try using flat bottom airfoils. irl they're draggy but i've not noticed a difference ingame. also gives nice stall characteristics and makes up for the lack of vortex lift simulation
edit: all else fails, you can post the plane and i'll try to fix it
@ReinMcDeer yeah, i just needed to do more research
i originally thought LERX was just vortex controlling, but its more than that
the LERX causes the root of the wing to have a bigger chord, which delays the stall as the centre of pressure is far futher forward
@DumbPlaneMaker well aware of that. i just hate doing it as its the easy way out. (and besides, my leading edge flaps technically already act as a form of canard)
but in my aircraft, the roll doesn't actually reverse at high angles of attack because the flaperons are a seperate control surface altogether (hover over it and you'll see).
the reason why they lock at higher angles of attacks is because they lose their authority as they pitch down to compensate for AOA. i just use rudder to roll instead.
i've got another aircraft that doesn't have slats at all while still being unstable. feel free to check it out here
but for OP, all you really gotta do to make it work is use something like Pitch - PitchRate/(gain) - AngleOfAttack/(gain)
a lower gain means more responsive. for pitchrate, try to keep it above the 100 region. for angle of attack, try something like 30 in the stabilisers or so and use the slats with similar code to adjust the high alpha performance.
(for the following, i'm talking about AOA)
i tend to think of it in terms of deflection. say you had a target angle of attack of 25 degrees. to have your control surfaces turn 1:1 with it, you'd use 25 as your gain. having a value below 25 would lock the control surfaces earlier and grant extra control earlier at the cost of efficiency while the opposite also applies.
i could go into more detail as to why but i don't wanna bombard you with too much info.
a more stable configuration: change the variable LEVCON to clamp(AngleOfAttack/110 + PitchRate/110 - Pitch/5, -1, 0)
and AOAswitch to AngleOfAttack < 0.5 ? AngleOfAttack/40 : AngleOfAttack/8
mr smart guy. is there any way i can improve AOA performance with this statically unstable plane WITHOUT adding canards or adding passive stability? i'm thinking it's at the very limit, but see for yourself if you're bored
@Rjenteissussy roll doesn't work as the wings don't have enough speed during PSM. just the limits of a single engine thrust vectoring aircraft sadly, only way around it is a twin engine
For people that stumble onto this post in the future, I can conclude that:
The more unstable a plane, the less alpha it can pull as all it will want to do is backflip
There is a balance for each plane for pulling high alpha - it depends on your thrust to weight ratio, leading edge slats/flaps and wing loading.
A higher wing loading means you can induce the alpha at a higher speed, but this comes at the cost of overall stability as you have less wing
A lower wing loading means the plane will stall less at lower speeds, but you'll never be able to pull alpha as either the insane thrust to weight will keep it airborne or just the sheer amount of lift will prevent a stall (which is needed for alpha.)
Having front control surfaces such as canards will help alot for stability, and using a bit of coding magic you can make the process automatic
It is better to use PitchRate for slats, and pitch/vtol for flaps. This is because the slats slow down the pitch rate until you either run out of deflection or you have reached the stop point. Flaps do the opposite, they induce the alpha.
Instability will make the plane rapidly pitch up, which can be nice for instantaneous turns but not for sustained alpha. You will need to make the plane more stable by either moving the landing gear or adding weight in the front.
Too much instability will be way too hard to control as the more you increase the code's sensitivity, the more it will shake the control surfaces, making it less precise
@ToeTips how hard we talking? did you completely remove the AOA limiter
when you want to get out of the AOA, just push the nose down and let the FBW do the rest
In short, I want an airframe that is unstable enough for instantaneous turns, but is easy to control and has PSM capability with raw aerodynamics (similar to the 'Jet 13' I just uploaded), while having a realistic G limit and a lack of canards
@BaconEggs @Nerfaddict
Shouldn't higher wing loadings increase speed (not modelled in SP unless you use fuselage wings), but decrease agility + manuverability?
And also, I found having the primary wings generate lift ahead of the centre of mass and using the horizontal stabilisers to well... stabilise the aircraft works well for instantanous turns (but it comes at a lack of AOA because it wants to pull up constantly after they stall)
@ToeTips Sure. I have one currently on my profile (not the AOA one, but still pretty good)
I'll upload it in a minute
I'm reasonable at making unstable aircraft, just not giving it the high AOA capability, unlike another one which i'm also going to upload (it has canards, which is likely why its more manuverable)
@ToeTips As much as I would like to, I want to design a plane that doesn't need them compared to others - I've been partly successful with forward swept wings, but thrust vectoring on the same design feels like cheating
i'm assuming that it limits its total output so it doesn't have as much authority as it used to - this has given another issue of pulling more G past that speed but i can just use my stick less or stay below that speed lol
@Rjenteissussy
+1@Rjenteissussy
+1got it, thanks. this thing will probably be insane once i'm done
where's the fuel tanks located?
