Aero Issue After Last Update

[inner musk]

My spaceplane struggles to get off the ground. But once it does, it's always flown straight as an arrow.
Between weight balancing, PID tuning, and trying (unsuccessfully) to rendezvous with my orbital station. I've flown close to 150 flights. Never has it pulled on the y-axis in any way.

But the aero tweak yesterday has caused it to veer hard left or right as soon as it hits about 500 m/s, and everything is balanced (com, thrust, etc) So it honestly shouldn't.

[honest cradle]

My spaceplane does this too!

[inner musk]

Glad to know it not just me.

[honest cradle]

The difference is that before the update it just fell to the ground like a rock. So the update is an improvement for me, but I guess based off this information, there are still issues

[astral swan]

Nice cockpit btw

[inner musk]

The only recent changes to the craft were removing the glass from the front of the boxes, removing the volume sensors from said boxes (essentially removing them) and re-plumbing it to use just the tanks instead of the box/tank combo.

[inner musk]

Thank you, that mean a lot to me.

Also... If you have time, take a look at the node-code. As I'm quite proud of it. 😎

[astral swan]

never seen nodes that clean!!!

@inner musk Your doors have been placed before the pressurization update, they need to be deleted and added back to properly handle pressurization. At the moment they will act as always sealed (closed) and won't transfer volume

[inner musk]

Thank you, and that is solid helpful information. Much appreciated!

However, I've flown since the pressurization update. This issue is specific to the aero change.

[inner musk]

Doors replaced. No change in flight profile. It's wierd because it switches which way it's pulling. First few times it was to the left. Then it switched to pulling right. Now it's back to the left. 🤔

[astral swan]

oh, it wouldn't change flight profile, I was merely pointing out that pressurization issue

[inner musk]

It's appreciated. 💯

[tawdry coral]

If my cockpit looked like that @next hornet would be giving me a verbal spanking for using so many LCD screens. 🤣

[meager mirage]

I haven't yet looked at byrons plane myself, but do you think it might be an issue with where the center of mass/center of lift is located?

That would be my go-to potential issue. That and the fact there may not be sufficient stabilization in the form of a (fixed) rudder to prevent unwanted yaw

Examnining the design of it, I see there are 2 holes in the middle. They may look cool, but from experience that can cause instability that manifests at igh speed.

[inner musk]

The COM and COL are mapped and there are 5 total rudders. The holes you noted are scenic viewing windows. 😎

Here's a more comprehensive view of the craft.

Also, what appear to be holes in the leading edge of the wings. Are headlights tucked behind angled glass.

[tawdry coral]

It's a contributor, the problem here is a few things:

• He has to be going supersonic to gain lift
• Which that means he MUST ensure there is far more drag in the rear of the plane than the front
• There is almost 0 rudder control
• The rudder-to-aileron(width) ratio is severely out of balance - the wider the wings the main ailerons, the further back and bigger the rudder must be to stabilize yaw; the space shuttle defeats this with the smaller delta wings and a large and exaggerated rudder which is taller than the wings are wide and serve as it's air-brake with a split-rudder design (this also helps it pitch up during re-entry and landing)

If he wants to stabilize that craft, he's going to need far bigger rudders or more lift to keep it slower.

[inner musk]

I know at least one of the devs checked the craft from an engineering standpoint. If it were a design issue, they would have advised me of such. Since they haven't, I'm assuming they're busy squishing higher priority bugs, and will fix the aero issue in due time.

[meager mirage]

Eventually they might changes things a bit yes, and it is under devleopment.

And yet I guarantee that if you follow this advice, you will see marked improvement.
#1327860107140399105 message

[inner musk]

I've got a bit of experience designing aircraft. So I do understand that more surface area on things like rudders and wing stakes equates to more control.

But I shouldn't need to make the changes your friend suggested. One of the tenets of this game is "It shall make sense".

The craft flew arrow straight in hundreds of test flight prior to the aero change, intended to stop player's zeppelins from floating into space. For that aero change to cause the craft to behave as it does now, does not make sense.

So I have faith it will be resolved, hopefully in time for me to make some videos of the craft with plasma trails off the back for the #showcase

[meager mirage]

That fix made the atmospheres a lot less dense
That has giant impact on the speed/aero, overall, especially for a craft of that speed, but you know that

[inner musk]

I'm not saying you're wrong, nor trying to argue with you. The comment last night was not intended as a rebuttal, but to put activity on the post and bump it up the sorting order. 'Top of Mind Awareness', and all that.

