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

[BigFatStupidHead]

After trying it out, the folding prop is very awesome. However; it starts deployed on launch. Shouldn't it start out folded up?

[KhaosCorp]

After trying it out, the folding prop is very awesome. However; it starts deployed on launch. Shouldn't it start out folded up?

You should be able to add 'animSwitch = True' to the animation module. Not sure if it works with FSanimate, but i think it should.

[Kenobi McCormick]

Flies pretty sweet. I'm pondering how I'll get it into orbit now . I am having a couple issues with these parts though.

1: That engine is too damn weak. We really need a larger, dual row radial for the bomber. At the stock 45kN it would only just lift off. Top speed was 135m/s, and takeoff speed was about 95-105m/s. With any sort of payload it flat out would not get enough lift to fly, and when it was airborne it had to fly with about a 15 degree nose up attitude to maintain altitude. I bumped the power up to 110kN from 45 and the bomber flies like an absolute dream now. Takes off nicely even with a hefty bomb load, flies at about 175-185m/s at full chat, and level flight is achieved with just 2-3 degrees of nose-up.

2: Helicopters don't seem to behave themselves. I tried one. Balanced it according to the guide. It constantly wanted to nose down and would not sit level for some bizarre reason. Shifting the center of lift 3-4 inches forward and suddenly it's pitching up uncontrollably. Maybe they need FAR to fly right?

[Snjo]

After trying it out, the folding prop is very awesome. However; it starts deployed on launch. Shouldn't it start out folded up?

If you click on the propeller in the action editor, you can select whether it start retracted or not. I wasn't sure whether retracted or deployed is the best default, what do you guys think?

So the new version of the Launch to Water module isn't shoving your seacraft to the bottom of the ocean now, but at default settings pretty much everything splashes down hard and is destroyed when I launch. The only way I can fix this right now without adding floats is to mess with their impact tolerance, and that's a bit cheaty. So is this unavoidable, or is there any fix?

Turn water launch off in the action editor, fly something to the desired location (has to be close to the KSC), right click the water module and click the Log button.

In the debug log (Alt+F2), you'll see the current coordinates. Edit the water launch part.cfg to replace/include the lines

MODULE
{
name = FSmoveCraftAtLaunch
launchPosition = -1199.2, 66.2, 4095.4 // using your log coordinates of course
}

Obviously this is not an ideal solution. I'd like to put some more options into it. I saw some awesome optional lauch location code in KerbTown, the only problem is, all launches do "put to ground" too enthusiastically now, so I'm not sure that method alone would work.

...

1: That engine is too damn weak. We really need a larger, dual row radial for the bomber. At the stock 45kN it would only just lift off. Top speed was 135m/s, and takeoff speed was about 95-105m/s. With any sort of payload it flat out would not get enough lift to fly, and when it was airborne it had to fly with about a 15 degree nose up attitude to maintain altitude. I bumped the power up to 110kN from 45 and the bomber flies like an absolute dream now. Takes off nicely even with a hefty bomb load, flies at about 175-185m/s at full chat, and level flight is achieved with just 2-3 degrees of nose-up.

2: Helicopters don't seem to behave themselves. I tried one. Balanced it according to the guide. It constantly wanted to nose down and would not sit level for some bizarre reason. Shifting the center of lift 3-4 inches forward and suddenly it's pitching up uncontrollably. Maybe they need FAR to fly right?

Big honking radials have been on my mind...

Usually I need to place the Center Of Thrust just behind the center of mass.

You just need to move the engine in very small increments back and forth to get the right balance. Other things that will affect it are drag from the various parts, shifting fuel balance etc. Remember to trim the craft to get rid of the last bit of pitch, and as time goes by and fuel supplies dwindle. For very precise trim, there's a Trim Gadget in the Control section.

I don't use FAR myself.

[BigFatStupidHead]

If you click on the propeller in the action editor, you can select whether it start retracted or not. I wasn't sure whether retracted or deployed is the best default, what do you guys think?

Odd, that didn't work for me. Maybe a linux issue?

Regardless, retracted is probably the correct way to start these out. After all, the main reason I can see for these is for getting launched to space. Otherwise a player would probably use a larger, more powerful propeller.

[BubbaWilkins]

2: Helicopters don't seem to behave themselves. I tried one. Balanced it according to the guide. It constantly wanted to nose down and would not sit level for some bizarre reason. Shifting the center of lift 3-4 inches forward and suddenly it's pitching up uncontrollably. Maybe they need FAR to fly right?

