Here's a few of mine, one with the nice sunset angle (and dust from the convoy) and one showing most of the folks that were involved (missing Venus and jangelelcangry because they had left by then)
It's pretty clear that the ship is based fairly directly on the B-17 bomber, both in design and performance. As shown in the initial bombing run on the dreadnought, the StarFortress' main characteristic is its ability to fly in formation, in a straight line, to deliver a prodigious quantity of ordinance over a relatively large area, again pretty similar to the WWII-era bomber it is based on. However, the main thing that differs from the B-17 (in fact the StarFortress' main weakness) is its incredibly poor survivability.
During the Second World War, one of the most notable properties of the B-17 bomber, other than its sheer quantity and effectiveness, was the aircraft's ability to take massive amounts of damage and keep flying. Fortresses returned to base with destroyed engines, gaping holes shot in the fuselage, occasionally entire stabilizers missing, and, on at least two occasions, after being nearly blown in half. The B-17 was originally dubbed the Flying Fortress because of its large quantity of defensive armament, but lived up to the name through sheer durability.
This is the main thing missing from the StarFortress. As depicted in the unfortunately quite poorly-thought-out opening sequence, the MG-100s are really not capable of taking any damage whatsoever. In fact, given how rapidly they fall victim to TIE fire (which even X-Wings are able to survive, and many other ships are able to shrug off with little to no damage), I wonder whether the deflector shielding on the StarFortress is even military-grade, as it does very little to protect the bomber from damage.
The numbers are for the blueprint scale, which you can adjust to make the image be whatever size you want to build from. I typically will start by just laying out a bunch of fuselage blocks to get the overall length (as determined via the craft properties tab of the Menu window in the editor), and then scale the blueprint to fit that.
The position is just if you need to move it horizontally/vertically from the default for whatever reason. Blueprint position is locked to the active cockpit block, so if you move that to a different spot on the build you might need to readjust your blueprint so it isn't shifted out of position.
At the time of posting this forum, your build that "didn't even get seen by people" had been up for approximately three hours. That's both within your "5 hours" window and an utterly insignificant amount of time for a build to be on the site, sorry.
Plus, keep in mind that the time you post stuff matters, particularly for your "5 hours" window. People might be sleeping or working or whatever.
Definitely looks like a carrier with the way the upper deck is shaped. Interestingly, though it's visible in both Google Maps and Google Earth, it is not visible on Apple Maps or other publicly available software (that I've seen, anyway). Which carrier, though, is a bit of a mystery, since none of the Black Sea navies have a carrier with that profile and the US Navy's task group is supposed to be in the Mediterranean.
Under Game Settings (Pause menu -> Settings -> Game Settings), set AI Air Traffic to "None". This will make the game stop automatically spawning AI planes.
A lot of learning how to make "good planes" comes from digging into planes that other people have made, seeing and then understanding the methods and techniques they use, and then adapting those techniques to fit your own personal building style. It isn't just a flip-of-the-switch, "follow these steps and you'll build good planes" thing.
Sure, there's general tips to be had ("use blueprints", etc.), but there can be no definitive answer on what makes a "good plane", because everyone has their own standards regarding what makes something "good".
Additionally, clickbait posts like this are really not helpful for those who are actually looking for information and tips on how to advance their building skills.
Pretty easy to check. Spawn at the airport you want to measure from, spawn an AI on your head (while paused), then change locations to another airport and measure how far away the AI plane is.
Wright <--> Krakabloa is thirtysomething miles (depending on whether you're measuring Yeager or Bandit)
Wright <--> Snowstone is 67ish I believe
Wright <--> Maywar is somewhere between 40 and 60 depending on where on Maywar you measure from
And Wright <--> Sky Park City is like five or six I think.
@Mrgoofy Apologies, I've been preoccupied with more important things (no offense intended) this week, so I haven't had time to respond.
If you want to tag me on an unlisted post of your tank, I can check it out, sure. Should be a super easy fix for you to do, but I can still take a look if you want.
Hard to say for certain given the lack of specifics, but the likely issue is the weight of the turret relative to the weight of the body. Either make the turret weigh less or make the body weigh more.
Are you, by chance, crashing or exploding? The cockpit is an indestructible part (barring the rare glitch where it too vanishes after a particularly nasty crash), meaning that if enough force is involved in the crash it can go quite far, and fast. However, I haven't heard of it yeeting itself into oblivion just all on its own. It generally occurs due to collision or explosion.
@Jaspy190 Yeah, that's the other problem with it. Not sure how to fix that since a dedicated height variable for the bomb isn't possible, apparently. The only other thing I can think of is to just scrap the code entirely and set the chute to whatever activation group the pylon itself is on, so it activates immediately when the bomb is dropped. Not nearly as interesting but it should work without issue.
