Firespitter propeller plane and helicopter parts v7.1 (May 5th) for KSP 1.0

[Nereid]

As you guys will have noticed, I have been pretty absent lately. Partly it's been work and vacation stuff, and partly I've just been burned out on stuff.

Creativity comes and goes in waves, and some moths (or years) I will be very into a project, others not so much.

This sounds very familiar to me.

[petros_a_l]

By the way, a full and an empty tank will still drop at the same speed.

As they should, unless Newton is wrong (only if you are talking about identical fuel tanks of course).

[slumpie]

... I was clearly talking about aerodynamics.

If you think the same two tanks, one empty and the other one full, should fall through the atmospheres with the same speed, then you're wrong.

[Camacha]

Today, I tried installing KSO (the shuttle mod) on top of this and tried launching ksp x64.

KSP x64 on Windows is broken, very broken. Even Squad calls it unstable at the download section. Almost none of the modders support it and those that do issue grave warnings. Use at your own risk. If you break it, don't expect anyone to be able to really do anything.

To be clear, this is not me dropping the mic and heading out the door, it's just being honest about the fluctuating level of development. I love the game and you guys, who have always been super nice. PMs and such always reach me

Don't worry. It's a game and the most important thing about games is that they should be fun. Don't burn yourself out on the project, both you and the community will suffer. Your attitude towards the plugin sound like a good way to go.

Take it easy!

Edited October 13, 2014 by Camacha

[Ford6]

... I was clearly talking about aerodynamics.

If you think the same two tanks, one empty and the other one full, should fall through the atmospheres with the same speed, then you're wrong.

Your right and wrong.

At first the full tank should drop faster do to its higher mass. However, ALL objects have a "Terminal Velocity", that's determined by . . . . surface area exposed to air friction (over simplified).

Since the tanks have the same shape they will have the same TV and will fall at the same max speed

[undercoveryankee]

Your right and wrong.

At first the full tank should drop faster do to its higher mass. However, ALL objects have a "Terminal Velocity", that's determined by . . . . surface area exposed to air friction (over simplified).

Since the tanks have the same shape they will have the same TV and will fall at the same max speed

In real physics where surface area is not proportional to mass, a denser object of the same shape will have a faster terminal velocity. The Wikipedia page has a derivation of the equations that show terminal velocity varying with mass.

Or if you would rather test for yourself, find a place where you can drop an empty plastic bottle and a full plastic bottle from fairly high up and see which one falls faster.

[zilfondel]

zilfondel: x64 KSP on windows is a waste of time.

Right. Sorry, I meant to say I am experiencing my issue with x86 version of KSP 24.2.

*EDIT*

Nevermind! I fixed it. Ran KSP as administrator and everything seems to work now.

Thank you for your help!

Edited October 13, 2014 by zilfondel

[NathanKell]

Snjo, thanks for the headsup, thanks for all you've been doing, and thanks for staying involved even when interest (and the muse) is on the ebb.

[BFGfreak]

In real physics where surface area is not proportional to mass, a denser object of the same shape will have a faster terminal velocity. The Wikipedia page has a derivation of the equations that show terminal velocity varying with mass.

Or if you would rather test for yourself, find a place where you can drop an empty plastic bottle and a full plastic bottle from fairly high up and see which one falls faster.

So if I'm understanding what you're saying correctly, than even though both objects are accelerating at the same speed, because of the mass it has higher force than a lighter object so that the air needs to be enacting a higher force to stop it's acceleration. Is that about right?

[slumpie]

@BFGfreak

Yes, that's pretty much how it is.

Although to be more precise, they don't exactly accelerate at the same speed. If there were no air, then the acceleration would be the same.

----

Your right and wrong.

At first the full tank should drop faster do to its higher mass. However, ALL objects have a "Terminal Velocity", that's determined by . . . . surface area exposed to air friction (over simplified).

Edited October 13, 2014 by slumpie

[Ruedii]

I found it works good with FAR.

I'm not sure if the stock aerodynamic changes cause issues, as FAR does it's best to eliminate them.

There were changes to quite a few of the stock aerodynamic modules, however they shouldn't be an issue with Firespitter. The parts may behave a little differently, but that's not really enough to go and say OMG IT'S BROKEN!

[sumghai]

As you guys will have noticed, I have been pretty absent lately. Partly it's been work and vacation stuff, and partly I've just been burned out on stuff.

Creativity comes and goes in waves, and some moths (or years) I will be very into a project, others not so much.

As people have noted, the plugin has become important for a lot of other mods, and I love that. Right now I see my contribution to other people's mods as more important than updating my own part set, which has often been a way to showcase the functionality of the code. As such, if any of the mod creators have feedback on how I can make things easier for them when I am being flaky, please let me know. Maybe you want some help branching the code, making a stable build of a smaller subset of the functions with other module names?

