@Diloph Well, if you fly this build, you'll notice how the speed goes up and down as the build contracts and expands its "wings." That's one side-effect of not being able to disable drag. Another problem is with things like my digital gauge, which can't really be used in aircraft for the same reason (wildly varying drag as the digits change). Then there's the limited range of rotation and fixed shape, which limits what you can build with them. If there was a fuselage block that could move any way you please, a lot more things would be possible.
@Diloph Because they can be animated. And even though they're limited in the range and type of animation, and you can't set drag to zero on them, that one feature makes them able to build things like this. Now imagine what could be done if we had zero-drag parts that could be moved along any axis, and rotated through any angle...
@Panzer828 Well, the idea behind variable wings is good in theory, but in practice it has at least three drawbacks: one, the additional mass required for the wing structure and the actuating mechanism; two, the increased drag because the mechanism makes the wing root thicker; and three, the loss of fuel capacity.
Then the aerodynamicists developed long chord, short span wing shapes (delta, trapezoidal) that can perform well in both low- and high-speed regimes. This wouldn't have been feasible earlier, because delta wings have high drag at low speeds, but these days engines are so powerful that it doesn't matter.
It's like the transonic area rule (Whitcomb area rule) that you can see in the wasp-waist design of early jet fighters. We don't see that any more because engines are so powerful that they can push through the transonic zone effortlessly.
@Panzer828 Wow, the NIAI RK-I is really something. I haven't seen anything like it before. It's funny how Stalin inadvertently killed itbecause he was so interested in it.
@Panzer828 Well, with modern materials I'm sure it could be implemented with a metal frame and a tough flexible covering, but I'm not sure there would be much point. You would lose all or most of the wing's fuel storage capacity, and the mechanism to extend and retract the wing would be added weight. Nobody builds swing-wing aircraft any more for a reason.
As to how I did it in SP, it's because 1) the game is so flexible and 2) the flight physics is implemented really well. With a high-school level knowledge of physics, you can build things you never imagined possible. Each "wing" is made up of 90 airbrakes, with the inputs arranged in a manner to create that spiky shape when the airbrakes open up.
@Panzer828 OK, I take it you mean well. It's just that when people keep bombarding me with the same nonsense over and over, it tends to wear on one's patience. Don't take anything I wrote as directed at you, but at "those people" in general. I'm happy to build a SledDriver-style prop plane (push or pull) for you.
OK, I'll take you at face value and accept that this isn't just another "oh that SledDriver, he kin onlee play by cheeeeeetung, he can't mek normal plens."
I have several problems with your challenge rules:
You must use the given engine and weapon along with the weight connected to the propeller
This doesn't make sense to me. Why must that specfic weight be there?
No modding parts
This kills 99% of the potential for creativity. Say goodbye to beautifully shaped wings, and any decorative elements. If you love the way my aircraft look, you have to allow removing drag and mass on decorative elements like fuselage-based wings etc.
Maneuverability - how easily and fast it can change direction
I build and test on PC, and planes handle very differently on mobile. Specifically, on a PC, when you press a key the input goes straight from 0 to 1. There's no possibility of ramping up the input slowly or applying an intermediate degree of input, say 0.2 or 0.6. It's either OFF or ON. So how will you compare maneuverability between devices? What handles beautifully on a PC will seem sluggish on a mobile. Also, it's extremely easy to make an airplane that turns on a dime in SP. A better, objective version of this rule would be "the aircraft should take X seconds to make a 180/360 degree turn."
Presentation - your description along with looks.
This is highly subjective. Some people love decals. I hate them. Some people love recreating all the defects of old-time metal manufacturing like misaligned panels, exposed rivet heads, and large seams between panels. I hate them, because I don't like living in the past.
Creativity - just how much fun you had making the project which is the most important thing.
How will you even determine this? I can tell you straight up that I hate propeller planes, I find them boring and noisy, I hate the propeller blocking my view, among other things. So there's no way this will be fun for me. However, read on.
The simple fact is that I don't do challenges, because I'm not here to compete with anyone, especially a bunch of kids. But I'm willing to create an airplane using your engine and wing limitations, just to shut up the geniuses who look at my work and are still unable to deduce that I mastered the basic (and intermediate, and advanced) skills of SP a long time ago. Here are the rules I will play by:
These attributes cannot be modded: engine power, wing scale, fuel tank mass.
The aircraft must have realistic mass and drag points (as implemented in SP). This means that I will create a simple airframe with dimensions close to that of an actual single-prop airplane. I will note down the mass and drag number. Then I will build the final aircraft using my methods (zero-mass fuselage blocks for wings, etc.), and finally I will adjust the mass and drag number to match the values I noted previously.
