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

[Surefoot]

Ahh there's a donation button *sends money* you deserve it man. Basically i've been playing KSP just because of your mod.

[ExEvolution]

Ok so now my AV-R8 winglets aren't working at all with FAR installed.

They don't activate when I pitch the vehicle, removing FAR restored them

[ferram4]

This indicates that you are missing a dependency, as I probably noted before. Make sure that you have both ModuleManager and ModularFlightIntegrator installed; both are required.

If you installed through CKAN, stop doing that and do it manually, CKAN doesn't know what it's doing.

[Gaugeforever]

I want to donate to a few modders after muh paycheck

[ragzilla]

Procedural Fairings seems to be unsupported. It's not really fun to fly a rocket using them, but I love the FAR update so far. It's so much better than stock aero, as a glider pilot I instantly fell in love with this.

Keep up the great work!

http://i.imgur.com/nphmduO.png

Mentioned on page 909, and 900.

[codefox]

Mentioned on page 909, and 900.

Sorry, missed them somehow.

[jrandom]

I love it when something ridiculous works.

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[cantab]

Where does that put KAX?

When I used it in .90 I felt KAX's electric prop was overpowered. In a light plane I was climbing to altitudes like 20 km with it, and not even using anywhere near full power. Then again, maybe that's actually realistic?

[NathanKell]

Nope, if you're not using an AJE-patched prop, you're using a rocket engine with a whirly bit on the front. Propellers are not rocket engines, and without AJE, all you can make are rocket engines*.

*kinda no longer true in 1.0, but nobody's used 1.0's tools to make prop engines yet.

[linuxgurugamer]

There's an updated config for it on CKAN waiting to be approved.

It was approved, and I see it in CKAN

[Wanderfound]

Anyone got any guesses as to what's going on here? The cross section curves appear very strange, I have no idea what those black lines are, and the position of the CoL appears somewhat suspect. Despite this, it flies just fine...

My previous design was giving similarly strange things, although in that case the curves were shifted to fully vertical. It's almost as if it's confused about which direction the airflow is coming from.

[Hodo]

Anyone got any guesses as to what's going on here? The cross section curves appear very strange, I have no idea what those black lines are, and the position of the CoL appears somewhat suspect. Despite this, it flies just fine...

http://i.imgur.com/s05WQ50.jpg

My previous design was giving similarly strange things, although in that case the curves were shifted to fully vertical. It's almost as if it's confused about which direction the airflow is coming from.

This looks like the old bug that was discussed a few pages ago. I am not sure where or else I would find you the link.

[Wanderfound]

This looks like the old bug that was discussed a few pages ago. I am not sure where or else I would find you the link.

Yup; it's not detecting the ship's axis correctly. Sorted in the dev build, apparently.

[diegzumillo]

Hi all o/

I have a question. With the new aerodynamics doing most of the things FAR advertised what makes FAR special? this is not a rhetorical question! I know there are differences, but they're not clear anymore.

I went back a few pages before posting, btw.

[jrandom]

I've noticed that the cockpits from the QuizTech Aero Pack bring back the CoL arrow. If that appears, does it mean the rest of aero will be broken for that craft? (I need to determine if I should uninstall QuizTech until the maintainer updates it.)

[UnanimousCoward]

To do one better here is the exact value he used to have b4 1.0 errordynamics

Cheers both for pointing out that I'm reinventing the wheel. ;-)

However, those configs don't include rootMidChordOffsetFromOrig, so the question remains: What is it? Is it needed for fins?

[Enceos]

I have a question. With the new aerodynamics doing most of the things FAR advertised what makes FAR special?

New stock aerodynamics are crippled in a lot of ways (see discussion threads) and your statement that they do most of the FAR things is totally incorrect.

[diegzumillo]

My statement is that new aero fills most of the features FAR used to advertise before. And it is not incorrect. It's a different statement than what you seem to be interpreting (new aero is just as good as FAR). Advertised previously: "FAR gives fairings a reason to exist". So does the new engine. I hope that makes it more clear.

