Does Drag Use AoA

[At4851]

Does drag use AoA to calculate it?  Seems like you might not need it with a drag cube, but Im not sure

[Human Person]

Yes.

You can press F12 during the flight to toggle a good visualization for drag and lift.

[At4851]

Any idea what the formula would be?

Also, to make that a little clearer, Im wondering if it does something like sin mabey? AoA * drag cube calculated drag, or if it works out which face is closest to the direction youre going and just uses that face as foreward no sin's involved

[bewing]

It does a correct vector calculation, dotting your surface velocity vector into each of the 3 drag cube vectors that are facing in the correct direction -- plus some kludge factors for rearward-facing open nodes.

 

[At4851]

Having trouble with this, I think this means it finds the component from your velocity straight up from each 3 faces pointing towards the direction youre moving. So you get 3 drag components that add up to the overall drag vector going in the opposite direction of your velocity.  So I think the dot product comes before the drag equation to get the velocity components, and then the drag equation for the 3 sides and get the drag components and then the overall drag vector.  Also wondering if theres skin friction drag, or if its all 90 degrees from the faces?  I think probably pressure drag and stuff is all included in the Cd and multipliers.  I found this in the physics.cfg

DRAG_TIP // Multiplier to dragcube drag when the face points towards the velocity vector, x value is mach, y value is multiplier
{
    key = 0 1 0 0
    key = 0.85 1.19 0.6960422 0.6960422
    key = 1.1 2.83 0.730473 0.730473
    key = 5 4 0 0
}
DRAG_SURFACE // Multiplier to dragcube drag when the face points orthogonal to the velocity vector, x value is mach, y value is multiplier
{
    key = 0 0.02 0 0
    key = 0.85 0.02 0 0
    key = 0.9 0.0152439 -0.07942077 -0.07942077
    key = 1.1 0.0025 -0.005279571 -0.001936768
    key = 2 0.002083333 -2.314833E-05 -2.314833E-05
    key = 5 0.003333333 -0.000180556 -0.000180556
    key = 25 0.001428571 -7.14286E-05 0
}
DRAG_TAIL // Multiplier to dragcube drag when the face points away from the velocity vector, x value is mach, y value is multiplier
{
    key = 0 1 0 0
    key = 0.85 1 0 0
    key = 1.1 0.25 -0.02215106 -0.02487721
    key = 1.4 0.22 -0.03391732 -0.03391732
    key = 5 0.15 -0.001198566 -0.001198566
    key = 25 0.14 0 0
}

Confused about how this fits in, especially the orthogonal.  I think the orthogonal is 90 degrees from your velocity, mabey theres some range of some degrees to set it to orthogonal?  Or possibly after the dot product it takes the one closest face as foreward, the other two as foreward orthogonal, the backwards one as tail, and the other two backwards ones as backward orthogonal?  Also what is the depth in the cubes?  I think thats like a capsule is wider at the base than the top, so the area is at an angle, but Im not sure how the depth effects the calculations

Edited February 13, 2018 by At4851