The aircraft must have high build quality. This means: no veering to the sides during takeoff runs; no auto-roll; good flight stability; good handling overall. The build should be smooth with no awkwardly-joined fuselage blocks.
If that is fine by you, I will build and post the aircraft either today or tomorrow (it's 20:30 here and I have work tomorrow), to shut up those people who claim that achieving a given set of flight characteristics takes hours and hours of "hard work". Maybe they take that long, but I can build a flight module to any specs within at most 20 minutes.
I will not make the aircraft a successor, because I think collecting other people's points for the "hard work" of posting a challenge is rather lame. I will post it as a regular build of mine. I don't care what you or anyone else thinks of it, but I would like to stop hearing "I DARE you to mek a normull plain!"
@Subnerdica Well, each claw is made up of 180 airbrakes with their inputs, positions, and angles set to create the claw shape. Using that many airbrakes means that from a distance, the shape looks smooth, like a single piece of metal. And before you ask, the reason I use airbrakes is because they're the only part that can take the new input system and move without using rotators or pistons. If I used fuselage blocks with rotators, not only would I need twice the parts to do the same thing, but the physics calculations would cause unnecessary lag.
@Subnerdica Well, that's just another joke in bad taste. What's funny about telling someone to get on their knees? You haven't upvoted this post, so I don't know if you have any goodwill towards me or my builds; then you make jokes about atrocities and getting on knees. It's just that I keep hoping for some intelligent discussion, but what little there is keeps getting drowned out by stuff like "FIRST!" and "Ooooo 666 parts" and "Lookit the drag points" and "Call the police" and so on, ad infinitum.
@Subnerdica Well, that was a notch in the wrong direction ("Atrocity?" What's atrocious about this post?). I just find it strange that so many commenters have so much to say about everything except the builds themselves.
@Treadmill103 Yeah, I'm the same. I've memorized pretty much every plot by Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke, and Niven, but there are plenty of golden age authors I haven't even got around to reading yet.
@Treadmill103 Do you know any good contemporary SF writers? I find most current stuff very mediocre, bland, often depressive, and drowning in political correctness and virtue signaling. The heroic, forward-looking, optimistic "sense of life" that defined the golden age of SF seems nowhere to be found.
@Treadmill103 I think "escapist" is what dumb people label SF because they don't get it and they don't really think about the future. Hard SF is the only genre of fiction that has any worthwhile ideas. Make a list of the top innovators in the world, and I bet every single one of them grew up loving science fiction. That's not a coincidence. To put it another way, the dumb kids don't have the imagination to conceive of a better world and so they're happy as pigs in muck; smart kids grow up seething at how much better the world could be if only most people weren't so stupid, and find kindred spirits in SF. Don't ever be self-deprecating about liking SF; you should be proud.
@Treadmill103 Wow, you must be the only other person in this world who's read Arthur Clarke. I must've read "Reach for Tomorrow" dozens of times. Haven't read "A Meeting with Medusa" yet, but I'll get to it soon now that you've mentioned it. I'm guessing you've also read Asimov and Heinlein?
@Treadmill103 The airbrake does have its uses, being the only part that can move without using a rotator or a piston. If only we had more parts like that...
Thanks, @BuiltBionixInd10. It's alien tech, so don't worry about aerodynamics. I could've easily made the "wings" flat, but I chose to make them thick to make the shape more interesting.
@UltimatePlayer123 Yeah, or if you were being chased by an enemy through a narrow canyon, you could pull your wings in and barely make it through while your pursuer smashes himself to bits, in the best movie tradition.
@ChallengerHellcat It's a big improvement over your previous builds. Improvements: the rear is too boxy and plain. Add some bevels, corrugations, etc. to make it more visually interesting.
@Panzer828 Yeah, it's going to be an interesting next few decades.
@Trijets This is actually the SD-450 Moth Mark II, but thanks.
@Diloph Well, if you fly this build, you'll notice how the speed goes up and down as the build contracts and expands its "wings." That's one side-effect of not being able to disable drag. Another problem is with things like my digital gauge, which can't really be used in aircraft for the same reason (wildly varying drag as the digits change). Then there's the limited range of rotation and fixed shape, which limits what you can build with them. If there was a fuselage block that could move any way you please, a lot more things would be possible.
+1Thanks, @AWESOMENESS360. It's inspired by butterflies/moths in general; I wasn't aware of that particular species.
+1@Diloph Because they can be animated. And even though they're limited in the range and type of animation, and you can't set drag to zero on them, that one feature makes them able to build things like this. Now imagine what could be done if we had zero-drag parts that could be moved along any axis, and rotated through any angle...
