Procedural wings, like them or hate them?

[Guest]

Today procedural wings where introduced into ksp 2. Now there was a thread on this (no procedural wings no buy simple) but it’s old. So thoughts?

[jastrone]

they are awesome! how they where controlled/created seems a bit like in simple planes wich had really good constructor for procedural wings(cant say the same about the rest of the constructor). I completely agree with the choice to have procedural wings in ksp2

[dave1904]

I love them. I really hope wing design has a major impact on aerodynamic performance. I would also love better UIs on how drag and lift etc is displayed. 

[Acid_Burn9]

Honestly a big relief. I'm so glad they're adding this to the stock game.

[RealKerbal3x]

I'm generally not a fan of procedural parts (I prefer the Lego approach with a set of prefab parts), but I do like procedural wings. The current wing system is frustrating to work with to say the least.

[The Aziz]

If they're editable only up to a certain point (if you want more, you have to use different size wing) I'm in. I don't like sitting for hours fiddling with length, width and AoA to get that perfect lift.

[Wubslin]

Lol you'd have to be a complete maniac to like the KSP 1 wing system. That whole section of the video was a love letter to the fanbase.

[MechBFP]

They seem to be taking a "procedural where deemed necessary" approach, which is fine by me.

[Guest]

I love the lego approach, in fact I love legos and lego-like wings always sucked, even in actual legos.

[shdwlrd]

One design choice I was hoping to see. I hope that the implementation isn't as clunky as other games and mods they appear in.

[mcwaffles2003]

On 5/14/2021 at 10:53 AM, Wubslin said:

Lol you'd have to be a complete maniac to like the KSP 1 wing system. That whole section of the video was a love letter to the fanbase.

Not necessarily... An advantage of the KSP 1 wing system is that the wings could fracture under heavy loads and bend at the joints. I like the addition of procedural wings, it is a great improvement in my opinion but the other system does have some merit. Heck If the new system just default attached the wing parts correctly that would have been enough and I hope there are some limits to the maximum dimensions to the wings so there is still a lego aspect to building with them.

 

 

[Guest]

When the search for the optimal wing takes you here, it's obvious that something needs to be done.

Procedural wings are the obvious solution. They do have a few downsides but they're really minor compared to the gains. I can deal with non-flexing, non-fragmenting wings if I get the flexibility of those proc wings.

I may be in a minority in thinking that procedural fuel tanks would also be a good fit, although there perhaps the parameters would need to be somewhat more constrained. The fuel tank tab is mega cluttered too, and it could easily be decluttered if you could just specify the top and bottom diameters and length of a tank, and what type of fuel/oxidiser it contains. These would be constrained by tech level of course.

[The Aziz]

I like what ksp1 has done with engine plates and few other things. 4 or 5 lengths of the same size item. So you get 5 times less parts in the menu but you still get what you want. 

If the same approach would be used for fuel tanks, then it would not only make searching easier, but building shorter - if you're looking for that perfect amount of fuel for your engine below, you don't have to replace it every time, just click a button to increase/decrease length and look how it affects the rocket performance.

Now, what if we could change what's inside the tanks? Like not have separate tanks for methalox, monoprop, MH etc, but one tank to rule carry them all? We'd have literally two parts per size lol.

It's either size or fuel type being configurable. Not both. I assume the devs are aware of that and will do it right.

The clutter exists because the parts are all over the place. With proper sorting and filters it won't be a problem.

[swjr-swis]

I voted 'undecided', because I really need to see it in action before I can judge whether this is really a step forward. I think with procedural wings, as paradoxical as it may sound, there is a danger of constraining the freedom of design/construction that the current system offers. I really hope they don't remove the option for completely separate control surfaces, and that the wing shaping code still allows us to build wings in 'un-aerodynamic' ways (let me be the judge please of what I'm intending my craft to do).

I'm also still awaiting how they will implement wing lift, as one of my biggest pet peeves with current wings is the need to add considerable AoA to even get any lift from them, completely missing the point of how aerofoils actually work - with all the construction difficulties that follow (eg. no longer being able to keep the wing smooth but having to 'stagger' sections so the leading and trailing edges don't stick out away from the fuselage).

 

I think KSP1's lego-like wing construction could work without going procedural, if it wasn't 1) inconsistent, and 2) incomplete. As far as I'm concerned, they got *this* close to having it right... and then they just stopped. A bit of a theme with KSP, unfortunately.

