014!

[Wolfwood]

I was just thinking this the other day. There is no reason that the ground around KSP shouldn't be more uneven, and the level 1 runway flattened. Keep it dirt, and have less friction than grass.

This also brings up another issue with runways. Weight. Im of the opinion that runways should have more weight restriction (lvls 1 & 2) than the launch pad. It seems logical that the launch pad can handle more weight than the runway.

Why is this important? Well im not sure if anyone else does it, but i did see Scott Manley focus on upgrading the runway/sph. This allowed him to build rockets and planes while only needing to upgrade one facility. Which kinda feels like an exploit against the spirit of the game (tho i dont knock him for going that route).

[Violent Jeb]

I like lvl one runway for a variety of reasons. It's a good place to test cruising speeds of rovers on rough terrain. It's also good to test your skills getting a bird in the air. Unfortunately it's brutal for landings

[genbrien]

On 7/4/2016 at 1:55 PM, swjr-swis said:

Russians: "These poor westerners and their flimsy planes. We make our planes take off plowed potato fields as a rule."

[tater]

To be fair, all the gear, and in fact the whole "impact tolerance" thing needs looking at. Typical lunar landing vertical velocities were well under 2 m/s.

[KerikBalm]

There should be a "rolling friction" as well as a "grip" stat... or some way to model the "average dip size"

The runway should be low drag, but very high "grip"... planes will keep on rolling, but brakes work very well, and wills are not so likely to lose grip and start side slipping.

The grass should be the opposite... effectively acting like every wheel is a brake, and wheels lose grip easily. One often does not want trong braking power with the nosewheel... but land on an uneven surface (ie non runway, and you get that).

If I had a 1m diameter wheel, and its going over 1cm pebbles/ditches/bumps... everthing is fine. If I have a 10cm diameter wheel, and there are 10cm rocks/ridges/troughs... that wheel is not going to roll... it might as well be the end of a strut hitting it.

Different terrains could have different "trough sizes", and wheels could have a radius stat. One could make an equation taking into account "trough size", wheel radius, and speed, and say that based on X trough size and Y wheel diameter, going over Z m/s makes the part behave like a strut and not a wheel... which would generally be bad and flip rovers and such.

The small retractable gears would require either very very low speeds, or a very smooth surface to allow them to actually roll and not "stick" like a landing leg.

Maybe also a "hardness" stat... based on the hardness of the ground, mass of craft per unit wheel surface area in contact, the craft "sinks" X meters into the ground, and based on wheel radius... sink too far and the wheel stops rolling, and catches and acts liek a strut. Before that, it just suffers more and more friction based on calculated "depth"

Grasslands could have a small trough size, but low hardness

The T0 runway could have low hardness, but very low "trough size"... hardnes and friction coefficient go up with upgrades, the trough size goes down.

In some places, We could expect some pretty smooth ice covering... low trough size, high hardness... very low coefficient of friction. You could land a spaceplane on icecaps perhaps... It might be nice if we had varying textures within the same biome, and different textures had different properties... so that you could visually see some areas that would be OK for plane landing, at least if you've got overseized landing gear or something like that.

I think we could balance plane wheels vs rover wheels with some system like this. Plane wheels would have very low rolling friction, but due to their radius, they'd not handle uneven surfaces as well. They'd also have much higher loading, and sink into soft ground more

[numerobis]

I use it in the early game. It forces me to make STOL planes -- 20 m/s and I'm off! Landing is rough but works, very bouncy.

[ag3nt108]

I can quite honestly say my experiences with the runway are at least half of the reasons I don't use planes in KSP.  Indeed every time I start a new career and the "observational surveys over x/y" contracts appear I groan inside.  Over all I think Squad does a fantastic job with KSP and infact it is one of the few games I've played recently and been genuinely impressed with for more than just a matter of a few hours but seriously, whoever designed that runway I suspect has a penchant for class A drugs lol

 

I live in South East Asia and travel often, I've have in real life been a passenger on air craft that have landed on and taken off from some pretty dodgy looking "airports".  I remember once in the Philippines my flight was cancelled due to rain.  The air craft simply are not able to stop in time on the wet, muddy grass.  This is in tropics so I imagine that airport has a lot of cancelled arrivals lol.  Perhaps the guy who invented a runway you can only land on in the dry is now advising Squad?

[qromodynmc]

There are few things to do about it;

1. Runway shouldnt be that bumpy, it should be flat but less stable, for example you shouldn't land on it at 100ms on it, if you do, landing gears should broke.

2. They can make acceleration much more slower on grass, also same with runway, high speed landings should broke something.

these are in my mind but dunno if squad ever reads it.

[Mastikator]

On 2016-04-07 at 4:53 AM, Draco T stand-up guy said:

Define 'rough', specifically, define it in a program.

It's not just defining the ground as rough but defining what happens to the craft as it lands. Do you take into account what appears to be an individual rock in the texture or do you just crash the craft? Do you shake the visuals a bit to make it look like a rough landing but doing no damage or do you just crash the craft?

A craft that lands or takes off horizontally shouldn't be able to land on unprepared ground. This is the point about the first level runway being worse to use than the ground next to it. You'll notice that the first level runway is meshed and not just texture.

Basically, if there isn't a runway there then your craft should crash and you'll be looking at mounting a rescue mission with a VTOL (unless all Kerbals die).

Make grass and dirt and sand snow count as "soft", soft ground automatically applies a breaking torque for wheels even if you're not breaking (or capable of braking). That would make it very difficult to take off from the grass. Rock, ice and asphalt would be fine.

Could make sand twice as soft as grass and dirt, adding double braking torque and also capping the torque at that amount (since wheels and sand don't play well).