Well, in general...helicopters are inherently UNSTABLE.

1) Pay attention to the arrow direction indicators on the parts, rotors need to face forward, tail rotors face downwards.

2) Ignore CoL, it's Center of Thrust which is the determining factor and that needs to be initially set near dead center of CoM.

3) Place the main rotor last, dead center on the CoM.

4) If your craft tilts up, you're tail heavy and the rotor needs to be shifted towards the rear to compensate. Tilt down, nose heavy and shift the rotor forward. Sometimes this means only by a few pixels.

Stock aerodynamics are pretty forgiving and you should be able to produce a very easily balanced craft. Flying takes practice, but generally make very small moves until you get used to it. Remember that they require constant input to fly and aren't like a other aircraft. Helicopters will fly in FAR, but it is magnitudes harder to control them and I would advise against it. I can't manage it without activating SAS, Mechjeb, or hover mode.

Edited August 2, 2013 by BubbaWilkins

[Darren9]

If you make a "Honking Big Radial" Snjo could it be in a 1m package still? My propeller aircraft are getting very badly hammered by jets, I need to use four props to get to real world single prop piston engine speeds (Rare Bear at 230m/s) and there isn't room to fit them to a reasonably sized craft and have it look nice.

[YX33A]

I'm having issues opening the latest version downloaded off of Spaceport. It won't open with 7zip or Universal Extractor. Universal Extractor error log seems to imply it's only a .zip because the file type was changed to .zip after compressing as another type.

EDIT: Third times the charm, apparently. Third attempt to download the mod was successful.

Edited August 2, 2013 by YX33A

[Snjo]

If you make a "Honking Big Radial" Snjo could it be in a 1m package still? My propeller aircraft are getting very badly hammered by jets, I need to use four props to get to real world single prop piston engine speeds (Rare Bear at 230m/s) and there isn't room to fit them to a reasonably sized craft and have it look nice.

For a more powerful version of the standard prop engine, I can just do a quick re-texture and cfg change of the regular one, but I was thinking of an Avro Lancaster engine. It can't be both radial AND still be inline compatible. It can however be the same scale as the regular engine, but with more engine body behind it to explain the increase in power.

[Snjo]

I'm just going to leave this here.

[Darren9]

For a more powerful version of the standard prop engine, I can just do a quick re-texture and cfg change of the regular one, but I was thinking of an Avro Lancaster engine. It can't be both radial AND still be inline compatible. It can however be the same scale as the regular engine, but with more engine body behind it to explain the increase in power.

I think it needs to take up more space and be heavier if it's a notable power upgrade, when you said "Honking great radial" I was thinking radial piston engine and not radially attached. I can overcome the problems of using a radial attached engine as an inline one if it doesn't have too long of a strut/connector going up to the wing if you know what I mean. I'd rather use engines as come in your pack than .cfg edits, I've made electric VTOL versions in the past but been careful to give them the same power as the other electrics. Long story short - I'll take anything with more that 45 thrusts and be very happy

[Kenobi McCormick]

For a more powerful version of the standard prop engine, I can just do a quick re-texture and cfg change of the regular one, but I was thinking of an Avro Lancaster engine. It can't be both radial AND still be inline compatible. It can however be the same scale as the regular engine, but with more engine body behind it to explain the increase in power.

This is what I meant by a bigger radial engine. I wouldn't say no to some Merlins or Allisons either, but IMO they fit fighters far better than they do bombers. Stonkin' huge radials fit bombers best.

Edited August 3, 2013 by Kenobi McCormick

[Mekan1k]

I'm just going to leave this here.

HOW CAN YOU JUST LEAVE THAT PIECE OF EPIC HERE?

How? What? Where can I get wings like that?!?!

[Mach56]

I'm just going to leave this here.

Snip

Jaw. On. Floor.

[Snjo]

HOW CAN YOU JUST LEAVE THAT PIECE OF EPIC HERE?

How? What? Where can I get wings like that?!?!

As soon as I brush up the texture, and make some simple code to make the leading edge produce more lift and drag when toggled, I'll throw it in the pre-release. I also have to make some tail elevators and rudder to go along with them, but that's easy.

And of course I'm going to throw the texture switcher on these parts so you can make them match the normal FS gray/black/red style, or the shown shiny F-86 style.

[colmo]

Could I suggest collective controls on the helicopter rotors?