Inconsistent because every other wing section attaches in a different way to each other, with different relative default offsets, borders modeled/textured in ways that do not blend well together, some borders being rounded others being flat (sometimes even on the same pieces!), etc, etc.

Incomplete because if your basic paradigm is to create something out of preset pieces, you then commit to at least provide all pieces necessary to make all shapes - we don't even have all pieces to properly make even the most common wing shapes. Not to mention that they never even finished implementing the things mentioned in their own part flavour texts (I'm looking at you, missing Big-S elevon fuel tanks).

A proper quality and polish pass would make a lot of the build annoyances with wings disappear, in my opinion, without even needing to go procedural.

 

1 hour ago, Brikoleur said:

procedural fuel tanks would also be a good fit

Agreed, but then I'm of the opinion that if they go procedural on one thing, they really should just go with it all the way. It's a fundamentally different way of building/constructing a craft.

Let me procedurally shape/size my own engine (bell), my own crew cabin, my own cargo bay, my own landing gear, etc etc. There's no reason why this should not be possible, and the methods of dynamically recalculating part properties based on adapted size have already been iterated to bits in the different tweakscale patch sets.

It would allow the part repository to be simplified down to the very most basic part types, physics calculations would become that much simpler/faster since craft would be made of much less parts, and they could fully concentrate on making sure the procedural/resizing code works right.

Doesn't look like that's going to happen though, and we'll have to again deal with some sort of hybrid implementation. Maybe KSP3.

 

[Single stage to ocean]

No, I dislike them b/c what if you want the wing to have a style like the big-s wings? Or like a FAT airline wing? Or you want different impact tolerance, or different heat resistance? This could get complex fast. Exact same system as stock, with same parts, with maybe some more added.

[Lt_Duckweed]

1 hour ago, swjr-swis said:

I'm also still awaiting how they will implement wing lift, as one of my biggest pet peeves with current wings is the need to add considerable AoA to even get any lift from them, completely missing the point of how aerofoils actually work - with all the construction difficulties that follow (eg. no longer being able to keep the wing smooth but having to 'stagger' sections so the leading and trailing edges don't stick out away from the fuselage).

In real life most wings have built in angle of incidence, and the majority of lift is produced via the wing's angle of attack. Wing camber does produce lift, but it is much less important than the wing having an AoA to the airflow.  After all, planes can fly inverted, and many acrobatic/stunt planes actually have symmetric airfoils with no camber at all, and get all their lift from AoA.  That's really all there is to it. Wings in ksp have no camber, thus they must have AoA to produce lift.  And with the lego like piece by piece  construction that wings have in ksp, giving the model for each individual wing part camber would ruin the ability to tile them.

With the procedural wings, if they give the ability to add camber, then they could implement it such that wings will be able to produce lift at Zero wing AoA.  Of course then we will have to deal with "why my lift negative" questions from people who put the wings on upside down or used negative camber lol.

To add to this, most airliners when fully loaded at cruising speed and altitude actually fly at a few degrees of positive fuselage AoA, as they are generally designed so that they never have to fly at negative AoA when light on fuel/cargo.

The true issue with KSPs aero model is not that the wings have no camber, but that body drag is so excessively punishing, and wing lift to drag ratios so low.

Edited May 16, 2021 by Lt_Duckweed

[Guest]

59 minutes ago, Single stage to ocean said:

No, I dislike them b/c what if you want the wing to have a style like the big-s wings? Or like a FAT airline wing? Or you want different impact tolerance, or different heat resistance? This could get complex fast. Exact same system as stock, with same parts, with maybe some more added.

Big-s and FAT are one of the biggest weak points for KSP1 wings, what if you want any other shape other than "space shuttle replica" or "airliner" shaped wings? You can't, you're forced to do a horrible mosaic of small wing segments that don't go together all that well.

If they do a procedural wing system with a minimum of competence a simple airliner wing or shuttle delta wing won't be a problem at all with the pro of being able to shape and size your wing to match the size of the rest of the plane and not be stuck with tiny wings on a huge plane.

And, remember, in the video we saw them stretching a single winglet type, not a full procedural system at all, clearly they only show the bare minimum to tell us "procedural wings" without revealing too much.

[Wubslin]

3 hours ago, Master39 said:

Big-s and FAT are one of the biggest weak points for KSP1 wings, what if you want any other shape other than "space shuttle replica" or "airliner" shaped wings? You can't, you're forced to do a horrible mosaic of small wing segments that don't go together all that well.

