[Stock Helicopters & Turboprops] Non DLC Will Always Be More Fun!

[Majorjim!]

Hmmm ... do you have a source or discussion on the subject of Unity 5 and PhysX 3.3?

Small steps, eventually things will grow in the right direction. It's only logical Squad or a different company will someday create a more engineering oriented game. Computational power will increase, that's a constant. The price of this power will drop, that's a constant (unless the global economy hits the fan).

I think we should create a plan for such an expansion. I don't know about you but I've got a ton of ideas. If I had a coder and a modeler, I'd probably start my own company :-)

If you search for KSP physics and look at the threads for this year it will become clearer what Squad are up against with the physics. KSP itself is multithreaded but the physics only run on one thread. And changing this may not be possible.

Its not an issue of hardware performance. Our modern GPUs and CPUs are monsters for physics. I am just a bit pissed off by the situation as we have been asking for this for ages and its looking more and more likely that we simply wont get what we want.

[Azimech]

I've got good news for ya then, check the Unity 5 site and look what they've done with PhysX :-)

- - - Updated - - -

First flight of the F4U Corsair! Started 8 hours ago, now it flies! Clipped the wing on the runway. Tail is too short, horizontal stabilizer too small and ugly, not enough pitch authority. Not enough cockpit detail. But it's fast and that's even before tuning the engine! By the way, the engine is a 12 blower 24 blade turbine, the fuel tank is the short MK3, with 2500 units fuel.

As usual: all stock.

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Part count? Classified for now

[Majorjim!]

I've got good news for ya then, check the Unity 5 site and look what they've done with PhysX :-)

What you have said right there is part of the issue. I believed this to be the case too. It is not that simple unfortunately. The nature of KSPs physics will not see any benefit from this change to Unity 5 sadly. Apart from better memory management and the possibility of stable 64bit.

As I said before, search for 'KSP physics' and read the threads from this year. You will see what I'm getting at.

[Azimech]

I can't find any news in any topic that the change to PhysX 3.3 wouldn't bring any benefits. On the contrary. The only disappointment is that it won't be able to split the physics of one big craft, just split the threads between multiple crafts. The code is more streamlined, plus a newer version of C# ... it doesn't look bad.

[Lothsahn]

What you have said right there is part of the issue. I believed this to be the case too. It is not that simple unfortunately. The nature of KSPs physics will not see any benefit from this change to Unity 5 sadly. Apart from better memory management and the possibility of stable 64bit.

As I said before, search for 'KSP physics' and read the threads from this year. You will see what I'm getting at.

Same here. Can you provide some links? Kerbal previously used multithreaded rendering (in .13.1), but Unity 5 brings updated phys-x, including multithreaded phys-x. I haven't heard anything about KSP getting no benefit to those changes.

[Azimech]

New personal records! Development of the turboprop goes quick, my friends! The first plane had a top speed of 25 m/s and was pretty unreliable (hence the name Screaming Turtle). The next was the first twin engined with contra-rotating props and was a whole lot better, but these engines exploded at 3300m. due to overspeeding. It's name: Yelling Gazelle. Next was the first single engined turboprop (Yodeling Yak), with a max altitude of 7000 and a top speed of 75, but climbing there took 40 minutes. In between there are the Bf 109 and Fw 190, which didn't see much development in engine and propeller.

But now this! Measured top speed in level flight: 95.6 m/s at 6124m!

Climb to 5000 meters: 10 minutes!

Max speed in a dive (from 6000m): 169m/s - 608 km/h! - and no RUD!

Specs: 12 blower 24 blade turbine, blower angle 12.5 degrees. Max rpm: 280.

4 bladed 4 layer compound prop, 2 layers 45 degrees, 2 layers 55 degrees.

1250 units fuel (6250 kg)

Take off mass: 48.6t

Not bad for a self designed engine & propeller!

And I feel it's got it's own kind of beauty. Shape and size are based on my Corsair but this thing flies a lot easier at 462 parts (the Corsair has 760 and isn't even finished yet).

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I wonder if someone can break the 100 m/s in level flight barrier, before I do :-)

Edited March 6, 2015 by Azimech

[Lothsahn]

in KSP the advantage would be a higher rpm for the prop, thus more thrust. Simply because the turbine begins to do weird things at high rpm (above 250 rpm)

I'm not actually sure this is true. I was able to build a very high RPM turbine. I got 452 RPM (47.35 rad/s) at full throttle, and adding more jets may have even allowed me to break 500.

[Azimech]

Aha, could it be you have a very powerful machine? Or have the physics delta-t at 0.03? Because on my system, things start to go very strange!

I remember 47 rad/s seems to be the upper limit.

Edited March 6, 2015 by Azimech

[Lothsahn]

Aha, could it be you have a very powerful machine? Or have the physics delta-t at 0.03? Because on my system, things start to go very strange!

