Will water (/liquid in general) physics be more realistic?

[Multivac]

I was watching a video about flying boats earlier, and felt the urge to build one in KSP — but then remembered that KSP's water physics are still a bit wonky, and planes (or spacecraft, or even dedicated water craft) designed to land on / take off from / operate over the surface of water tend to be... not always particularly fun to pilot. (I know it's possible to build such craft and that examples are out there, but I also know from experience that water in KSP doesn't always... act in ways comparable to water in real life — potentially leading to rapid unscheduled disassembly events...) See also: Water landings in KSP are still more dangerous than landing on good ol' terra firma. 

So my question is... Will this be adressed at all in KSP 2? A quick search didn't give me an answer, so could anyone else possibly point me towards anything that may have been mentioned by the dev team regarding a re-work of liquid physics? Will seaplanes, sea-launched vehicles, capsules designed for water landing, and dedicated seagoing craft work better in KSP 2 than they do in the game's current incarnation? And what are everyone else's thoughts on the topic?

^{Saunders-Roe Princess Flying Boat}

Edited November 12, 2020 by Multivac
Added caption to photograph

[Kosmix1]

In ksp2 i just hope my ears wont go deaf whenever i land in the water.

[shdwlrd]

I don't remember seeing anything mentioned about liquids in general. I do hope that they do address it at some point.

[Guest]

There are two issues that I’d like to see addressed. Neither should be that hard to do well enough to work for gameplay purposes even if not strictly realistically. They would likely need to be handled as special cases, rather than actually simulated from base physics.

Ground effect and planing.

Ground effect would work sufficiently well simply by increasing generation of lift by lifting surfaces when close to the surface.

Planing would occur when a buoyant craft is moving sufficiently fast on water. At that point the craft would lift almost completely out of the water, and drag would drop commensurately. The point at which the craft transitions to and from planing would depend on its size, density and  aerodynamic profile.

Both would be very hard to simulate accurately but I think these simple approximations would be good enough, and would let us make hydroplanes, flying boats, ekranoplans, or why not speedboats and hovercraft that behaved reasonably well and would be fun.

[K^2]

Hydroplaning would make all kinds of amphibious aircraft more viable, but it's pretty tricky to get right. In general, I think the reason parts were so sensitive to water collision in KSP is because they were forced into a compromise between that and making it too easy to survive a water landing, making parachutes unnecessary.

I hope Intercept finds a way to have both of these, but I wouldn't be disappointed if we have to use special parts for floats or flying boat bodies to allow for high speed movement on water without breaking, with all other parts interacting with water as before.

[jimmymcgoochie]

Ground effect can be done in KSP- there’s the conveniently named KSP ground effect mod which I have found to make landings much easier, and I think FAR does some ground effect too. No reason why that can’t be included in KSP2 as a stock feature. Hydroplaning I can live without as I don’t make (m)any boats or seaplanes.