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

[FourGreenFields]

Known issue, fixed in the dev build.

k, thx for info

[ferram4]

Solar, all you had to do was do what they asked. I have no idea why you've insisted on being so stubborn about providing information. Regardless, glad to hear that you're not coming around here again. I'm sorry that being cooperative and constructive isn't something you're willing to do. Interestingly, it turned out that the issue you were originally complaining about was very easy to fix and is fixed in the dev build, but I gather you never bothered to check that out.

In other news, I haven't been able to reproduce any issues related to voxelization or aero breaking, and with no one providing reproduction steps that work, I think this issue is likely fixed. Maybe it's not, but no one who has claimed to be able to reproduce it reliably has ever bothered to completely explain what they did, so I've got nothing. I won't be around for later today and most of tomorrow due to real life stuff, so later tomorrow and Sunday I'll be looking at packing up an update with the fixes.

[Kitspace]

Ferram

That issue is breaking flights and missions when it happens. So I think that everybody who have experienced it would be happy to hunt it down properly if it appeared more consistently.

I personally believe that it could be related to the memory problems and consequently have similar reasons that make it occur. That is it just happens sometimes and does not seem to require any particular actions to cause.

Just for me it happens most of the time after some reverting and repeating of test flights in the course of a few hours.

[kcs123]

By 'Stable' I mean that the moment applied from aero forces will return the craft to 0 AOA. That's what a cm graph with negative slope means. The craft in the image flips over both with and without fairings, and the effect is slower without fairings.

This is incorrect.

Sorry, if I sounded rude, that was not my intention. Perhaps I was lack of sleep and designed planes too much instead of rockets.

Usually my craft designs are just like that, with negative slope all way and usualy cross center in positive L/D area or near 0 AoA. So it was more/less stable in flight.

You are right, in case of positive slope, more stable rocket could be considered one with shallower slope.

If yelow line has negative slope than second design would be more stable, but harder to steer, I was rushed with post without second thought about it.

Fortunately, ferram steped in and cleared things up, so we all have learned something new.

Edited June 12, 2015 by kcs123

[sashan]

Don't know is this was asked before, but is there any way to make FAR "see" landing gears from mods? So far it still displays warning about lack of gears with them, and there's no option to extend/retract gears from FAr menu.

[blowfish]

Don't know is this was asked before, but is there any way to make FAR "see" landing gears from mods? So far it still displays warning about lack of gears with them, and there's no option to extend/retract gears from FAr menu.

Most likely FAR is only looking for the stock landing gear module, whereas many mods use FSWheel (and BD's adjustable gear use a fork of that module).

[smartdummies]

Ferram

That issue is breaking flights and missions when it happens. So I think that everybody who have experienced it would be happy to hunt it down properly if it appeared more consistently.

I personally believe that it could be related to the memory problems and consequently have similar reasons that make it occur. That is it just happens sometimes and does not seem to require any particular actions to cause.

Just for me it happens most of the time after some reverting and repeating of test flights in the course of a few hours.

I would have to agree that it is memory related. This has only happened to me once (using Ferri) When it did I reloaded my last quick save and it repeated, I exited to the main menu and reloaded the game and it still happened. I then exited to remove mods and then I could not get it to reappear even after reloaded the same quicksave with all my mods back in play. I should have preserved my log from when it happened, but as it was so reproducible before I exited to eliminate mods I figured I could get it to happen again. I have been trying to get it to happen again (I am a horrible pilot and so I revert/reload often and can easily get KSP near crash limits on memory) but have not seen it since. IMHO this indicates a memory issue (only difference between it working and breaking was memory usage) and at that point I would suspect a breakdown in stock code over FAR.

[Karretch]

I tried this, I can't handle it. New career mode, can't for the life of me make a small plane just to do surveys that won't nosedive or bounce. I have no idea where to put wings, no idea where my CoL is, and I have no idea how to read most of the charts.

[Wanderfound]

I tried this, I can't handle it. New career mode, can't for the life of me make a small plane just to do surveys that won't nosedive or bounce. I have no idea where to put wings, no idea where my CoL is, and I have no idea how to read most of the charts.

If it's not for you, that's fine. But if you do want to persist with it, have a look at the third post in the Kerbodyne thread linked in my .sig below.

[Karretch]

If it's not for you, that's fine. But if you do want to persist with it, have a look at the third post in the Kerbodyne thread linked in my .sig below.

I have before I posted here. It still doesn't help. To explain my severe lack of experience and knowledge, for all the stuff I've seen and watched, all my play time has never taken me out of the Kerbin system and I've never made a plane capable of reaching and staying over 20km stock. I'm sure I'd enjoy this mod for all the benefits it has (which is odd because I have used this before long ago with little trouble), but there's so little easy to find step-by-step explanations for those that have trouble just reading numbers and graphs and their correlation to the plane.

[11of10]

Karretch, until 1.0 I never played without FAR installed, made planes, flew them and all the other stuff. When 1.0 came (1.0.2 actually) I installed FAR and realised I couldn't make a plane worth anything. Wanted to quit. Always came back. Finally I did it.

FAR is a little glitchy still, but don't quit. You'll feel better when you finally manage it!

[ferram4]

@smartdummies: Considering that if it were a memory-related issue for voxelization, the whole game would crash, I doubt that has anything to do with it. Sounds a lot more like a red herring to be honest. I'll look into high memory usage, but I suspect something else is to blame.

[smartdummies]

If it happens again I will make sure I keep my logs for you. These occasional, random bugs are always the worst to try and fix.

[blowfish]

To explain my severe lack of experience and knowledge, for all the stuff I've seen and watched, all my play time has never taken me out of the Kerbin system and I've never made a plane capable of reaching and staying over 20km stock.

20km is no trivial altitude, particularly on jets. To get high altitude survey contracts, I usually fly ballistically - gain speed lower in the atmosphere and then pitch up and coast to the destination. This was on 0.90 but with AJE, meaning that thrust fell off with altitude even more than it currently does in stock.

[Karretch]

20km is no trivial altitude, particularly on jets. To get high altitude survey contracts, I usually fly ballistically - gain speed lower in the atmosphere and then pitch up and coast to the destination. This was on 0.90 but with AJE, meaning that thrust fell off with altitude even more than it currently does in stock.

Yeah, but I'm playing a hardish career, I've only unlocked the mk 1 fuselage, and I can't afford to keep crashing and killing pilots

[blowfish]

Yeah, but I'm playing a hardish career, I've only unlocked the mk 1 fuselage, and I can't afford to keep crashing and killing pilots

If you can't revert you should either know exactly what you're doing or be testing in sandbox first. With only the basic jet you will probably have trouble completing high-altitude survey contracts but maybe including a rocket to boost you up to speed would help...

[Karretch]

I think something was lost in conversation. I gave that high alt thing as saying I've never gotten a plane above atmos ever so I don't know the advanced tactics for building. I'm not trying to go for height at the moment. I just want to be able to make a simple one engine plane that can fly level and take off under 100 m/s. I want to know how to build these planes but the interface is so user unfriendly for me that I can't make heads or tails except green is good. WHY is green good? What about X placement of Y makes the planes work? I want to have more challenge (or ease depending), but this is like asking a fish to sing for me

Edited June 13, 2015 by Karretch

[kcs123]

I think something was lost in conversation. I gave that high alt thing as saying I've never gotten a plane above atmos ever so I don't know the advanced tactics for building. I'm not trying to go for height at the moment. I just want to be able to make a simple one engine plane that can fly level and take off under 100 m/s. I want to know how to build these planes but the interface is so user unfriendly for me that I can't make heads or tails except green is good. WHY is green good? What about X placement of Y makes the planes work? I want to have more challenge (or ease depending), but this is like asking a fish to sing for me

If you have found Wanderfounds building craft tutorial not enough to explain everything, take a peek to link in my signature.

I have tried to cover things that was not explained elsewhere in more practical manner rather than using too much math behind it that could be even more confusing by some people.

