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Question about drag/lag/performance

47.0k WisconsinStatePolice  9 months ago

Greetings!
I seek to make a relatively high-part aircraft. My device begins suffering at around 300 parts, and becomes near-unusable shortly after 600 parts. I’ve heard that disabling or reducing the drag on many parts can negate some of this lag. I’ve also heard (or misheard) that disabling or reducing drag only makes the next part calculate more drag, so I’m not exactly sure on what to do.

To make my aircraft perform best, should I use:

calculateDrag - false
or
dragScale - 0
or possibly both?
or do I need to do something else entirely?

Any other tips on keeping high part count craft from getting too laggy would be appreciated as well. Thanks!

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    27.8k Dragoranos

    Drag scale 0 just makes the part have no drag force. It is still calculated, but such calcs always end in 0. Disabling drag calculations makes such calculations not happen anymore, improving performance.

    You can see that a part with dragScale=0 still affetcs parts behind it

    Pinned 9 months ago
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    69.7k Monarchii

    per technically, both is best. however, the problem we gave now is the airplane having no way to slow itself down, so what I would recommend is how nearly everyone does it.. no drag on all parts(except wings, do not mess with wings.), and when you're done, add drag again to certain parts(typically, the fuselage wings, however, you can also add it to the nose.), 3000 drag should be enough on a normal day.

    Pinned 9 months ago
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    Yes, less drag is better

    Both for realistic performance and lag, a typical clean 4th gen should be around 600-800 drag points

    9 months ago
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    69.7k Monarchii

    @Graingy indeed. cough

    9 months ago
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    35.8k Graingy

    @Monarchii projecting moment

    9 months ago
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    69.7k Monarchii

    @Graingy oh, i thought you were serious cause i do stuff like that kek

    9 months ago
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    35.8k Graingy

    @Monarchii
    Joking.
    I’m joking.

    9 months ago
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    137k BaconEggs

    its not the amount of drag points that cause lag, rather the amount of parts that have to make those calculations. i think somewhere in this topic i heard it has to do with the fact it constantly has to calculate each parts location with their drag (and some other variables probably) and if that calculation is reduced down to, say 10 parts out of 600 it will improve performance noticeably

    if you want to make a drag model properly the best way ive figured out of doing it is to only enable drag calculations on wing parts, and use an airbrake part controlled with ft to do the rest

    +2 9 months ago
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    69.7k Monarchii

    @WisconsinStatePolice i usually go around between 3000 drag(regular sized WW2 fighter) to at most, 10.000-12.000 drag(building sized flying stuff)

    +1 9 months ago
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    @Graingy
    Remember brother: with enough power, anything can go fast

    9 months ago
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    Epic, thank you! @Monarchii

    9 months ago
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    69.7k Monarchii

    @Graingy let me guess, it has... more than 75.000 drag? maybe more but I'm not betting on 100.000 drag... knowing my Airships though, it's likely more than 100.000 is it?

    +2 9 months ago
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    35.8k Graingy

    @Monarchii 3000 drag?
    Well, good to know that my 400 meter long flying ocean liner isn’t going anywhere too fast!

    +4 9 months ago