[1.3.1] Ferram Aerospace Research: v0.15.9.1 "Liepmann" 4/2/18

[Yarbrough08]

@ferram4: Thank you once again. That's what I was thinking, but I wanted to ask to verify.

[Einarr]

With KAS removed, I have not had the nullspace issue anymore. Wonder where the conflict lies and if it can be fixed from either end...I so wanted to use the struts and fuel lines from KAS...they'd help me to increase rigidity between docked vessels, or transfer fuel between vessels that are not actually docked...

[Picard]

hey Ferram, i've got three bugs (i think): all mods are up to date

1) inside the VAB and SPH i can no longer select the angle of deflection on control surfaces. I can select their function, though i miss the ability to dictate their AOA. I don't know if this is by design, but it'd be a shame if it is.

2) when using angled wings (vertical axis) i tend to get the infinite glider effect as SAS violently shakes the craft.

3) better balanced craft tend to avoid the infinite glider issue, but acceleration and speed seem to be hugely disproportionate. the small jet engine can accelerate me to mach 1.3 at sea level before even clearing the runway.

[camlost]

What do you mean by "small jet engine"? Is there a bigger one? The only way to properly simulate jet engines is AJE (see signature) AFAIK

[Dirt_Merchant]

hey Ferram, i've got three bugs (i think): all mods are up to date

1) inside the VAB and SPH i can no longer select the angle of deflection on control surfaces. I can select their function, though i miss the ability to dictate their AOA. I don't know if this is by design, but it'd be a shame if it is.

2) when using angled wings (vertical axis) i tend to get the infinite glider effect as SAS violently shakes the craft.

3) better balanced craft tend to avoid the infinite glider issue, but acceleration and speed seem to be hugely disproportionate. the small jet engine can accelerate me to mach 1.3 at sea level before even clearing the runway.

@Picard: Your problem is exactly this: you have not installed FAR correctly, or some other mod has broken FAR through incompatibility, or indeed a less than correct install. Try FAR with no other mods, on a freshly downloaded and clean KSP install, and ensure to follow all directions to the letter. Let us know how that goes. Additionally it may be worth looking to see if perhaps your antivirus (if you use one) has eaten the .dll

[Picard]

AHHHHHHHH... thx mate. I took a look through and found that the .dll hadn't gone through. BTW, i play with:

FAR

KAS

Firespitter

UniverseReplacer: Celestial Bodies Revamped

Visual Enhancements

Volumetric Clouds

thx again

[Pigbear]

how exactly does this work on asteroids? because I imagine they wouldn't be very aerodynamic

[ferram4]

It makes asteroids behave like somewhat rough spheres, which is to say, they're pretty draggy. They still end up being the leading part of a spacecraft during an aerobrake though, simply because there ends up being much more mass than surface area for an asteroid (except for the very puny ones). It seems to work well, and they smack the ground going supersonic, so everything happens about as it should.

[Deschain212]

I cannot toggle the Surface Speed to EAS. I have KW rocketry, FAR, Procedural wings, part catalog, firespitter and environmental enhancements installed. Anyone knows how to fix it? Flying plaes in surface speed is just dumb.

[jinks]

It seems to work well, and they smack the ground going supersonic, so everything happens about as it should.

So, no bouncy asteroids without parachutes?

I cannot toggle the Surface Speed to EAS. I have KW rocketry, FAR, Procedural wings, part catalog, firespitter and environmental enhancements installed. Anyone knows how to fix it? Flying plaes in surface speed is just dumb.

Known bug with 23.5, will likely be fixed with with the next release. Squad changed the draw-order for the navball, so FAR's display gets overwritten.

Edited April 8, 2014 by jinks

[flywlyx]

If it is possible to add several "FARControllableSurface" and "FARWingAerodynamicModel" to a single part and make them performance as flaps, ailerons, tailerons and rudders in a single part plane?

[NathanKell]

Even if you could, the forces would all be applied at the CoM, which would mean the control surfaces wouldn't apply any torque.

[flywlyx]

So, if we replace the torque provided by control surface with SAS, what will happen?

[ferram4]

No, the forces would be applied at the aerodynamic center of each defined aerodynamic surface, where the aerodynamic center would be defined as an offset from the part origin. They still would be all over the place.

So I've got the Navball fixed, the ModuleJettison null fixed, I've got the not-updating-properly-after-undocking bug fixed, removed the coefficient readouts, and just have to test my changes to see if the weird behavior with the B9 gear on different parts is fixed. Then we can have 0.13.1 with bugfixes.

[White Owl]

Fixes are great. You're cool.

[flywlyx]

So it is possible to realize a single part plane right?

How could I define the aerodynamic center for different module?

Edited April 9, 2014 by flywlyx

[Hyomoto]

Any chance you slide in the ability to turn off the aerodynamic readouts in the right click menus? They push nearly every menu behind the navball, meaning you need to rotate the camera to interact with various parts on your ships. I know this was brought up before, but I didn't catch if you'd acknowledged it or had planned to change it.

[NathanKell]

removed the coefficient readouts

Literally three posts up.

[ferram4]

@flywlyx: No, the aerodynamic center is calculated internally by the module from the values used to define the size of the lifting surfaces. It is not currently possible to manage a single-part plane with FAR, and given the way things are currently coded very weird effects will be caused by having a single part with multiple aerodynamic modules defined for it.

[flywlyx]

Understand, thank you very much.

[Hyomoto]

Literally three posts up.

Hmm, I realize I should have worded it better I had read his post about releasing an update, I guess I didn't realize that was what that line meant. Thanks!

[GentlemanJack]

Is it possible to turn FAR off temporarily in-game? After i get up into orbit with a B9 spaceplane i designed, i do what i need to do and then make my retro burn to land at KSC. However, FAR likes to ruin my design and make it stall and spin uncontrollably. It is at no point in the descent through the atmosphere that it is stable. I will mention that when i am taking off from KSC in the plane, it is perfectly fine. Please Help

[ferram4]

@Hyomoto: Update isn't out yet, that's just a progress report. I still need to make sure that everything is functioning properly, so it might take until tomorrow.

@GentlemanJack: Nope, there's no way to do that. Besides, FAR isn't that much different from stock aerodynamics; the basic causes of stability issues (aerodynamic forces centered ahead of the CoM rather than behind) will still affect the craft if it has a large number of wings. You'll probably have an even worse time landing it, since you'll have the number of wings needed for FAR, which is much less than the number needed for stock, so you'll have to land at a very high angle of attack at a very high speed.

The thing you need to do is to redesign the craft to account for and reduce CoM movement due to fuel drain and payload deployment. This is something even basic planes have to deal with, and you'll have to deal with it with stock aero as well.

If you insist on disabling FAR to attempt "fixing" the reentry, you'll have to resort to uninstalling FAR (which is quite simple, just delete the FAR folder), which means closing KSP to delete FAR and then restarting the game. I'm just going to warn you, it's not going to fix things like you think it will.

[GentlemanJack]

The problem is that the same design worked fine landing BEFORE i had installed FAR and after i installed it, the landing was completely uncontrollable. I'll try removing wings as you suggested and looking over the design again. I can post a screenshot if you like with the CoM and CoL. Both are fine

[ferram4]

The CoM doesn't move at all after you burn fuel to get it in orbit? Use tweakables to remove fuel from the tanks that are empty on the craft in orbit (while you're in the SPH), and then tilt the spaceplane to the same AoA you were at when you lost control. If the CoL is still behind the CoM, then I'm going to guess that the problem is not enough yaw stability, which causes lots of rolling, and you're losing control that way.