I was wondering if you could revisit this feature request - https://github.com/snjo/Firespitter/issues/41

[Dr. Death]

I am wondering if someone can make choppers FLYABLE with FAR installed.

[AetherGoddess]

I am wondering if someone can make choppers FLYABLE with FAR installed.

my choppers fly in far. what's wrong with them?

[Sakata]

Hey Snjo, quick question - do you have any objections to anyone forking or maintaining the plugin while you're in burnout mode?

I personally couldn't code my way out of a hello world box; mainly just asking in case someone with some knowledge comes along that might be able to pick it up and tote it for you till you get the itch to code again.

[Snjo]

Hey Snjo, quick question - do you have any objections to anyone forking or maintaining the plugin while you're in burnout mode?

I personally couldn't code my way out of a hello world box; mainly just asking in case someone with some knowledge comes along that might be able to pick it up and tote it for you till you get the itch to code again.

I don't mind code re-use at all, but to avoid naming collision in the part modules, the class names should be changed so that for instance FSanimateGeneric becomes NNanimateGeneric in cases where someone makes a more focused dll.

Since I am not going AWOL, if anyone wants to add improvements to the official firespitter.dll, just make a pull request.

If I do ever go completely away, the license does permit re-use of everything except the model files, but even then I'd alter the license for that too, and open up my project's model source folder on dropbox.

[Justin Kerbice]

@snjo: what do you think of splitting FS into FSUtils and FS itself, FSUtils would contains all non directly related FS stuff like Animate module + all Switcher* ones.

So most of the dependency should be on FSUtils which may be not often updated as FS itself, unless you do more work on it.

[Snjo]

Yeah, but I would rename the classes to e.g. FSUanimateGeneric to avoid conflict, and mods targeting that would just alter their cfg files to match that new pattern.

If there's a desire for such a build, the question is, which modules are needed?

[Dr. Death]

my choppers fly in far. what's wrong with them?

Stability for the most.

Snjo, you can punch me later, but any ETA on the .25 compatibility update?

[AetherGoddess]

Stability for the most.

Snjo, you can punch me later, but any ETA on the .25 compatibility update?

Stability is always a problem when you are suspending an aircraft off dynamic thrust. Make sure that your center of mass is DIRECTLY under your center of thrust, and that you put enough wings on the side to keep it dymanically stable at speeds where wind is going to be an issue. i find that the enclosed tail roter with both fins (top and bottom) and two jet fighter elevators (with control disabled) on the sides of the tail is just about right to keep a chopper stable at or above 40 m/s. Faster choppers use aerodynamic half-wings, like the apache, for stability at high speeds.

[Dr. Death]

Stability is always a problem when you are suspending an aircraft off dynamic thrust. Make sure that your center of mass is DIRECTLY under your center of thrust, and that you put enough wings on the side to keep it dymanically stable at speeds where wind is going to be an issue. i find that the enclosed tail roter with both fins (top and bottom) and two jet fighter elevators (with control disabled) on the sides of the tail is just about right to keep a chopper stable at or above 40 m/s. Faster choppers use aerodynamic half-wings, like the apache, for stability at high speeds.

I was using the .craft that came with the mod. And even then, even when everything is in place, the mod wont remember the RPM i set for the engines, and every time i revert back to launch or i relaunch the chopper i must retune the engines (i think this counts as a bug).

The reason why the stability its a problem its because this isn't just me not knowing how to fly, if i could make a VTOL when i dont even know how to make proper planes and i can fly it better than a FS chopper there is a conflict. Of course, it could be that i was just using .crafts that were not compatible with FAR, and i would love to check that, but i will have to wait for FS to get updated.

Its not like i was expecting 100% realistic helicopter physics anyways, the way the KSP physics/atmospheric engine is made makes impossible for proper realistic simulation of airplanes and choppers to happen.

[Snjo]

The 0.25 dll is available here, i just haven't baked it into a full release yet, since the rest of the package is still a bit messy.

@dr. death, there used to be a few separate craft files for FAR planes since they needed tweaks to wing positions. I never even attempted helicopter with FAR myself. They might work just fine, but almost certainly not with a craft file made for stock aero.

[Thourion]

I also didnt notice anything bad going on with the older version, but Thanks for the update Snjo!

[Dr. Death]

The 0.25 dll is available here, i just haven't baked it into a full release yet, since the rest of the package is still a bit messy.

@dr. death, there used to be a few separate craft files for FAR planes since they needed tweaks to wing positions. I never even attempted helicopter with FAR myself. They might work just fine, but almost certainly not with a craft file made for stock aero.

now THAT its important info, after i installed Kerbinside heliports became quite important.

[jamesthegiantkiller]

I got my .25 firespitter working okay but there are no biplane parts except for the tail section. where can I replace those parts?