@Zanedavid Thanks. Think of it like a magic trick: just enjoy it, don't try to figure it out :)
@Panzer828 Yeah. And we went from the Wright flyer to the SR-71 in only about sixty years...
@Panzer828 Well, the idea behind variable wings is good in theory, but in practice it has at least three drawbacks: one, the additional mass required for the wing structure and the actuating mechanism; two, the increased drag because the mechanism makes the wing root thicker; and three, the loss of fuel capacity.
Then the aerodynamicists developed long chord, short span wing shapes (delta, trapezoidal) that can perform well in both low- and high-speed regimes. This wouldn't have been feasible earlier, because delta wings have high drag at low speeds, but these days engines are so powerful that it doesn't matter.
It's like the transonic area rule (Whitcomb area rule) that you can see in the wasp-waist design of early jet fighters. We don't see that any more because engines are so powerful that they can push through the transonic zone effortlessly.
+1@Panzer828 Wow, the NIAI RK-I is really something. I haven't seen anything like it before. It's funny how Stalin inadvertently killed it because he was so interested in it.
@Panzer828 Yeah, I know the benefits of variable-geometry wings :) I just looked up the plane, is it the Makhonin Mak-123 or Mak-10?
@Panzer828 Well, with modern materials I'm sure it could be implemented with a metal frame and a tough flexible covering, but I'm not sure there would be much point. You would lose all or most of the wing's fuel storage capacity, and the mechanism to extend and retract the wing would be added weight. Nobody builds swing-wing aircraft any more for a reason.
As to how I did it in SP, it's because 1) the game is so flexible and 2) the flight physics is implemented really well. With a high-school level knowledge of physics, you can build things you never imagined possible. Each "wing" is made up of 90 airbrakes, with the inputs arranged in a manner to create that spiky shape when the airbrakes open up.
@Panzer828 OK, I take it you mean well. It's just that when people keep bombarding me with the same nonsense over and over, it tends to wear on one's patience. Don't take anything I wrote as directed at you, but at "those people" in general. I'm happy to build a SledDriver-style prop plane (push or pull) for you.
+1Part 1 of 2
OK, I'll take you at face value and accept that this isn't just another "oh that SledDriver, he kin onlee play by cheeeeeetung, he can't mek normal plens."
I have several problems with your challenge rules:
This doesn't make sense to me. Why must that specfic weight be there?
This kills 99% of the potential for creativity. Say goodbye to beautifully shaped wings, and any decorative elements. If you love the way my aircraft look, you have to allow removing drag and mass on decorative elements like fuselage-based wings etc.
I build and test on PC, and planes handle very differently on mobile. Specifically, on a PC, when you press a key the input goes straight from 0 to 1. There's no possibility of ramping up the input slowly or applying an intermediate degree of input, say 0.2 or 0.6. It's either OFF or ON. So how will you compare maneuverability between devices? What handles beautifully on a PC will seem sluggish on a mobile. Also, it's extremely easy to make an airplane that turns on a dime in SP. A better, objective version of this rule would be "the aircraft should take X seconds to make a 180/360 degree turn."
This is highly subjective. Some people love decals. I hate them. Some people love recreating all the defects of old-time metal manufacturing like misaligned panels, exposed rivet heads, and large seams between panels. I hate them, because I don't like living in the past.
How will you even determine this? I can tell you straight up that I hate propeller planes, I find them boring and noisy, I hate the propeller blocking my view, among other things. So there's no way this will be fun for me. However, read on.
Part 2 of 2
The simple fact is that I don't do challenges, because I'm not here to compete with anyone, especially a bunch of kids. But I'm willing to create an airplane using your engine and wing limitations, just to shut up the geniuses who look at my work and are still unable to deduce that I mastered the basic (and intermediate, and advanced) skills of SP a long time ago. Here are the rules I will play by:
If that is fine by you, I will build and post the aircraft either today or tomorrow (it's 20:30 here and I have work tomorrow), to shut up those people who claim that achieving a given set of flight characteristics takes hours and hours of "hard work". Maybe they take that long, but I can build a flight module to any specs within at most 20 minutes.
I will not make the aircraft a successor, because I think collecting other people's points for the "hard work" of posting a challenge is rather lame. I will post it as a regular build of mine. I don't care what you or anyone else thinks of it, but I would like to stop hearing "I DARE you to mek a normull plain!"
Deal?
+1Merci beaucoup, @grizzlitn
+1@Panzer828 Do I know you? What is your motive for inviting me to this challenge?