[faint bluff]

This looks a lot like what happens without a vertical stabilizer. Maybe as a sanity check try putting a comically large vertical stabilizer to see if it changes anything, but it is odd that it worked before the update and not now

[tawdry coral]

It should be working a lot better with how sloped/corner blocks now have full drag effects (but still no/little lift it seems).

Also, with the pressurization update they added error to buoyant crafts to get bounce and such to them (which reduced server load as well as increasing precision), this effect also applies to things in the air abet to a far smaller effect, but enough that any stability you thought you had, this tiny bit of error will throw it off in a big way.

As I pointed out, the space shuttle has a comically large rudder - it's larger than it's own delta wings. This is how, in real life, the space shuttle can maintain attitude at hypersonic velocities.

There were a lot of craft that relied on the game introducing no errors into their flight characteristics, unfortunately your craft was among them. That is to say if they added weather or anything else, your craft would have destabilized because there is so little rudder control for the wingspan.

I'm not trying to be mean or coarse, but the only reason your craft flew straight to begin with is because the game never threw your craft a curve ball as it does now, your craft relied on the 0-error system it once had. But this also means that no one has a craft that seemingly "flies on rails" any more (not even my own). There is slight deviations in flight characteristics that players and autopilots have to deal with to keep it flying straight.

The only way Batch could rectify this is to roll back the deliberate error introduced in the pressurization update, and forgo the introduction of weather. I'm sure you wouldn't want your craft to fly straight at the cost of never seeing weather in the game.

[honest cradle]

You edited that messsage quite a lot chip 😅

[tawdry coral]

Yeah, really trying not to sound like an arse 😦

I was in the Army. What I'm thinking tends to fall right off my tongue and right out of my finger tips and, sometimes I have to correct that - a lot.

[faint bluff]

I'm curious what you mean by "slight deviations in flight characteristics" and the whole not flying straight thing. My jet seems to do fine aside from needing a slight trim adjustment

[tawdry coral]

Fly it faster. The faster or higher you go, the more you notice the deviations.

Everyone I know with jets has noticed this to a great effect the faster and higher they fly.

[faint bluff]

Ahhh I see. Ya I have noticed it at blistering speeds

[tawdry coral]

For instance, I had a plane with an autopilot that held the nose so straight at mach 1.5, those watching my stream in discord ( @meager mirage ) accused the plane of not moving at all (serious).

After this update, anything over mach 0.8, you feel it and everyone knows it's got some velocity behind it.

[tawdry coral]

Yeah if you watch the video, his plane has the glowing-red aero effects which means he's well above mach 1.0

[faint bluff]

So you're thinking more rudder is required the faster you go, and this is true to irl?

[tawdry coral]

The faster you go irl, the more rudder you need and the less wing you need. To a certain degree the fuselage itself gains lift. So, for a lot of people going mach 2.00 and losing control, it's because they now have too much lift (but some clever engineering of folding wings like the tomcat, would be interesting to see stabilize their flight characteristics 😉 )

Also, it's worth noting, the less wing you have, the less rudder you need as well...

[faint bluff]

Interesting. Thank you!

[inner musk]

@tawdry coral I know you keep in contact with the devs. So please let them know this bug report can be removed. I'm done here.

[tawdry coral]

Overlord, I get it, my craft has been hit with some heavy nerf sticks as well. There are solutions...

One I employ is spamming ailerons inside my fuselage.

Ailerons give no drag, provide lift, and are never occluded (you can hide them anywhere!!!). I only hope they fix the lift of slope/corner blocks and the tops of wings before nerfing the ailerons lol - otherwise it will ground my favorite plane.

[night fossil]

With one plane concept I used stabilizer + aileron so to have a slower moving stabilizer which can be large compared to the aileron and have the aileron act like an elevator on real planes.

https://shfahimi.net/assets/img/the-case-of-boeing-737/stablizer-elevator.png

the darker blue part moves as well and is the stabilizer

and if you look at the rudder you see two parts as well. the upper is the horizontal stabilizer

[inner musk]

Sigh... My apologies for being so frustrated, and stubborn on this. 😔
All I had to do was extend the wing strakes a bit, and it straightened right out.

[meager mirage]

You're lucky. I have had some other things crop up when I addressed my plane's stability issue. 😄

https://discord.com/channels/390984499833602078/1332803289183682631

Of course I do keep an eye out for things that break, and I push limits 🙂