[0.90] Procedural Dynamics - Procedural Wing 0.9.3 Dec 24

[Mekan1k]

Ok. wow. That looks amazing. Tell me which mods you used to make this thing. Please!

EDIT: Oh, can you post some pics of that in flight? Re-entering the atmosphere? How much does it weigh? Can it fly? how stable is it?

I WILL MAKE THIS IF I CAN!

[White Owl]

Ok. wow. That looks amazing. Tell me which mods you used to make this thing. Please!

EDIT: Oh, can you post some pics of that in flight? Re-entering the atmosphere? How much does it weigh? Can it fly? how stable is it?

I WILL MAKE THIS IF I CAN!

Glad you like it!

The Eagle mkV (until I think of a better name) has been designed from the ground up to function similarly to NASA's space shuttle, with external fuel tank and two giant SRBs, using parts from easy to find mod packs. Many of those part stats have been tweaked with the Tweakable Parameters mod. I've made functioning shuttles before... but I really want to share this one with the whole KSP community. Past shuttles have used DR powered hinges to manually control the engine gimbal, but this one doesn't need them. I have the center of thrust aligned close enough to the center of mass through the whole launch, whether the shuttle is empty or carrying a 60 ton payload in the cargobay. Yes, I am very damn proud of accomplishing that.

The shuttle is stable enough to make a standard takeoff from a runway and fly normally in the atmosphere, powered by two SABRE engines which also act as OMS. I'll be honest and say that reentry is giving me some instability problems... but I have ideas to take care of that. Still very much a WIP.

My eventual goal is to release the craft file, packaged with a mod list and the very few custom parts required, so that an average KSP pilot will be able to use this bird without having to learn any crazy tricks first. Nazari1382 is making some giant SRBs for this project, the landing gear needs a cfg edit to resize the stock gear bay and start in the retracted position, and I'm using a cfg edit to add the TorqueCompensation plugin from the Tiberdyne shuttle to one of KW's 2.5m engines. Other than those three parts, everything else can be found in various mod packs.

Edit: Actually, it's looking like that fancy tail arrangement just won't ever be stable enough for reentry. I'll have to go more conventional.

Edited May 31, 2013 by White Owl

[nhnifong]

I've embarked on the insane journey of diving into this code and trying to find where the "magic" happens. In other words, where the mesh is represented and how it is modified from the internal size variables. I'd like to eventually work this into some king of fairing tool. Am I right in thinking that you are moving a couple of transforms in UpdatePositions() and that the wing is somehow parented to those so that it stretches and moves with them? how did you do that? Sorry if im missing something obvious, I'm not a technical Unity user or a C# whiz. (yet)

Edited May 31, 2013 by nhnifong

[Taverius]

I've embarked on the insane journey of diving into this code and trying to find where the "magic" happens. In other words, where the mesh is represented and how it is modified from the internal size variables. I'd like to eventually work this into some king of fairing tool. Am I right in thinking that you are moving a couple of transforms in UpdatePositions() and that the wing is somehow parented to those so that it stretches and moves with them? how did you do that? Sorry if im missing something obvious, I'm not a technical Unity user or a C# whiz. (yet)

There are 2 meshes (one for normal, one for the collider but not set as a collider) attached to 2 bones, Tip and Root. When the wing is changed, new positions/scales are applied to the bones, a SkinnedMeshRenderer on the invisible mesh-to-be-collider bakes a copy of itself into a new Mesh, and then the actual collider is pointed to this new mesh.

The collider stuff might sound a little convoluted, but you cannot scale or transform a collider mesh once its been set as a collider, so this is the only way you can have a collider that moves that is not a parametric collider like a unity box collider.

[DYJ]

Fairings was actually one of the first thing I looked at when I first started messing with SMR based procedural manipulation many months ago : http://imgur.com/a/J5mog

It's something I will add to this pack as soon as I can.

[Mekan1k]

Glad you like it!

The Eagle mkV (until I think of a better name) has been designed from the ground up to function similarly to NASA's space shuttle, with external fuel tank and two giant SRBs, using parts from easy to find mod packs. Many of those part stats have been tweaked with the Tweakable Parameters mod. I've made functioning shuttles before... but I really want to share this one with the whole KSP community. Past shuttles have used DR powered hinges to manually control the engine gimbal, but this one doesn't need them. I have the center of thrust aligned close enough to the center of mass through the whole launch, whether the shuttle is empty or carrying a 60 ton payload in the cargobay. Yes, I am very damn proud of accomplishing that.

