Rebalance and enable physics on landing gear

[SkyRender]

So I've noticed recently that, while the stock landing gear part certainly works well enough most of the time, there are other times where they become the unwilling hosts of the Kraken and start doing very, very naughty things. Like wobbling about during take-off and sending the plane veering wildly and uncontrollably left or right. Same sort of problem when landing comes up too: the plane will start doing the electric slide off in a random direction no matter how straight-on you are, but entirely at random. Now I've noticed that physics-less parts tend to be at the root of problems like this, and I've also noted that the landing gear is definitely physics-less. If they had that flag removed, I'm sure there would be some serious rebalancing necessary, but I also think this would be a very, very good idea. As they stand now, the landing gear are something of a hazard to use since you can't be sure if they're going to flip out and kill you or not.

[Random Tank]

Hmmm... maybe...

They'd have to lower their weight though really, as it could kill most planes with the weight change, and completely destroy Ion planes... Have you done any testing?

Anyway, most of the issue with wild veering is caused by them not being mounted 90 degrees perpendicular to the runway, not being physics-less

[SkyRender]

I've seen the crazy veering effect happen even when the wheels are all perfectly level with the runway, actually. And no, I haven't tested making them physics-enabled, because I don't know how to do that. The flag for it is either not in the CFG or not obvious. I suspect that a large part of why they're not is because of the fact that gear has to be able to handle moving at speeds well above their crash tolerance when taking off and landing both.

[Starwaster]

The field is PhysicsSignificance and if it's not present then it uses its default value.

Disabled would be PhysicsSignificance = 1

It's an enumerator not a boolean so the above is not the same as 'true'. So PhysicsSignificance = 0 (default) is physics enabled. PhysicsSignificance = 1 is physics disabled.

Edit: More info. You're not going to be able to affect landing gear physics with the above because the PartModule involved will override it no matter what you set it to in the file

Edit #2: FSWheel landing gear does not override physics (that I can tell) but landing gear that use FSWheel still exhibit the same sliding behavior.

I have to concur with Random Tank. This is more an issue with the gear not being perfectly aligned, and it might NOT look like it is, but a degree of difference of even 0.0001 off will throw you off course when you approach takeoff speeds.

Edited August 1, 2014 by Starwaster
Left out the word 'NOT' above. NOT! look like it is. NOT.