Control Contrails on a per-wing basis

[mattihase]

I tend to do a fair bit of constructing wings from multiple wing parts, either because I want to go for a shape with more than 4 points on it, approximate a curved ending, or even just include 2 control surfaces on the same wing.

 

While the contrails are a nice visual touch it's quite annoying that whenever I make one of these composite wings, they end up producing a lot of contrails from what is often the dead centre of a wing. I think it'd be great to allow designers a little extra control over the contrails so we can tidy up designs to make them look their best.

[sgt_flyer]

One way could be to add attachment nodes to wing roots & wing tips - if the wing tip node is occupied, prevent contrails from forming there

Those nodes could also technically be used to bind the wing root size of the children segment to the parent's wing tip size for seamless adjustment. (though, i guess it should also lock some of the parent wing's controls (length / angle / wing tip sizes)

i guess allowing to adjust the wingtip rotation could be useful for seamless integration though, like if you go for gull wings, or to add sharklets.

[mattihase]

The latest example of overcontailing I ran into was because I made a tricolour tailplane out of several parts to get the multiple colours and that led to 3 or so different contails showing up right next to each other.

so nodes doesn't fully fix the problem for all use cases

[DeepSpace]

I actually hate them. The way they are implemented at the moment (visible 100%) is super unrealistic and to be honest, fairly annoying,

[mattihase]

The thing is, I'm realising I don't know this now, but out of curiosity what exactly causes them to appear and/or dissapear.

It seems like they show up way more often than they should but it's hard to tell exactly why that is because I haven't been able to work out a consistent behaviour for them in relation to speed, altitute or a combination of the two.

[Screeno]

They are ugly and totally unrealistic. contrails only happen occasionally in real life. The reason is reduced pressure in the wingtip vortex behind the wing  (yes, just the tip) , this causes the temperature in the vortex to drop and if humidity is high enough it will form what basically is a small cloud in that vortex. same thing goes for vapor cones and the clouds above  wings that can be seen on high g manoeuvres sometimes. but it's all dependent on humidity. 

 

https://www.boldmethod.com/learn-to-fly/weather/contrails/

 

that website explains it better than me and with pictures.

 

the main thing to keep in mind is these water vapour formations are vey short-lived. ksp2 having every single wing peice create a contrail at it's tip is very unrealistic. to the point it's jarring. 

On 4/20/2024 at 11:35 PM, sgt_flyer said:

One way could be to add attachment nodes to wing roots & wing tips - if the wing tip node is occupied, prevent contrails from forming there

Those nodes could also technically be used to bind the wing root size of the children segment to the parent's wing tip size for seamless adjustment. (though, i guess it should also lock some of the parent wing's controls (length / angle / wing tip sizes)

i guess allowing to adjust the wingtip rotation could be useful for seamless integration though, like if you go for gull wings, or to add sharklets.

oh i totally agree with the wing tip node thing. this just has to be a thing.

[dr.phees]

Or simply make a small, "invisible" part, a contrail source, with a simple setting for minimum g-forces or similar. I would be perfectly happy with manually placed contrail sources.