Landing Gear

[Nothalogh]

This game has, since they were introduced, had landing gear that were utter trash.

There has not been a single iteration of stock landing gear that were, or are, not barely useful mockeries of the real thing.

The one time a mod fixed this, Adjustable Landing Gear by BahamutoD, it was killed off by the Unity Engine upgrade.

 

So this is what I propose, landing gear that mirrors their real world implementation, to even a fraction of a degree.

[Thiagobs]

24 minutes ago, Nothalogh said:

The one time a mod fixed this, Adjustable Landing Gear by BahamutoD, it was killed off by the Unity Engine upgrade.

 

Adjustable Landing Gears still lives in a new home:

(but otherwise I share your sentiment about the stock landing gears )

 

 

 

[Nothalogh]

1 hour ago, Thiagobs said:

 

Adjustable Landing Gears still lives in a new home:

(but otherwise I share your sentiment about the stock landing gears )

 

 

 

Neat, too bad it's no longer a stand-alone pack.

But be that as it may, the existence of a mod does not address the issue, being that the subject of this subforum is "features that should be stock".

[CommanderSmith]

I've been playing stock recently (well, with Restock, but close enough), and one of my biggest gripes has been the stock landing gear. The sizes can often lead to an aircraft sitting way too low or way too high, and the placement is a little iffy. If you want the landing gear to retract into the fuselage (an aesthetic choice that I, as an aeronautical engineering student, prefer), you either need a really narrow wheel track or landing gear that's splayed outwards. The latter option not only looks pretty bad, but I think it can, or used to, lead to stability issues.

I have always loved Adjustable Landing Gear for its flexibility. The options it has, with sideways-retracting gear, tweakable strut lengths, adjustable scale (which can be really nice), and the ability to align splayed wheels with the ground, just makes it absolutely essential in my opinion to make nice-looking aircraft.

Should it be stock? Well... I'd say yes, just because I adore it, but it probably shouldn't be shoved in outright. Something like it, though, definitely. A few tweaks to make it seem more stock in function, though, and maybe an artistic once-over as the devs see fit, and it would fit in very well.

[Nothalogh]

10 minutes ago, CommanderSmith said:

I've been playing stock recently (well, with Restock, but close enough), and one of my biggest gripes has been the stock landing gear. The sizes can often lead to an aircraft sitting way too low or way too high, and the placement is a little iffy. If you want the landing gear to retract into the fuselage (an aesthetic choice that I, as an aeronautical engineering student, prefer), you either need a really narrow wheel track or landing gear that's splayed outwards. The latter option not only looks pretty bad, but I think it can, or used to, lead to stability issues.

I have always loved Adjustable Landing Gear for its flexibility. The options it has, with sideways-retracting gear, tweakable strut lengths, adjustable scale (which can be really nice), and the ability to align splayed wheels with the ground, just makes it absolutely essential in my opinion to make nice-looking aircraft.

Should it be stock? Well... I'd say yes, just because I adore it, but it probably shouldn't be shoved in outright. Something like it, though, definitely. A few tweaks to make it seem more stock in function, though, and maybe an artistic once-over as the devs see fit, and it would fit in very well.

Yeah, I'm not saying that they should just jam the aforementioned mod into the game, I'me saying they should implement its functions as a minimum starting point, and work from there.

[EnderKid2]

Letting us adjust the strut extension would solve most of the issues with the current gear, most of which consist of "this landing gear is too long". But of course, being able to angle the wheels would also be great.

Edited September 26, 2019 by EnderKid2

[Guest]

On 9/20/2019 at 6:43 PM, Nothalogh said:

This game has, since they were introduced, had landing gear that were utter trash.

There has not been a single iteration of stock landing gear that were, or are, not barely useful mockeries of the real thing.

The one time a mod fixed this, Adjustable Landing Gear by BahamutoD, it was killed off by the Unity Engine upgrade.

 

So this is what I propose, landing gear that mirrors their real world implementation, to even a fraction of a degree.

@Matt Lowne found a solution to landing gear by getting rid of friction control... But that doesn't apply to all landing gear though

[T-Bouw]

The stock landing gear has never made the game more than a little annoying for me, until yesterday.

My Minmus lander can't even stand upright without the use of SAS. Without it, the lander slowly leans to one side until it falls. The gear seems made of rubber no matter what setting I use for it.

Is this at least solvable or is it related to the issues most people have? I've never kept up with landing gear problem news until now.

[Zarkov2]

1 hour ago, T-Bouw said:

My Minmus lander can't even stand upright without the use of SAS. Without it, the lander slowly leans to one side until it falls. The gear seems made of rubber no matter what setting I use for it.

Is this at least solvable or is it related to the issues most people have? I've never kept up with landing gear problem news until now.

The auto setting for spring and damper doesn't seem to be very good, for landers at least. It's way to bouncy. I usually set the spring to slightly less than max, and damper at max. It seems to work better than auto. However, if your lander is standing still and then slowly tilts over and falls, that sounds like a mild kraken attack (something else is weird according to the game's physics engine).

Edited September 26, 2019 by Zarkov2

[Nothalogh]

On 9/26/2019 at 4:46 AM, Zarkov2 said:

The auto setting for spring and damper doesn't seem to be very good, for landers at least. It's way to bouncy. I usually set the spring to slightly less than max, and damper at max. It seems to work better than auto. However, if your lander is standing still and then slowly tilts over and falls, that sounds like a mild kraken attack (something else is weird according to the game's physics engine).

Landing gear, legs, and wheels are literally the most phoned in part of the stock game.

It would be bad enough if they had never been dealt with, but instead, the whole system got rebuilt just as bad.

Which means that at each level of design, implementation, and quality assurance, there are people looking at it, and saying "this is great".

Edited September 28, 2019 by Nothalogh

[Maelstrom Vortex]

And as long as the auto-strut kracken exists, could we get the auto-strut enabled by default on gear removed?

[OrbiterAirFields]

1 hour ago, Maelstrom Vortex said:

And as long as the auto-strut kracken exists, could we get the auto-strut enabled by default on gear removed?

that happens? I don't use landing legs.

[Maelstrom Vortex]

5 minutes ago, OrbiterAirFields said:

that happens? I don't use landing legs.

The auto-strut kracken can happen on any docked craft where autostrut is enabled. Safest most is grandparent, but even then there is a risk. All landing gear by default have autostrut heavy enabled.

Here is a documented case:
 

Near the end of the log you will see where a mass of debris are created and just before that is an error where autostrut fails to find a part to link to, causing the explosion. it creates a NAN error, a connection to non-existent object error which explodes the craft. Fairly game breaking for a campaign where if you have, like in my case, 1000+ data of science being researched in a lab on board.

Edited October 1, 2019 by Maelstrom Vortex

[OrbiterAirFields]

2 minutes ago, Maelstrom Vortex said:

The auto-strut kracken can happen on any docked craft where autostrut is enabled. Safest most is grandparent, but even then there is a risk. All landing gear by default have autostrut heavy enabled.

ah, thanks for telling me, I will be disabling autostrut on landinglegs when I use them.

[Maelstrom Vortex]

Just now, OrbiterAirFields said:

ah, thanks for telling me, I will be disabling autostrut on landinglegs when I use them.

I don't believe that is possible unless you mod the part, but something I intend to try as well.

Edited October 1, 2019 by Maelstrom Vortex