Part 1: Building planes.
Planes that can't get off the ground.
Planes that roll too fast.
Planes who's nose bounces up and down in flight reguardless of the buttons I press.
I can't seem to build a plane that works well, and I don't get what I'm doing wrong.
Now, I know I'm not hardly an expert at building, but I generally know what an airplane looks like.
I understand, as the game tells me, the center of mass should be slightly in front of the center of lift.
I should at least be able to build a simple airplane that flies decently.
I see all these things available for download, and things on YouTube videos that are crazy machinations of the imagination, and things that, in reality, shouldn't possibly fly... and they fly.
Yet my airplane, one that's just trying to accomplish basic flight, is always seemingly doomed to crash and burn.
I've had a simple prop plane never get off the ground, and I don't understand it.
Planes that are as simple as a basic cockpit, basic fusilage, the 3 basic types of wings in places that make proper sense, and basic jet or prop.
Building what should be a simple airplane fails terribly and I don't get it.
Sometimes planes don't pull up ever, sometimes they nose up so badly, that I can hold nose down and it'll still lift up on takeoff, or go straight from takeoff to a backflip without any ability to stop it.
And maybe some of my problems are
Part 2: Erratic controls.
Now, I have the game setup to use keyboard controls, and maybe it's just that this game needs something more sensative than a keyboard.
When I try to roll, it's an erratic roll unless I make the roll flaps (forget the specific name for the flaps on the main wings) really small. I'll go from perfect horizontal flight to just past sideways or even upside down in an instant.
Sometimes I can't seem to find a nice middle ground vertically with the nose bobbing up and down, never really capable of leveling out.
Honestly, I want to love this game, I love building things in games, but it's driving me crazy. Even when I'm flying the planes that came with the game or ones I downloaded that are perfect models of real world planes, I still struggle to fly even for a couple minutes without something going terribly wrong.
I've flown airplanes before in other videogames, and I've never had such difficulty flying in videogames. Now perhaps SimplePlanes has better physics than other videogames that aren't centered around flight, but I can't imagine something that's so simple in most games is so terribly hard in something called SImplePlanes.
I don't understand why I'm struggling so bad to build and fly even the simplest of airplanes. Everyone else has the ability to build and fly insane things and I'm somehow incapable of doing the basics.
Please help so I can enjoy this game.
Not sure if you're still seeking input under this thread after over 5 years, but imma go for it anyways. A lot of issues arise from those wings that can support control surfaces (horizontal and vertical stabilizer, primary wing) for the purpose of this comment, we can refer to those as primary wings. A lot of players, including myself, seldom use primary wings for a few reasons, most notably: they wobble like nobody's business, and control surfaces are far too responsive as in going from 0 to 100 instantly, resulting is erratic movements. Primary wing control surfaces can be finely tuned using the XML mod (I'm sure you probably have it, but if not, it's a must must must). You can precisely adjust the range of the aileron (how far it moves) and the speed at which it moves. I can elaborate on how to do this in a later comment if you wish.
Try one of my planes and jusg disect it an you will get an idea of how to build your planes.
Hey, I can relate to this post bc this used to happen to me when I started playing simple planes about a week ago. What I found really helped me was downloading other simple plane designs, taking them apart and observing where things are, what kind of mechanics are involved, and etc. make sure you focus on weight in the front and the back, and make sure both sides of your plane are symmetrical. You can check out my planes if you like to see how they work and how I made them better over time. Hope this works. I also play on mobile lol.
Oh also Inplay on mobile
Take the plane lessons
If this thread is still active:
-I took your craft file and took it for a spin. It was able to get off the runway, but It did rotate sideways too much when I rolled, as you mentioned.
---I think it's fine to just keep the roll ailerons very small; this is a jet that goes zipping fast (One of the reasons that I like it), and only needs a small aileron surface area to fly.
-I was not able to land it, as when I tried to turn it around, It went careening out of control for me.
---So, I looked into this and made a change: The center of lift in a plane, as far as I understand, needs to be directly behind the center of mass, not above or below it as much as possible. I don't know if that's the only way it works, but I know this way does work.
---Also, again, as far as I know, If this plane is to be propelled from the rear, the center of thrust should also be directly behind the center of mass, or else it is like attaching a rocket engine in the place of a horse on a merry-go-round: It will very likely spin wildly around the center (In the planes' case, the center of mass is what it will likely be spinning around).
Anyway, I posted an updated model with my little tweaks here: https://www.simpleplanes.com/a/b2zNr2/Mystic-Dragon-Jet-FIX-1
-made ailerons smaller for less rigid rolls and moved them outwards a bit
-mounted the engines directly to the fuselage and placed the wings on the engines to move the center of thrust/mass/lift to be all in line: Should be a lot more stable.
making planes seems to be an art-- best of luck to you all.
Hope this helps you or any others viewing this thread, If you still need it.
hey bud , i can help you ,,,im a vanilla plane builder , i can give u advice a lot ,,contact me with W.A
@MysticJhn If you don't understand the physics, there really is no changing that other than to learn and understand the physics of flying. Just my two cents. Also, flying an aircraft and building an aircraft are two different things. Also, your aircraft you showed was decent, it just needed a bit more tweaking. Sorry I haven't really responded, been doing other things, and also, if you really want some help, you can ask the devs, go to the reddit forums, ask more questions on the forums in the comments or make another forum post, etc. There is many, many, many options to get help on this. You just have to reach out for it. This thread is basically dormant now.
This game is making me feel really stupid.
