Project Here goes nothing: The Delta-StarLiner G42

[Sarcanth]

to the forums. I'd like to ask you to not change the color of the text. I could only read it after selecting your whole post as I'm using a black theme.

fftopic: MeDiCS :thankyou: for the welcome. The colour change is wierd as all the posts are appearing the same to me! I'm not changing anything.:shrug: Wierd.

 

[Moach]

thanks for the feeback guys!
having a "beta crew" really helps out:thumbup:

Just a few things (which you probably knew anyway): the controls are rather difficult...it took more than one go-around before I managed to land it. For example, when I banked briefly then let go of the joystick, it kept rolling until about 98 degrees of bank, at which point it slowly began to correct itself. Another thing was that it seems to want to pitch up a lot...possibly more so when the fuel tanks are less full.!

the controls are indeed difficult... more than i intended still... it was indeed meant to be harder tha the stock DG, but as of now, i understand it's punishingly demanding on the stick... needs to be tuned, noted!

as for pitching up, it'll do that, since it's got a lot of lift, way more than the DG, that is... so if you try to fly it too fast in low altitude it'll pull nose high...

you'll be able to correct for that once i get the elevator trim and CG shift system working, but for optimal performance, throttle down to about half power until you pass 20k Alt, this should help reducing drag and DynP during early flight

1) are you going to release it for 2010 only or 2006 p1 aswell (because it doesnt work in 2006 so far, i checked earlier)
2) is there going to be a 2d panel?
3) whens the eta release, cant wait till its fully functional!

1) since 2010 is being so well accepted, i figure there's no immediately apparent point in making it for the old version as well.... as noted, it won't work with the old version, since it was compiled for the new one

2) i did not plan on a 2D panel - the VC should be fully functional... but source codes are to be released, so if anyone wants to make one, be my guest:tiphat:

3) i honestly have no idea... i try to do as much as i can in the little able time a have in hands... i also cannot wait until it's functional:lol:

I noticed that while in orbit this craft, under full main engine power, pull's very heavily down and to the right.

yeah... it's been doing that for a while, i'm not sure what it may be...
as for pulling down, once it stops trying to pitch up, it'll wanna nose down when you burn - that's because the thrusters aren't perfectly aligned with the CoG, being slightly above...
i reckon it's an unnecessary hassle, and i plan to correct it by pointing the engines up a bit...


cheerz! let me know if anything else pops up:hello:

 

[MeDiCS]

i reckon it's an unnecessary hassle, and i plan to correct it by pointing the engines up a bit...

IMO, a better solution would be to place the (logical) engines on the "sweet spot" even if it is't aligned with the model placement. The original DG does this with the back hover engines (only one in the centre instead two), but associates the textures and particle streams to the right spots to give the visual illusion of two different hover engines.

---------- Post added at 07:59 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:57 PM ----------

fftopic: MeDiCS :thankyou: for the welcome. The colour change is wierd as all the posts are appearing the same to me! I'm not changing anything.:shrug: Wierd.

You may have hit the wrong button . Anyhow, it's fixed now :thumbup:.

 

[Moach]

ok, happy news!

i've succeeded in my first trial of simulating the engine thrust-altitude-mach envelopes :thumbup:


i figured instead of running complicated calculations and whatnot, i could just use a calibrated lookup table with value pairs for sample positions, then interpolate the in-betweens (it's like how the eletronic injection in your car works :hmm


this allows for finer tuning of the dynamics as well...


for instance, look at this mess:

int MainEff_MachAlt[8][8] = 

/*  AGL  */   {{  75,    70,     65,    50,     0,     0  },    
/*        */

/*   4k   */   {  60,    72,     75,    52,     10,    0  },   


/*   8k  */    {  50,    90,     78,    62,     35,    10 },   


/*   12k   */  {  45,    60,     95,    80,     50,    25 },   


/*   16k   */  {  30,    55,     90,    95,     85,    45 },   


/*   20k  */   {  10,    30,     65,    78,     70,    55 }};   


// MACH           0      .5      .1       1.5      2      2.5

that ball of apparent nonsense, is the sample matrix for how the main engines react to mach and altitude, expressed in efficiency percent...

how realistic this is, you tell me :shifty:
the values there are roughly based on a NASA engine simulator applet....

i have another similar table for the engine compressor temperatures... i've tuned it to kinda correspond to the efficiency curve, as the compressor heats up, it's efficiency decays, thus, less thrust...


there'll be other tables for the RAMCASTER in both Hi and Low setups, and finally, once in internal-O2 mode, i'll just default to the stock Isp simulation thingy....


getting 'er up to space will require careful managing of the engines...

think of it like changing gears in your car, you don't ride the first gear into a highway, right? just like you don't drive off from stopped in the 5th gear either...