I've been going back even more pages though, enough to answer my own question. It's even more realistic now. Some screenshots show what seems like the blade element theory model. Same model used in X-plane, perhaps?

[Baloogan]

FAR has broken that mod that gives you money for spent stages.

[Phylan]

@Phylan: Update to 1.0.2. Apparently some things changed in between that RealChuteLite relies on.

This was indeed the issue. Thanks!

[Wanderfound]

My statement is that new aero fills most of the features FAR used to advertise before. And it is not incorrect. It's a different statement than what you seem to be interpreting (new aero is just as good as FAR). Advertised previously: "FAR gives fairings a reason to exist". So does the new engine. I hope that makes it more clear.

I've been going back even more pages though, enough to answer my own question. It's even more realistic now. Some screenshots show what seems like the blade element theory model. Same model used in X-plane, perhaps?

Stock aero is no longer as awful as it used to be, but it is still cartoonishly unrealistic. Heavy ships taking off in 1/20th of the runway, landing by power-divng at the ground before flaring 20m off the deck, no such thing as a stall, sustained 15G manoeuvres all over the place, any ship you build will fly so long as it vaguely resembles an aircraft.

If you're satisfied with that, then that's fine. FAR is for those who would like their atmospheric Kerbal to be as believable as their space Kerbal.

[Gfurst]

Behold yourselves, as an image barrage is about to come on my experiments...

These are my tests about Air performance and drag on sub-sonic speeds, for balance purposes, if there is any needed, in nuFAR.

The resulting design, came pretty close to what I expected, most parts are stock, with the exception of the air intake, jet engine and fuel tank (all MKS), which are based under the wing for balance purposes, and are reasonably close to stock.

All control surfaces are properly assigned, only a bit changed to control deflection. Reaction wheel is disabled, and I also have to note this: people, if you need SAS to fly your craft than its not balanced...

A side note, originally I wanted to do it with a conventional landing gear, but it was ridiculously hard to take off and land, due to drifting to the sides, lowering the wings, which inevitably led to crashes. Any tips how to do it?

This was actually the last of several tries. Oh and sorry for grammar mistakes, maybe missing words, I'm quite sleepy...

With the tricicle configuration, the aircraft is pretty easy to handle, with a minor drift, it quickly gets up to speed, rolling out at around 60m/s

My first test is of course the highest speed, the craft quickly catches up to trans-sonic where the increase drag holds it back, between full-throttle and 2/3 makes little difference.

As its expect for this design, it really shouldn't go trans-sonic, in that matter (and as I've mentioned before) FAR is pretty much spot on.

Though reducing throttle after that I can barely notice a reduction in speed, the last image I'm still going 0.76 mach for my next test.

Which is no other than the stall test, basically cutting off throttle and pulling up until you get a stall. Notice that it takes about 33s to actually experience the stall and still only for a moment a full stall of the wings.

Minimum speed was around 45m/s, roughly 87kt, which is quite high for the high for the design. Overall it was quite easy to recuperate, and I've feel it didn't quite add the drag needed to make for a flat fall. Anyway this design is very stall resistant, so that may account to it.

Next fun test is the side slip, simply pulling the rudder and controlling your roll to maintain direction. Pilots do this to lose altitude fast while not gaining to much speed.

Didn't go under 99m/s but still lost a lot of altitude, mission accomplished.

The next is also a very important test, holding back on the throttle while maintaining level flight. First I drift from a higher speed to see how much time it took to lose speed while being level, from 180m/s to 60m/s it took a whole 2m and 30s. And thats what feels a bit off about the whole thing, I hope the pictures, and information about lift, drag, angle of attack and how they're scaling in different speed should help figuring it out.

Next I throttled just a bit to actually see how much speed is minimum to maintain level flight, for this case around 60~66m/s(128kt).

Done a flip around for a bit more fun, the plane holds quite well, and aimed for landing. Had to throttle down quite a bit for the final approach, and simply wasn't losing speed, until flaps down, and they do seem to help a lot.