I still can't get the building part correct, even applying everything the game has taught me, everything picked up in this thread, or even trying to copy already built planes.
I just tried building a jet, and I couldn't even get it to lift off the ground.
I even added a second set of pitch controls on the main wings in addition to the ones on the horizontal stabilizers, and it wouldn't rise an inch at any speed.
The only air it got was falling off the cliff at the end of the runway!
My airplanes are no better, or even worse, than the first time I opened the game.
It's a videogame airplane in a game where the current best "airplane" right now is a man standing on a flying carpet.
I downloaded that, I know it flies very well.
Yet I can't even make an airplane fly that looks like an airplane.
It's like everyone else playing this game works for the aerospace industry and I'm the only non-engineer playing this.
I know it's a physics game, but it's still a videogame where the parts go together like Lego bricks... it shouldn't be that hard.
I have literally watched people on YouTube put their first airplane together and it flies real nice and easy.
Meanwhile I'm sitting here attempting everything I can think of to accomplish getting off the ground nicely, and it's just not working.
I do not get it.
According to Steam, I've put 14 hours into this game already, and have made zero progress.
I would be a third the way to a real world pilot's license with that much flight time, and yet I can't build an imaginary plane in a videogame!
Alright, I modified a jet I was working on that was okay on the air, trying to use the bit I've learned here, and improved it some, doing a lot of work on it. However, as you'll see in the description, I'm still haivng trouble with take-off of it and trying to keep the nose steady. So much so, it takes off like a Chinese dragon flies.
Download it and see what I'm doing wrong here.
http://www.simpleplanes.com/a/fF6s03/Mystic-Dragon-Jet
I've built like a half dozen planes by now (only ever uploaded this one), and I can't seem to do much better than this, even knowing all I was told here.
I didn't bother painting this, wanted to get something that worked first, so it's still the default color scheme.
Ok, admission here, I have not yet completed any of the flying challenges.............................@MysticJhn
I'd like to thank everyone for the advice and the recommended planes.
I shall be giving them a try tonite and see if it helps.
If I'm still struggling to build a plane that flies decently, I'll post it, let you guys download it, and see what I'm doing wrong.
Some of your advice here is stuff I feel I was missing with only the Ground School instructions that I couldn't figure out on my own that might improve my builds.
Well, hey.
I suck at building planes too haha. I just download other people's and enjoy how well they fly, as well as editing them here and there as I see fit.
@MysticJhn I've never even beat them...
... knew it. Yeah, more to follow. There is a text limit, and I just went over it.
@MysticJhn Well, I have a very old design which could help you. Multiple, actually, but many of them have part clipping, which could be a bit much for a 'simple' plane, though I will show one which has it.
Really old plane
Old P-80 Shooting Star
Now, for some explanations(though most of these should have been figured out with the build guide). The CoM must always be ahead of the CoL for an aircraft to fly properly. The further ahead the CoM is in relation to the CoL, the more stable it is, though the less maneuverable it is as a result. Usually, if you want to make your aircraft more maneuverable, you either put your control surfaces further away from the CoL(which is the pivot point for the control surfaces), or move the CoM closer to the CoL, but only to a point. if you put them nearly on top of each other, or very close to it, it will be uncontrollable and won't even fly straight, much less take off. As for control surfaces, it's basically the same as everyone else has said. Too big, and the plane can become wobbly when pitch is used. I should note, though, that this only truly applies to normal control surfaces, for the most part. Structural wings used on rotators for fully moving horizontal and vertical stabilizers usually behave differently than ones with normal ones with the control surfaces the game gives you when you edit them. Landing gear should be placed so that the rear landing gear act as a pivot point for the Com, always behind it, or otherwise it will make the aircraft tilt back off the front landing gear, and in general, will make the aircraft unstable on the runway, depending on placement(tricycle doesn't really care, tail draggers in general suffer the most when this happens).
Now, for your flying problem... You should first try the P-51. One of the most user friendly aircraft, unless you really screw up with the controls, it's hard to unintentually crash it. That will give you some flying experience. My P-80 is also fairly user friendly, other than it's rather unresponsive turning at most speeds. I've had to deal with keyboard controls, and personally like them more than the mouse controls, for the moment, anyway. Then again, I use a school macbook air with a trackpad, it's always going to hamper me. But if the controls are too responsive, lightly tapping the controls will usually help a bit with overcorrecting.
M
@MysticJhn
My Twinstar is rather simple
Text is link
Is there a good plane out there that best demonstrates the basics of good plane building?
Something that really illustrates important points of building that the Ground School lessons don't cover?
Or perhaps a better tutorial?
I've reread the Ground School lesson a bunch of times, and it's not really helping me improve my plane building.
Even studying the default planes don't really help.
Well, to be honest, I may not have been like you, but I've been in the same situation. Of course, it was not with flying, but building. And look at me now. I build some of the best airplanes on the website, and definately the best when it comes to Ace Combat. At one time, I struggled at building anything not a simple prop plane built in 5 minutes. I simply couldn't do jets at that time, and none of them could maneavear well. Everything is now second nature to me. I've been good at flying aircraft from the start, though I've tried to improve over the months. Just keep practicing and experimenting, you'll get there someday.
Because in real life airplanes are not simple it just takes practice to get good at it like all things
@MysticJhn
If you are on steam, I can help you out with building
Hey man, after my first prop plane, I found that jets were my thing, especially sci-fi non-fictional jets..
...Maybe if you posted something, we could evaluate your designs and their flaws.
Im a bad creator to but you still can get points by doing forums stuff or taking other planes and modifies it!