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

[Ravien]

I wonder - If CoL ball in FAR is calculated correctly? I took FAR Firehound sample, it has CoL far in front of CoM, it should fly like crazy ivan but is pretty much stable..

Did someone made good tutorial how to design stable craft in modern version of FAR ?

[BudgetHedgehog]

I wonder - If CoL ball in FAR is calculated correctly?

No, it's basically meaningless (shame, I think). Use the graphs instead.

[ferram4]

God people. Read the thread; I already acknowledged that there's an error in the CoL calculation back on page 1132 that will be fixed in the next update. Surprisingly, people asking if there are errors are burying the answer that yes there is an error, wait until I get a fix together.

[Van Disaster]

@Ferram: you might already be aware, but last night's silent update was not so good for water drag & FAR; the flying boat I was messing with last night would need to take off at 18m/s to work now.

• Parked stock Gull in the sea in a clean install of last night's 1.0.5; messed around a bit to check drag on it, stock sea is rather draggier but it did manage to take off eventually at around 40m/s
  
• Installed Helmbold and nothing else ( well other than it's dependencies, obviously )
  
• Attempted to take off - this is as fast as it'll go:
  

Reverted to original 1.0.5 & all is well again.

Edited November 11, 2015 by Van Disaster

[kendoka15]

^ This, and water landings so far for me have been rather deadly. I tried with the same plane and the second it touches the water the pontoons rip off and it performs a frontflip

[ferram4]

This is the problem with silent updates. Everything was fine back in 1.0.5.1024, but with 1.0.5.1028 things are broken. Don't worry, I've got fixes almost ready, I just need to be certain they actually work.

[iospace]

Minor annoyance rather than major bug: The FAR window doesn't remember its location after game closure. If you got bigger fish to fry, don't worry about it right now.

[KerbMav]

Standard plane built with first 3-4 tech levels:

Cockpit, fuel tank, tail connector, swept wings, tiny intake-tank-engine assembly under each wing, surfaces for roll on each wing, for pitch at the end of the tail, a single one for yaw on the wing, non-retractable landing gear under cockpit and to the sides of the fuel tank.

With and after removing FAR - each time the CoL is far at the end of the plane and it has almost zero pitch control ... would I have to rebuild the whole thing, is something retained in the saved craft after FAR is removed?

Everytime I try to build even the simplest of planes I fail ... they dont even look that different from others posted on the forums!

Is there an in-depth video tutorial for the graphs and numbers btw.?

tl/dr

[cantab]

Check your KSP version is supported by your FAR version - note ferram's post above that the "silent update" to KSP broke FAR stuff and there isn't a corresponding FAR update yet.

Install FAR and no other mods manually to isolate problems.

[Van Disaster]

@KerbMav: The FAR module definitions would be in the craft file ( and presumably the persistence file too ) until the first time you saved it out after loading it without FAR installed, but given the game can't find them they shouldn't have any effect on anything. That the CoL ball is still way off after you removed FAR ( you did remove everything FAR installed also? ) might be a clue about the CoL ball oddness though.

As for derivatives & numbers, that was brought up in the last page of this thread, even. I suspect searching the thread for mentions of derivatives might hit a lot of discussion of the features, otherwise there's the FAR wiki linked in the OP.

[KerbMav]

Check your KSP version is supported by your FAR version - note ferram's post above that the "silent update" to KSP broke FAR stuff and there isn't a corresponding FAR update yet.

Install FAR and no other mods manually to isolate problems.

My question was solely aimed at the if FAR would leave anything behind after uninstalling it.

The rest was mainly me whining that planes generally hate me and that I never get anything done in the SPH - besides rovers maybe.

@KerbMav: The FAR module definitions would be in the craft file ( and presumably the persistence file too ) until the first time you saved it out after loading it without FAR installed, but given the game can't find them they shouldn't have any effect on anything. That the CoL ball is still way off after you removed FAR ( you did remove everything FAR installed also? ) might be a clue about the CoL ball oddness though.

I deleted the whole FAR folder in gamedata - is there more?

Will try again with a completely new craft - and load some stock crafts for testing purposes too.

Thanks all!

[Van Disaster]

I deleted the whole FAR folder in gamedata - is there more?

Will try again with a completely new craft - and load some stock crafts for testing purposes too.

ModularFlightIntegrator and MM. MM shouldn't cause problems and given most mods use it then it'd be silly to delete it too. No idea what else uses MFI, but if you don't need it it's worth removing as a check.

[ferram4]

@iospace: Everything is saved properly so long as you exit the scene normally and without reverting. ALT-F4 and clicking the X on the window prevent data from being saved; I haven't found an efficient way to hook into KSP's save system so that I can save certain data to the save file whenever I want and without being removed by a revert.

