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

[Elmetian]

2 hours ago, AccidentalDisassembly said:

Give Atmosphere Autopilot a try first IMO, it might do what you want - or not.

Thanks, this is actually much easier to use. Not perfect though. For some reason the fly-by-wire mode is rolling my aircraft now. Not just a bit either, it's applying full aileron deflection for no reason. Going to post over on the Atmosphere Autopilot thread and see what they think.

EDIT: as expected it was me being a dumbass, not Atmosphere Autopilot's fault... I'd left FAR's own roll control assistance toggled on

Edited August 5, 2016 by Elmetian

[softweir]

8 hours ago, LordOfMinecraft99 said:

No offense or anything, but can someone please help with my issue? I posted logs on this very page.

Can I suggest you link to your first post on the problem so people don't have to go searching for your description of the symptoms? That would make people much more likely to help.

[SilverWolf]

Why?

 

[kcs123]

5 minutes ago, Verran said:

Why?

Sorry, but "why" what ? What do you want to ask ?
I don't see waht is wrong on picture except that you use stock flight info instead data provided by FAR.
If you open FAR flight data window you might find answer for whatever you ask for.

[tetryds]

@Verran why why?

That looks just right.

There should be no difference between that window and FAR's other than the type of information shown.

[SilverWolf]

Because they're not stock wings, that's why. 

[kcs123]

1 minute ago, Verran said:

Because they're not stock wings, that's why.

Sorry, but I still don't understand question.
I have recommanded FAR data because there is more info that might reveal what is wrong, if anything is wrong.

If you are using wings from some other mod, you should check them in SPH, to see if there is voxelization problem, but again I don't know what you think that is wrong based on provided picture.

Don't know maybe it is just me, that I'm too stupid or too old to understand what you want to ask. I still didn't mastered mind reading skill.

[SilverWolf]

Sorry, I'm just screwing up over here.  The center of pressure was being calculated six feet behind the center of gravity because FAR wasn't processing my wings; so an airplane that flies great in stock wasn't even coming off the ground at 200 knots in FAR; all because I overlooked the details.

Like I said.  I'm an idiot, sometimes.

[blowfish]

Just now, Verran said:

Sorry, I'm just screwing up over here.  The center of pressure was being calculated six feet behind the center of gravity because FAR wasn't processing my wings; so an airplane that flies great in stock wasn't even coming off the ground at 200 knots in FAR; all because I overlooked the details.

Like I said.  I'm an idiot, sometimes.

I think a major reason it's not coming off the ground is those control surfaces on the main wings are angled up, killing your lift.  You probably want to remove pitch input on those surfaces, and maybe enable them as flaps even (which would angle them down)

That being said, it does take more wing to fly in FAR than in stock.  Don't expect a craft that behaves well in one to behave well in the other.

[Van Disaster]

On 05/08/2016 at 0:26 PM, Elmetian said:

Hi guys,

I'm once again finding that the stock SAS is just atrocious for more exotic designs. I recently rebuilt a B2-esque flying wing in 1.1.3, and for some reason it's even less stable now than the original was in 1.0.5 (see pic in the spoiler)

Please can someone explain for me, step-by-step, how I set up the PID tuner in FAR to force the SAS to hold the aircraft steady and make greater use of the control surfaces? When I've used PID tuners previously changing Ki helped to make the SAS stiffer but this doesn't seem to be the case now. Do I need to engage the stock SAS, or simply click FAR's flight assistance toggles, or both? What am I doing wrong? (as you can probably tell I'm getting a bit frustrated...)

As an alternative to AtmosphereAutopilot ( which is pretty intensive ) try Pilot Assistant - you can fiddle with the PID settings in flight. I find in general you want Kd highest and only raise Ki if the craft is close to settling but won't quite get there.

General rule of thumb:
* Long period oscillations which never settle mean Kp is too high
* Short period oscillations which never settle mean Kd is too high
* If the value gets stuck off the setpoint or is reaching the setpoint very slowly, Ki is too high.

The difference between long & short period oscillations is usually pretty obvious, especially for pitch - long periods generally mean the craft changes vector, short-period ones don't usually overcome inertia & just result in flapping control surfaces, or very slight movement.

[SilverWolf]

@blowfish Hey man, while you're here...  How can I tell FAR to read my folder and make the appropriate adjustments?

[blowfish]

Just now, Verran said:

@blowfish Hey man, while you're here...  How can I tell FAR to read my folder and make the appropriate adjustments?

...I have no idea what you're trying to do or how you're trying to do it.  Could you please be somewhat more specific and provide context in your posts?

[SilverWolf]

I have a collection of my own parts in their own folder under the GameData path.  Many of the parts I have customized are fuselages or aerodynamic surfaces.  They have been modified to contain either Jet-A, or other bipropellant fuels.  I have determined through the debugger that FAR is not looking through this folder, because the FAR modules are not being added to my parts by ModuleManager.  It would be largely inconvenient for me to go back to overwriting stock parts in the Squad folder.  Since FAR is heavily reliant upon ModuleManager to make its adjustments to stock parts, how can I instruct your MM scripts to include my custom part folder in it's processing?

