[0.90] Procedural Dynamics - Procedural Wing 0.9.3 Dec 24

[NathanKell]

AFAIK there's been FAR support since it says FAR support in the changelog in the first post, i.e. 3 or so revisions ago

[TouhouTorpedo]

To be honest, I wish it didn't have FAR support. There would be a lot more that could be done with this if it didn't have to depend on the center of lift being in the dead center of the wing root, which has to be done for FAR to work. But it means the stock behavior is not as good as it could be.

[Sauron]

A question: I'm finding the lift on these to be woefully inadequate (especially with constraints like fuselage size relative to the root). What should I change in the CFG to get more lift from these wings? Ideally I'd like to keep the proportional balance in terms of weight per unit lift but do it in a much smaller volume.

Thanks!

[SkyHook]

A question: I'm finding the lift on these to be woefully inadequate (especially with constraints like fuselage size relative to the root). What should I change in the CFG to get more lift from these wings? Ideally I'd like to keep the proportional balance in terms of weight per unit lift but do it in a much smaller volume.

Thanks!

The wings are certainly accurate, I use them on all of my craft, and both low and high speed performance is excellent. You might consider redesigning your craft, and posting pics so that the community could give advice.

[Sauron]

Well, I'm dealing specifically with larger planes. I say inadequate because (by area--we really need some way to see the lift and mass P-wings add!) planes made with regular stock wings that easily take off at 75 m/s don't get off/barely get off the ground at 120 m/s with similarly-sized wings. (We're talking things in the 40-60 ton range).

But the question stands. I want to be able to alter the lift and mass ratios to enable planes with smaller wings and higher lifts to get my spaceplanes to look more like RL designs but I want them to be balanced to P-Wing defaults and stock (in large part because the fuselages of larger planes provide a fair amount of their lift--something you can't really do in KSP without tweaking things)

[Guest]

Greetings Sauron,

I went thru some intensive work with pWing recently and talked to the creator very briefly. It is my understanding pWing's lift is driven by the final size of the wing, and possibly other factors, due to the use of a DLL that comes with it. There is no way to override it.

I ended up copying a tiny wing and making my own (config), and embedded it inside the plane. My issue was more of control, and balance, but would work as well for total lift I would think.

[SteevyT]

Am I doing it right?

[arq]

Is Lift Rating a per-mass parameter, like Drag? I have always believed that it is (like drag) because of the values for the stock wings, but have never found certain confirmation.

Specifically, does the 50% heavier Mk3 wing provide more lift per unit area than the smaller Mk2 when they both have the same lift coefficient? I just want to make sure I'm not being silly by using it. Also, are they almost 4x less lift per unit weight than the Delta Wing (0.5 vs 1.9), or is the lift rating a more absolute number and pWing scales the actual lift rating in the final craft?

If it's true that lift is a function of part mass, I might do some editing to rebalance pWings against some of the stock surfaces, because in that case they are significantly less efficient than almost every other wing.

[The Lone Wolfling]

Is Lift Rating a per-mass parameter, like Drag? I have always believed that it is (like drag) because of the values for the stock wings, but have never found certain confirmation.

Specifically, does the 50% heavier Mk3 wing provide more lift per unit area than the smaller Mk2 when they both have the same lift coefficient? I just want to make sure I'm not being silly by using it. Also, are they almost 4x less lift per unit weight than the Delta Wing (0.5 vs 1.9), or is the lift rating a more absolute number and pWing scales the actual lift rating in the final craft?

If it's true that lift is a function of part mass, I might do some editing to rebalance pWings against some of the stock surfaces, because in that case they are significantly less efficient than almost every other wing.

Someone managed to come up with the formula that KSP uses recently:

Lift = CrossProduct(velocity, wingRight) * Sin(AoA) * (1 - Abs(Sin(AoA))) * Cos(AoA) * deflectionLiftCoeff * StaticAirPressure;

Where AoA is the angle between the velocity and the upward vector of the wing.

So lift is entirely independent of mass in stock KSP.

(This also says that lift is maximum at ~25.7 degrees, among other things. An interesting graph)

Edited August 19, 2013 by The Lone Wolfling

[arq]

Someone managed to come up with the formula that KSP uses recently:

Lift = CrossProduct(velocity, wingRight) * Sin(AoA) * (1 - Abs(Sin(AoA))) * Cos(AoA) * deflectionLiftCoeff * StaticAirPressure;

Where AoA is the angle between the velocity and the upward vector of the wing.

