How do you adjust the new spring and damper values?

[peachoftree]

I feel like whenever I build a plane and try to land it, I always bounce erratically around the runway. I think that if I had properly adjusted values it would fix the problem, but I have no idea how.  

[sebi.zzr]

19 hours ago, peachoftree said:

I feel like whenever I build a plane and try to land it, I always bounce erratically around the runway. I think that if I had properly adjusted values it would fix the problem, but I have no idea how.  

What do you mean by "properly adjusted",did you try to change settings in SPH?

[Warzouz]

My very basic first plane was bouncing until death in 1.1.1. In 1.1.2 it doesn't. Well, it still do on physical time warp (*2 is OK, *3+ is deadly)

[Guest]

In my limited play with the settings I find that increasing both to the maximum is preferable if the craft can handle it.

[nli2work]

keep damper strength equal or less than spring strength. increasing spring ratio have less negative side effects as that in essence increases mass each wheel can support, better to over support than under support for takeoff/landings. low grav situation you'd want to tune it down to minimize shooting craft off the ground when wheelColliders switches on for physics unpack.

[GoSlash27]

I'd recommend dampers be set to .6 on all occasions. Springs should be max where 2 gear are handling the load and reduced for situations where 4 or more gear are sharing the load.

 You want to balance between sponginess and the Kraken.

Best,
-Slashy

[Diche Bach]

On 5/2/2016 at 10:07 PM, GoSlash27 said:

I'd recommend dampers be set to .6 on all occasions. Springs should be max where 2 gear are handling the load and reduced for situations where 4 or more gear are sharing the load.

 You want to balance between sponginess and the Kraken.

Best,
-Slashy

So 0.6 on the dampers and max on the springs. Heh, that is more or less exactly the opposite of what I'd been trying (spring 0.3 or less; damper 1.5 or higher).

Shame there is no documentation to clarify what these user-configurable parameters "do."

"Spring strength" does that mean "how large of recoil the spring exerts when it undergoes acute increased compression?" or does it mean "how much compression the spring can resist before it undergoes acute compression?"

Damper strength . . . damping of what exactly?

Edited August 31, 2016 by Diche Bach
question

[GoSlash27]

1 hour ago, Diche Bach said:

So 0.6 on the dampers and max on the springs. Heh, that is more or less exactly the opposite of what I'd been trying (spring 0.3 or less; damper 1.5 or higher).

Shame there is no documentation to clarify what these user-configurable parameters "do."

"Spring strength" does that mean "how large of recoil the spring exerts when it undergoes acute increased compression?" or does it mean "how much compression the spring can resist before it undergoes acute compression?"

Damper strength . . . damping of what exactly?

The spring strength is the spring rate; the mass required to get it to compress 1m. That is based on the sprung mass and gets scaled when the Sim figures out how much mass is being supported.

 It's better to think of spring strength as a frequency adjustment. The lower the spring strength, the slower the suspension will bounce.

The damper rate is the percentage of critical damping where 1 = critical, <1= underdamped, and >1 is overdamped. Critical damping occurs when all the energy imparted to the spring is dissipated in one cycle of oscillation. Typical settings are .3 for all terrain rovers and .6 for landing gear. Setting it too low causes bouncy, wallowy suspension. Setting it too high (never exceed 1) will cause the wheels to skip on the surface and "Jack down" (loss of suspension height over bumps).

HTHs,

-Slashy

[Diche Bach]

Great to know. Thanks Slashy:

So for my next question:

What is "Authority Limiter?" (which I'll abbreviate as AL)

It had always made sense that these control how large of angle the control surface can flex into from its retracted state. So a pair of ailerons with AL = 150 will generally produce much more rapid and erratic roll than those set to 15 . . . but I'm now thinking it is more complicated than just that. I've been opening up and pinning the part config panes for all my control surfaces and tweaking them in flight to try to learn more. Of course, when I build a new design, I do this during the first few test takeoffs to determine values that suffice for takeoff.

Generally for takeoff I plug in values about like this (for most aircraft):

Ailerons: ~2 (1 if I can manage to hit that number on the slide bar)

Flaps: ~40 (flaps only seem to function like flaps in certain instances though, so I rarely make much use of them these days)

Rudder: ~2

Elevators: ~40

Observations:

1. Tweaking elevator's AL up during time warp can be used a bit like "trim" (and seems to actually work _better_ than the Alt-S or Alt-D key combo). Get to an altitude/speed/heading desired, pitch up a bit, and then enter time warp. As the ship pitches down, use small upticks in the elevator's AL to get it to keep at a reasonable upward or level pitch in flight.

2. Values of -100 on ailerons and rudder are viable, and in some instances I've found these to be preferable, though not always (the characteristics of the vehicle seem to change a lot depending on altitude, fuel expended, velocity, etc.). In one instance, I was able to get the ailerons to function about like I would expect them to (very smooth and gradual rolling) by setting them to around -100, but in other instances changing this value < 1 seems to cause problems.

Rolling is my nemesis. I have a few designs that seem able to maintain a stable roll orientation (sometimes) but generally the ship always wants to pitch one way or another, until at least half its fuel is exhausted.

Any tips in regards to that stuff?

[GoSlash27]

1 hour ago, Diche Bach said:

Great to know. Thanks Slashy:

So for my next question:

What is "Authority Limiter?" (which I'll abbreviate as AL)

It had always made sense that these control how large of angle the control surface can flex into from its retracted state. So a pair of ailerons with AL = 150 will generally produce much more rapid and erratic roll than those set to 15 . . . but I'm now thinking it is more complicated than just that. I've been opening up and pinning the part config panes for all my control surfaces and tweaking them in flight to try to learn more. Of course, when I build a new design, I do this during the first few test takeoffs to determine values that suffice for takeoff.

Generally for takeoff I plug in values about like this (for most aircraft):

Ailerons: ~2 (1 if I can manage to hit that number on the slide bar)

Flaps: ~40 (flaps only seem to function like flaps in certain instances though, so I rarely make much use of them these days)

Rudder: ~2

Elevators: ~40

Observations:

1. Tweaking elevator's AL up during time warp can be used a bit like "trim" (and seems to actually work _better_ than the Alt-S or Alt-D key combo). Get to an altitude/speed/heading desired, pitch up a bit, and then enter time warp. As the ship pitches down, use small upticks in the elevator's AL to get it to keep at a reasonable upward or level pitch in flight.

2. Values of -100 on ailerons and rudder are viable, and in some instances I've found these to be preferable, though not always (the characteristics of the vehicle seem to change a lot depending on altitude, fuel expended, velocity, etc.). In one instance, I was able to get the ailerons to function about like I would expect them to (very smooth and gradual rolling) by setting them to around -100, but in other instances changing this value < 1 seems to cause problems.

Rolling is my nemesis. I have a few designs that seem able to maintain a stable roll orientation (sometimes) but generally the ship always wants to pitch one way or another, until at least half its fuel is exhausted.

Any tips in regards to that stuff?

Actually, I think you've got the idea of the authority limits. They're just percentage of default deflection. Negative numbers make them work backwards.

I have best results by making sure that each control surface only responds to one input and not using active rudders.

For pitch stability with changing fuel, I make sure the CoG doesn't shift when the fuel drains. Cog is in the exact same place with the tanks empty as it is with the tanks full.

Best,

-Slashy