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Anybody know why my aircraft kept doing this?

57.6k ZeroWithSlashedO  2.4 years ago

I tried entering the War Challenge II for two times now, but the first aircraft didn't make it.

Why?

Because it somehow kept having the same issues. The aircraft would roll to the right, slightly, but noticable, without any sign of the issue, at all.

At first the issue I thought was offset mass. But I checked the indicators, nope. They were centered.
Second, I thought it was lift. Same thing.
Third, I thought it might be assymetric drag. So I adjust the drag of multiple parts suspected to be causing the assymetric drag, but with no avail.

Then I checked the output variables of the wings. I checked them all, And it turned out it was assymetric lift. The left wing had produced more lift than the right. But how? It was fine in the designer, I even mirrored the whole aircraft multiple times to no avail. What is going on?

I eventually gave up on the first craft, and I made a second one. And guess what? It had the same issue. Seriously, What the frick is going on?

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    9,103 ZWLenning

    I can tell you one possible reason - its the coordinate position of parts. and it isnt your fault, its a simpleplanes thing

    Thats right, simpleplanes mirroring doesn't always mirror quite correctly - and neither does the nudge system. Its not enough to be noticeable, in overload I found it was sometimes off by less than 0.0001 units, but its enough to create an almost imperceptible roll to the right. This can be quite easily fixed using copy/paste, especially if you build with the centre of the craft on an X coordinate of 0.

    Thats how i fixed it on a couple of aircraft, but there may be errors in upload/download that may create the problem for others.

    hope this helps!

    +1 2.4 years ago
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    27.8k Dragoranos

    Happy 15k!

    2.4 years ago
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    37.2k V

    Here's an FT fix:
    Roll=0?smooth(RollRate, 0.5):Roll
    .
    I forcefully induced auto Roll into one of my planes and managed to get it to stop by replacing the wings that use Roll with this code, multiply RollRate by a number to increase and decrease the strength of the correction, and replace 0.5 with a different number to increase or decrease the speed of the correction. The input for wings is in ControlSurface under InputId. Just paste the code there and it should be fine.
    .
    Please note that this is a band aid, this can cause weird flight characteristics on something that is very agile

    +1 2.4 years ago
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    Did the wings have symmetrical connections?

    2.4 years ago
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    23.1k KudaOni

    Maybe try making the hidden wings farther from the main body of the plane.

    2.4 years ago
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    27.8k Dragoranos

    SP wings don't like to have an angle in any direction
    Mostly at high speed

    2.4 years ago
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    27.8k Dragoranos

    @ZeroWithSlashedO yes

    I've seen an F-14 Almost let unfinished because the wings had to be angled, and that would cause one of them to stall and autoroll uncontrollably

    2.4 years ago
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    @Dragoranos
    My wing is angled to match the custom wings...
    Is that an issue?

    2.4 years ago
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    27.8k Dragoranos

    So 1.11 unintentionally revealed a form of autoroll
    maybe you have an angle of attack diff of something like 0.1° degrees
    Or wing flex is affecting your plane

    Or something we don't know

    2.4 years ago