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

[Mihara]

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:

...Wait. I have just spent eight hours fighting against the exact same problem with my own camera... but in the end I won, mwahahahaha.

You're creating RenderTexture with depth of 0. Make that 24. I.e. newTex = new RenderTexture(256, 256, 24); Enjoy.

What actually happens:

Rendering requires an extra plane of color, 'depth', the so called "Z buffer" which is essentially a grayscale bitmap marking up how far from the camera a pixel actually is, or rather, to how distant an object it belongs. This allows the engine to draw pixels that aren't occluded while avoiding drawing those that are. Screens have that plane, RenderTextures do, nothing else does. When creating a RenderTexture, you need to specify how many bits each pixel in this plane the texture is to have, or the engine will get confused about, yep, the draw order.

It's obvious giving it 0 bits wouldn't work, but you usually aren't looking for that bug anywhere near to where it actually is.

Edited November 8, 2013 by Mihara

[Snjo]

whoa! That is amazing luck!

I will delve back into this beast and test that fix, thank you so much!

Yup, that worked! now I just gotta mash it toghether with landscape camera 2, and fix the rotation on the targeting cam.

News from a very different era:

Edited November 9, 2013 by Snjo

[sirkut]

whoa! That is amazing luck!

I will delve back into this beast and test that fix, thank you so much!

Yup, that worked! now I just gotta mash it toghether with landscape camera 2, and fix the rotation on the targeting cam.

News from a very different era:

Awesome! Glad you got the camera fixed!

[T-Pilot395]

DANG JUST LOOK AT THAT OPEN AIR COCKPIT

I should really get down to using the Firespitter oblong stuff more often. It's just something about the textures not looking right lol.

[Hellbrand]

Am I the only one who's been wanting to make an F-4 Phantom In KSP but who has been failing horribly at it?

[ultrasquid]

DANG JUST LOOK AT THAT OPEN AIR COCKPIT

I should really get down to using the Firespitter oblong stuff more often. It's just something about the textures not looking right lol.

I feel you there. Apart from a few splashes like we get in this kit, much of KSP is rather drab, ranging from galvanized steel to brushed aluminum. Some more bright paint and gold metalized mylar would be wonderful, not just for Firespitter, but among all the parts. Now, to do so would make maintaining a cohesive aesthetic more difficult (even the current not-quite-matched grays can be troublesome), but it wouldn't be impossible.

[Ganymede]

Looks awesome!

Slightly unrelated note, how'd you get the second runway?

[KhaosCorp]

Looks awesome!

Slightly unrelated note, how'd you get the second runway?

Probably KerbTown, can find it in addon development subforum

[Snjo]

Yeah, it's one I made for KerbTown, but launching on alternate runways is broken in 0.22, so it doesn't do much good at the moment. Everything else works though, like the fuel pump I made, and other static objects.

[BrickedKeyboard]

Ok, maybe it's my design, maybe it's my piloting, but with FAR installed (have not tried without), I cannot seem to make a plane that is flyable. I've tried most of the stock firespitter planes, most of them are unflyable. They go out of control almost immediately after throttle up.

One of the few planes that works, surprisingly, is the VTOL. For some reason, the aerodynamics model likes it.

One thing I did notice is that no matter what plane I tried, they all "feel" like they are made of styrofoam. They instantly accelerate, they get tossed around the air like tops, the slightest twitch on the rudder during a takeoff roll and they get tumbled end over end into pieces.

Note that I've tried stock planes, the ones packaged with this mod pack, and I have a thrustmster HOTAS joystick. I don't have any problems like this with semi-realistic flight sims.

Anyways, if anyone has gotten an aircraft from this mod that feels realistic and is easy to fly, please link the part file. I'd really like to find out what I'm doing wrong. Note that this must be WITH FAR running.

[Snjo]

The fighter and bomber wings have FAR values (the jet wings aren't working quite right with FAR), but since the lift produced by FAR's lift calculations is different than stock, the Center of Lifgt will move around in relation to the Center of Mass, and even the Center of Drag. Therefore, any pre made craft will usually have to have the wings moved a round a bit to get back in line. A plane with CoL far in front of the CoM will often flip out immediately on take off.

When I tested it, the K-17 bomber actually flew pretty well as built with FAR.

If you tried the latest pre-release and used the special aero wings, those have not been tested with FAR at all yet, so all bets are off.

[BrickedKeyboard]

Can you link a part file where this has been fixed so I can look at it in the editor and see where precisely those centers need to be with respect to one another? (yes, i know the basic idea is CoM ahead slightly of CoL, but there must be other subtleties there)

What about where the planes "feel" like they are made of styrofoam, and they jerk around erratically? That seems to happen to anything, I think it's either that the mass/lift/thrust values for this mod are way off, or FAR is way off.

[Snjo]

Can you link a part file where this has been fixed so I can look at it in the editor and see where precisely those centers need to be with respect to one another? (yes, i know the basic idea is CoM ahead slightly of CoL, but there must be other subtleties there)

What about where the planes "feel" like they are made of styrofoam, and they jerk around erratically? That seems to happen to anything, I think it's either that the mass/lift/thrust values for this mod are way off, or FAR is way off.

I don't have any FAR specific craft. The included example craft have to work with stock+FS, which will often be slightly different than FAR+FS.

