Jump to content

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

ferram4

By ferram4
in KSP1 Mod Releases

 Share

Recommended Posts

Jim Meillente

Jim Meillente

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, ferram4 said:

Jesus people, calm your selves.  That means you @RevanCorana.  Although I must thank you for being so willing to test the dev build when it's out, I'll be expecting your detailed bug reports and reproduction steps to help handle any issues that might come up from porting the mod over.  After all, why else would you be so eager to get your hands on a 1.2-compatible build if not to test it? :D

In all seriousness though to everyone, thanks for the patience.  With KJR out I'll move to working on FAR, and someone has already been kind enough to attempt a PR to make it 1.2-compatible, though I haven't checked to see if it works or what other things might need addressing.  So, um... SoonTM?  I'll post here when I need guine-- I mean, testers for the dev build.

Hello,

Thank you for your hard work, I look forward to the update!

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Ban_Tier

Ban_Tier

Posted
Posted

I also want to express my thanks to @ferram4 for continuing to work on this fantastic mod. Being a rl privat pilot, the stock model is a nogo for me. And being a rl programmer for more than 20 years I know that good code takes it time to be ready to publish. So take your time to find and squash these nasty new bugs.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
MunGazer

MunGazer

Posted
Posted

Would I be right to say this mod is the most mathematically intensive mod in existence for kerbal space program, based on just the algorithms alone?  Atmospheric drag and lift being computed on the fly... what kind of math would be involved? Differential equations?

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Ser

Ser

Posted
Posted
4 minutes ago, MunGazer said:

Would I be right to say this mod is the most mathematically intensive mod in existence for kerbal space program, based on just the algorithms alone?  Atmospheric drag and lift being computed on the fly... what kind of math would be involved? Differential equations?

Add parallel calculations to that

Link to comment
Share on other sites
MunGazer

MunGazer

Posted
Posted (edited)
28 minutes ago, Ser said:

 

Gotcha, I haven't messed with the forums much since the migration to new software and only just now realized that the "like this" button and giving rep are one in the same.

To enhance the usefulness of this post, I thought I'd throw out a technical question or two regarding this mod:

1.  If I was new to modding and wanted to make a wing part mod, what steps, if any, should I take to ensure that it functioned with FAR properly?  Or does FAR look at the part's shape and mass, and determine everything it needs from that?

2.  Does FAR simulate ground effect (the effect of added aerodynamic buoyancy produced by a cushion of air below a vehicle moving close to the ground) ?

Edited by MunGazer
Link to comment
Share on other sites
MatterBeam

MatterBeam

Posted
Posted
11 minutes ago, MunGazer said:

Gotcha, I haven't messed with the forums much since the migration to new software and only just now realized that the "like this" button and giving rep are one in the same.

To enhance the usefulness of this post, I thought I'd throw out a technical question or two regarding this mod:

1.  If I was new to modding and wanted to make a wing part mod, what steps, if any, should I take to ensure that it functioned with FAR properly?  Or does FAR look at the part's shape and mass, and determine everything it needs from that?

2.  Does FAR simulate ground effect (the effect of added aerodynamic buoyancy produced by a cushion of air below a vehicle moving close to the ground) ?

As far as I know:

1-FAR use a voxel-based shape-detection system that allows it to take into consideration wing angle and offset items, occlusion and the such. Any shape built like stock models will be correctly analyzed by FAR.

 

2- Ground effect is not in the mod.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
kcs123

kcs123

Posted
Posted
18 hours ago, Freds said:

I only wish that somebody maintains the Adjustable Landing Gear mod, its a must have for SpacePlanes

Keep fingers crossed and your wish might be fulfilled.Following is from BDArmory(continued) thread:

[1.0.5] Adjustable Landing Gear v1.2.0 - 22 Feb 16 - @Papa_Joe,  Download,  Git Repo,  Change Log, License  Report a bug (update will be AFTER KSP 1.2 is released)

Just be a patient with that mod too and wait. It is even more frequent asking in BDA theread for update than it is here.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
mechanicH

mechanicH

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, MunGazer said:

Would I be right to say this mod is the most mathematically intensive mod in existence for kerbal space program, based on just the algorithms alone?  Atmospheric drag and lift being computed on the fly... what kind of math would be involved? Differential equations?

Calculus is pretty amazing. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
cantab

cantab

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, MunGazer said:

Gotcha, I haven't messed with the forums much since the migration to new software and only just now realized that the "like this" button and giving rep are one in the same.

To enhance the usefulness of this post, I thought I'd throw out a technical question or two regarding this mod:

1.  If I was new to modding and wanted to make a wing part mod, what steps, if any, should I take to ensure that it functioned with FAR properly?  Or does FAR look at the part's shape and mass, and determine everything it needs from that?

2.  Does FAR simulate ground effect (the effect of added aerodynamic buoyancy produced by a cushion of air below a vehicle moving close to the ground) ?

For parts that *aren't* wings or control surfaces all you need to do is make sure it has a sensible collider, one that is accurate to the visible mesh and doesn't have any topological weirdness. But for wing and control surface parts my understanding is you do need to make a specific FAR configuration as well.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
MaxRebo

MaxRebo

Posted
Posted (edited)
8 hours ago, MunGazer said:

Would I be right to say this mod is the most mathematically intensive mod in existence for kerbal space program

It's a close one between FAR and Principia.

