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Realistic Mach 2 Performance?

18.7k F104Deathtrap  7.4 years ago

Making a plane go 1400mph on here isn't much of a challange. Making a plane on here that acts like a real life plane capable of the same speed is another story altogether!

Right now I'm working on the flight model for my next plane, a 1960's fighter capable of low Mach 2 performance at high altitude and mach 1.2 on the deck. I've xml modded the engines to give me the thrust I need to go that fast, but now I accerelate so quickly that I can take off in the space it takes to parallel park a Volkswagen!

I want the plane to handle well, and it does (no nosing up or down during normal flight speeds), but I don't want it to have supernatural powers.

Should I make it outrageously heavy to match the thrust? Wouldn't that negatively effect the top speed (and thus require me to add even MORE amounts of thrust)?

If I mess around with the wings, I might be able to get it to take off slower, but that messes up the stall-speed and then landings are borked. AAAARGH!

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    @ChiChiWerx I had modded the mass of the rotors and it messed them up, after changing them to 10x mass, the problem was lessened, and now the gear works great. As for the speed I think I used like 5x or something, I modeled the performance off of low altitude (mach 1.1 @ sea level) and just ignored the high altitude stuff. Thuds flew low and fast, flying high would just make you SAM bait over North Vietnam.

    7.4 years ago
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    30.3k ChiChiWerx

    You're talking about your F-105 you just pulled down, correct? I just posted my Viggen, very similar stats and I had to Mod my engine for 4.5x power to get the performance required to propel the at least semi-realistic build. But, acceleration is unreasonably swift. I have no idea how to mid engine acceleration, wish I did, but I think it's better than putting up with a 300 mph supersonic fighter bomber. As for the gear, probably have as much weight as you're dealing with. A trick I discovered that instead of using the resizable wheel, use the small double wheel. Of course you only have one wheel per gear, so you would have to do other tricks to make that work. Can't wait to see your 105, I was thinking of building one next...

    7.4 years ago
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    8,104 LofiTurtle

    @F104Deathtrap np!

    7.4 years ago
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    @Shmexysmpilot I think I can make it work, I was able to land it even without goofing around with the landing gear. Thanks again.

    7.4 years ago
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    8,104 LofiTurtle

    @F104Deathtrap glad I could help, hopefully you solve the problem!

    7.4 years ago
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    @Shmexysmpilot Well, after a brief search, it seems his solution is to make the landing gear itself the source of the mass, rather than the plane, that way the rotors are less stressed. Just crazy enough to work I guess!

    7.4 years ago
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    @Shmexysmpilot Damn, we think alike! I was experimenting with hidden double wheels a few minutes ago. It helped a bit with the wheels, but the fuselage "bars" still travelled around quite a bit, I will scour Baconeggs posts and see what I can see. And now, for a second time, THANK YOU.

    7.4 years ago
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    8,104 LofiTurtle

    @F104Deathtrap I don't have experience with fixing that, but I've seen other users complain about that problem too. It's much worse on low physics settings, but increased weight makes it happen on higher settings (which I assume you're running). My best guess at a fix would be clipping another set of wheels (with collisions disabled) inside the ones already there to share the load between the wheels, but I haven't tested that so it might not work. Also I think it was BaconEggs who I saw talk about this first and I'm pretty sure he found a fix

    7.4 years ago
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    @Shmexysmpilot Hmmmm, the mass increase certainly made the plane handle more realistically, and had a LOT less effect on top speed than I expected (seemingly none at higher altitudes). Now I can't seem to figure out why my custom landing gear is so springy! I disabled suspension on the tires, so I doubt it's the wheels, even the fuselage blocks and rotors bounce around. Is this an unintended consequence of nudging or scaling or what?

    7.4 years ago
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    @Shmexysmpilot I will give that one a shot, it sounds promising, thank you

    7.4 years ago
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    @Kerbango @Tully2001 Thanks fellas

    7.4 years ago
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    8,104 LofiTurtle

    @F104Deathtrap I've noticed the engines acting funny like that too. Like deactivating them locks them at whatever the throttle input was when they were deactivated instead of turning them off. To solve your problem, look at the current wing loading of your plane and add weight and wing area until the acceleration is where you want it but the wing loading stays the same (which will leave the stall speed and other characteristics virtually untouched)

    7.4 years ago
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    @Tully2001 That's how I ran my Mig-25. Weirdly, I'm using the new Beta version and it seems they changed how AG's handle engines. Instead of toggling the engine on and off, the AG seems to only toggle throttle inputs, so powering up a second engine would be similar, but powering down the "burner" engine would mean cutting the throttle. Kind of confusing, no?

    7.4 years ago
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    101k Kerbango

    If you have OverDrive you can adjust the thrust rate.

    7.4 years ago