@Subnerdica Well, each claw is made up of 180 airbrakes with their inputs, positions, and angles set to create the claw shape. Using that many airbrakes means that from a distance, the shape looks smooth, like a single piece of metal. And before you ask, the reason I use airbrakes is because they're the only part that can take the new input system and move without using rotators or pistons. If I used fuselage blocks with rotators, not only would I need twice the parts to do the same thing, but the physics calculations would cause unnecessary lag.
@Subnerdica Well, that's just another joke in bad taste. What's funny about telling someone to get on their knees? You haven't upvoted this post, so I don't know if you have any goodwill towards me or my builds; then you make jokes about atrocities and getting on knees. It's just that I keep hoping for some intelligent discussion, but what little there is keeps getting drowned out by stuff like "FIRST!" and "Ooooo 666 parts" and "Lookit the drag points" and "Call the police" and so on, ad infinitum.
+1@Subnerdica Well, that was a notch in the wrong direction ("Atrocity?" What's atrocious about this post?). I just find it strange that so many commenters have so much to say about everything except the builds themselves.
@Subnerdica I did. Because it didn't make much sense, and I'm tired of off-topic comments.
@Treadmill103 Yeah, I'm the same. I've memorized pretty much every plot by Asimov, Heinlein, Clarke, and Niven, but there are plenty of golden age authors I haven't even got around to reading yet.
@ALIEX Do you speak English at all? Because I don't want to have to run everything through Google Translate.
+1@Treadmill103 Do you know any good contemporary SF writers? I find most current stuff very mediocre, bland, often depressive, and drowning in political correctness and virtue signaling. The heroic, forward-looking, optimistic "sense of life" that defined the golden age of SF seems nowhere to be found.
@ALIEX 程式设计
+1@Treadmill103 I think "escapist" is what dumb people label SF because they don't get it and they don't really think about the future. Hard SF is the only genre of fiction that has any worthwhile ideas. Make a list of the top innovators in the world, and I bet every single one of them grew up loving science fiction. That's not a coincidence. To put it another way, the dumb kids don't have the imagination to conceive of a better world and so they're happy as pigs in muck; smart kids grow up seething at how much better the world could be if only most people weren't so stupid, and find kindred spirits in SF. Don't ever be self-deprecating about liking SF; you should be proud.
@yoshicraze Mission: accomplished.
+1@Treadmill103 Wow, you must be the only other person in this world who's read Arthur Clarke. I must've read "Reach for Tomorrow" dozens of times. Haven't read "A Meeting with Medusa" yet, but I'll get to it soon now that you've mentioned it. I'm guessing you've also read Asimov and Heinlein?
Very cool.
+1@Treadmill103 Better than moiré patterns, I think?
@ShockRF Well, I quite like it. I wanted it to have some momentum during rolls.
@randomusername All my stuff is pretty cool.
+3@Gameboi14 An illusion is something that tricks the mind into seeing something that isn't there; this build doesn't do that.
+1@Diloph I'm actually the sanest builder you know :)
@Treadmill103 Yeah, I've spent way too much time staring at this. Who'd have thought there's so much fun to be had with airbrakes?
@BRINE Sure thing, it's a good build. You should add a description. Also, yaw is inverted on the airplanes.
+1Thanks, @ChickenMan235
@SaintNPC I don't see the value in that.
@LeonardoEngineering Lepidopterans, coleopterans and dipterans: mostly a nasty bunch.
+1@TrislandianAlliance Hmm, interesting.
@Treadmill103 The airbrake does have its uses, being the only part that can move without using a rotator or a piston. If only we had more parts like that...
Glad you enjoyed it, @Shadowed
+1@Texasfam04 Thanks, Tex.
@Shippy456 Yeeeeessssssss.
Thanks, @BuiltBionixInd10. It's alien tech, so don't worry about aerodynamics. I could've easily made the "wings" flat, but I chose to make them thick to make the shape more interesting.
+1@UltimatePlayer123 Yeah, or if you were being chased by an enemy through a narrow canyon, you could pull your wings in and barely make it through while your pursuer smashes himself to bits, in the best movie tradition.
Thanks, @Alta2809 @Halodude117
+1@ChallengerHellcat It's a big improvement over your previous builds. Improvements: the rear is too boxy and plain. Add some bevels, corrugations, etc. to make it more visually interesting.
@Stormfur @GeneralPatrick2 Do carry on, I can't wait to read more obscure advertising-related comments on everything except the build itself.
+1@GTAPRO I had to look that up, but now I get it.
@Treadmill103 Hmm. Something tells me you really like shiny metallic finishes :)