Quote

Atmospheric drag and lift being computed on the fly... what kind of math would be involved? Differential equations?

As usual with physics simulations, the underlying math is almost guaranteed to be differential equations. In practice, this means that there's most likely lots of numerical integration over t going on. Lots and lots and lots of numerical integration over t.

Edited by MaxRebo
Wow. This forum software is _really_ bad.
Link to comment
Share on other sites
MunGazer

MunGazer

Posted
Posted (edited)
7 hours ago, cantab said:

For parts that *aren't* wings or control surfaces all you need to do is make sure it has a sensible collider, one that is accurate to the visible mesh and doesn't have any topological weirdness. But for wing and control surface parts my understanding is you do need to make a specific FAR configuration as well.

Thanks.  As someone who is brand new to modding, I was just now stumbling around on FAR at GitHub and found this:

https://github.com/ferram4/Ferram-Aerospace-Research/wiki/Deriving-FAR-values-for-a-wing-using-Blender-2.7

That was useful.  Now I know that FAR looks at each wing as a trapezoid for the major data points.  Everything in there regarding custom FAR values looks straightforward, except I wonder:

"e = 0.87 // Drag per lift, lower equals more drag (based on FAR setting for Squad swept wing)"

1.     What's a handy way to derive my drag per lift?
2.     Additionally, does FAR care how "thick" my wing's collider is in blender?  If not, then I'll make my wing collider a simple 3d six sided trapezoid with no curvature

Edit:  I just wanted to clarify:  I got the impression in the FAR wiki on GitHub that wing calculations are determined solely from trapezoid dimensional data and config values about the wing, so really my #2 question, in other words, would be:  Does my wing collider shape really matter that much?

Edited by MunGazer
Link to comment
Share on other sites
ferram4

ferram4

Posted
  • Author
Posted

The handy thing to do is to ignore "e=bleh" because that hasn't been needed in practically a year why won't these things die already.  That shouldn't even be listed in the FAR configs anymore.  Dammit, I hate missing things on the wiki.

As for the collider shape, the collider and mesh only matter for the voxel calculations, which do account for the overall geometry of the wing, but not the lift and drag-due-to-lift aspects.  Make it stupidly thick and you will get hyper-draggy wings as a result.  Don't try to be cheeky or get away with stuff, FAR will likely smack you around for that in the end.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
MunGazer

MunGazer

Posted
Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, ferram4 said:

The handy thing to do is to ignore "e=bleh" because that hasn't been needed in practically a year why won't these things die already.  That shouldn't even be listed in the FAR configs anymore.  Dammit, I hate missing things on the wiki.

As for the collider shape, the collider and mesh only matter for the voxel calculations, which do account for the overall geometry of the wing, but not the lift and drag-due-to-lift aspects.  Make it stupidly thick and you will get hyper-draggy wings as a result.  Don't try to be cheeky or get away with stuff, FAR will likely smack you around for that in the end.

Thanks ferram4 for your time and patience with corresponding here.  I'm zeroing in on some of the nitty gritty details because I'm just getting started with hopes of developing some pretty serious part mods, and I've been doing a lot of reading both on my downtime at work on my mobile phone and at home on my pc.

Acknowledged regarding the collider shape.  Lol, no I wouldn't make the collider or make a silly wing that was ridiculously thick but it's good to know FAR would punish me for it.  I'm just determining some specific things I need to know for how I make my colliders function well with FAR in the interest of utilizing the wonderful simulation capabilities FAR offers and making some parts that perform both realistically and effictively, while having the concept in mind that supposedly complex colliders are more physics expensive and... could they slow things down in ksp on a decent pc?  Perhaps I'm too worried about the complexity of my collider shape, idk.  Anyway,  I made a quick Microsoft paint drawing to visually aid in a question I have relevant to this, and that is:  Given the same exact trapezoidal dimensions and config values for a wing part, how would these three blender collider cross sections for the wing/airfoil be differentiated from one another, if it all, in FAR?

epZ7ppV.png

Edited by MunGazer
changed "well" to "effectively"
Link to comment
Share on other sites
ferram4

ferram4

Posted
  • Author
Posted

More complex colliders will always slow things down.  First is just collision in general, then there's the expense of FAR building the voxel model which is proportional to the number of triangles it has to handle (roughly.  There are some fixed costs that can't be avoided), though there won't be an increase in runtime expense due to FAR with a more complex collider.

Just make it as simple as you need it to be for collision.  Most complicated you should consider is the hexagonal design.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
MunGazer

MunGazer

Posted
Posted
3 minutes ago, ferram4 said:

More complex colliders will always slow things down.  First is just collision in general, then there's the expense of FAR building the voxel model which is proportional to the number of triangles it has to handle (roughly.  There are some fixed costs that can't be avoided), though there won't be an increase in runtime expense due to FAR with a more complex collider.

Just make it as simple as you need it to be for collision.  Most complicated you should consider is the hexagonal design.

Very helpful, thank you.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
This thread is quite old. Please consider starting a new thread rather than reviving this one.

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
 Share
Go to topic listing
×
×
  • Create New...