@Kerbmav: Nothing that will break anything. Biggest failure will be that control surfaces will have to be re-labelled.

[KerbMav]

ModularFlightIntegrator

Thats me. Blindly installing mods by the dozends. Open zip, pull contents to window, close zip, open next zip, repeat ...

[iospace]

Put a plane on the runway (the stock Aeris 3A), made sure FAR window was out, moved the window, recovered the plane, quit normally (as in going through the menus), loaded up same save, loaded up the same plane, and the window position reset.

Another bug I found, but I'm not sure if this is a FAR bug or a MFI bug: when a control surface is deployed as a flap via right clicking on it in flight, opening up the "flp/splr" submenu, and clicking flap, it doesn't visually deploy until the gear is dropped (I think). However, when it's taken off flap mode it doesn't visually go back to normal, even if the gear is pulled up. I've flown from the southern ice cap to the KSC without it resetting properly, at least visually. I've seen this behavior on the Elevon 1 and Big-S Elevon 1 and 2 parts.

[ferram4]

@iospace: I cannot reproduce the first issue. The second issue is not exactly as you describe.

Following your directions exactly, the window appeared exactly where I had moved it. I suspect that you have something interfering with properly saving data.

The menu you are talking about is only to set it to act as a flap. It will automatically deploy to the 2nd flap setting (takeoff), however flaps deploy slower than regular control surfaces to make deploying / undeploying flaps less severe on the vehicle's flight characteristics, especially considering the large deflections they will often move to. However, due to errors on my part if the control surface is changed from being a flap while it is still deployed it will not return to 0, which I will fix.

[ferram4]

Alright, and with that, FAR v0.15.5.3, "von Helmholtz" has been released. Should fix the water issues, includes code changes to RealChuteLite thanks to stupid_chris, some control surface and voxelization weirdness, a fix to one of the example crafts and a new example craft thanks to tetryds.

I was hoping that I could have von Helmholtz be the codename for the first update with the wing overhaul, given that Helmholtz's theorems are important in the analysis of vortex filaments (and thus, wings), but unfortunately, things didn't pan out that way.

Edited November 13, 2015 by ferram4

[Van Disaster]

New install, Github version, unmodded FAR example craft:

I'll try the kerbalstuff zip.

Edit: same issue with that, CL zero ( occasionally in my trips off the end of the runway I've seen negative CL briefly ). Log fwiw, nothing special in it ( also included a MM dump of a random aero part ). https://www.dropbox.com/s/relpmrcf5gg9gon/KSP_log_FAR.zip?dl=0

Reproduction: clean install, launch any craft, try and take off. Want it logged on GH?

Edited November 13, 2015 by Van Disaster

[ferram4]

Oh, I see what happened. Somehow I packaged MFI 1.1.1 because I had to do a system restore. Dammit Windows. I'll fix that.

...and done.

Edited November 13, 2015 by ferram4

[Van Disaster]

Right, yep replacing that fixed it. Thought it might have been part of the new wing code trying to make an early appearance...

[AlphaBlock]

Is there a way to change the default flap position? (Default when launching a vehicle)

There's no situation where i would want to take off with plain flaps in any position other than full up.

[iospace]

@iospace: I cannot reproduce the first issue. The second issue is not exactly as you describe.

Following your directions exactly, the window appeared exactly where I had moved it. I suspect that you have something interfering with properly saving data.

I figured it may have been something like that (I'm going to suspect KER given it doesn't have a 1.0.5 update yet), but eh. It's a minor annoyance at worst (I tested with the newest version). It's not breaking anything, so no big deal.

The menu you are talking about is only to set it to act as a flap. It will automatically deploy to the 2nd flap setting (takeoff), however flaps deploy slower than regular control surfaces to make deploying / undeploying flaps less severe on the vehicle's flight characteristics, especially considering the large deflections they will often move to. However, due to errors on my part if the control surface is changed from being a flap while it is still deployed it will not return to 0, which I will fix.

Ah... ok, the slow deploy makes sense then. Two questions: does the newest version have the fix for that issue? And would adjusting the setting involve action groups then? Guessing it's fixed with the deploy more/less buttons now.

[Drew Kerman]

Is there an in-depth video tutorial for the graphs and numbers btw.?

Open the Physics & Realism section of my mod list and you'll see a whole set of reference links that should help under FAR's entry

[Van Disaster]

Just ruling things out - is FAR responsible for stock airbrakes not deploying in water? I suspect it's not but just checking.

[Boris-Barboris]

Hi, ferram4! Small technical question: I've heard you're working on wing and control surface overhaul. Will you keep control surface actuator code untouched? Judging by one of FAR contributor's comments, he decided to use exponential decay of actuator to desired value long time ago. If you're going to change it, can I ask you to warn me? The change will break FAR - AA compatibility.