[Elmetian]

14 minutes ago, Van Disaster said:

As an alternative to AtmosphereAutopilot ( which is pretty intensive ) try Pilot Assistant - you can fiddle with the PID settings in flight. I find in general you want Kd highest and only raise Ki if the craft is close to settling but won't quite get there.

General rule of thumb:
* Long period oscillations which never settle mean Kp is too high
* Short period oscillations which never settle mean Kd is too high
* If the value gets stuck off the setpoint or is reaching the setpoint very slowly, Ki is too high.

The difference between long & short period oscillations is usually pretty obvious, especially for pitch - long periods generally mean the craft changes vector, short-period ones don't usually overcome inertia & just result in flapping control surfaces, or very slight movement.

Thanks, I got Atmosphere Autopilot yesterday and it works brilliantly. I found Pilot Assistant too complicated when I tried it a few days ago. The UI is harder to understand than when I used it a year ago, and it has too many toggles for me. It could do with a simple-ish mouseover explanation of what each button and value field will do.

That's a really good description of how to set up a PID tuner though. Much easier to follow than most I've read.

[blowfish]

2 minutes ago, Verran said:

I have a collection of my own parts in their own folder under the GameData path.  Many of the parts I have customized are fuselages or aerodynamic surfaces.  They have been modified to contain either Jet-A, or other bipropellant fuels.  I have determined through the debugger that FAR is not looking through this folder, because the FAR modules are not being added to my parts by ModuleManager.  It would be largely inconvenient for me to go back to overwriting stock parts in the Squad folder.  Since FAR is heavily reliant upon ModuleManager to make its adjustments to stock parts, how can I instruct your MM scripts to include my custom part folder in it's processing?

FAR has a ModuleManager patch that applies the basic FAR modules to all parts.  I'd be very skeptical if these weren't applying to yours unless you messed something up.  Aero surfaces are different, you need explicit patches for each of those because you have to specify the shape of the wing.

It sounds like you have a lot of questions that aren't necessarily FAR related.  I would hate to clutter an already crowded thread.  I can maybe help you with some stuff if you make a new thread.

[SilverWolf]

sweptWing
Surface Area:  5.43 m
MAC:  1.5294
Taper Ratio:  0.417 (0.416772)
Mid Chord Sweep:  33.4993


tailFin
Surface Area: 2.17
MAC:  1.5089
Taper ratio:  0.318993
Mid Chord Sweep:  30.1688

Here are your new numbers for the sweptWing and tailFin.  I'll continue measuring lifting surfaces once I get done with my own stuff.

[blowfish]

@Verran Not sure what you're trying to accomplish (context!), but you might want to read the first section of this: https://github.com/ferram4/Ferram-Aerospace-Research/wiki/Deriving-FAR-values-for-a-wing-using-Blender-2.7

Edited August 9, 2016 by blowfish

[raxo2222]

With nuclear turbojet engine and wings like long triangle my 22 ton space plane is capable of flight around 0.4 - 1.75 mach at sea level.

http://imgur.com/a/ly1fm

Edited August 14, 2016 by raxo2222

[AccidentalDisassembly]

Is it possible that FAR is changing the way in which my various crafts interact with water? I ask because I'm trying to pin down the cause of some weird stuff I've noticed in pure stock vs. my modded save, and because there seems to be an effect.

E.g.: take a stock sandbox, fly the gull, land in water. You get something like this:

Do the same thing in FAR and you get this:

In the example with FAR, I modified wing mass so the whole craft weighs close-ish to what it does in Stock. Side note - is there currently any way to completely disable the way FAR messes with wing mass?

Long story short, in FAR I find it very difficult to make a seaplane that will work, and it also seems to be pretty difficult to make one that goes straight in the water. Secondarily, when FAR is installed I also can't seem to get any kind of submarines to move underwater (engines and control surfaces seem to do nothing when submerged). Am I alone in this? What (if anything) is FAR doing to water...?

Edited August 14, 2016 by AccidentalDisassembly

[raxo2222]

I built hypersonic plane

I can trade altitude for speed by setting pitch on autopilot, but lower pith settings means hotter flight, as you fall to denser parts of atmosphere and fly faster.

It doesn't stall even at AOA of 20 degrees! http://imgur.com/a/pgdv1

Edited August 16, 2016 by raxo2222

[StarStreak2109]

Hi there,

not a bug report per se, just a question whether or not this has occured to anyone else?

Cheers,

Sebastian

[raxo2222]

Why Nbeta is negative number in this FAR window for low speed low altitude flights and hypersonic high altitude flights?

http://imgur.com/a/vS0vG

[tetryds]

@raxo2222 Please discuss aircraft design here: 

 

@StarStreak2109 FAR and KIS are known to have issues playing with each other, due to the way it works, never had problems using FAR and KAS only though.

Either way I believe it's an issue on the KAS side, I have only seen FAR failing to voxelize things of messed up mods, none of its own business.

@PTGFlyer PM a moderator or report your own post with the request so that the moderation team can remove it for you.

You can always edit your posts too if you wish.

[martinezfg11]

 

Does FAR have support for multiple integrated control surfaces?

[tetryds]

10 minutes ago, martinezfg11 said:

 

Does FAR have support for multiple integrated control surfaces?

Do you mean control surfaces acting at more than one control input? If so then yes.

It uses the same scheme as the stock KSP, but with more options and tweaks.