As I'm sure anyone with a fleeting interest in Physics knows, doubling velocity requires 8 times the power. This is because doubling the speed quadruples the energy, and because your speed is doubled, you do the same amount of work in half the time, hence (2*2)/0.5 = 8.
I did a little experiment on this the other day - I took the Bush Plane, removed its prop and attached a couple of jet engines, to which I applied a 0.2 power multiplier. I climbed to 1,000', stuck it on autopilot and went full throttle. It reached 151 mph.
Next, I changed the power multiplier to 1.6 (8 times the previous value), and repeated the test, expecting to see roughly double the previously achieved speed, so somewhere around 300 mph. To my surprise, it swiftly accelerated past this and reached equilibrium around 450 mph.
Can anyone explain this? Is this something to do with Simpleplanes not treating the 'power multiplier' correctly/linearly? Is it because of the changing drag coefficient at different speeds? I doubt the latter, because even at 151 mph the aircraft essentially had an almost nil AoA, same as at 450 mph.
Or are Simpleplanes' values sound but there other factors to consider?
This is very interesting, I hadn't thought about this before.
Also, congrats on being back after 3.7 years lol
@Javiatrix oh sick!!! Thanks for the info dude!
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They really need to add variable parts to the engines. Like modifying the acceleration of the engine, exhaust fumes, and accurate changing of the MAXIMUM power of the engine 😂
Like afterburner and military power are completely different things. Milpow is normal thrust 0-100, and afterburner/reheat is like 120, or more modern, like 150%
The game is super simple trying to be complex and it doesnt work out well lol
@TheSonOfThunder Haha it's all good! I think I figured it out btw... The 'power multiplier' is more like an 'energy multiplier'. It varies only as kinetic energy varies but DOESN'T take into account the 'per unit time' part of the power equation. In essence, if you want to go twice as fast, you have to multiply the power by 4, not 8 lol. That has passed a few tests now!
No no Ik! I was agreeing with you, in a badly phrased way
@Javiatrix ofc dude!
Yeahhhh SP be a bit weird sometimes lol
@TheSonOfThunder Thanks for the reply! So it's a Simpleplanes thing by the sounds of it, not a problem, was just curious about the 'why' of it. Also yeah, energy is based on velocity squared, but power is cubed, hence twice the speed required eight times the power :)
But SP in entirety is utterly... erm... disproportionate and poor in calculating sometimes
And adding on to what PlaneFlightX said, look at the engine, they show a lbf (pound-force). That little orange dot that shows the center of thrust is literally just the point where all the forces are equal. If you have 2 jets with 3,000 lbf, then that orange dot has 6,000 lbf going probably backwards. If the jet weighs 10,000 pounds, it will have a 0.6 thrust-to-weight ratio, and likely shouldn't be able to climb at a 90 degree angle
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I have a bunch of kinematic equations written down, but I rarely use them in SP because they typically don't work anyways lol.
Also, velocity is squared, by the way
SimplePlanes's physics are... simple. They do physics things but are not precise at all. I like to make my builds feel like they fly realistically instead of making all my parameters
(engine power, craft weight, wing area etc.) realistic.