I've always found the standard throttle was far too notchy to affect delicate take off and landing, so a seperate control varying total lift would avoid having to touch it.

[Ferrit]

Honking great big radial engine snipped

I wouldn't say no to some Merlins or Allisons either, but IMO they fit fighters far better than they do bombers. Stonkin' huge radials fit bombers best.

Minor threadjack: for the record the Merlin was used on the Avro Lancaster and numerous other aircraft, fighters, bombers and pretty much everything else. Heck, the non-supercharged version as used in tanks! Would love to have that throaty roar in KSP. Heck of an engine

I shall now return you to your regular KSP broadcast.

[Snjo]

I put the new f-86 wings in the pre-release.

You can toggle the leading edge on with an action group, or the context menu. It will give you more drag, but also increase the wing's lift from 1.5 to 2.5. You can land ridiculously slowly with a light plane.

The included f-86 craft is of course missing some tail surfaces still, but it works. It's not super stable when you pitch hard, but if you put the rear stabilizing air brakes up one step, it flies like a charm.

Could I suggest collective controls on the helicopter rotors?

I've always found the standard throttle was far too notchy to affect delicate take off and landing, so a seperate control varying total lift would avoid having to touch it.

If you can suggest an implementation that makes sense, I'm all ears. But there are only two options I see. Either it's just a more fine grained version of the throttle control, but then you will still have the same problems, because you constantly have to mind that thing anyways.

Or it's a hover controller basically. You ask for a certain vertical speed, and the engine auto throttles to give you that lift or drop rate.

[colmo]

If you can suggest an implementation that makes sense, I'm all ears. But there are only two options I see. Either it's just a more fine grained version of the throttle control, but then you will still have the same problems, because you constantly have to mind that thing anyways.

Or it's a hover controller basically. You ask for a certain vertical speed, and the engine auto throttles to give you that lift or drop rate.

I like a challenge :-)

Looking through the cfg of the rotors, I'm looking at the atmosphere and velocity curves. Collective changes the pitch of the rotors - more pitch, more drag (fuel consumption could go up), more lift. For a given collective, you'd have a given atmospheric/velocity curve. Change the collective, the curve changes too. I envisage this as a modifier variable multiplied by those values. They wouldn't need to be drastic - this is basically to allow better, finer landing controls, but still fully manual.

Flying at high altitude, you'd crank the collective all the way up, slightly increasing the flight ceiling at a fuel consumption cost. For landing, you'd set the throttle for near-level flight (nearly impossible to lock it completely), them trim the collective to bring it down gently.

How does that sound? (Disclaimer - I know little of the inner workings of the game!)

P.S. Or it could modify this?

MODULE
{
	name = FSpropellerAtmosphericNerf
	thrustModifier = 1.1
}

P.P.S. If this works, allowing it to be set in the SPH for the other props would allow people to tune their engines without modding core files e.g. the complaint the bomber engines weren't powerful enough, but this way there's balance as fuel consumption goes up. Engines could also overheat more readily with greater rotor pitch.

Edited August 3, 2013 by colmo

[Snjo]

It sounds to me like what we have now, so I guess I don't fully see your thought process...

When you increase throttle, it simulates pitching all the blades by increasing thrust all around, increasing fuel consumption as a result, and I've kept the engine pitch sound in to make it clearer to the player that you are at a low or high collective setting.

The engine is already less effective at altitude, so you need more throttle higher up. The helicopter has an operational ceiling that's only a few thousand meters. It does not however use more fuel at that altitude. That can be changed via the atmosphere curve of course, but it's not my favourite feature.

Given that I'm not a helicopter pilot in real life (I only play one in KSP), what are you missing in the current system?

[colmo]

It sounds to me like what we have now, so I guess I don't fully see your thought process...

When you increase throttle, it simulates pitching all the blades by increasing thrust all around, increasing fuel consumption as a result, and I've kept the engine pitch sound in to make it clearer to the player that you are at a low or high collective setting.

The engine is already less effective at altitude, so you need more throttle higher up. The helicopter has an operational ceiling that's only a few thousand meters. It does not however use more fuel at that altitude. That can be changed via the atmosphere curve of course, but it's not my favourite feature.

Given that I'm not a helicopter pilot in real life (I only play one in KSP), what are you missing in the current system?