+1i shall make this thing unstable and somewhat realistic
thanks guys :)
+1i'll probably update the flaps and slat code so stay tuned. rate performance is meh at the moment compared to 2.5
feel free to suggest any ideas to improve
+1(fuck canards tho)
try using flat bottom airfoils. irl they're draggy but i've not noticed a difference ingame. also gives nice stall characteristics and makes up for the lack of vortex lift simulation
edit: all else fails, you can post the plane and i'll try to fix it
+1@ReinMcDeer yeah, i just needed to do more research
+1i originally thought LERX was just vortex controlling, but its more than that
the LERX causes the root of the wing to have a bigger chord, which delays the stall as the centre of pressure is far futher forward
@DumbPlaneMaker well aware of that. i just hate doing it as its the easy way out. (and besides, my leading edge flaps technically already act as a form of canard)
but in my aircraft, the roll doesn't actually reverse at high angles of attack because the flaperons are a seperate control surface altogether (hover over it and you'll see).
the reason why they lock at higher angles of attacks is because they lose their authority as they pitch down to compensate for AOA. i just use rudder to roll instead.
i've got another aircraft that doesn't have slats at all while still being unstable. feel free to check it out here
thanks though
@DumbPlaneMaker not necessarily. all you need for an unstable high angle of attack plane is some way to kill the lift in the front post-wing stall. here i used leading and trailing edge flaps in combination:
but for OP, all you really gotta do to make it work is use something like Pitch - PitchRate/(gain) - AngleOfAttack/(gain)
a lower gain means more responsive.
for pitchrate, try to keep it above the 100 region.
for angle of attack, try something like 30 in the stabilisers or so and use the slats with similar code to adjust the high alpha performance.
(for the following, i'm talking about AOA)
i tend to think of it in terms of deflection. say you had a target angle of attack of 25 degrees. to have your control surfaces turn 1:1 with it, you'd use 25 as your gain. having a value below 25 would lock the control surfaces earlier and grant extra control earlier at the cost of efficiency while the opposite also applies.
i could go into more detail as to why but i don't wanna bombard you with too much info.
new one is here
a more stable configuration: change the variable LEVCON to
clamp(AngleOfAttack/110 + PitchRate/110 - Pitch/5, -1, 0)
and AOAswitch to
AngleOfAttack < 0.5 ? AngleOfAttack/40 : AngleOfAttack/8
update: go into the variable editor and change any variables beginning -AngleOfAttack >= 18 ? to -AngleOfAttack >= 10 ?
this will fix small roll inputs for any AOA above 10 degrees, where before it used to reverse the turn
(saves me a repost as well)
new one is here bois
@Majakalona
@Rb2h
@CaptainBrayden
@Ownedpilot
@SuperSuperTheSylph
mr smart guy. is there any way i can improve AOA performance with this statically unstable plane WITHOUT adding canards or adding passive stability? i'm thinking it's at the very limit, but see for yourself if you're bored
@Rjenteissussy roll doesn't work as the wings don't have enough speed during PSM. just the limits of a single engine thrust vectoring aircraft sadly, only way around it is a twin engine
fixed. for some reason it was only using negative AOA as the comparison
just needed to make the AOA variable negative.
new version incase anyone is interested
@ToeTips
@Nerfaddict
I also just posted a new HARV if you want to have some experiments with it. Link is here.
edit: wrong link
For people that stumble onto this post in the future, I can conclude that:
I just posted a high alpha research vehicle here
fr
https://tenor.com/en-GB/view/top-gun-su57-су57-топган-уклонение-gif-27622957
the AOA 'limiter' in this is more of a type that keeps it in control rather than actually limit the AOA
@ToeTips how hard we talking? did you completely remove the AOA limiter
when you want to get out of the AOA, just push the nose down and let the FBW do the rest
@ToeTips not jet 13, that one just demonstrates what i've managed to accomplish with 'canards'. Take the Llama instead
@ToeTips why? it's perfectly stable
In short, I want an airframe that is unstable enough for instantaneous turns, but is easy to control and has PSM capability with raw aerodynamics (similar to the 'Jet 13' I just uploaded), while having a realistic G limit and a lack of canards
@BaconEggs @Nerfaddict
Shouldn't higher wing loadings increase speed (not modelled in SP unless you use fuselage wings), but decrease agility + manuverability?
And also, I found having the primary wings generate lift ahead of the centre of mass and using the horizontal stabilisers to well... stabilise the aircraft works well for instantanous turns (but it comes at a lack of AOA because it wants to pull up constantly after they stall)
@ToeTips Sure. I have one currently on my profile (not the AOA one, but still pretty good)
I'll upload it in a minute
I'm reasonable at making unstable aircraft, just not giving it the high AOA capability, unlike another one which i'm also going to upload (it has canards, which is likely why its more manuverable)
@ToeTips As much as I would like to, I want to design a plane that doesn't need them compared to others - I've been partly successful with forward swept wings, but thrust vectoring on the same design feels like cheating
updated version in description
i'm assuming that it limits its total output so it doesn't have as much authority as it used to - this has given another issue of pulling more G past that speed but i can just use my stick less or stay below that speed lol
it works, tysm. i will now upload the updated version
@11qazxc rgr