Should aerodynamics be slightly more realistic.

[Rath]

It feels strange that an aircraft with straight wings can be just as fast as a lawn dart.  Obviously wing sweep should do something, and while it would slow down straight wing aircraft, most people's spaceplanes already follow this for aesthetics.  It shouldn't be very complicated, no Mach cones or somesuch.

Dihedral wings should also auto-stabilize along the roll axis, like it does IRL.

 

[Wjolcz]

For a kerbal flight sim sequel, yes. I don't think KSP has any need for that. Aerodynamics seems to work well and I'm happy with it. Still better than the souposphere.

The only thing I wish for KSP is control stiffening. It's really annoying to accidentaly G-LOC your crew because you forgot to adjust the pitch slider.

[OHara]

The effect of wing dihedral in stock aerodynamics (where all parts see aero forces from the undisturbed airflow) works pretty well, probably because the wing parts with functional dihedral tend to be in undisturbed airflow anyway.  

The first serious aircraft I built in KSP, trying to make something that would handle well based on my experience as an engineer and a pilot (but not knowing the KSP aero model) slowly levels from a roll.  You can also make a plane that over-corrects roll, doing the wallowing 'Dutch roll' motion. 

That first aircraft had long wings because it wasn't meant to go fast, so it was mildly disappointing when I found that long wings don't help low-speed lift-to-drag ratio at all in KSP.

I can't imagine a way, though, to simulate the effects of one part of the airframe on the airflow around another part, like shock-wave cones, simpler than figuring the airflow in a mesh of voxels in 3D space like Ferram's FAR mod does.  Is there an alternative to FAR that does less computation but handles wing-shape effects more satisfactorily ?

Edited January 8, 2017 by OHara

[steve_v]

Craft shape based, rather than part based drag/lift/occlusion model. e.g. FAR.
Parts lift based on shape, not arbitrary "lift rating", adds ability to make ad-hoc cargo bays, removes all issues with simplified stupid cargo bay occlusion model (no more "cannot deploy while stowed" BS), makes things that look aerodynamic behave as you would expect, removes all wierd drag behaviour of open stack nodes & surface-mounted parts (e.g parts angled to follow contour produce excessive drag), fixes unexpected drag of clipped parts (e.g. parts inside hollow adapters). Probably more advantages I can't put my finger on right now.

12 hours ago, OHara said:

...simpler than figuring the airflow in a mesh of voxels in 3D space like Ferram's FAR mod does. Is there an alternative to FAR that does less computation...

Why does it need to be simpler? FARs approach works great, and I dont see a significant performance impact.

Edited January 8, 2017 by steve_v

[Enceos]

On 08.01.2017 at 7:00 AM, Veeltch said:

For a kerbal flight sim sequel, yes. I don't think KSP has any need for that. Aerodynamics seems to work well and I'm happy with it. Still better than the souposphere.

The only thing I wish for KSP is control stiffening. It's really annoying to accidentaly G-LOC your crew because you forgot to adjust the pitch slider.

Joystick is your friend. Try it, you'll never fly aircrafts with keyboard again.

[EpicSpaceTroll139]

I'm pretty sure dihedral effect is already a thing. I definitely think wing shape should have effects on the flight characteristics though. Even more than just the effects of wing sweep. Swept wigs should act like swept wings. Straight wings should act like straight wings. Delta wings should act like delta wings. LERX should provide realistic benefits. Etc.

[Arugela]

Have they considered making FAR stock? Or adding it as a default option for aerodynamics during a game creation as stock. They could polish it up a bit more(if needed) and add their sample aircraft in and whatnot.

Edited January 14, 2017 by Arugela

[Red Iron Crown]

2 hours ago, Arugela said:

Have they considered making FAR stock?

Even if that were desired, the license is incompatible.

[Arugela]

The guys making far couldn't just change the license or give permission?

[GluttonyReaper]

13 minutes ago, Arugela said:

The guys making far couldn't just change the license or give permission?

As I understand it, lots of people have contributed to FAR's code over the years, so getting permission would be very difficult / entirely impossible.

[Red Iron Crown]

Just now, GluttonyReaper said:

As I understand it, lots of people have contributed to FAR's code over the years, so getting permission would be very difficult / entirely impossible.

That's my understanding as well.

[Arugela]

I don't know what the license is but, what if they put all of KSP under the license and bought far... Or something tricky to bypass the problem... >< Like I said. I have no idea what it is though or how it works.

Or just make their own better version.

How many updates does this game have still to go btw? Isn't there a minimum promised amount of versions or something. How many more game updates do we have still?

Edited January 14, 2017 by Arugela

[GluttonyReaper]

33 minutes ago, Arugela said:

Isn't there a minimum promised amount of versions or something.

Yep - zero. Everything after that is just a nice bonus  

[Arugela]

When they did the christmas sale in 2015 or something it said free updates till something like 2.4 or some odd number.

On a more pointed note. They could hire or get engineers to work for them or do stuff for fun/free and make the new models. Then they could build not on art grounds but aerodynamic grounds. Maybe a bunch of guys would help build the game for the fun of it. Engineers tend to do that.

That could get them new or even multiple aerodynamic models to choose from.

Edited January 15, 2017 by Arugela

[Red Iron Crown]

21 hours ago, Arugela said:

I don't know what the license is but, what if they put all of KSP under the license and bought far... Or something tricky to bypass the problem... >< Like I said. I have no idea what it is though or how it works.

They would have to make KSP GPL, which is not going to happen any time soon, if ever.

21 hours ago, Arugela said:

Or just make their own better version.

The aero overhaul of 1.0 was the better version. There are some details of FAR that are more realistic, but the current aero model is generally sufficient for the game.

21 hours ago, Arugela said:

How many updates does this game have still to go btw? Isn't there a minimum promised amount of versions or something. How many more game updates do we have still?

Minimum promised version is 1.0. There is no guarantee of any future updates. I really wish people would consider this when they descend on every devnote thread to complain about how awful everything is, one of these days Squad will just pull the plug and that will be that.

[Arugela]

When they did the christmas special sales they said free upgrades up to a certain version of the game. It was past 1.0 and I believe 2.0. I thought they were doing free then possibly DLC after that.

I was curious what we were likely to see up to that point. Or what they had hoped to get up to that point in the game. Thought it might shed light on how the updates might go or the odds of seeing certain changes like this.

It was the Steam christmas sale for 2015 or 2014. It was just before release when 0.9 or 0.95 or something was out. I thought maybe they were going to do so much upto that update with free updates(base game) then possibly start doing more expansive DLC via a pay wall to make more money.

Maybe we can get advanced Aero DLC packs later.

Edited January 15, 2017 by Arugela

[Red Iron Crown]

4 hours ago, Arugela said:

When they did the christmas special sales they said free upgrades up to a certain version of the game. It was past 1.0 and I believe 2.0.

You're mistaken. Please read the user agreement, no future versions are guaranteed and they could stop at any time.