Ah, I didn't know this - I presumed the throttle controlled rotor speed with a fixed collective. I should have read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helicopter_flight_controls#Throttle

The stock throttle is problematic at the low end, it's very difficult to change it by very small amounts - one moment you're coming in for a hovered landing, next you're plunging from the sky just a bit too fast (do fine controls influence throttle? I've never checked).

I've posited the idea of a throttle exponential curve - in R.C. models, better controllers allow an exponential throttle response so that you have good control over low speeds where you need it, at the expense of the high throttle settings, where you don't.

Edited August 3, 2013 by colmo

[m4ti140]

^this. Advanced joystick settings allowing to adjust response curve is something I miss from KSP.

In real live chopper moving the collective lever results in pretty much instant change in vertical acceleration, that's why rotors are kept pretty much at constant RPM and only blade pitch changes - while changing pitch gives instant reaction, changing throttle gives lagged reaction due to spool up/slow down time.

Also in real live chopper attitude is controlled by dynamically changing pitch of blades when they are on the side of the chopper we want to ptich into - so pitch/roll/yaw rate doesn't depend on collective setting, you can even change your attitude 0% prop pitch (like RCS)

So it should work pretty much like lunar lander XD

Edited August 3, 2013 by m4ti140

[colmo]

So we're after a throttle curve tool to fix the stock game's lack of one. I guess that sums it up!

Don't forget my idea of tweaking plane props for more aggressive, faster, thirstier and overheat-prone performance, or for low speed, economical and cool running (my trainer biplanes for example). Having tweakable settings in mods like the Procedural Fairings is great, would love to see them in Firespitter too.

Using an R.C. model analogy again, this is often done not by changing engine, but rotor. I know working out the optimum rotor for an electric plane is quite an involved process. In KSP, of course, we can just slap one on, see how it crashes goes, then pick a different rotor. TouhouTorpedo has already begun the business of separating powerplant from mechanical output with engines powering wheels. DYJ was beginning to look at different rotors for different engines too.

This is a great mod, which is why we want to keep pushing you to greater heights ;-)

[Snjo]

OK, so here's how it works. The rotation is just an illusion. After the engine has spun up, it maintains a constant rotation speed that's tuned to look OK at 60fps. You wouldn't be able to notice a change in rotation speed expect for changes in the glitchy way it displays on screen (Don't worry, I'll get the blur disc in there later). The fact that the rotor blades rotate have no bearing in the output on the engine, it's just visual smoke and mirrors to hide the fact that it's an upside down rocket engine.

What makes it different from rockets, apart from sound and visuals, is the steering and thrust control. When you increase throttle (or collective if you will), the engine responds immediately, just like blade pitch would. Any lag you see is just overcoming the fact that you were previously falling, and now need to accelerate out of that fall.

The hover function will completely override your throttle/collective control to maintain a constant altitude (up to the max effect of you current throttle setting).

The steering simulates the net effect of the swash plate tilt in a slightly incorrect, but more predictable way. It rotates the thrustTransform to induce steering. It could instead be more correct and move the thrustTransform back/forwards, left/right, but it just requires a bit more tweaking, and you would be very hard pressed to know the difference. I'm tempted to switch to that system however, to make pitch trim slightly better.

There's also some limitations on how much steering input is given at high throttle values to smooth the steering a bit.

Now for the collective sensitivity solution...

I could make alternate buttons to increase the throttle in smaller increments, but the problem is, almost all the keys are already in use. Maybe something like Page Up and Down aren't used...

Edited August 3, 2013 by Snjo

[colmo]

OK, so here's how it works. The rotation is just an illusion <snip>

- yup, we've got that. I was trying to think of other constants we could change into a variable to add a completely separate axis of control. Probably superfluous...

Now for the collective sensitivity solution...

I could make alternate buttons to increase the throttle in smaller increments, but the problem is, almost all the keys are already in use. Maybe something like Page Up and Down aren't used...

Make them action groups and leave it to us to decide? The Pg Up/Down keys are a good choice, especially as a helicopters demand full attention on WASD with the other hand!

(The new SAS should help a lot, looking forward to building some choppers with it. I'm wondering if a rotor with combined fuel tanks might be the answer to the problems people have with in-flight balance? I digress....)

One limitation of the exponential method is while that would be great for sea-level landing, perching on top of one of those nice new mountains could be a complete nightmare. What you're suggesting, adding granularity to the throttle, sounds better. It might need an emergency override when you get into a tangle on a landing and need to GTFO quickly, but that's yet another key....