Finally coming down to a landing, which incidentally happened to be one of my bests in KSP (apart from being slightly drifted), hold it there just enough and came to a touch down around 60m/s(116kt). Very fun indeed, but still too fast considering the design, aspect ratio for the plane. And this was basically the minimum speed I was able to get without loosing control of the plane, making lading in un-even terrain very hard.

Conclusion: FAR is still great fun, the voxel system seems amazing and will do wonders for rockets, wings are still the same though, I think this is what brought back the feeling I had in 0.25 of a lack on drag.

I'm not sure and I'll leave to the experts, but I do indeed feel that drag (maybe specifically for wings) doesn't scale properly with speed and AoA as lift does, maybe its only in that sub-sonic area.

I hope this helps, Cheers.

[Amram]

With the new aerodynamics doing most of the things FAR advertised what makes FAR special?

• The single greatest imo is the voxel model, which among other things, lets far determine when you have "built" a fairing or cargo bay. If the parts shield it, its shielded, end of story now. Clipped parts are shielded, unlike stock.
  
• area ruling, now that FAR takes the actual shape into account, the shape now actually matters.
  
• Aerodynamic mach effects. Stock has none, it has visual effects, I'm talking aerodynamic effects: mach tuck, transonic instability,
  
• you can and probably will stall. In stock this is nearly impossible to do, far doesn't bubblewrap the player, you will fail when you should.
  
• advanced options for control surfaces, allowing you to specify their response to commands from 0 to ±200%, as well as optional automatic response to AoA enabling unstable aircraft to be controllable, and leading edge slats, and so much more. The result is relative ease in creating and controlling super maneuverable aircraft with CoM behind CoL.
  
• while stock can do flaps now, they are all or nothing. In far they are deployed/retracted in steps, with the deflection set by you.
  
• variable wing strength, everything from light weight but fragile to virtually unbreakable but heavier.
  
• the atmosphere isn't screwy and strange. stock is still a soupmosphere, it just behaves a bit better than stock used to, FAR yields as close to real as can be done on a kerbin without adjusting atmo height - in RSS you get as close to reality as KSP can get.
  
• stability diagnostic tools. no more guessing and finding out mid flight that it yaws uncontrollably, FAR will tell you that while your building it if you ask it to. It will tell you the altitude you can reach, the AoA you need to fly at, the speed you'll stall at, so much more. What does stock tell you?
  
• a chute implementation(essentially a variant of real chutes integrated into FAR) that permits braking chutes that stay deployed on landing, and more. Stock is better than it was, but comparatively it falls rather short still.
  
• flight stability assists that ease keyboard flight by helping damp out rolling, yawing, pitching, high AoA, and dimming control authority to keep you from ripping the wings off. Flight just works better in FAR.
  
• very detailed readout in flight of your aircraft's performance, to further aide you in optimising if you are so inclined.
  
• last, FAR doesn't dumb down for the average player like stock has, it is what it really is. What works in reality stands a damn good shot at working in far, and best of all, most of the worlds info on aero applies to FAR's aero. What better documentation could there be? The opposite is of course true, what shouldn't work, won't work, though with proper design just about anything is still possible.
  

and I'm sure I have forgotten things worth mentioning.

couple that with stock not doing hardly any of what far does, and what little it sort of does, it does in a hacky sort of "fake it til you make it" kind of way, and there really is no comparison.

Really, in all fairness, the only thing stock aero does right is disconnecting the forces from the center of mass, finally acknowledging that these forces produce torque, and so stability matters.

[DaMichel]

The stock model is much better than before though:

* Fixed infiniglide.

* Removed mass dependence of drag forces.

* Fairings and nose cones reduce drag. At least they are supposed to.

* I think stock aero somehow depends on the mach number. IIRC there is a bit of increased drag in the transsonic region. I don't know any details though.

FAR does essentially a more accurate simulation according to real world aerodynamics (no odd compromises for "fun"/difficulty, etc.). And of course, as aforementioned, nuFAR deals nicely with clipped parts and cargo bays built from panels.

[futrtrubl]

* Fairings and nose cones reduce drag. At least they are supposed to.

Oh they do, far too well. It's amazing how aerodynamic a nose cone installed backwards inside the craft is.