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

[Hellbrand]

If there is an interest for it a firespitter style pWing could be arranged just like I did for B9 Aerospace and if Snjo is up for it.

I second that ! Definitely need Pwings for Firespitter!

Also Snjo think we could get 1/2 length Fuselauge fueltanks and such??

[KhaosCorp]

If there is an interest for it a firespitter style pWing could be arranged just like I did for B9 Aerospace and if Snjo is up for it.

Would LOVE some FS pwings!!

[BubbaWilkins]

If there is an interest for it a firespitter style pWing could be arranged just like I did for B9 Aerospace and if Snjo is up for it.

And this is why I love the KSP mod community. Hell YES!

SNJO: That's awesome!

[Snjo]

If there is an interest for it a firespitter style pWing could be arranged just like I did for B9 Aerospace and if Snjo is up for it.

I assume the pWings modify the stock wing module's lift values based on size if it's present. If you wanted to use FSliftSurface as an option on the pWings, it would be a simple matter to alter the public floats span and wingArea. But of course, it would also want a central lift transform...

[Bobhendly]

..Weapons?

[InfiniteDice]

Pushed this engine a bit too much!

[mike9606]

Do we have any planned release date for the combustion engine module InfiniteDice made?

[tomato3017]

This is from the B9 thread, he told me to ask the question here. Its related to the vtol engines(and vtol in general with firespitter).

Is there anyway to assign increase/decrease hover height to an action group? I have looked all over and am not seeing it. I would like to while in hover mode slowly decrease by hover height till I touch the ground. But the only way I can see to do that at the moment is by right clicking each engine and doing it that way, obviously that will make it go crazy.

[Snjo]

This is from the B9 thread, he told me to ask the question here. Its related to the vtol engines(and vtol in general with firespitter).

Is there anyway to assign increase/decrease hover height to an action group? I have looked all over and am not seeing it. I would like to while in hover mode slowly decrease by hover height till I touch the ground. But the only way I can see to do that at the moment is by right clicking each engine and doing it that way, obviously that will make it go crazy.

Oh, I guess I forgot to include that, since it was initially only used on a single heli rotor. Coming right up!

...

and done.

Pre-release v5.7

New:

-Added new custom lift code. Used on wings marked Special Aero. Configurable response to axis and flap commands on each movable section. (Click the wing in the hangar action group editor)

-The special f-86 wings have working flaps/air brakes and better leading edge slat lift (Auto deploys based on speed/AoA).

-Added action groups to increase or decrease the hover height in VTOL/heli rotors.

Issues:

-The lift indicator in the hangar may not be accurate. Still working on it.

-Still tweaking the lift positions and strength of the lift components on the various wings.

Download full Firespitter

Download the dll only

Edited November 8, 2013 by Snjo

[sirkut]

Snjo, I noticed a prop not being used by anything called FScockpitTV. How does one use this?

[Snjo]

Snjo, I noticed a prop not being used by anything called FScockpitTV. How does one use this?

You could just replace one of the FSpropMonitors instances with FScockpitTV in the apache cockpit cfg (Or add one with the same coordinates perhaps to keep the frame there still)

It's a cool thing, but it doesn't work too well though, the draw order of the objects is inverted for some reason:

Target a vessel to point the camera at it. (if it still works...)

Edited November 8, 2013 by Snjo

[sirkut]

Now that's nice. I gave it a try and I'm just seeing a black box. Do I need to change the proxy information (I'm assuming this is the camera properties)

[Snjo]

Nah, that's just its position in the cockpit. It's possible I removed the camera from the model.

[sirkut]

I replaced all 4 with the prop name and only one works. Pretty cool little prop, sucks that the sky is pink.

So in order for this to work you have to have a camera gameobject within the model.

[Snjo]

sucks that the sky is pink.

Does it?

It's not a bug, it's a feature. Did you find the rainbow unicorns yet?

For each monitor to work, they would all need their own cameras, but they only have one to share.

[InfiniteDice]

It's funny how you spend 20 hours coding a rainbow unicorn and nobody notices.... Then if you were to take 30 seconds to make a crappy texture - everyone would notice it... lol

[Aranthos]

Feature request tiem!

The engines work amazingly well for the vertical part of a VTOL's flight, but I've got some ideas on how to improve VTOL steering's usefulness in forward flight. I haven't come up with a way to do this for single-pair engine arrangements (I actually haven't even built or flown one), but something like this should allow double-pair craft to maintain full engine-driven attitude control all the way through the sweep from vertical ascent to forward flight by transitioning from the current control method to one that still allows yaw, pitch and roll control when the engines are brought to 0 degrees for forward flight.

