Bumpier surroundings of KSC

[Van Disaster]

59 minutes ago, TheDestroyer111 said:

//EDIT: @pandaman below me Yeah. I don't think this is entirely impossible, especially with your version. But what about rovers? This would require another remake on the rover wheels, this time giving them some proper, sense-making and reasonably realistic physics.

Wheels are being redone again for 1.2. I don't know how realistic they'll end up ( I doubt they'll approach pro car sim levels somehow... )

Lamding on grass would be fine if we had the right gear. We have aircraft gear meant for runways, mostly, or prepared grass strips for small craft - gear with bigger low pressure tyres wouod help with the tier0 runway too.

[pandaman]

55 minutes ago, TheDestroyer111 said:

 

//EDIT: @pandaman below me Yeah. I don't think this is entirely impossible, especially with your version. But what about rovers? This would require another remake on the rover wheels, this time giving them some proper, sense-making and reasonably realistic physics.

That's why it needs scaling to speed, rovers don't (usually) go anything like as fast as a plane coming in for landing.  And if you are driving rovers that fast then you are asking for trouble anyway.  I wasn't thinking if a huge jump in risk for the grass over the runway so landing 'a bit quicker and rougher' would not be instantly terminal, just riskier and getting more dangerous the faster the speed.  The idea is to encourage players to use the runway because it is actually safer, not the opposite as it is now, and to design and plan for when you want or need to land in rugged areas.

5 minutes ago, Van Disaster said:

Wheels are being redone again for 1.2. I don't know how realistic they'll end up ( I doubt they'll approach pro car sim levels somehow... )

Lamding on grass would be fine if we had the right gear. We have aircraft gear meant for runways, mostly, or prepared grass strips for small craft - gear with bigger low pressure tyres wouod help with the tier0 runway too.

Yes, appropriate gear is part of the 'design for the terrain' argument, and some small 'rough terrain' wheels may well be a good addition too.  I tend to find I'm OK with the larger wheels (medium upwards depending on the vessel) on most terrain if I land carefully.

[ZooNamedGames]

1 hour ago, TheDestroyer111 said:

Both this and the OP are bad ideas. OP is bad as AFAIK most new players land on the area near KSC before getting the precision required for runway landing, and thus messing with the terrain near KSC would effectively prevent most players from learning how to land airplanes. The quoted idea is bad because then, it would be much harder to fly planes from places other than KSC. And this would cause trouble for people trying to for example have bases in remote locations on Kerbin. And... There must be a reason why the KSC was built on a relatively flat area

//EDIT: @pandaman below me Yeah. I don't think this is entirely impossible, especially with your version. But what about rovers? This would require another remake on the rover wheels, this time giving them some proper, sense-making and reasonably realistic physics.

Got a better solution to mine then?

[pandaman]

7 hours ago, ZooNamedGames said:

Got a better solution to mine then?

Actually my idea isn't much different to yours looking at it again.  Both of them don't require adjusting the terrain graphics at all and use a 'modifier' to adjust the risk level.

Like you I felt this was a simple way to simulate those little bumps and unevennesses on unprepared surfaces without having to actually model them. 

 

[ZooNamedGames]

Just now, pandaman said:

Actually my idea isn't much different to yours looking at it again.  Both of them don't require adjusting the terrain graphics at all and use a 'modifier' to adjust the risk level.

Like you I felt this was a simple way to simulate those little bumps and unevennesses on unprepared surfaces without having to actually model them. 

 

That does seem true upon rereading.

The whole point is to give players an incentive not to land wherever they like but to try to aim for the runway unless their goal is elsewhere and as you mentioned, you'd likely have prepared for the conditions.

[pandaman]

22 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

That does seem true upon rereading.

The whole point is to give players an incentive not to land wherever they like but to try to aim for the runway unless their goal is elsewhere and as you mentioned, you'd likely have prepared for the conditions.

Yes.  It's fairly intuitive that landing off the runway is riskier than landing on it.  And as long as that risk is apparent without being too punishing there should be no major problems. 

[tater]

Landing on wheels anywhere except a prepared runway should end up as a crash landing. (except maybe aircraft that look like a Cessna 180, or old planes like the Storch, etc). Anyone landing a spaceplane off the runway? That's an airframe write-off, or something is wrong.

[Hupf]

Kerbinside exploration by plane should yet stay possible. So the general idea to increase stress on the landing gears depending on biome sounds good if it is balanced in such a way that lighter craft are still able to safely land on grass.

[tater]

7 minutes ago, Hupf said:

Kerbinside exploration by plane should yet stay possible. So the general idea to increase stress on the landing gears depending on biome sounds good if it is balanced in such a way that lighter craft are still able to safely land on grass.