So lift is entirely independent of mass in stock KSP.

(This also says that lift is maximum at ~25.7 degrees, among other things. An interesting graph)

Interesting. The editor values for pWing lift display as 0.5, but your statement suggests that they need to be changed internally. Does anyone know how pWings compare to the stock wings in terms of lift/mass ratio? Is the Mk3 simply heavier with no added benefit?

EDIT: After discovering the debug printer ('o'), I have determined that the Mk2 and Mk3 wings are functionally identical. For a given size and shape they have the exact same mass, drag, lift, and other stats. Also, they very nearly match the delta wing when made to its size/shape.

Edited August 20, 2013 by arq

[gendalf]

make a thinner version of wing

also add better attachment mesh for vanilla flaps

[Glaucus]

Is it broke for just me. But when the wing is still green it shows the centre of lift, as soon as I attach it, the lift change back to how it would be if procedural wings weren't there and on the runway it appears to generate no lift.

Am I doing something wrong or?

Anyway to fix the I assume its the mesh so you can attach stuff properly to the wing surface.

[Lord DarkRift]

This looks awesome! I'll try it !

[Guest]

I have a few requests concerning the procedural adapter. First, could you add a way to change it's height? Right now it looks very slim if used with large diameter parts.

Second, could it have a "smoother" model? The one you have doesn't fit with most big tanks.

[gendalf]

how to adjust height(longitudinal) of that procedural adapter?

Edited August 26, 2013 by gendalf

[Decoherent]

This is a neat mod, and I'm enjoying using it! However, I'd like to echo the request to be able to adjust the "thickness" of the generated wings. I have designs for which I'd like very long but thin wings (length along the fuselage, not sideways width), but length (of the adapter) seems to be the only determining factor for "thickness", which can make some fairly ugly wings

[GrizzlyJones]

Just another person complaining that the CoL is still not placing the same between about to place and placed Pwings, and this has just become very frustrating especially on a plane I'm Trying to build that uss multiple Pwings (actually all of them are Pwings) so I have no idea whats is right or not, cause i rip off all the wings and place them at once to see where the CoL jumps to for everything!!!!!

[arashion777]

cool!~got it

[egreSS]

Just another person complaining that the CoL is still not placing the same between about to place and placed Pwings, and this has just become very frustrating especially on a plane I'm Trying to build that uss multiple Pwings (actually all of them are Pwings) so I have no idea whats is right or not, cause i rip off all the wings and place them at once to see where the CoL jumps to for everything!!!!!

Yeah I got the same problem. I narrowed it down to 2(of 3) pwings. Adjusting the dimensions while fitted with just a small tweak will either throw it far off the the side or a few meters fore/aft, real pain when trying to line up the seams.

The worst part is you can't eye ball it by removing the full piece and refitting it as the CoL is recalculated once fitted. I think it's mostly a VAB/SPH bug.

For now, just pretend you're flying your planes in strong crosswinds.

[raath]

This is a neat mod, and I'm enjoying using it! However, I'd like to echo the request to be able to adjust the "thickness" of the generated wings. I have designs for which I'd like very long but thin wings (length along the fuselage, not sideways width), but length (of the adapter) seems to be the only determining factor for "thickness", which can make some fairly ugly wings

++1 to this. I have a SSTO with a large Delta wing currently made up of 25 wing sections (50 in total for each side + struts holding them inplace) that 1 PWing could easily handle but due to it's size, it ends up being nearly the thickness of the hull which is not ideal when fitting the wing to the lower part of the fuselage. It would be nice to have an option to hold the default thickness.

[Guest]

Yeah, there needs to be a separate key for adjusting root thickness.

[raath]

Actually since my last post I've found a sort of hack to reset the wing thickness. You have to edit the .craft file. Search for the keyword rootScale and tipScale. By resetting the 1st and 3rd values to 0 eg

rootScale = (0, 3.325004, 0)

the wing's thickness will reset to the default. So I've just managed to make my mega sized deltawing without the root part being nearly twice the size of the fuselage. Only downside though is that the wing edges get wider so they don't join up to the other wings if scale is changed but hey, I can live with that.

[UAL002]

OP really needs to chime in here and let us know if he is actually ever interested in providing this feature stock. I was the first guy to ask. Still great mod though.

[AsopAE]

Woops double post

Edited September 30, 2013 by AsopAE

[AsopAE]

I can't get this mod to work; I put the ProceduralDynamics in the GameData folder and nothing happens when I try to adjust the wings and nothing shows up on the debug.