[0.90] Procedural Dynamics - Procedural Wing 0.9.3 Dec 24

[Tex_NL]

I think what he means is: when you unlock your first pwing (which would be like in the third column, if you remove all other wings) you don't need anything else, you can make any wing you want and there's no need for more tech nodes. That breaks the current plane tech tree

Then put it in a late, advance node. At least put it somewhere!

[Hector_919]

I've got a small question regarding FAR support: the version description says:

FAR support is very questionable.

how "questionable" is the FAR support really? like between "no FAR support at all" and "behaves unbalanced at extreme settings"?

[Guest]

Well, it works with FAR for me. Quite realistically, I have to say. I built an F-22 replica with it and B9, and it behaves.

[g00bd0g]

I like the new elliptical wings. My solar motor-glider gets better than 40:1 L/D in FAR

[DYJ]

The questionable FAR support regards the controlsurfaces property scaling, which seems to work and the accuracy of lift/drag parameters of elliptical wings, chances are that they aren't very accurate at all.

And it's just as easy for me to add career support as it is for any of you, the difference is that those of you who wants it in career have a good idea of where to put them. But if it's something people really want I'll make sure the next version has a pointless and halfassed career mode integration.

I haven't noticed any extra flapping with pWings, like all large parts they flap about like crazy without struts especially during physics-warp. But that's nothing unique.

[Xrave]

I haven't noticed any extra flapping with pWings, like all large parts they flap about like crazy without struts especially during physics-warp. But that's nothing unique.

I noticed pretty much the same thing. Bigger wings just apply so much lift to the part they're attached to, so you should always use some structs to tie down the joints. There's a transparent struct in the B9 pack you could use.

[Boamere]

Ok i'm having some trouble with these wings, i put them down like this :

I want the center of lift to be in the middle of the CoM so I move it the whole wing:

But when i place it the center of lift seems to be in the same place as before:

I seem to remember someone mentioning this before, can you help me out?

[Bloodbunny]

The Tech Tree has been around for 2 versions now, no excuse to not have it in a mod... yeah it's easy enough to add, but it shouldn't state that it is for .23 when it is for .21 Just saying..

While I agree its kind of pointless for the stock techtree, lots of people use the treeloader mod, and its frustrating to keep teching up, wondering when you'll finally get a part, only to find that the code was missing from the config.

Edited January 6, 2014 by Bloodbunny

[Dreadp1r4te]

Hey guise; finally figured out some bugs for ya. So first lemme say I love these wings; I've created some truly breathtaking spaceplanes using them so I figured I better let ya know what's goin on so you can fix this awesome mod if possible, or at the very least advise people of the work around! So here ya go: Apparently, when you have a PWing/pair of PWings selected and "lifted" (i.e., not placed yet) the game shows one Center of Lift, and after placed it moves and shows a different center of lift. The problem is that the first center of lift is the accurate one, the second is NOT. Here, pics to demonstrate:

Note the green (lifted) wing shows the center of lift ahead of the center of mass.

After placing the wings, the center of lift jumps aft, to be in line with the center of mass. Now, attempting to FLY the plane at this point results in it attempting to permanently do loops, because its center of lift is ACTUALLY too far forward. The work around, then, is to design your CoM and CoL according to the indicated CoL when you have the PWings selected. I'm not sure how this will work with multiple PWing craft, so I can't help you there, but aligning the CoL/CoM BEFORE placing the part will work correctly, even if the CoL jumps after placing the wing.

Second, for those of you having problems with your wings bouncing around and causing crashes on the runway, you can limit that by strutting the wings to the body of the plane. The reason it occurs is that with normal wings in KSP, you'll likely attach larger wing bodies to multiple sections of the fuselage, whereas PWings only attach to one and then stretch. This is great for a visual effect, but the physics engine still thinks the wings are attached in just one location, causing severe instability when your plane is fairly heavy (as a good deal of mine are.) In the pic below, the 4 small grey blocks on the wings and fuselage are invisible struts; a part included in B9, but any strut will do. Hope this helps guys!

[Bloodbunny]

That is one sweet spaceplane, though I would place the radiators inside a cargo bay for dem aesthetics .. in RL the wind would rip them off even undeployed

[Dreadp1r4te]

That is one sweet spaceplane, though I would place the radiators inside a cargo bay for dem aesthetics .. in RL the wind would rip them off even undeployed

I totally agree with you, but I don't have a cargo bay on that plane; it was designed to retrieve some crew from one of my LKO stations that I'm decommissioning (read: planned lithobraking) because its a filthy lagwho-- it has too many parts. I was also testing out using KSP Interstellar's nuclear-powered thermal turbojet, which functions as a fuel-less turbojet in atmosphere, and a high-efficiency fueled rocket in vacuum. I say fuel-less, but the 14-ton nuclear reactor on the back of my plane counts as fuel, I'm pretty sure.

