Add second control surface to procedural wings.

[NaughtyMonster]

Give procedural wings a second control surface that can be sized, positioned and assigned independently of the first (i.e. give pitch and roll functions to separate surfaces on the same wing).

With the second surface accessed as an option in the Wing Shape editor defaulted to off.

[Guest]

I think the current system is where you can just stick one wing on another is basically fine.

They could make that a little easier by auto-sizing and auto-positioning the second wing’s root to fit the first wing’s tip, getting them to fit now is a bit too fiddly.

[NaughtyMonster]

I agree, I find it very fiddly to graft a second wing onto the tips of a first pair. I've read some descriptions about how the devs could regulate the length and thickness of tips and roots of successive wings but, even with all that additional code in place, you'd still have to fiddle around matching the slope and angles of the two sections - assuming you had a particular shape in mind.

With all that fiddling around it struck me the suggestion I've seen, to just add the option for a second set of control surfaces to a wing, was a lot more straightforward. As I said, the default could be set to off, so it would make no difference to building a wing unless you wanted to go into the wing shape editor and turn on the second set of control surfaces.

This would restore the functionality we had in KSP1 where you could add two control surfaces to a wing. Whilst I'm not a programmer it seems to me that it might be substantially easier to duplicate the existing 'control surface' section in the wing shape editor - with the switch defaulted to off - and then add in a couple of rules about how the two surfaces divide up the trailing edge if it's turned on, rather than developing all the code to match up the tips and roots of successive wings.

If you're not one yourself, perhaps a dev can step in here and explain that I'm wrong to think this route would be a more dev-time-efficient path to restoring this functionality.

Of course, this wouldn't limit advanced players like you from adding further wings.

[Guest]

I don’t think it would be hard, I just don’t like the idea! I think KSP ought to be about lots of simple parts you can combine in interesting ways, so you should only make a part more complex if there’s a really good reason.

In this case, you want two control surfaces on a wing. This can be done by making the wing more complex or by making it easier to combine wings. I like the second option better because of what I said above, although it might actually be more work to implement it well!

[NaughtyMonster]

Procedural wings seem like a pretty significant departure from a "Lego"-like ethos, one I believe many players (perhaps even a majority?) regard as a substantial improvement on KSP1.

Adding the option for a second control surface would seem to open up a degree of flight control to beginner and intermediate players whilst not necessarily impinging on the aesthetic sentiments of purists such as yourself, who may enjoy fiddling around adding successive wings to overcome basic flight stability issues like the one our intrepid kerbal is experiencing  -and apparently enjoying - here:

 

[Rothryn]

It's not super difficult to merge a few procedural wings together into one as long as both wing parts are the same size category (as in small, medium, large) and as long as you build the whole wing before tilting it in any direction. You can basically enter the same values you have in the wing tip of the first half of the wing (as in tip thickness and tip length) for the wing root of the second wing (as in, enter them for root thickness and root length). You'll have the exact same shape and now you just have to attach the second wing half to the tip of the first half with snapping enabled from where you just have to adjust the position of it to match.
That being said, being able to split the control surface in two and ajusting where that split is would for sure make stuff quite convenient if you only want a single, simple wing shape.

[Guest]

On 9/10/2023 at 7:17 PM, NaughtyMonster said:

Procedural wings seem like a pretty significant departure from a "Lego"-like ethos, one I believe many players (perhaps even a majority?) regard as a substantial improvement on KSP1.

They are and I do think they’re a big improvement!

On 9/10/2023 at 7:17 PM, NaughtyMonster said:

Adding the option for a second control surface would seem to open up a degree of flight control to beginner and intermediate players whilst not necessarily impinging on the aesthetic sentiments of purists such as yourself, who may enjoy fiddling around adding successive wings to overcome basic flight stability issues like the one our intrepid kerbal is experiencing  -and apparently enjoying - here:

A beginner plane doesn’t need two control surfaces per wing! You only need ailerons and an elevator, even the rudder is optional!

If you’re advanced enough that you know you need two control surfaces, and if connecting wing elements is easy as 1-2-3, what additional benefit would an optional second control surface bring? I think it would just introduce complexity with no benefit, and it would be a further deviation from the Lego design paradigm!