[WIP] Nert's Dev Thread - Current: various updates

[Voculus]

Thanks, Starkline. Still can't fix the drag issues on my end.

[starkline]

@Voculus: I think I'm seeing what you mean, but for myself, I don't find the drag out of the ordinary. Don't get me wrong, I'm no expert, but my test seems to fly like I'd expect. I've got a rotate speed of around 80-90 m/s and she hits 25K alt. at around 1450-1500 m/s. That's with or without a loaded cargo bay, although loaded down she adds 15 m/s to rotate speed and kills around 100-150 m/s at 22500m.

Also, I've removed that config file in the FAR folder I mentioned. It didn't seem to make any kind of noticeable change.

All that said, I do see what you're talking about when I turn on the drag visualization tool in FAR. Here's what mine looks like in a few images.

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The first image is with an empty cargo bay. Second shows the 2nd flight's cargo (MKS Colony Control Center and Base Module), and the third is in flight with that cargo. The difference in overall "yellow" viz color is just the angle I snapped the screens, but I do see that the 4th of 6 cargo bays is indicating much more drag. I don't quite understand that, but then again, I've not inspected the drag visualization in previous cargo planes that use the old SPP parts.

Anyway, I hope this all helps Nertea. I don't want to hash this out in Nert's thread if he doesn't want us to.

Cheers.

EDIT:

I just tested with the stock SPP parts.

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So, it does seem as if the Mk4 cargo bays are exhibiting some "odd" behavior. Although, I'm not using 6 cargo bays, so maybe not such an apt comparison. Perhaps, it's a better question asked in ferrma4's thread? I'll leave that to Nertea to discern as its his mod.

Edited October 30, 2014 by starkline

[Voculus]

Hmm. Maybe some more thorough testing is in order. Now that I think about it, the ship could have been underpowered. I had a Sabre M, and two Sabre S. A similar B9 design I'm fond of, uses two Sabre M. The MkIV test ship was also a delta wing configuration with no canards, and that didn't help with control authority, either.

Fear not, Nert! I think it was my own oversight, and not a flaw on your part.

[starkline]

There's a decent way to test, at least in my head. Take two planes of the same mass. One with the Mk4 cargo and one without. I'd suspect that designing them so each have similar CoG : CoL ratios will help. Give each the same intakes and engines. Compare. Not a perfect comparison by any means, but significant differences may be noteworthy.

[blowfish]

You can also turn on the aero forces display to look at the drag an individual part is creating. If the cargo bay is creating more then the nose, you know something is fishy.

[TonyC]

Hmm. Well, it looks very neat, but I'd say a little too neat. It looks like... I don't know, a plated sausage? Bit too smooth over such a large area, even with the plating. No need to change the geometry there, but I think it could visually benefit from a seam of sorts, or at least a dark line, running the length of the fuselage near the top, at the level where the cockpit windows end. Just to break up the large off-white surface.

edit: Something like this: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4152380/sketches/094_b.png

Also, some more shape/part inspirations for you, if you want:

-snip-

Oh my god..we need this..WE NEED THIS ! THIS IS THE PERFECT SHIP !

[bazz]

As soon as I saw this I knew what I had to build!

Was TB2 inspiration for the cockpit?

So far tricky and I have had to increase the wing span, when I get something that I am happy with and works I will post a few pics.

Have you thought about giving the cockpit and hull pieces lift?

The tail ramp piece yet to be textured is absolutely awesome.

Could I also suggest VTOL hull sections with engines built into the sides.

Awesome project keep up the good work!

[Bomoo]

Today I tried working the Mk4 fuselage parts into a heavy rover, but it didn't quite work out.

[nli2work]

Today I tried working the Mk4 fuselage parts into a heavy rover, but it didn't quite work out.

http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/49864638435051219/7B5904E6FDD81B957727F195E5B30A3E84563EB4/

just have to design a lower chassis.

[Doggydog]

The Drag issue is being caused by the unused nodes on the cargo bays. Here is the cargo bays with the node removed.

[blowfish]

Yeah - I think it's probably not the best solution to have two nodes on top of each other.

[Lack]

The problems with FAR and the cargo bay are certainly a nuisance, changing the node size of the internal attach nodes doesn't seem to make a difference either.