[Dreadp1r4te]

Okay, upon further testing, it seems that the PWing Center of Lift is overriding any additional wings you put on the craft, pWing or otherwise. I'm not sure how to fix this one.

EDIT: Further testing! It seems that constructing a really sexy spaceplane with ALL the wings made of PWings and PWing Control Surfaces results in correct calculation of the aircraft's center of lift and mass, but I haven't been able to tell if it is actually INDICATING the CoL correctly.

In my test aircraft above, a 100-ton twin nuclear reactor powered monster which I designed for actual use in my career gameplay (orbital retrieval of deployed satellites and modular station components, without the need to lithobrake them, especially if they contain crew,) every wing is a pWing or pWing control surface. The indicated CoL was some distance behind the Center of Mass, which meant it should have flown nose-heavy, if at all, but it actually flew very slightly nose-light (it wanted to pitch up when no control input was given / SAS-off). Also on re-entry it tried to spiral out of control until I got the speed down to ~200m/s, exactly as it would have done if the CoL was too far forward.

After removing all the control surfaces that affected lift, I found the CoL to be where I expected it to be; just ahead of the CoM:

It seems, then, that control surfaces give false indices of CoL, but it DID show that with the control surfaces attached and actuated I would have enough force to overcome the nose-heavy condition and climb. I'm not sure if that helps any of you out, or the mod author in solving the problem, but that's the conclusions I've come to.

Edited January 7, 2014 by Dreadp1r4te

[horndgmium]

I figure there would be no better place to ask than this... could pwings ever be modified to hold a proportional amount of jet fuel (or LOX) to their size? I find it very annoying that I cannot place fuel in wings, where it actually goes.

I feel like this would work quite handily with modular fuels, but alas, I have no coding skill whatsoever.

[DYJ]

I'll have a look at the controlsurfaces CoL indicator code, might have forgotten something there, but all pWings really does is to tell the game their new lift values so the game can place the CoL indicator, after that all you can do is to hope the game puts it where it should be. The mod itself never actually calculates the CoL of the aircraft as that's something the game should do reliably by itself, which it only sometimes does.

Wet wings is planned, but I want to get all-moving controlsurfaces and some of the weirdness fixed before adding more things that can go wrong. This is also something that will have questionable performance in the stock game until the stock flightmodel is updated to be less wrong, as it currently includes part mass in the drag and possibly lift calculations, meaning that an aircraft with wetwings would take off with more lift and drag than it would land with. Something that doesn't make any sense at all.

Also: Sweet looking plane you've got there DreadP1r4te

[Boamere]

snip

Thanks for the help, i've often wondered if that was the case, also how do you run Ksp interstellar with b9? I've tried installing but it kept crashing (and not from memory limits either, I have boulder co's texture compresser plus super reduction packs for novapunch etc) (oh yeah plus I have exactly 37 mods installed)

[Northstar1989]

It did not work properly, here is a link since google search likes to send people to the old thread....

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/55219-Module-Manager-1-5-%28Nov-11%29?p=861735&viewfull=1#post861735

To bad this does not fix the wings spazzing out and tearing the plane apart no matter how many struts you use....

Here is a better gif of what is happening. Most of the time the engine tear off before I hit 300m and the thing will fly itself with just the wings flapping....

http://i.imgur.com/qnvYrcT.gif

I don't know if you already figured out why this was happening, but I've had that problem more than a few times myself in generating my line of KSP-I/P-Wing SSTDABK (Single Stage To Duna And Back To Kerbin) spaceplanes, so let me share a little insight:

(1) The P-Wings have a LOT of lift relative to the overall craft. Extreme wing-wobble with very high lift, unfortunately, seems to be a feature of the stock game- and might be part of why the designers only give us such puny stock wings to work with... Since the lift coefficient increases exponentially (I think by a power of 2) with wing surface area in the real world, you're going to end up with a lot more lift on that craft than you might otherwise expect- if P-Wings follows real life patterns...

(2) With that many engines, you have rather high TWR at takeoff. Combine that with high lift coefficient, and you'll have extremely high lift forces at takeoff, also not good for plane stability- especially with large P-Wings...

(3) Like was mentioned earlier, you have very little aerilion surface area (if any). Your roll-dampening control surfaces need to increase in size in proportion with your wings, or you don't have a prayer of maintaining stability. High SAS force may somewhat alleviate this problem, as what you have is essentially uncontrolled rolling (with bouncing back and forth as the air pushes the wings back when they move up/down)- but what you really need is some aerilons. Use wing-mounted landing gears with high clearance to protect them from runway/terrain impacts if necessary.