The shuttle is stable enough to make a standard takeoff from a runway and fly normally in the atmosphere, powered by two SABRE engines which also act as OMS. I'll be honest and say that reentry is giving me some instability problems... but I have ideas to take care of that. Still very much a WIP.

My eventual goal is to release the craft file, packaged with a mod list and the very few custom parts required, so that an average KSP pilot will be able to use this bird without having to learn any crazy tricks first. Nazari1382 is making some giant SRBs for this project, the landing gear needs a cfg edit to resize the stock gear bay and start in the retracted position, and I'm using a cfg edit to add the TorqueCompensation plugin from the Tiberdyne shuttle to one of KW's 2.5m engines. Other than those three parts, everything else can be found in various mod packs.

Edit: Actually, it's looking like that fancy tail arrangement just won't ever be stable enough for reentry. I'll have to go more conventional.

If it seems too unstable, add some airbrakes! I have found that airbrakes tend to force a directional stability for re-entry. (Place behind center of gravity, and you can get oriented, even at hypersonic velocity's falling into the planet.)

[nhnifong]

Bones! of course

[colmo]

I just tried these out - a fantastic innovation!

I note, however, that the centre of lift and/or mass in the SPH are wildly off. My first design had CoL well behind CoM, and actually flew OK. The second had them much closer, with CoL at the back of the CoM ball, and it flew like the CoL was well in front of the CoM (i.e. uncontrollably).

[Taverius]

I note, however, that the centre of lift and/or mass in the SPH are wildly off. My first design had CoL well behind CoM, and actually flew OK. The second had them much closer, with CoL at the back of the CoM ball, and it flew like the CoL was well in front of the CoM (i.e. uncontrollably).

Bug reports aren't very helpful without crafts ...

[colmo]

Bug reports aren't very helpful without crafts ...

:-D - Here: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B15B3MQ2F4JTYWw1Q2pVS0tGVEk/edit?usp=sharing

Just change the tail winglets to see what I mean. Requires Firespitter mod.

[Camacha]

I just tried these out - a fantastic innovation!

I note, however, that the centre of lift and/or mass in the SPH are wildly off. My first design had CoL well behind CoM, and actually flew OK. The second had them much closer, with CoL at the back of the CoM ball, and it flew like the CoL was well in front of the CoM (i.e. uncontrollably).

I just realized that this might explain some erratic behavior from one of my craft the other day. I needed to put the CoL way in front of the CoM, which is usually bad news with FAR installed. Also, in the same series of tests the craft lifted from the landing strip only to crash horribly after any input, and crashing a while later without any input, while the CoM, CoL and CoW seemed fine. I am not sure I saved this craft though.

[White Owl]

I'll note that I'm seeing some strange behavior with these wings in reentry. Several different space shuttle designs have shown a very strong tendency to yaw completely out of control, while a shuttle with basically identical wings made with B9 and stock wing parts will fly straight. I don't have any craft files to share yet, since I use so many customized parts... Right now I'm just wondering if anybody else is running into a similar issue?

Of course, this is with FAR installed.

Just thinking about it now... maybe I'll experiment with a mostly pWing craft, but common wing parts as the vertical stabilizer, or vice versa.

[aftokinito]

Just out of curiosity, couldn't Squad use a method derived from this to make all the parts be really only one (and thus reducing the memory usage a lot)?

Like, a generic part that changes its mesh and properties to the ones corresponding to each part when you load the part list or something like that.

[localSol]

I'm using FAR, really loving Procedural Wings! I spend all day yesterday building with it. I noticed something I couldn't explain though compared with regular wings, like people are saying about Col/CoM strangeness, I don't really know what's happening other than I noticed this : I spent all day tweaking this plane, and the CoL and CoM display in a reasonable looking way , but the one with mass further toward the CoL gets crazy unstable at mach 1.2-1.3, flipping over backwards, even though I set elevators/pitch to 5 degrees.

With this plane with small engines, the CoM is much further forward, but it is still almost as though the CoL is 'off', because it is stable but acts like a plane with a CoL very close to CoM (relatively easy stall, maneuver). I can get it up to 1000+ m/s without trouble - and also with pitch control surfaces at normal 20 degrees instead of 5.