If by lighter craft you mean things like a Cessna (prop plane), then sure.

[Van Disaster]

1 hour ago, tater said:

Landing on wheels anywhere except a prepared runway should end up as a crash landing. (except maybe aircraft that look like a Cessna 180, or old planes like the Storch, etc). Anyone landing a spaceplane off the runway? That's an airframe write-off, or something is wrong.

Well... I'll agree to an extent, except there's been quite a few airliners which have landed undamaged on random patches of land ( and in some cases, taken off again from the same place - topically, look up TACA flight 110 which landed on a grass berm next to a NASA installation & was flown out ), and quite a few routinely land on gravel; the original 737 could operate off grass with a kit, and I suspect others like the Tu-154 could. 747 on a dirt strip.

Planes are pretty tough. This doesn't mean you can land anything with wings wherever you like, but they won't fall apart the second you touch some plant life.

[tater]

I don't disagree, actually. The trouble is that in RL, you can pick and choose which bits of the natural world to land on that have better chances, and in KSP it's sort of all or nothing. It looks flat out on the mesa west of Albuquerque, but the dirt is soft, and covered with mini-arroyos, and most any such landing would end up a crash. You could bulldoze a strip, and the ground might support a large airliner, though. So unless they added much more terrain variability on a small scale, it's all or nothing.

[pandaman]

The smallest fixed gear could probably do with being a bit sturdier to offset the extra risk of landing in the rough a bit, or a more expensive 'ruggedised' version more suited to rougher terrain being added to highlight the difference may be better.

[Magzimum]

The flat grassfield around the KSC has to stay!

Old-fashioned airfields are called "airfield" because it was basically a field. Note: these were certainly not strips, but fields onto which you could take off and land from a lot of different directions.

For decades airplanes would make regular landings and take-offs from fields.

While it is completely ridiculous that the tier-0 runway is bumpier than anywhere else on the planet, and especially bumpier than the field next to it, the fact that there is a field is quite realistic. The flat land around the KSC does resemble a lot of airports around the planet, although I know exactly zero airports where the runway is elevated by a few meters from the surrounding grassfields. It is almost always at the same elevation for reasons of safety. I think most jet airliners could land quite safely on a purposely flattened grassfield, although their landing gear has been optimized for asphalt/concrete runways... But I still like the grassfield.

While I agree that there should be a benefit to launching and landing from the actual runway instead of the grassfield, removing the flat grass does not solve this. Flattening the tier-0 runway would at least not make the runway worse. Removing the tier-0 runway altogether and replacing it with more grass would make it more realistic, although then I would not upgrade it to the tier-1 or tier-2 anymore, unless the runway has a benefit of some kind.

[tater]

I've flown off of grass before. The aircraft in the first image weighs about 1 ton. Notice the quality of the field the Spits are on, as well. Airfields are well maintained, they are not random grassland---though it is indeed possible to land on random grasslands in light aircraft with appropriate landing gear. Such aircraft are almost always taildraggers, however, as the geometry of a tricycle means that if the nose gear snags on something, the plane will nose in, and likely break.

I agree that the tier-0 runway should actually work as an airstrip, but a large aircraft in the grass should be very bad indeed, and if it is not possible to have "maintained" grass next to the airport that is different than other grass on Kerbin, then grass should equal a total loss unless the aircraft are designed for rough fields. We own the craft mass, and we can calculate the ground pressure at the wheels, so above some fairly low number there should be no landing off a runway at all for aircraft. Off kerbin? LOL. No.

[Magzimum]

Here's a movie (youtube) of an IL-62 landing in a grassfield. And it's not a flat field either, but one with some bumps... lol.

Quite impressive.

[Van Disaster]

25 minutes ago, Magzimum said:

Here's a movie (youtube) of an IL-62 landing in a grassfield. And it's not a flat field either, but one with some bumps... lol.

Quite impressive.

Yeah, we discussed that particular landing on the previous page - note there was never any intention of taking off again or even probably starting up. I don't think landing on the area around KSC should always cause a writeoff ( I said why a few posts back ) but it should probably be a bit more difficult. Until we get rough-terrain landing gear I'm not in favour of making landing in random spots any harder, it's already pretty damn risky if you're using FAR ( other than the poles, which need a bit more variety in terrain surface before I'm prepared to write them off as landing spots ).

Last career game I already had to resort to this, which has a) tiny wing loading and huge flaps & b) is as rugged as I can make with existing parts. If you've not tried it already, try landing something useful on rough terrain in FAR :p.

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