(4) You really, really need to keep in mind how screwed-up the stock aerodynamics module is. In stock, drag is proportional to mass- so those heavy nuclear reactors on the wings are generating a TON of drag despite their small profile, and the extra drag on the wings really isn't helping with stability either...

(5) Last, but not least, MechJeb seems to have an especially hard time piloting vessels with large P-Wings. I'm not sure if this is due to the size factor, or them being P-wings, but if you're using the ASAS in surface-mode, or some other autopilot functionality (such as the one from Firespitter), it has a very difficult time piloting craft with very large wings near sea-level, and tends to over or mis-correct for roll. This tends to generate 90% of the flapping-motion observed in my experience: especially with very low angles-of-attack. Even the stock SAS has some problems with the really large-winged craft. Your best bet is probably to launch the thing all-manual, and only switch over to autopilot after reaching at least 3000-5000 meters.

(6) If all else fails, don't forget you can always launch your plane at reduced thrust. Often, I find that in these situations it helps to start the thrust at full to accelerate on the runway, then dial it back just before takeoff. Don't forget that the wing-mounted thrust itself can also destabilize the craft- especially with KSP-I thermal turbojets: which have no thrust-vectoring capabilities to help counteract this and steer the craft.

I hope all this helps. Also, don't forget that P-Wings seem to have several annoying tendencies based on the game only processing wing attachments as "point-attachments" occurring at just one location: usually halfway between the ends of where the wings contact the fuselage (this applies to stock as well as P-Wings).

This same rule also seems to be responsible for the annoying tendency of P-Wings to show CoL as too far forward with procedurally-designed swept-wings attached: as P-Wings are apparently not compatible with generating lift displaced from the attachment point more than a certain (small) amount... CoL will always show up right near the attachment point with P-Wings: no matter how far they are swept back...

Regards,

Northstar

P.S. You can see quite a bit of detail on my SSTADBK designs on my Mission Reports long-thread... I've used P-Wings for almost all my later aircraft designs, so I had to work through a lot of associated problems that introduced. Even when I don't explicitly discuss problems I encountered, sometimes I hint at them, or you can catch glimpses of how I dealt with them from the screenshots of my flying and the designs themselves...

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/57509-Kerbin-and-Beyond-a-Maturing-Space-Program

Edited January 8, 2014 by Northstar1989

[K3-Chris]

Root and Tip thickness tweakables seem to do bumpkins.

[Kaa253]

They are not. That's exactly the problem.

For days I was under the assumption I simply had not unlocked the proper tech node yet. But now that I have the entire tree unlocked they still weren't there. I knew in 0.22 pWing didn't have proper techtree integration but since the pack has a few new parts I expected this to be resolved as well. Boy was I wrong.

So what gives DYJ, why no techtree integration? I know how I can do it myself but a lot of people do not. Time to step up to the plate and get things fixed.

Same thing has just happened to me!

OK, OK the stock tree is balanced for flight difficulty just so but ... I downloaded and installed this to use in career mode, knew that it was a possible "cheat" as such and accepted that. If you want to play hard mode then edit the tree for yourself to reflect that or don't use mods.

This mod is not updated to "0.23" as there is no entry for the tech tree. Edited the part.cfg for myself now and I agree with other posters, supersonic flight would seem to be about the right tech tree entry point for most people.

Otherwise, this is a most excellent mod.

Edited January 11, 2014 by Kaa253

[Comrade Jenkens]

Ok this has been bugging me for ages. What are the small jet engines on the pic on the first page of this thread?

[Tex_NL]

Ok this has been bugging me for ages. What are the small jet engines on the pic on the first page of this thread?

I think they're the rescaled engines from Taverio's Pizza and Aerospace. Not sure if there is a 0.23 version for this mod. This link was the only one I could find this quick.

[DaMichel]

I would like to report a bug which i believe is caused by pwings.

This messed up several crafts to the point at that i had to rebuild them completely.

Here are the logs plus .craft files.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/x5cflsbca9wbo40/Az4nqFPhrm

You'll see some NullReferenceExceptions involving the StrutConnectors. PWings don't appear directly but since i cannot reproduce this bug with stock wings i figured PWings has something to do with it. The only loaded plugins were 000_Toolbar, MM and ProceduralDynamics.

[mikeman7918]

you should add procedural canards.

[rowns]

you should add procedural canards.

+1 I would like to be able to make my own canards.

[AbeS]

He is working on that currently IIRC

[DYJ]

0.7 is released and contains an allmoving control surface you can use to make canards and stabilators.