similarly, if you try to ride the main engines over mach 3, they'll overheat and stall... or fly it too high, then pressure drops and down she goes



i think i'll have someone more math-savvy than myself have a look at the tables later... any volunteers?





now i'm still thinking the details for the engine-switch procedures... i want it to be more fun than just flipping a switch:hmm:



i'm not uploading any WIPs just yet because now it's kinda impossible to fly... i'll have it tuned up some more then i'll release another sneak-peek

 

[HarvesteR]

i read again some of the last posts... funny you should mention the x52 pro, not only i have one right here, i actually did model it into the G42 cockpit

it has indeed a more "we mean business!" look to it... none of that neon stuff... so much, in fact, it has been used in movies - in "the day the earth stood still" (new version), you can see the military guys using x52's to fly the UAVs... now, in "G.I.Joe", the super-duper hyper jet craft thing in the end, has an x52 in it's cockpit, as you can clearly see in a close-up shot :rofl:

can't blame them... it DOES look cool

Sorry to quote from so many pages back, but this needs a corollary... dude, you couldn't possibly have missed the many many X52's in Avatar... the Pandora base control room had one on almost each desk, and the big bad bulldozer was controlled by one too, but they dressed it up a bit for the close up shot with some yellow-black stripes :lol:

BTW, the craft is looking quite cool... and if you couldn't see the pictures before, it's because you weren't logged in

Nice to know it's got the X52 in the cockpit, this makes me that much closer to a true-to-(virtual)-life simpit :thumbup:

Cheers

 

[Izack]

It looks gorgeous even unfinished, but its handling characteristics are frankly awful. Excessive pitch-up and roll, as well as the off-center thrust already mentioned.

Keep it up, you have a real beauty in the works!! :thumbup:

 

[Moach]

yeah, the flight model is very much off in that version...

the new one i have brewing back here is much more stable... just hold on until windows 7 is done dragging itself through the last few hours of it's horribly sluggish setup and i'll upload it


good thing Orbiter requires no install.... i think it's the only program i'll have working straight away :lol:

 

[Izack]

good thing Orbiter requires no install.... i think it's the only program i'll have working straight away :lol:

Yeah, Orbiter is wonderful in that respect.
Just cram it in My Pictures and we're good to go! :thumbup:

 

[River Crab]

Just cram it in My Pictures and we're good to go! :thumbup:

:lol:LOL

I know kind of just disappeared from this thread, but finally tried it and I gotta say, it owns!
There are a few things I noticed:

• Fore RCS texture is pointing backwards
• Exhaust texture too far forward, clips through hull
• Texture the same on top and bottom (I know it's not done)
• Aft pair of nose gear doors is unnecessarily long
• Visor key is...N? Wasn't it supposed to be K or V?
• Couldn't open bay?
• Model clips from view too far away- can't look at it up close
• Cockpit view will not tilt back, hard to see controls without moving the view or using a large POV angle- suggest moving the default VC viewpoint back
• Textures of MFDs buttons in VC are blurry

Looks great though! Will keep testing for you! :thumbup:
Expect me to be one of the first to make a skin or a personification for it!

 

[Moach]

aha! thanks for that! you've picked up on some things!

notes:


the visor key really SHOULD be V... it's only N right now because i'm using the same code i had operating the nose-cone before... i plan on re-purposing the nose cone to house either retro rockets or a long-range radio dish....or maybe i'll put the forward RCS ports there, not quite sure yet... (any ideas?)


the exhaust textures are really bothering me with that clipping... but moving them aftwards would make it look like the flames aren't really coming from inside the nozzles... i think i'll just re-texture them so the glare is small enough not to clip through


the bay doesn't open inside atmosphere -safety first- try it when atmosphere reads zero... there'll be a light indicating that in the vc later on....


i have no idea why the model clips at certain distances... it also doesn't happen every time, which is quite strange :shrug:

i'm not sure what you mean by the view not tilting back - the POV moves exactly like it doesn in the stock DG, and i didn't have any problems with it....
maybe i missed something... what difficulties are you having?


and the buttons really aren't supposed to be blurry like that - they're that way for the same reason the bottom of the hull is textured llike the top :lol:


and the gear doors are long indeed... that was from before, when i did experiments with hover engines hosed there... all the gear doors are oversized and have yet to be remodeled a bit.... the rear gears are also looking very unfit with that single axis... i'll still model a two-axis truck there....

i also thought i could leave the oversized front doors as they are, since they could very well allow maintenance access to the cargo bay while the ship is landed - just like the main crew hatch is located in front of where the nose wheels are stowed


and i'm still not sure what im gonna do with those forward RCS vents.... i can't imagine how it would be a good idea to just leave them there pointing directly against hypersonic airstreams.... i does seem like it's asking for mr Murphy to prove himself right once more


cheerz! keep 'em coming!

