Help with Aircraft

[UriahGnu]

Hi, I've been attempting to get any form of decent aircraft working in KSA since release, and recently have been taking another stab at it. I got pretty far again, but have ran into a few roadblocks, and I would really appreciate some help.

1. Aerodynamic drag

• I understand drag moved to using cylinders at some point, but are these hardcoded to mesh bounds?
• If this is hardcoded to mesh bounds, is it per subpart, or for the entire vehicle?
• Is there a way to override this cylinder (radius, length, transform) in either XML or from CS?

2. Aerodynamic forces

• Is there any method exposed in CS to apply arbitrary forces to the vehicle so that I can calculate my own life/drag/side forces?

3. Infinite O2 Supply

• Is there any way to set a fuel tank to have more contents without affecting the mass? I need to simulate an air intake without storing O2 onboard, is it possible to have a propellant without the mass?
• If not, is there a CS method to refill a fuel tank, or any other possible work around?
  • In the Tank class there is a Refill method, however it appears the tank will hold both fuel and oxidizer, so I don't see a way to just refill O2.

Thanks in advance!

 

[gravhoek]

1. The cylinder is for the whole vehicle, and there is no current way in our code to change this.
2. There are not at the moment.
3. There's no native way to make infinite propellant. You could use Tank.ConfigureFor() to tell it what reactants you want it to hold (just O2 in this case, I would imagine), and then keep calling refill to keep it topped up.

In general, I would expect trying to make aircraft work in the current game to be extremely frustrating, so I would gently advise against it, but good luck to you if you want to keep cracking at it!

 

[ColdJ]

Hopefully intake air will be a thing some day. I noticed that you have staff that know the early KSP code and so may know how to implement.
I must admit that in KSP I spend more time with planes and vehicles in atmosphere than I do out.
But this game is still very young, I am sure that given enough time these things will come.

 

[gravhoek]

We will absolutely have better aerodynamics and air-breathing engines, they just aren't our priority at the moment.