@Jaspy190 ...Okay, so unfortunately after some testing it seems that the parachute can't be activated by a custom variable, so the altitude would in fact be dependent on the altitude of the plane (meaning that on the plus side you don't need the flight computer, but on the minus side you'll either have to dive after dropping the bomb or just have the chute deploy immediately). I have no idea why this is the way it is, but the parachute has always been particularly difficult to work with when it comes to custom inputs.
Anyway, for this method you'll need to set the parachute's input (*via Overload because otherwise it won't work since the parachute makes things difficult for no reason) to: GS > 1 & Altitude < 200 & Activate1. You can change the numbers around if you want, so the chute will only activate above a certain speed or below a different altitude (in meters), and change the activation group to whatever you want.
Then, you'll need to attach the bomb to a detacher or pylon set to whatever group you set the chute to use, and launch the bomb with that group (dropping it with the "drop bomb" button will not trigger the chute).
It's somewhat of a clunky process, but the parachute doesn't seem to quite work properly with FT code, so it's the best I can come up with.
@Jaspy190 They're basically equivalent to cockpit blocks, except they're smaller and don't have a camera associated with them. You need it in this case because just telling the parachute to read the standard Altitude variable would make it depend on the altitude of the plane, instead of the altitude of the bomb. Attaching a flight computer with its own separate Altitude variable to the bomb itself avoids this problem (in theory; I haven't tried this myself but it should work).
A parachute activating by height after being dropped can be done, though I believe you'd also need a flight computer attached to the weapon, and it would need to be fired from a detacher or otherwise armed with an activation group or button.
If you set the flight computer's Altitude variable to something (e.g. BombAltitude), you could then set the parachute's input to (Activate1 & BombAltitude<100) ? 1 : 0 and I believe it should open when the bomb reaches 100 meters above sea level. I'm not sure how to do an air burst bomb though, since you can't "tell" the bomb to blow up, but I do believe I've seen it before so it's probably possible.
@U2 1GB VRAM should be fine. I'm on half that and don't have any significant problems with anything even on close-to-max settings. I'm not certain whether the part count a device can run is more dependent on the graphics card, the processor, or the RAM, but I'm able to run up to 2000 parts and still hold 15-20FPS, which is an entirely playable framerate for SP.
Regarding the mods you mentioned, smoke trails will be fine. I haven't had any noticeable performance impact from it unless I were to put like forty emitters on one plane and turn them all at once or something. Tracks2 has a bit more of a performance impact just due to the complexity of the track parts, but again there aren't many issues unless you just go completely overboard with things. Pearl Harbor is a fairly intensive map just due to its size, but you should still be able to run it pretty well. Turning Aircraft Reflections back to Static instead of Dynamic is good for getting framerate back if things get too laggy (I have to do that on the Nordschleife map), but again you shouldn't have any major issues.
You can see which activation groups are, well, active by hitting the little arrow on the right side of the main HUD (next to the fuel gauge; the same panel where you can toggle your landing gear or select weapons), or by hitting Right Shift (I believe that's the default) if you're on PC. Active groups will be highlighted in blue, inactive will be gray.
As far as which groups do what, there's a few ways to do this. First is to check the craft instructions (Pause menu -> Craft Instructions). If the builder put any instructions or lists of what buttons do, they'll be in there. (Do note that this is a relatively new feature so most older planes won't have them in-game. Also check the plane's description on the website too just in case, since builders can also often just forget to add them to the instructions in-game).
If there aren't any instructions or lists of what-does-what anywhere, the other option is to just start pressing things and figure out which button does what. Be warned, you might explode if one of the groups is "drop weapons" and you're testing on the ground!
In order...
1. Absolutely not!
2. I certainly hope not
3. Everyone cares for someone, even if it isn't readily apparent.
4. Nope. Not at all.
5. I don't think you do, no.
6. No, no, no, no, no, and no!
I know you're going through hard times right now, but there are people who care about you. Never forget that. No matter how bad things might get for you, there is always someone who cares and wants to help you.
I know that this site can kind of devolve into memes and chaos at times, but I like to think that I speak for everyone here by saying that we care about you and we want to help. We're all here for you, got it?
@BritishAirwaysFAN124 I don't think I've seen any mods that add an engine like that. People typically just build them out of fuselage blocks and other parts (with a regular engine inside somewhere).
Which engines are you looking for? There's a few mods that add one or two more jet engines, but you'll need to be more specific than "bigger and more cooler Engines".
The reason it explodes is because of the pistons. Pistons really don't like compressive forces, and your plane weighs 139 tons. I'd suggest either finding a way to do the gear without pistons, or significantly lightening the aircraft (preferably the latter, since even without the pistons 139 tons on two tires will still make the wheels' suspension super jittery).
@Airheaddivision The number of builds you have saved shouldn't affect anything performance-wise, what matters is the part count of the specific build you have loaded at any given time.