 

[River Crab]

Never mind about the VC viewpoint, nothing wrong, that was just me.

As for the fore RCS, IMO it might look weird always orbiting with the nose cone hanging off...I'd say you should have the RCS necessary for rotation available during ascent. The gray zone between atmosphere and space might make maneuvering impossible with only AF surfaces. Even the X-15 had rotational RCS, SpaceShip2 will as well.

As for the forward-facing translation RCS, maybe you could place it so the visor covers it when extended?

Also 2 tiny nitpicks:
The visor clips through the sides of the cockpit when extended, and the MFD buttons are mis-aligned; they shouldn't go all the way to the top of the screen, there's a title bar there. Making them smaller might be too small though...



---------- Post added at 16:27 ---------- Previous post was at 14:24 ----------

Still couldn't get the bay open...it could be the 2010 atmosphere model...
And the port rear wing pods RCS exhaust textures are off from the nozzles. Also, the translation RCS doesn't work as expected; all directions except forward/back give you roll. I'll wait for the newer flight model though and see how that works.

---------- Post added at 16:33 ---------- Previous post was at 16:27 ----------

Yeah, it's the 2010 atmosphere. I tried it with the 2006 model and it worked. You have the bay set to not open unless the pressure is zero, but there's still a tiny bit of pressure above 200km in the new model.
cheerz

 

[Marcvs101]

Yeah, it's the 2010 atmosphere. I tried it with the 2006 model and it worked. You have the bay set to not open unless the pressure is zero, but there's still a tiny bit of pressure above 200km in the new model.
cheerz

Isn't that the "Radiation Pressure"? Maybe try disabling it, it is found on the "Parameters" part of the launchpad

 

[jedidia]

Isn't that the "Radiation Pressure"? Maybe try disabling it, it is found on the "Parameters" part of the launchpad

No, it's the atmosphere pressure of the new atmosphere model for earth, that goes up a lot more than it did in 2006. I think the best way to solve this would be to not set the limit to zero, but to some sensibly low value instead.

 

[Izack]

Isn't that the "Radiation Pressure"? Maybe try disabling it, it is found on the "Parameters" part of the launchpad

I think it's still a better idea to alter the Liner so that it can open its cargo bay under some pressure. Maybe, if you want to give motivation not to open it in an atmosphere, make it so the craft gets crazy weird aerodynamics when it's opened.

 

[Moach]

yeah... this wasn't an issue before, when pressure was zero above 100k... but now i guess i'll have to set it to have a little tolerance....

anyways, or i could just make it so they can be operated whenever the G meter reads less than .1 (the doors are too heavy to operate in full gravity), then cause a major disaster if you do something unadvisable such as open it while hypersonic:rofl:


or perhaps sounding an alarm under these conditions would make more sense.... :hmm:

 

[Spike Spiegel]

yeah... this wasn't an issue before, when pressure was zero above 100k... but now i guess i'll have to set it to have a little tolerance....

anyways, or i could just make it so they can be operated whenever the G meter reads less than .1 (the doors are too heavy to operate in full gravity), then cause a major disaster if you do something unadvisable such as open it while hypersonic:rofl:


or perhaps sounding an alarm under these conditions would make more sense.... :hmm:

If the doors are too heavy to operate in full gravity, how do you load cargo before launching to orbit?

Also, if I knew what I was doing with C++, I'd try to set it up so that the greater the external pressure was (perhaps dynamic pressure?), the greater the likelihood of damage occurring.

 

[Dambuster]

With the nose RCS, could you just have some sort of hatch to cover them up during ascent and descent? Perhaps an arrangement like the hatches the Shuttle has for the ET connections, except maybe a little sleeker?

 

[Moach]

i thought of a retractable bulge that extends off the sides of the nose... kinda like the DG's front RCS assembly, but in a way that could be closed....


when the ship is grounded, special maintenance equipment -crane- is used to service the bay - otherwise, the actuators would be unnecessarily heavy.... same goes for the nose hatch, it can only go up and down if no gravity...

the shuttle's RMS is also unable to operate in gravity, being unable to sustain it's own weight...

it's one of the few engineering advantages of space flight, you don't need powerful actuators to lift stuff....

 

[Marcvs101]

same goes for the nose hatch, it can only go up and down if no gravity...

I might have missed something... but then how will the crew get off? (on another planet, not earth)

 

[Moach]

unlike the DG, the crew access hatch is not in the nose - but inside the forward gear well, where exists a little retractable ladder :thumbup:

i'm still not sure if the nose should open at all, actually:hmm: