Is Ferram Aerospace research mod still relevant?

[Fierce Wolf]

Since 1.7.x is out, is Ferram Aerospace research mod still relevant? And if it does, what does it provides? So far i tried only vanilla aerophysics and they seem to be adequate (in lastest version, at least)

[Snark]

Moving to Add-on Discussions.

27 minutes ago, Fierce Wolf said:

Since 1.7.x is out, is Ferram Aerospace research mod still relevant? And if it does, what does it provides? So far i tried only vanilla aerophysics and they seem to be adequate (in lastest version, at least)

Stock KSP used to have an incredibly inaccurate atmospheric model, pre-1.0, which you'll occasionally see referred to as the "souposphere".

1.0 updated to a considerably more realistic (but still far from perfect) model, and other than minor tweaking it's been essentially the same ever since.

FAR uses a much more realistic model.  It was around pre-1.0, and has continued to be around post-1.0 because it's still a lot more realistic than even the post-1.0 KSP aero model, and some people like that.

So it's still "relevant" in the sense that it's different, and AFAIK people are still using it because they like it.  Other people are happy with the stock model and don't need it.  So it's up to the individual player to decide what they like.

[Loskene]

I would guess most people, when they read about what it does, know whether they want the FAR aero model or not. I'd say if anyone's on the fence about it or whether it's relevant with the updated stock aero, that it depends on how much of your playtime is spent in atmosphere. If you mainly launch rockets and spend most of your time in space, the stock aero model is perfectly adequate for your launch and aerobraking needs and you don't need the associated overhead of the mod, nor adjustment time to its own quirks. If you build a lot of planes, however, sooner or later the little imperfections in the stock lift/drag calculations will start to nag at you until you want them to just go and build a voxel-based model into KSP2. I really hope someone brings that up by the way, it seems to have gone largely understated in the fan coverage/dev interactions so far. I hope they haven't forgotten aircraft completely. KSP is a really wonderful flight simulator that walks the line between arcade fun and realism in a way few others achieve.

Edited September 11, 2019 by Loskene

[Snark]

2 hours ago, Loskene said:

If you build a lot of planes, however, sooner or later the little imperfections in the stock lift/drag calculations will start to nag at you until you want them to just go and build a voxel-based model into KSP2.

Need to qualify this statement.

The little imperfections will nag at you if you're the kind of person that they would nag, i.e. you care a lot about being very realistic.  Not everyone does.

It's perfectly possible to fly lots of planes for years and never be bothered in the slightest by KSP's aero model, i.e. to find it "good enough".

The short answer for someone who's not sure where they stand, like @Fierce Wolf, is this:  The stock KSP aero model is fine for most people.  Give it a whirl.  If flying planes feels fine to you and you're happy with it, you don't need FAR.  But if, as Loskene says, little details about the way things fly start to bug you... then you may want to consider FAR.

[sturmhauke]

I've entered a few of the BDA competitions, both with and without FAR. I find FAR combat aircraft much harder to design well; it models things like sideslip and yaw instability in more accurate ways, yet doesn't give you the tools you need to figure out how to address those issues. At least, not in a way I can grasp, and I've tried. Maybe for lower performance stuff like cargo planes and spaceplanes it's more forgiving, but I haven't bothered.

[Loskene]

1 hour ago, Snark said:

Need to qualify this statement.

The little imperfections will nag at you if you're the kind of person that they would nag, i.e. you care a lot about being very realistic.  Not everyone does.

It's perfectly possible to fly lots of planes for years and never be bothered in the slightest by KSP's aero model, i.e. to find it "good enough".

The short answer for someone who's not sure where they stand, like @Fierce Wolf, is this:  The stock KSP aero model is fine for most people.  Give it a whirl.  If flying planes feels fine to you and you're happy with it, you don't need FAR.  But if, as Loskene says, little details about the way things fly start to bug you... then you may want to consider FAR.

Yeah might be worth expanding on the little things. Arbitrary/inconsistent drag cubes and part configurations, special handling for lifting bodies that only affects a handful of parts, "cheaty" exploits abusing the simplified calculations like covering engine nodes with clipped nosecones, node vs radial attachment, determining what's shielded from the airflow and what's not, etc. Practically all of these are resolved by using FAR's voxel model, which calculates the aircraft's flight characteristics based on the actual shape of the exposed hull rather than predefined values and hokey abstractions meant to paper over edge cases for the majority of gameplay situations. It resolves problems that make some parts over or under-perform for no good reason, like the dreaded Mk2 spaceplane parts that look great but are unreasonably draggy in stock. If these sound like things that would bother you, then you'll want FAR. As others mentioned it has issues of its own but after having used it for so long they're overall easier to deal with than otherwise unresolvable stock issues that spoil some aspects of the game for me. But then this might all be a "power user" problem so YMMV.

[Snark]

2 hours ago, Loskene said:

But then this might all be a "power user" problem so YMMV.

^ I think this is key.

Bear in mind that most people aren't serious "power users" who really get down into the weeds about the finer details of aerodynamics.  What they care about is just "do my airplanes fly".  And in stock KSP... well... airplanes fly.  I fly stock KSP, and am perfectly happy with it.  When I build an airplane that looks to me like it ought to fly, it flies.  And flies controllably and predictably for me, so I have fun doing it.

All the other stuff you mention, while no doubt valid technical points, are only going to be of concern to people if they're unhappy with how their airplanes fly.  If they're fine with it, then what happens under the hood usually isn't their concern.