I remember 47 rad/s seems to be the upper limit.

http://i.imgur.com/orsff0O.gif

Physics delta is .04--not sure the default. My machine is very powerful--i7-4930MX--turbos up to 3.9GHZ on a core. Maybe that's why it works well?

I also generally don't have to worry about part counts--my machine doesn't really get laggy unless I hit 800-1000 or so.

[Azimech]

Yeah, that must be the reason. I'm using a Pentium G9120 on a Z77 chipset. Very happy with it, compared with my previous Q6600.

[_Bugs]

@ previous Azimech post

Does this mean you're going to start making less part and fast planes soon? I can't seem to run the big replicas you're making, would appreciate a simple 300 ish part plane soon. GL

[Azimech]

Funny you mention this, _Bugs! I was building an ultralight while you were typing your post :-)

Expect it to be online within two hours.

[_Bugs]

Fantastic

[Azimech]

_Bugs, here's number one:

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It's a trainer/aerobatics plane. Uses my newest engine, a 2 blower 8 blade turbine. With the lessons I've learned, this baby is tuned to almost max (there's even a hotter version but that one is less user friendly, it needs an additional starter).

Only 208 parts!

Download link: http://kerbalx.com/crafts/1285

Coming up is my other trainer/leasure craft/light bomber, the Whistling Goblin. Expect that one online within one hour.

Edited March 6, 2015 by Azimech

[Azimech]

Two new airplanes! Check the OP!

[_Bugs]

Oh my gosh yes!

Quick question: How do you remove jet smoke?

[Azimech]

Go to the path of the basic jet engine (for example D:\KSP\GameData\Squad\Parts\Engine\jetEngineBasic)

open the jetEngineBasic.cfg file and place a // in front of the following line: fx_smokeTrail_light = 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0, 0.0, power

save, exit.

You're done!

[_Bugs]

Plane flies great, although, most of the lift does come from a little infini-glide.

[Azimech]

Depends ... if you fly with SAS on, then yes. That stupid thing shakes everything all the time. If you just use trim, it's surely the power of the engine that propels it. You can try it by replacing everything with rcs. That surely is one little powerful engine!

[Azimech]

Funny thing is ... people don't respond to the new ones. Can imagine, not .... or exiting at all. But they're being downloaded like crazy!

To anyone who's downloaded any of my airplanes or helicopters from KerbalX.com ... should I upgrade all models with the newest engines?

Edited March 7, 2015 by Azimech

[Yukon0009]

Maybe they have no forum account, or people have no time to comment- they're having too much fun!

[Azimech]

It was more of a reflection of what's happening on the unofficial facebook page. Usually people are pretty exited about my stuff and show it. No biggie though.

Any ideas of what I should/could build next?

[Rune]

Funny thing is ... people don't respond to the new ones. Can imagine, not .... or exiting at all. But they're being downloaded like crazy!

To anyone who's downloaded any of my airplanes or helicopters from KerbalX.com ... should I upgrade all models with the newest engines?

If I had to bet, I'd say people are busy trying to one-up you... and likely running into a CPU wall. I know I half-heartedly tried to build something like your latest engine (same thing, less parts) but of course, you got there sooner. Long time since I did a stock helo...

Rune. We are waiting for you to build the perfect one!

[Azimech]

The difference between 0.22 with the 7 rad/s limitation and now is gigantic. Can you imagine I've built the first turboshaft helicopter December 2013 ... thought it was funny but they were terrible to control and very fragile. Left it in the dust for over a year.

Suddenly started again February third. Loaded an old design, looked at it with one year extra experience. Started over and had a working helicopter in 2 hours that was easy to control and flew ten times better than all my previous designs!

Thirty days later the things are pretty reliable and very powerful. I've had engines running for hours without jamming, RUD or explosions so bad they ripped half the wing off.

That new editor is fantastic!

Then comes 1.0 ... first thing I'm gonna do is do things with those fairings and other new parts no-one else thinks about - you'll see what I mean.

Question: does anyone want piston engines? I know how to build them, we just need one little piece of software, then everyone can build them and let them run on their own power!

If your answer is yes, then look in the Proximity Sensor topic in my sig and leave a post in there, please.

I have designs ready for the following:

7 cylinder radial,

V2

V6

V8 both crossplane and flatplane

Flat 2

Flat 4

Flat 6

This is a big one. Once we have a proximity sensor to work as the ignition system, we can start to build smaller.

[Frozen_Heart]

Funny thing is ... people don't respond to the new ones. Can imagine, not .... or exiting at all. But they're being downloaded like crazy!

To anyone who's downloaded any of my airplanes or helicopters from KerbalX.com ... should I upgrade all models with the newest engines?

Same happens with most things. People got really exited over the first warships I made and also there was a lot of reaction to a K-drive. Now if I post something similar no one bats an eyelid.