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Edit: *removed*

EDIT 2: Scratch that, my control group was complete swoddle. Here's a more representative one, removing the extra nodes and rebuilding the model appears fixes it.

http://i.imgur.com/OdzD4O2.png

Anyway, I've been having a lot of fun with these parts

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Edited November 1, 2014 by Lack

[Bomoo]

So here's an idea for the cockpit piece. Essentially the idea is to allow the mounting of inline air intakes on either side of the cockpit, at the ends of those protrusions on the side. No idea what the technical term is, sorry. The way I see it working is two flat surfaces that could fit either sloped caps (creating the cockpit shape that's present now), or an extender (creating the shape of the 2x1.25m + 1x2.5m tail segment). What this could do is allow for both of the tail segments (the version with and without the 2x1.25m nodes) to be merged, and for the player to be able to create either one by using either the extender or the cap on the 1.25m nodes on the side.

Sorry for the muddy explanation. I could try and whip up a drawing to show what I mean if you're interested in considering the idea.

[jfx]

So here's an idea for the cockpit piece. Essentially the idea is to allow the mounting of inline air intakes on either side of the cockpit, at the ends of those protrusions on the side. No idea what the technical term is, sorry. The way I see it working is two flat surfaces that could fit either sloped caps (creating the cockpit shape that's present now), or an extender (creating the shape of the 2x1.25m + 1x2.5m tail segment). What this could do is allow for both of the tail segments (the version with and without the 2x1.25m nodes) to be merged, and for the player to be able to create either one by using either the extender or the cap on the 1.25m nodes on the side.

Sorry for the muddy explanation. I could try and whip up a drawing to show what I mean if you're interested in considering the idea.

That may look cool, but is not exactly feasible for a cargo-sized (space-)plane. You see air intakes at the body of fighter aircraft because the turbojet compressor starts not far behind the intake. If you funnel air in a tunnel along the full body of a cargo plane you pretty much kill the pressure at the end because of friction and dissipation inside the air duct (no idea if this is the correct english term, translated from german engineering course some years ago).

Edited November 1, 2014 by jfx

[Voculus]

How does one delete the extra nodes on the cargobays?

[Bomoo]

That may look cool, but is not exactly feasible for a cargo-sized (space-)plane. You see air intakes at the body of fighter aircraft because the turbojet compressor starts not far behind the intake. If you funnel air in a tunnel along the full body of a cargo plane you pretty much kill the pressure at the end because of friction and dissipation inside the air duct (no idea if this is the correct english term, translated from german engineering course some years ago).

Ah, thanks for clarifying. As you may have guessed, I know sweet .... all about aeronautical engineering.

[Nertea]

As soon as I saw this I knew what I had to build!

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a3/Thunderbird2.jpg

Was TB2 inspiration for the cockpit?

So far tricky and I have had to increase the wing span, when I get something that I am happy with and works I will post a few pics.

Have you thought about giving the cockpit and hull pieces lift?

The tail ramp piece yet to be textured is absolutely awesome.

Could I also suggest VTOL hull sections with engines built into the sides.

Awesome project keep up the good work!

Yes, of course it was TB2 .

All the wide parts have live already, actually. Considering some surface attachable VTOL engines for that.

Today I tried working the Mk4 fuselage parts into a heavy rover, but it didn't quite work out.

http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/49864638435051219/7B5904E6FDD81B957727F195E5B30A3E84563EB4/

Heh, well, hopefully the newer version of that piece works better

The Drag issue is being caused by the unused nodes on the cargo bays. Here is the cargo bays with the node removed.

http://puu.sh/cym5q/55894cfd03.jpg

This can't be the entire answer, because the SP+ bays use the same 4-node method with no FAR issues.

So here's an idea for the cockpit piece. Essentially the idea is to allow the mounting of inline air intakes on either side of the cockpit, at the ends of those protrusions on the side. No idea what the technical term is, sorry. The way I see it working is two flat surfaces that could fit either sloped caps (creating the cockpit shape that's present now), or an extender (creating the shape of the 2x1.25m + 1x2.5m tail segment). What this could do is allow for both of the tail segments (the version with and without the 2x1.25m nodes) to be merged, and for the player to be able to create either one by using either the extender or the cap on the 1.25m nodes on the side.

Sorry for the muddy explanation. I could try and whip up a drawing to show what I mean if you're interested in considering the idea.

I think I addressed this at one point - those bulges are too small for this, and I don't like it anyways.

[blowfish]

It may have to do with the fact that the extra nodes on the SP+/Stock cargo bays are actually size 0. Will test in a bit.

[BudgetHedgehog]

I made a thing:

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Excuse the GUI being too much to the right, it seems KSP doesn't like too small a resolution on fullscreen. But the pics and GUIs go from left to right, pretty simple.