It's also worth noting that going with FAR is going to significantly rejigger how airplanes work.  A craft designed with KSP stock aero may not fly well if you try to run it with FAR, and vice versa.  So, going with FAR means that (for example) if you want to exchange aircraft, it'll need to be just with other FAR users, and if you need help with "why won't this fly" or the like, the pool of people who could help you would just be FAR users.  It's a popular mod, but it's still just a small minority of the overall player base, so those factors could be significant.  How much a player cares about that, of course, would be another matter-- it would matter a lot to some folks, but to others not as much.

[Dafni]

If you go FAR, keep in mind it changes the hydrodynamics too. It makes the water really draggy and most if not all parts float. Boats are pretty much impossible last time I checked.

Edited September 12, 2019 by Dafni

[Fierce Wolf]

Thanks for the input, I will have to try FAR then!

[Loskene]

13 hours ago, Snark said:

^ I think this is key.

Bear in mind that most people aren't serious "power users" who really get down into the weeds about the finer details of aerodynamics.  What they care about is just "do my airplanes fly".  And in stock KSP... well... airplanes fly.  I fly stock KSP, and am perfectly happy with it.  When I build an airplane that looks to me like it ought to fly, it flies.  And flies controllably and predictably for me, so I have fun doing it.

All the other stuff you mention, while no doubt valid technical points, are only going to be of concern to people if they're unhappy with how their airplanes fly.  If they're fine with it, then what happens under the hood usually isn't their concern.

It's also worth noting that going with FAR is going to significantly rejigger how airplanes work.  A craft designed with KSP stock aero may not fly well if you try to run it with FAR, and vice versa.  So, going with FAR means that (for example) if you want to exchange aircraft, it'll need to be just with other FAR users, and if you need help with "why won't this fly" or the like, the pool of people who could help you would just be FAR users.  It's a popular mod, but it's still just a small minority of the overall player base, so those factors could be significant.  How much a player cares about that, of course, would be another matter-- it would matter a lot to some folks, but to others not as much.

Fair points, but I'd have to disagree with the notion that a plane built for FAR wouldn't work well under stock. They do, and the "rejiggering" required is less significant than you'd think, often none at all depending on the craft in question. They're two different aerodynamic models but they perform the same basic function, making planes fly, just achieved via different methods of varying complexity. Once the centres of lift and mass are in the right place (with the caveat that FAR can be more sensitive to this) the plane will fly just fine in either. The small differences only become apparent under specific flight regimes, like breaking the sound barrier, exact stall speeds and flight ceilings etc. where one model is intended to better reflect reality while the other is tailored for more general gameplay. I think FAR sometimes gets an undeserved bad rap for being "too complicated" or "too different" to get into, especially with all the graphing and "wind tunnel" tools you get in the editor, but after getting over that number fear I found it remarkably straightforward to adjust to. Green numbers = it fly good, and that's good enough for me 

The pool of users that can assist with FAR issues is anyone who understands common aerodynamic quirks though, since those are usually the stumbling blocks. Not necessarily limited to FAR users, unless something is specifically a FAR-related issue/bug.

Also should thank Dafni for reminding me it is not good for boats. I believe Ferram stated he designed it with only aircraft in mind, and so it doesn't model the specific qualities of water like displacement to determine buoyancy. So yeah, not for boats, though floaty parts do make seaplanes a bit easier, if you can get them up to take-off speed again 

Overall it's surely a try-before-you-buy thing, so it's probably not going to become a stock feature, much as I'd love otherwise, unless it were added as an option. But that depends on how much work is involved in integrating it and whether the devs think it's worth it. I really hope it gets consideration though, since Ferram seems to have stopped developing the KSP1 version, meaning I have no guarantee of any successor for KSP2, if no one with a similar level of experience takes up the mantle.

[sturmhauke]

4 hours ago, Loskene said:

I really hope it gets consideration though, since Ferram seems to have stopped developing the KSP1 version, meaning I have no guarantee of any successor for KSP2, if no one with a similar level of experience takes up the mantle.

Ferram has made portions of his mod all rights reserved, apparently due to unresolvable arguments with the CKAN team. So either he writes the KSP2 version himself, passes it off to someone he trusts, or someone writes their own new mod from scratch.

Edit - see here for more information:

 

Edited September 12, 2019 by sturmhauke
correction

[Gordon Fecyk]

I figured I'd get more 'street cred' using FAR. At first my early space planes needed non-plane-like handling to fly and land safely. With FAR I had to learn how to use flaps and design slower stall speeds into my ships. Guess I've grown used to it by now.

And only in FAR could I build something like this to get to orbit on Tier 4 parts:

 

[Poodmund]

13 minutes ago, sturmhauke said:

Ferram has made his mod all rights reserved, apparently due to unresolvable arguments with the CKAN team. So either he writes the KSP2 version himself, passes it off to someone he trusts, or someone writes their own new mod from scratch.

Just thought I needed to post this to stop the possible spread of misinformation. The FAR aero codebase is licensed under GNU GPL v3 and as such can be further developed and released as has been done. See: 

Only the aero shader and art assets were licensed under ARR.

 

[sturmhauke]

Sorry, I misunderstood.

[mikegarrison]

I'll just toss in here that I play with FAR not so much because I fly many planes in KSP (I almost never do), but because I have a pretty good feel for what is actually aerodynamic and what is not. It bugs TF out of me when stuff that should be aerodynamic isn't, or stuff that shouldn't be aerodynamic is.

[dkavolis]

9 hours ago, Poodmund said:

Just thought I needed to post this to stop the possible spread of misinformation. The FAR aero codebase is licensed under GNU GPL v3 and as such can be further developed and released as has been done. See: 

Only the aero shader and art assets were licensed under ARR.

 

Unlike original FAR, my shaders and art assets are licensed under GPL v3 so anyone can continue its development.