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

[ferram4]

Try specifying a "majorMinorAxisRatio" of 1 and see if that fixes it.

[erkha343]

After I installed FAR yesterday all my spaceplanes have become very jittery. If I turn on ASAS it will take off fine, and the start to roll to the sides and sometime sit will instead pitch up and down, something like like what the old ASAS did. Is this FAR or is it a KSP bug?

Edited February 13, 2014 by erkha343

[ferram4]

It's called "SAS doesn't know how to handle lots of control authority." You're adding too many control surfaces; reduce the number and you'll be fine.

[erkha343]

It's called "SAS doesn't know how to handle lots of control authority." You're adding too many control surfaces; reduce the number and you'll be fine.

Hmm. I did what you said, but it didn't work. It's still quite jittery, could lift/com be the problem? Here's a pic of the plane: http://i.imgur.com/5eWconL.jpg

It also seems that it is only present when an engine is running, speed doesn't matter.

Edited February 14, 2014 by erkha343

[ferram4]

You still have tons of control authority. You don't need ailerons that large for a plane that small.

[camlost]

MajorMinorAxisRatio=1

Still the same problem

[ferram4]

Does the problem occur only if you add it to intake parts, or can it be caused with all parts? I'll admit, at this point I'm at something of a loss for solutions.

[erkha343]

You still have tons of control authority. You don't need ailerons that large for a plane that small.

It still happens, even with just two of the small ones. Im gonna try some of the planes that are bundled with the mod.

[erkha343]

Removed this post.

[blizzy78]

Ferram, it looks like in the editor the plugin is still adding an input lock if the mouse pointer is hovering where the old window button was. This is also true if the window is currently hidden - the input lock is added regardless.

[ferram4]

Yep, just checked and removed that. Will be fixed in the next version; thanks Blizzy.

[AnatolyVasserman]

Hi! I'd love to get FAR to work with TiberDyne shuttles, but it seems that the wings there follow some unreasonable attachement scheme making FAR mad. Please help=)

[ferram4]

Pretty much all of the shuttle mods have been designed without the ability to be set up for FAR compatibility, and I'm not exactly in the mood to go and dig through how the wings are set up to try and hack it together. Ultimately, even if the wing properties could be properly applied the shuttles will probably handle badly due to the fact that they will have been optimized for stock aerodynamics, not FAR aerodynamics. The last time I tried to work on something like this it involved trying to get Bobcat's Buran to work and it never ended up working properly.

[AnatolyVasserman]

Well maybe you could tell me how can I adjust the properties of the wings, because right now they are totally broken and I don't want to uninstall FAR cuz I love the way it works.... In particular, if I have a part, which logic decides where is it's center of lift relative to the attachment point? I could not find it in any of the configs...

[Ristse]

I've made a Beautiful plane that is really just a dream to fly even with FAR installed i call it The Eagle MK2. I can fly around kerbin and land at KSC with out running out of fuel... but the aircraft is still very maneuverable even with FAR.

[Ristse]

Ive built a amazing with very low fuel consumption but extremely maneuverable while flying with FAR heres a download link fi you like: No viruses i swear!: https://www./?bx3b389qz0z3lhd

Not trying to steal fame Ferram your amazing! just helping people out if they can't figure out how to build a great aircraft

[ferram4]

@AnatolyVasserman: The CoL is automatically calculated based on the wing parameters specified for the PartModule (documentation in the Readme) assuming that the part origin as located at the center of the wing root. In order to make sure that it is placed properly the wing must be able to be radially attached properly so FAR can orient things properly. So you're going to have to shift the models in the config so that the part origin is in the proper place and then make sure that it can be surface attached like the stock wings.

[NathanKell]

That should be possible with MODEL nodes in the CFG, and adding node_attach.

[Ristse]

I have a link for those who can't completely ferram aero space's aero dynamics: https://www./?bx3b389qz0z3lhd

[taniwha]

I've made a Beautiful plane that is really just a dream to fly even with FAR installed i call it The Eagle MK2. I can fly around kerbin and land at KSC with out running out of fuel... but the aircraft is still very maneuverable even with FAR.

I love to break it to you, but your aircraft flies well because of FAR, not despite it. Even without seeing it, I'm willing to bet it looks like an aircraft.

[a.g.]

How realistic is it that nodes on the back of active engines cause a lot of drag? I'd imagine expanding gases would alter aerodynamics. (A more specific problem is that the B9 VTOL engines for some reason have a node right on the back, unlike all other aircraft engines, and it's impossible to cover it with anything reasonable. )

Also, it seems that the ferram_graph code creates a lot of Texture2D objects and doesn't destroy any of them - yesterday I had KSP crash on me because of running out of memory after a lot of fiddling in the editor, and the backtrace pointed at that code creating textures.

[ferram4]

Yes, the gases would reduce the drag a bit, but trying to figure that out is a nightmare since you're dealing with a supersonic jet in subsonic / supersonic flow. Overall, most of the drag that's added there is actually just a kludge fix for the huge weight of stock KSP engines, the fact that rockets tend to become unstable as the fuel drains due to the lack of a need for large series staging and the fact that there's no simple way to make rockets aerodynamically stable by adding a quick little skirt at the bottom that widens a bit. The drag on them is 50 times what it should be at Mach 0 and 20 times what it should be at Mach 1 (and realistically equal to 0 at Mach infinity) to try and deal with the problem, since there's not much that can be done to design around it.

The B9 VTOL thing isn't something I can fix though; it probably just makes more sense to get rid of that node.

I wasn't aware of the graph texture code causing memory issues. I'll play around with that and see if I can force the assets to be released.

[Read have Read]

Ferram,

Porkjet wants his new pointy mk2 cockpit to have some body lift in both stock and in FAR; He added this code to it, and about 0.8 stock lift factor. I have mentioned that FAR already calculates body lift by itself and that a lifting surface at the very nose would make it harder to construct a plane. What do you think?

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

MODULE
{
name = FARWingAerodynamicModel
MAC = 3.516
e = 0.7
MidChordSweep = 0
b_2 = 1.744
TaperRatio = 1
} 

[ferram4]

If he adds that wing code everything will act really, really funky. Body lift is a lot less than wing lift and he's basically setting things up so that the cockpit is only capable of being at the back of the plane; besides that the lack of setting nonSideAttach = 1 in that will also cause the CoL to be offset, causing fun rolling issues.

If he leaves it set with a stock winglet lift factor FAR will simply ignore it when working out standard body lift / drag, so if he wants it to function properly with FAR that has to go as well. Body lift in stock isn't really a good thing to have anyway since it'll just make things less stable and there's less ability to control how things are set up.

[Luckfish]

So I'm trying to assign & tweak control surfaces in the VAB, and either something isn't working right or I don't know what I'm doing. I'm trying to assign the two lateral AV-R8 tail fins to both deflect 10 degrees max for pitch control (upper half of the tweak window) as well as 3 degrees max for roll control (lower half of the tweak window). After I close the tweak window and go back into it it has the pitch max deflection set to 3 degrees. Sometimes it just resets back to 15 degrees. I've tried closing the tweak window by right-clicking somewhere else in the VAB, as well as right-clicking on the opposite tailfin. I've tried tweaking with symmetry both on and off.

Am I not understanding the tweak window or how to manipulate it? Are the tweaks (or their effect) different when using FAR? If there's some tutorial on tweaking control surfaces out there I would appreciate a link.