I haven't noticed any styrofoaminess, but my parts are generally lighter than rocket parts since they are not full of fuel, and it's possible FAR creates more lift and less drag, so if you slap too much engine power one there, that could explain some of it.

I think Ferram said something about the lifting ability of a stock wing being unrealistically low, so since the FAR lift values of my wings is based on their span etc, they will have more lift in the FAR version than stock.

[BubbaWilkins]

Can you link a part file where this has been fixed so I can look at it in the editor and see where precisely those centers need to be with respect to one another? (yes, i know the basic idea is CoM ahead slightly of CoL, but there must be other subtleties there)

What about where the planes "feel" like they are made of styrofoam, and they jerk around erratically? That seems to happen to anything, I think it's either that the mass/lift/thrust values for this mod are way off, or FAR is way off.

Adjust your wings so that your CoL is just behind the CoM. In many cases the two indicator nodes will overlap quite a bit. It may take some trial/error to get it right with FAR.

Secondly, make sure you set your control surfaces up in FAR.

Third: Ease the throttle up on take off and use the trim to adjust and stabilize your level flight.

[BrickedKeyboard]

Well, that didn't fix it. What did fix it was using heavier wings from B9 aerospace, using your cockpit and engines. This made a flyable aircraft.

Another flyable aircraft I discovered by accident is this :

[wasmic]

OOOH OOH! I'VE GOT IT! TAKE ME TAKE ME!

Turboprop engines. Sorta in between a propeller and a turbojet, with kool contrails AND kool propellers!

[BrickedKeyboard]

Got a question : do the piston engines in this mod lose power at some realistic speed? That is, they supply a certain amount of thrust until the airspeed over the propeller reaches a certain point and then the thrust diminishes to zero over some range?

That seems to be what is happening, but was not certain.

[BubbaWilkins]

Got a question : do the piston engines in this mod lose power at some realistic speed? That is, they supply a certain amount of thrust until the airspeed over the propeller reaches a certain point and then the thrust diminishes to zero over some range?

That seems to be what is happening, but was not certain.

I believe it's more simplified than that in that drag increases as a factor of velocity (as it should) up to a point that it counters/equals the thrust supplied by the engines. All engines have different thrust values depending on altitude as well.

[Tommygun]

I finally got my 1910 Bleriot flying!

Just realized I need to move the set back.

Now I need a Lewis gun mod and maybe a Snoopy logo on the tail.

[Senshi]

@Bricked and Bubba:

Thrust of all engines (even stock) decreases on an altitude curve and a throttle curve. So yes, the FS engines lose thrust on higher airspeeds as well.

The curves are the same for all engines, only the maximum thrust is different. A quick chart to show this in comparison with the stock engines. All regular props share the same curves, and the FS oblong tail jet uses the curves from the stock basic jet engine:

It is easy to recognize that the "Nose engine "(meaning the Firespitter props) performs significantly worse than any jet engine.

Remember that the engines have vastly different thrust levels, and these charts only show factors of this efficiency. Running at 250m/s only yields half the original power of a prop engine already, steadily decreasing after that...that usually is barely enough to keep you steady, so you can expect speeds in the 100-200m/s area (that is with FAR, probably less without) for FS prop engines, which kind of restricts you already to low altitude flight (3-4km max) due to air friction and gravity overcoming your engine's power. The moderate ISP increase shown in the left chart is more of a theoretical nature. And it only affects fuel consumption in stock KSP anyway, IIRC. Only the big Lancaster engines can go faster and higher due to their sheer plus in raw thrust.

These charts also show nicely why the stock turbojet has such a dramatic power boost on medium altitude (ranging from ~12-17km), as there lies the peak in atmospheric density and the usual air speed approaches the efficiency maximum of 1000m/s.

EDIT:

@Bricked: If you have trouble with an unstable plane, it is 1000% easier to give you tipps if you provide a screenshot. Firespitter planes fly just fine with FAR, so it is very likely that there's a flaw in your design. Sometimes those flaws can be tricky to spot and seemingly minor, but have huge effects in the aerodynamics model of FAR.

Edited November 14, 2013 by Senshi

[Snjo]

@Senshi Nice work!

As you can probably tell from the curves above, I didn't put too much effort into making each engine different in those regards. That reminds me that I should tweak the values a bit for any engine that is supposed to be super powerful.

(Of course there are limits to how fast a propeller engine should be able to go)

@wasmic, turboporops. For now, the VTOL engines are the ones most similar in appearance. I've heard this request several times before, I've just been too lazy. Your contrail comment made me thank that when I finish my fx stuff, it should enable contrails based on temperature/altitude. Even propeller engines create contrails if you are high up in the cold air.

Oh, and since I can't stop myself from sharing progress reports. I've set up some decent normal maps to bring the biplane wings alive:

the flat section is how it loks with no normal map

[Tommygun]

I like the biplane. It would be nice with a separate Maxim or Lewis machine gun part.

It wouldn't have to work, just a cosmetic part.

[colmo]

Tally ho! Feeling quite emotional to see biplane parts, as my first properly good plane was one.

[InfiniteDice]

It wouldn't have to work, just a cosmetic part.

Cosmetic? I think we can do better than cosmetic. Takka Takka Takka!

[Bobhendly]

If you guys are making Biplanes, you HAVE To make machine guns to go with them.. You could base some of the code off DYJ's minigun!

He even added sound to the thing a while ago