Why green numbers are "good" ? Well, hower your mouse over each of them that will provide more info about it, but you may also check FAR wikipedia along with it to see what those greek letters means. In short, for example, at given velocity, if your craft is supoused to lift up and pitching coeficient based on other calculactions is green than it tells you that your plane will lift up, meaning you have enough wing area to lift up your plane.

If it is red, it means that your craft does not have enough lifting area for given craft weight at given speed. So, your craft will not be able to take off until you go at even higher speed. That is just for lift up/pitch/speed ratio. Other green numbers tells you if craft have other lifting/control surfaces that will push your plane in desired position (towards prograde vector) or it will sideslip/roll over etc.

I hope that i will have more time this weekend to update with some new stuff.

[Karretch]

If you have found Wanderfounds building craft tutorial not enough to explain everything, take a peek to link in my signature.

I have tried to cover things that was not explained elsewhere in more practical manner rather than using too much math behind it that could be even more confusing by some people.

Why green numbers are "good" ? Well, hower your mouse over each of them that will provide more info about it, but you may also check FAR wikipedia along with it to see what those greek letters means. In short, for example, at given velocity, if your craft is supoused to lift up and pitching coeficient based on other calculactions is green than it tells you that your plane will lift up, meaning you have enough wing area to lift up your plane.

If it is red, it means that your craft does not have enough lifting area for given craft weight at given speed. So, your craft will not be able to take off until you go at even higher speed. That is just for lift up/pitch/speed ratio. Other green numbers tells you if craft have other lifting/control surfaces that will push your plane in desired position (towards prograde vector) or it will sideslip/roll over etc.

I hope that i will have more time this weekend to update with some new stuff.

I know what the numbers mean (roughly), thanks, and I'll have a look. I was asking along the lines of "what have I done that makes these numbers good"

[Wanderfound]

I think something was lost in conversation. I gave that high alt thing as saying I've never gotten a plane above atmos ever so I don't know the advanced tactics for building. I'm not trying to go for height at the moment. I just want to be able to make a simple one engine plane that can fly level and take off under 100 m/s. I want to know how to build these planes but the interface is so user unfriendly for me that I can't make heads or tails except green is good. WHY is green good? What about X placement of Y makes the planes work? I want to have more challenge (or ease depending), but this is like asking a fish to sing for me

Green is good because:

Each one of those numbers relates to a way in which the plane can be stable (tends to return to pointing the right way) to unstable (tends to move towards pointing the wrong way). Because of things in the math that you don't need to care about, sometimes the good side is a positive number and sometimes it is negative. The green and red show you which side of good or bad it's on; zero is always at the centre of the colour spectrum.

When you hover your mouse over the numbers, you'll get a tooltip popup telling you exactly what it relates to. Interpret that, and you'll know whether it's saying "yaw problem", "roll problem", "pitch problem" or "not enough lift" problem.

If it's a yaw problem, add moar tailfin or pull the CoM forwards. If it's a roll problem, add moar wingspan (or dihedral). If it's a pitch problem, move some lift away from the nose and towards the tail. If it's a lift problem, lose some weight or gain some wing.

That's really all that's required for a basic plane. Because examples are helpful, have a look at http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/90747-Kerbodyne-SSTO-Division-Omnibus-Thread?p=1961865&viewfull=1#post1961865 Pull that one apart and see if you can "reverse engineer" it.

If you want to understand more of the real-world "why" those things work, you're probably best off starting to dig into Wikipedia articles on aircraft. Like these:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dihedral_(aeronautics)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_wing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_rule

If you go through those, don't freak out and freeze as soon as you get to a bit you don't understand; just read on and take in what you can. Then, afterwards, go back and drill down (click links etc) into any of the bits you didn't understand that you think might be interesting or important, and see if you can get your head around them then.