The bottom picture here is the stable one, I later renamed, same as the craft file.

Fullsize images :

http://imageshack.us/a/img854/2128/2013060200002.jpg

http://imageshack.us/a/img94/6505/2013060200001f.jpg

Craft files (let me know if they don't load..may be the landing gear, though maybe you can chop them off in the craft file?) :

unstable : http://www./?k5mirgnvzrxp74i

stable : http://www./?2f6je8ww9j9b4c6

Requires FAR 0.9.4, Taverio's 1.4.1 (or possibly 1.3.5?), Procedural Wings 0.3

I'm using a hybrid of FAR and Taverio's, with FAR wing/stock parts and keeping regular stock gear bays for compatibility, renamed taverio's smallest gear bay to 'name = SmallGearBaySM' in Smallgearbay part.cfg while using other taverio gear bays also.

In other words merged. Here, in case it helps : http://pastebin.com/Ns8FA1PG

Edit : I also tried locking gimbal on engines, that did nothing to change stability.

Edit 2 : Also it has nothing to do with the airbrakes, I added those much later after testing with different cockpits and weight distributions.

Edit 3 : I'm still not sure, but maybe PWings is working fine, I tried a different plane lately with both normal wings and PWings and had problems with stability in the same area of mach 1.1 to mach 1.4, but in different ways involving yaw. Maybe I misunderstood wing sweep / aspect ratio in FAR. This plane (entirely PWings) worked really well. It had much different wing sweep angle and lower mass - around 4.5 tons :

Edited June 4, 2013 by localSol

[UAL002]

Is there a way that you could add another key function to control the thickness of the wing?

[White Owl]

0.4:

-Added B9 aerospace wing, asset by Bac9.

Say what!? Some kinda sneaky ninja update?

[Camacha]

Fairings was actually one of the first thing I looked at when I first started messing with SMR based procedural manipulation many months ago : http://imgur.com/a/J5mog

It's something I will add to this pack as soon as I can.

That would be absolutely awesome. As much as I like Fairing Factory, getting something to fit properly (design, download, install, restart, check, redesign, download, install et cetera) is a bit tedious at times. Being able to do that directly in the VAB would be pretty amazing.

[Gaius]

Is there a way that you could add another key function to control the thickness of the wing?

Actually, this could be done without adding keys just by changing how the R and T works a bit. Make one mouse axis expand/contract the size in one dimension and the other axis, the other direction. That way you could make wide but thin wings (or short thick ones if that was your preference)...

[Camacha]

Actually, this could be done without adding keys just by changing how the R and T works a bit. Make one mouse axis expand/contract the size in one dimension and the other axis, the other direction. That way you could make wide but thin wings (or short thick ones if that was your preference)...

I feel this would be a horrible solution if you want any decent control. It means that messing with one axis will inadvertently always mess up the other one a bit (since humans are not robots).

[localSol]

[...] messing with one axis will inadvertently always mess up the other one a bit (since humans are not robots).

I think its just a matter of time before the guys making this put in some sort of GUI for fine control. I like the thickness idea. I wonder if that has something to do with weird trans and supersonic instability in FAR I was having since my wings were different thicknesses. But, weirder looking planes I made with stock parts seemed to fly okay. I only say so as conversation, what a good job the FAR and PWings guys are doing because Programming can be like trying to learn to write culturally fluent Swahili to a french android by consulting gigantic references written by robots who were really rushed.

[Gaius]

I feel this would be a horrible solution if you want any decent control. It means that messing with one axis will inadvertently always mess up the other one a bit (since humans are not robots).

I hear ya. Lots of interfaces that have this sort of option also include a modifier to restrict it to one dimension (e.g. hold down shift to change only the X axis, or ctrl to change only the Y).

[White Owl]

I love the B9 styled pWings. They're fantastic.

[Greywind]

You can say that again white owl! Great looking spaceplane!

[Yargnit]

Hey DYJ, I sent u a msg in Skype about needing some help with something I'm trying to do with your mod, but figured I'd most u a quick video here to show u in a bit more detail.

Any help with tweaks to make this work better would be greatly appreciated.

[UAL002]

I'm glad a lot of people seem to thing my wing thickness idea is a good one. I always feel like I'm in the minority suggesting mod features.