I haven't made much stuff on here. Really just 5 planes, but I always try to put as much effort as possible into each one. Not just the look, but the feel, the performance. That's one thing I love about aircraft: the function determines the look, not the other way around.
Anyway, performance seems to be the trickiest part of Simpleplanes for me, because it requires the most research, the most trial-&-error and the most compromises. It doesn't help that by the time I get to flight testing, I've already spent weeks and weeks getting the thing to look right and I may or may not be just plain tired of staring at the same half-finished plane.
I try to get at least 3 things right: maneuverability (roll rate, pitch rate), maximum speed (at an altitude that makes sense for that particular plane) and the ability to land (somewhat) safely. But for my last couple builds I've also been trying to get things like acceleration, stall speed and a nice even cruise speed.
The problem is, I just haven't nailed it all down yet and it's becoming clearer and clearer to me that I'll have to completely ignore a few stats if I ever want to get closer, namely: mass, wingloading and power-to-weight.
To get the right top speed, I need a ridiculous amount of power (often more than 5x reality) which leads to silly-fast acceleration. To fix acceleration, I have to increase mass which upsets stall speed, cruise speed and handling. To fix them, I have to increase wing area but by that point I usually have to choose between realism at landing speeds or handling at cruise-to-maximum speeds.
And all of this completely ignores the fact that most people just want it to be fun!
TLDR: Lets hear from you. Tell us about your approach to performance. Do you care about it at all? What's important and what can be sacrificed?
@EternalDarkness For personal use it's fine, but I wouldn't intentionally share planes that crash the game for people. Oh! And did you know the game counts vertical tails as part of the wing loading?!
@F104Deathtrap I just noticed that when I tried to apply it to my submarine. Of course, since planes aren't supposed to fly under water, it's no biggie.
@EternalDarkness ok, so I messed around with it a bit. Very powerful stuff, but with one serious drawback: if you crash into the water, it crashes the game, even on a modest -.05 It also seems to amplify movement of any kind, including torque, which makes stall recovery... surreal. Have you encountered this stuff? Any workarounds?
@F104Deathtrap no problem. Can't wait to see what you'll make with it.
@EternalDarkness This is very exciting. Thank you for taking the time to explain all this!
@F104Deathtrap if you overdo it. It will reduce drag. On SP, if the drag is negative, it's a pulling force. I haven't tested this, but I'm pretty sure that's what WNP said.
@EternalDarkness So it actually creates thrust on its own, not just a lack of friction? Well, not thrust as it's counted in the stats, but a pushing force that will propel the craft forward even without an engine?
@F104Deathtrap WNP invented it, and even used it as propulsion. I just made first detailed build with it. I've been advertising it for the last month or so. You can find an example of this airbrake on my latest trainer (the one with a prop).
@EternalDarkness Wait, you invented negative wind resistance?! And this isn't all over the place yet? How long ago did you first share this discovery? Dang. That's a real game changer, no pun intended. I could design planes with realistic wingloading and power-to-weight with such a tool.
There's one trick to fix that. I don't think anyone has eve used it on a build except me, despite me advertising it all over the place.
Your problem is drag. You need a lot of power to overcome it, making the plane accelerate very quickly, and making power-to-weight ratio in excess of unrealistic 2:1.
The fix is one of many SimplePlanes exploits. This exploit uses airbrake. Now, here's what you should do to:
Step 1: make the plane realistic in all other aspects. Wing loading, mass, CoM/CoL/CoT. power...
Step 2: edit airbrake like this:
- maxInput = -x (negative number);
- minInput = -x;
- input = Activate8.
Put that airbrake on the plane, and edit "x" value until you get your intended max speed. If you did everything right, brake will be glitching. Place it on your plane along the centerline and nudge up and down to negate any pitch up or pitch down.
What you achieved by doing this is reduction of drag. Basically, if you did everything right, your plane now has realistic drag.
@Treadmill103 It seems like you've got a pretty simple, honest approach.