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Fastest Plane under 1.000m. [WE HAVE REACHED MACH 5!, Tidus Klein at 1,714 m/s]


m1sz

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Idle thought: is KSP's atmospheric physics "good enough" to take advantage of ground effect lift?

Short answer: NO.

Short answer with FAR: STILL NO. (Ferram4 has attempted to implement it and it either produced unusable results or took far too much computing power).

Long answer: KSP stock air physics is absurdly unrealistic. Not only does it not consider where a part is on a vehicle or what it is attached to, but it doesn't even apply drag correctly. As proof, try making a plane with an empty to orange tank on the front, turned to stand up so that it would realistically be an aerodynamic brick. Watch as it performs similarly to a streamlined version of the same ship. This is what makes ships like some of those from SSI so effective in stock aerodynamics. Their microscopic wings can produce much more lift than is realistic and parts don't generate drag in a way that makes it a problem. Worse still, try dropping an empty and a full fuel tank from space, they will hit the ground simultaneously at the same speed and trajectory. It basically says that a block of lead and a lead balloon have the same terminal velocity... This is most definitely an inaccurate assumption. They should, in reality, have the same aerodynamic force applied to masses an order of magnitude different.

Long answer with FAR: there is a similar effect that occurs over the surface of your aircraft. Parts connected close to the body generate more lift and less drag because of air being able to follow a different path and also potentially accelerating. Unfortunately, no such effect exists between vehicles and the ground/water.

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Can we enter this with Mods other than the ones listed just to see if we can beat the top speed? Also what about flight on Eve, Laythe, or Jool?

Yes you can, as long as they are not unfairly overpowered!

Just list the mods used and we will see :-)

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My main computer is still down and out, and the backup that I'm using can't handle video capture (the game crashes about every other flight even with every other program shut down). As such, I just took a bunch of screenshots for this one. You'll notice that I took a tour of KSC after landing--that wasn't intentional.

While braking, Bill forgot to shut down the engines. Even though they were throttled all the way down, they kept him from stopping. By the time he noticed it, he didn't have enough battery left to stop (yay for landing at sunset), so he just rolled around until the plane hit a building. That slowed him down enough to go EVA and push the plane to a full stop.

Looking forward to seeing the next fastest plane :)

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Edit: Thanks to ihoit and m1sz for helping me get this slideshow posted!

Edited by Sevant
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CRAAAPPP GOD Darn it!!

Right when I got to 1,444 m/s with a missle,= two small contral surfaces, one jet fuel tank, 3SAS's a prob core, 3 engines, one ram airintake, and a single Proc fairing.

TIP 1: You only need one fairing attached to its base to get the effects of sheilding. :) learned this on my trip to duna when i had an interstage fairing gaurding a docking port and jettisoned two on acident. .....LOOK it up.

That should cut down drag by alot for most designs.....1,600 m/s anyone?

Tip 2, wings make a ton of drag.....Use them sparingly.

tip 3 shield as much as you can.... even if a fraction of a part is coverd by a fairing it still registers as sheilded....:) physics

Tip 4 Cover your intakes!.... use fairings to cover intakes and use as little as possible, one ram air will power 3 turbo jets at 1,100 m/s

even covered intakes produce a small amount of drag "2 units according to KSP".

Tip 5 SAS is your friend.... With Far it becomes incredibaly hard to keep your plane going straight, espeacily when you have small wings, 3 SAS Coverd with a fairing should keep you straight enough , if not MOAR!

Hope all this helps.

Edited by Tidus Klein
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yes, lose the "#0" on the URL. :)
use this: [ imgur ] SSWRb [ /imgur ]

SSWRb is the last part of the album link, the #0 (or any number) is just the number of the picture, you dont have to type that

Thanks guys!

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IIII DID IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!

PROOF!

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heres the link to for a better quality.

1,609 m/s! or 1,650 M/s depending on where you measure. so ya that's mach 4.9......

lost control at the end, but i think i could land it even with half of it gone.

:D

ooo and no i did not turn on part clipping in order to make the engine assembly

Edited by Tidus Klein
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1,609 m/s! or 1,650 M/s depending on where you measure.

Cool looking plane Tidus! Just a few things.

1) I'm not sure about the rules on taking off from the runway by suspending the plane on a mount. OP will have to decide that one.

2) Rules say you have to stay under 1000m at all times, even for the return trip as I understand it.

ill set the rule to be under 1.000m at all times

3) I think you need to provide proof of landing. That means a picture of your plane landed, with a screenshot of the mission report (press F3) showing your max speed and proving that your max altitude was less than 1000 m.

4) Some of your pictures seemed to show pretty badly clipped parts. I'm pretty sure parts count as clipped whether or not you enabled the clipping cheat or not. Even without the clipping cheat, I can make the game put whole blocks of fuel-tanks + engines inside each other. (That said, the game clips some parts in minor ways no matter how carefully you try to avoid it. The key in my mind is to do what you can to avoid it, and to not intentionally gain a performance boost by clipping parts.)

Keep it up, I look forward to seeing your next entry :)

Edited by Sevant
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Sevant said it very well. HEre are some tips for your next try:

You can do vtol launch, but not on a mount (its a plane challenge!, of some kind). Remember, landing has to be horizontaly.

Stay under 1000m all the times

Proof of landing with the F3 screen

And not partclipping, even if its w/o the debug console. I consider that some kind of cheating, specialy when you clip engines!

Other than that, your idea of partialy cover the plane with the fairings is BRILLIANT and can get us to mach 5!! :D

Tidus, make an entry, we need to get rid of Sevant and Hejnfelt, they rule too much :P

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Honestly the stay below 1000m at all times part of the challenge is a bit too strict at those speeds even tiniest error in control can cause you to cross the boundary especially if your plane is a bit hard to control or unstable.

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Honestly the stay below 1000m at all times part of the challenge is a bit too strict at those speeds even tiniest error in control can cause you to cross the boundary especially if your plane is a bit hard to control or unstable.

That's the inherent genius of the challenge! No easy mode.

How about a ruling on TV Pizza and Aerospace? The scramjets would be a nice addition. They have no thrust to speak of below 1200 m/s.

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That's the inherent genius of the challenge! No easy mode.

How about a ruling on TV Pizza and Aerospace? The scramjets would be a nice addition. They have no thrust to speak of below 1200 m/s.

Well i have it always installed but i cannot build aircraft that could fly above 940m/s below 1000m so those scramjets are pretty useless, though they perform nicely when you get some altitude.

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Naaa crap Right when i GET to mach 5.125 you tell me no cliped parts even without the cheat.....:(

Never mind Ill post some pics of my latest when I get on a better computer, still has the super cliped engines thou... Ill see what I can do.

PS the new one is droped from a simlpe plane i made around it.. Do to the limited fuel I have I fly out over the ocean with the drop plane then turn around to start my run, so ya the new one takes off like a plane.

EDIT: here she is!

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Edited by Tidus Klein
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I see a few points that could disqualify the design:

- intake behind fairing.

- clipping (landing gear).

- not landed.

Otherwise, the design is following most steps I mentioned earlier to attain optimal speed.

- single fairing per adapter.

- smaller adapters.

- reversed engine fairings.

Points that can still be improved upon:

- more engines to make the mass of the minimum requirements less significant, increasing TWR, decreasing fuel needed to get to top speed, again increasing TWR.

- procedural all-moving wings instead of minor control surfaces; more lift, less drag.

- flying upside down to gain lift from the single upper fairing.

- using lighter B9 landing gear.

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