Edited June 13, 2015 by Wanderfound

[Gryphon]

Yeah, but I'm playing a hardish career, I've only unlocked the mk 1 fuselage, and I can't afford to keep crashing and killing pilots

There's a lot of good comments above about building better aircraft, but I'd like to add a comment about a couple options to save your pilots. First, I've had some luck with attaching parachutes to my aircraft to save at least the crew compartment, short of augering in at speed. The second option would be flying using drone cores, of course. The third option, which I think is the best, long term, is using one of the several mods that allow you to simulate your flight before actually launching. It's not the same as just reverting, because even if it goes perfectly, you STILL have to redo it. Besides, simulation has been a part of aircraft design since the Wright Brothers' built a wind tunnel for testing airfoil shapes.

Personally, I use Kerbal Construction Time, because it has simulations, but they cost money. (Unrelated to this discussion, it also makes time into a resource that you consume.)

[FourGreenFields]

I know what the numbers mean (roughly), thanks, and I'll have a look. I was asking along the lines of "what have I done that makes these numbers good"

Well, from my experience the three most importand things regarding stability are pitch, yaw and roll stability.

Pitch stability makes your plane point prograde. To achieve this, keep your centre of lift behind the centre of mass (= mass on nose, wings at tail).

Yaw stability is the same as pitch, just for yaw. Add vertical tail wings. Wing sweep also increases yaw stability (60°+ sweep is fun in that regard)

Roll stability leads to your plane's wings returning to horizontal by themselves. Increase by keeping your CoL above your CoM, and using dihedral effect (-> dihedral wings, wing sweep) (dihedral effect makes your plane roll in the direction you yaw towards - dont add too much)

There was some very good tutorial on the forum somewhere (albeit with a very silly font...). Cant remember what it's called though.

[sashan]

I've done a few things to balance game up a bit. Basically, I've decreased fuel tank empty mass and fuel density 2 times, and increased engine gimbal limits to realistic values. Now I'm flying mostly unstable rockets, just like in real life. Engine gimbal, stock SAS, MechJeb ascent trajectories and angle of attack limiting are doing a good job to keep rockets from flipping. One should be careful not to exceed speed tho, usually limiting acceleration to 18m/s until first boosters or first stage separation. It's still freakin difficult tho, but I like it.

The most difficult moment is stage separation, as there's no engine thrust to keep rocket stable at that point. You have to use same tricks as real engineers do.

Also, I feel I really need a set of 5m parts - low fuel density makes rockets very tall now.

Here's the patch, you may try it out.

@PART[*]:HAS[#category[FuelTank]]:HAS[!RESOURCE[*],@RESOURCE[LiquidFuel],@RESOURCE[Oxidizer]]
{
	@mass *= 0.75
}

@RESOURCE_DEFINITION[LiquidFuel]
{
  @density = 0.0025
  @unitCost = 0.4
}

@RESOURCE_DEFINITION[Oxidizer]
{
  @density = 0.0025
  @unitCost = 0.09
}

@PART[*]:HAS[@MODULE[ModuleGimbal]:HAS[#gimbalRange[<4]],@MODULE[ModuleJettison]]
{
    @MODULE[ModuleGimbal]
    {
        @gimbalRange *= 2
    }
}

@PART[*]:HAS[@MODULE[ModuleGimbal]:HAS[#gimbalRange[>3.9]],@MODULE[ModuleJettison]]
{
   !MODULE[ModuleGimbal]
    MODULE[ModuleGimbal]
    {
        gimbalRange *= 1.5
    }
}

@PART[MassiveBooster]
{
    @MODULE[ModuleGimbal]
    {
        @gimbalRange = 8
    }
}

@PART[Size3EngineCluster]:Final
{
    @MODULE[ModuleGimbal]
    {
        @gimbalRange = 6.5
    }
	RESOURCE
	{
		name = LiquidFuel
		amount = 1620
		maxAmount = 1620
	}
	RESOURCE
	{
		name = Oxidizer
		amount = 1980
		maxAmount = 1980
	}
}

[kcs123]

There was some very good tutorial on the forum somewhere (albeit with a very silly font...). Cant remember what it's called though.

Is it Basic Aircraft Design - Explained Simply, With Pictures thread that you think of ?

[FourGreenFields]

Is it Basic Aircraft Design - Explained Simply, With Pictures thread that you think of ?

That's the one! Thanks.