Cargo bays and adapters can now hold a variety of fuels, with various weights of initial tanks and stuff and things.. available setups are Structural, LF, LFO and MP. You'll need Firespitter and this patch won't fire if you don't have it. It's probably a little unbalanced, but I got the numbers from both stock and Nerts initial amounts, with a bit of fiddling. Feel free to change the amounts/cost/weights as you see fit, it's probably a bit unbalanced.. I've no idea, I'm a little drunk. Was debating about using FStextureSwitch for the fuselage but it seemed like too much work for just one less part in the part list.. Though, I have to hand it to Snjo, FS is very well documented, no wonder it's so widely used. ANYWAY!

@PART[mk4cargo-1]:NEEDS[Firespitter]
{
  MODULE
    {
        name = FSfuelSwitch
        resourceNames = Structural; LiquidFuel; LiquidFuel,Oxidizer; MonoPropellant
        resourceAmounts = 0; 500; 360, 440; 500
        basePartMass = 0.8
        tankMass = 0; 1; 1.56; 2.76
        tankCost = 0; 392; 367; 500
        displayCurrentTankCost = true
        hasGUI = True
		availableInFlight = false
		availableInEditor = true
        showInfo = True
    }
}

@PART[mk4adapter-1]:NEEDS[Firespitter]
{
  MODULE
    {
        name = FSfuelSwitch
        resourceNames = Structural; LiquidFuel; LiquidFuel,Oxidizer; MonoPropellant
        resourceAmounts = 0; 500; 360, 440; 500
        basePartMass = 0.5
        tankMass = 0; 1; 1.56; 2.76
        tankCost = 0; 392; 367; 500
        displayCurrentTankCost = true
        hasGUI = True
		availableInFlight = false
		availableInEditor = true
        showInfo = True
    }
}

@PART[mk4adapter-2]:NEEDS[Firespitter]
{
  MODULE
    {
        name = FSfuelSwitch
        resourceNames = Structural; LiquidFuel; LiquidFuel,Oxidizer; MonoPropellant
        resourceAmounts = 0; 500; 360, 440; 500
        basePartMass = 0.475
        tankMass = 0; 1; 1.56; 2.76
        tankCost = 0; 392; 367; 500
        displayCurrentTankCost = true
        hasGUI = True
		availableInFlight = false
		availableInEditor = true
        showInfo = True
    }
}

Was contemplating putting it on more parts, but those already have other uses/functions and I didn't want to encroach on Nerts already marvellous models (like the MP slice - that's why the MP setup has only slightly more MP despite the much larger size)

Anyway, yeah, go have fun! Gonna build a Shuttle with this now, brb.

Edited November 1, 2014 by ObsessedWithKSP

[Naf5000]

Alright, my quick test has garnered my support for the single most frequently suggested improvement in this thread: Make the bumps on the side match with the CoM. If you turn off the snap-to-angle function wings will sit straight, but it's hard to assemble modular wings without angle snap. Procedural ones work perfectly, though. Excellent work!

[CptRichardson]

My god, it's like some unholy pudgy budgie, balefully glaring at aerodynamics and daring them to say something. And it can EAT a SP+ spaceplane.... my god, it's full of win.

Currently, I have the perfect soundtrack for this wonderful piece of designwork:

Can't play with it yet, but planning on doing so.

Addendum: One thing that would help would be specialized 'wing base' wing parts. The funky shape of the hull means you need a root of some kind to anchor to in order to make your structural wings sound. Plus, the design might make it so that you would want to mount above the CoM to help provide better lift and to keep potential engines away from the ground where unfortunate incidents involving an engine calling the ground fat and finding out that it's not so tough after all.

Edited November 2, 2014 by CptRichardson

[blowfish]

Okay, just did some testing with FAR. Changing the nodes to Size 0 doesn't help. But it looks like the Stock/SP+ cargo bays have the same issue. I recommend MM-deleting the nodes in the presence of FAR.

[blowfish]

Update: ferram4 informs me that opening and closing the cargo bay should fix the issue. He's looking into it though.

[Bomoo]

KAS containers, anyone?

[CptRichardson]

Playing with it, it's horrifically unstable. I think the CoM is off-center from the aircraft, but I need to do some investigating. Also, could it be possible to have some alternate variants of the cockpit based off of the current formfactor? There is a metric butt-ton of space beneath the flight deck you could play with, and I can think of several variants that could be put into practice.