If they do a procedural wing system with a minimum of competence a simple airliner wing or shuttle delta wing won't be a problem at all with the pro of being able to shape and size your wing to match the size of the rest of the plane and not be stuck with tiny wings on a huge plane.

And, remember, in the video we saw them stretching a single winglet type, not a full procedural system at all, clearly they only show the bare minimum to tell us "procedural wings" without revealing too much.

This. This so much. We all know and love the "selectable style" buttons on the context menus for parts in the VAB, right? They can just have all the different wing types be there if there need to be multiple types. Or there can be two or three wing "parts" to choose from.

[jimmymcgoochie]

I was never a fan of procedural parts, but now that I've spent several months playing RO/RP-1 using many many procedural parts... I still don't like them. The limitations of using a small set of fixed parts is part of KSP's charm, in a way that endlessly adjusting a load of barely legible sliders to tweak trivial details of a fuel tank or wing just isn't. Then again, trying to create a nice looking and functional wing with the selection of wing boards available in KSP is equally fiddly especially when the wing needs to be angled to generate lift instead of using real lift physics with aerofoil shapes etc.

I'll wait and see a) how KSP2 implements them and b) if planes are actually useful in KSP2 in any way to need to use them.

[Sidestrafe2462]

On 5/16/2021 at 2:14 AM, The Aziz said:

It's either size or fuel type being configurable. Not both. I assume the devs are aware of that and will do it right.

 

I'd rather we have the latter, just for the pretty disassembly of a multitude of parts. One of the things that got old really fast with one-part fuselages/aircraft mods was that when they got destroyed they just popped. Plus, fiddling with the part sizes is part of the charm of the game.

With proc wings I think they should give people basic custom shapes (triangles, rectangles, rounds, +control surfaces for each) to keep the lego aspect of building while allowing people to avoid the horrible puzzle of small/large wing shapes, along with a couple of utility options like fuel storage and structural strength/mass to allow for more optimization. Let people spend hours on wings if they wish, but make it easy to get basic functional shapes without annoying finagling. Perhaps the basic wing shapes could come with some standard presets to match the wings we have in KSP1. And maybe save your own presets too!

 

Edited May 18, 2021 by Sidestrafe2462

[Bej Kerman]

On 5/14/2021 at 3:24 PM, The Aziz said:

(if you want more, you have to use different size wing)

Why would we need to swap being able to rescale a wing to as far as realistic proportions extend, with having to throw the wing you've been working on in the bin because it's oh-ever-so-close to being as long as you need it? This needless complications is what KSP 2 should be fixing.

[Guest]

On 5/16/2021 at 12:32 PM, swjr-swis said:

Agreed, but then I'm of the opinion that if they go procedural on one thing, they really should just go with it all the way. It's a fundamentally different way of building/constructing a craft.

Let me procedurally shape/size my own engine (bell), my own crew cabin, my own cargo bay, my own landing gear, etc etc. There's no reason why this should not be possible, and the methods of dynamically recalculating part properties based on adapted size have already been iterated to bits in the different tweakscale patch sets.

I've played SimpleRockets 2 a bit and it is fun too, and a completely different way to build your craft. However I wouldn't like KSP2 to go all-in on that style. Space Legos are still a huge part of the charm, and working around the limitations of the available parts is a major part of my enjoyment at least.

With wings though the Lego approach is... problematic, shall we say. RL wings come in a massive variety of shapes and sizes. If you don't go procedural, you would need a much bigger variety of wing components to do the job properly, and that alone comes with some fairly significant downsides. I do agree that done properly it would be a lot better than in KSP1. Making them procedural is a simple solution that eliminates most of that clutter at a stroke.

As to tanks, my issue with them is clutter. There's a massive number of tanks to choose from, and they're still not sufficient. For example there are no Lf only fuel tanks other than in the 1.25 m, Mk2, and Mk3 format, which really cramps your style when designing atomic spacecraft. There also isn't a sufficient variety of adapters between different tank types.

I don't think they'd necessarily need to be fully procedural; part variants with the possibility to specify what they contain would get the job done too. You'd basically need 1 cylindrical tank of each diameter with variants of different lengths, and 1 truncated conical type that steps between two neighbouring sizes, with a set of variants of different lengths. And then a nose cone that fits each size. That would let you sculpt pretty much any rocket you like. And of course the variants with different diameters and lengths would get unlocked with tech development.