It could do this by using direction control of the engines to manage pitch and roll, while using thrust to manage yaw. To transition from one system to the other, it weights the two sets of controls by fading one in and one out using sin/cos curves based on the current angle the engines are thrusting at.

I've never worked in C# much so instead of writing a terrible unreadable piece of turd I just pastebin'd some javascripty pseudocode here:

http://pastebin.com/T7Drx9wE

I didn't go through the roll and yaw functions as well but they're pretty similar so that example should pretty well explain what I'm thinking.

[Tanya Sapien]

<biplane pushing 122m/s>

Pushed this engine a bit too much!

I can't push 'er any harder, cap'n! She's comin' apart at the seams!

Anyways, I was just thinking about something. There's an ancient .dll called "throttle steering" that was put on the spaceport way back in 0.18, I still use it to this day in my mods because some element of coding wizardry keeps it functioning. It overrides throttle values on engines which it's both equipped to and activated on through context menus or action groups. The override piggybacks off the linear RCS code, making the engines independently adjust their throttles when steering input is given.

Back in the day, this had problems because of the epileptic ASAS computers, but with the new guidance systems, I'm wondering if a feature like that would be useful in your mod, as real life aircraft have the capability and quite often necessity of employing varying throttle strengths in control. Three prime examples would be fighter jets, which use it to pull tighter corners, large cargo planes and bombers, who if they suffer failure of one of their engines need to be able to adjust the throttles of the others to keep the plane flying straight, and VTOL's and quadcopters, who use it to keep them from spinning out of control.

EDIT: OH! and B2 bombers, as they have no stabilizing fins, using varying throttles to stabilize instead.

Edited November 8, 2013 by Tanya Sapien

[Snjo]

Feature request tiem!

The engines work amazingly well for the vertical part of a VTOL's flight, but I've got some ideas on how to improve VTOL steering's usefulness in forward flight. I haven't come up with a way to do this for single-pair engine arrangements (I actually haven't even built or flown one), but something like this should allow double-pair craft to maintain full engine-driven attitude control all the way through the sweep from vertical ascent to forward flight by transitioning from the current control method to one that still allows yaw, pitch and roll control when the engines are brought to 0 degrees for forward flight.

It could do this by using direction control of the engines to manage pitch and roll, while using thrust to manage yaw. To transition from one system to the other, it weights the two sets of controls by fading one in and one out using sin/cos curves based on the current angle the engines are thrusting at.

I've never worked in C# much so instead of writing a terrible unreadable piece of turd I just pastebin'd some javascripty pseudocode here:

http://pastebin.com/T7Drx9wE

I didn't go through the roll and yaw functions as well but they're pretty similar so that example should pretty well explain what I'm thinking.

I think roll can be done via rotating left and right engines in opposite ways, yaw can be done with thrust variations left and right (KSP is super sensitive to it), and pitch can be done with opposite front/back roll.

I guess it won't work too well at the halfway point though

I'll add it to my list of things that are Nice To Have.

[InfiniteDice]

I was just thinking about something. There's an ancient .dll called "throttle steering" that was put on the spaceport way back in 0.18 ...I'm wondering if a feature like that would be useful in your mod, as real life aircraft have the capability and quite often necessity of employing varying throttle strengths in control. B2 bombers, as they have no stabilizing fins, using varying throttles to stabilize instead.

I have built independent throttle support into the 'alternative, micro-manageable, slightly more realistic' Engine module I'm playing with. It's not implemented yet as it requires a more intuitive gui control, but it is supported!

On the same note I've been toying with a thrust averaging option, that allows for flying in a straight line with only one engine that is offset on a wing. At the moment it's not perfect but does allow for some degree of flight where in normal KSP you'd be unrealistically spinning towards the ground. KSP is goofy in this respect.

B2's also use computer controlled drag flaps (AKA split-rudders) at the ends of the wings which help keep it flying in the intended direction.

Edited November 8, 2013 by InfiniteDice

[Tanya Sapien]

B2's also use computer controlled drag flaps (AKA split-rudders) at the ends of the wings which help keep it flying in the intended direction.

I did not know that. I learned something today.

[J.Random]

FS_fighterJetWing doesn't have FAR modules in .cfg - is that normal?

[Tanya Sapien]

FS_fighterJetWing doesn't have FAR modules in .cfg - is that normal?

I think Snjo said the module auto-detects if FAR is present and replaces itself with FAR to avoid conflict issues.

[Hellbrand]

any word from DYJ about the procedural firespitter wings?

[Snjo]

FS_fighterJetWing doesn't have FAR modules in .cfg - is that normal?

I was testing stuff, and removed them, they were rotating the ailerons on the wrong axis. I asked Ferram about it, but he couldn't see where the error was.

And now I think I've lost the values they had... If someone has a set of wings with the values still in the cfg, feel free to post them.