Does your game still crash when using the default planes?
What device are you on?
How long has this been happening?
@Airheaddivision Hmm... if it's closing itself like that, it's probably crashing. Usually this happens because people try to run builds with a much higher part count than their device can handle (though that limit varies from one device to another and you really only find it with trial and error), or they're running with their graphics settings too high. Are there any specific builds that cause it to crash more frequently? Does it still do this even when just using the default planes? What device are you on, and how long has this been happening?
Generally the "Rick" tag is used for meme builds, hence the name and description. It's a little more interesting than just a "Meme" tag, don't you think?
If anything I think it's slightly overrated (mainly because it's one of the best of the "remastered" versions of the older stock planes), but it's still a very good plane. I use it a lot in multiplayer.
Is anything on the turret connected to any part of the main hull other than the rotator? Is the rotator's input and speed set to something that will allow it to work (a valid input and not free-spinning)?
@Funt1meTh3Psych0 So, let me summarize this.
You want to acquire digital copies of a series of books. These books cost money. You are unable or unwilling to purchase the books with said money. You want to find a free digital version of a paid item so that you can use the item without paying for it.
That is both copyright infringement and quite literally the very definition of digital piracy. No matter how you look at it, what you are asking for is assistance with theft. I certainly will not be providing this, and I hope that nobody else does, either. I would instead recommend seeking a legal method of acquiring these books, one that will not expose you to the possibility of being held liable under civil and criminal law.
@Mrgoofy Because... that's how it works. You have to link to the image from somewhere else, you don't upload it directly to this site. Some people use postimages.cc, some use Discord, some use other places. Once you have an embed URL for your image from wherever you've put it, you add it to your post by typing .
Here's a few of mine, one with the nice sunset angle (and dust from the convoy) and one showing most of the folks that were involved (missing Venus and jangelelcangry because they had left by then)
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/998493137649541120/1095886156681466038/Screenshot_407.pnghttps://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/998493137649541120/1095886157184762007/Screenshot_403.pngIt's pretty clear that the ship is based fairly directly on the B-17 bomber, both in design and performance. As shown in the initial bombing run on the dreadnought, the StarFortress' main characteristic is its ability to fly in formation, in a straight line, to deliver a prodigious quantity of ordinance over a relatively large area, again pretty similar to the WWII-era bomber it is based on. However, the main thing that differs from the B-17 (in fact the StarFortress' main weakness) is its incredibly poor survivability.
During the Second World War, one of the most notable properties of the B-17 bomber, other than its sheer quantity and effectiveness, was the aircraft's ability to take massive amounts of damage and keep flying. Fortresses returned to base with destroyed engines, gaping holes shot in the fuselage, occasionally entire stabilizers missing, and, on at least two occasions, after being nearly blown in half. The B-17 was originally dubbed the Flying Fortress because of its large quantity of defensive armament, but lived up to the name through sheer durability.
This is the main thing missing from the StarFortress. As depicted in the unfortunately quite poorly-thought-out opening sequence, the MG-100s are really not capable of taking any damage whatsoever. In fact, given how rapidly they fall victim to TIE fire (which even X-Wings are able to survive, and many other ships are able to shrug off with little to no damage), I wonder whether the deflector shielding on the StarFortress is even military-grade, as it does very little to protect the bomber from damage.
(1/2)
Ooooooo, that looks great!
T
@YeetDoctor They work for me
Unfortunately not (devs please)
T
@NawcandoAK47 Sorry, my mistake. I meant the "Cockpit Interior" section.
There's a text label part under the "Cockpits" section.
The numbers are for the blueprint scale, which you can adjust to make the image be whatever size you want to build from. I typically will start by just laying out a bunch of fuselage blocks to get the overall length (as determined via the craft properties tab of the Menu window in the editor), and then scale the blueprint to fit that.
The position is just if you need to move it horizontally/vertically from the default for whatever reason. Blueprint position is locked to the active cockpit block, so if you move that to a different spot on the build you might need to readjust your blueprint so it isn't shifted out of position.
At the time of posting this forum, your build that "didn't even get seen by people" had been up for approximately three hours. That's both within your "5 hours" window and an utterly insignificant amount of time for a build to be on the site, sorry.
Plus, keep in mind that the time you post stuff matters, particularly for your "5 hours" window. People might be sleeping or working or whatever.
Definitely looks like a carrier with the way the upper deck is shaped. Interestingly, though it's visible in both Google Maps and Google Earth, it is not visible on Apple Maps or other publicly available software (that I've seen, anyway). Which carrier, though, is a bit of a mystery, since none of the Black Sea navies have a carrier with that profile and the US Navy's task group is supposed to be in the Mediterranean.
Here's the Google Maps coords for anyone who wants to take a look themselves.
Those are some nice pictures!
Theoretically I think it should be possible through some (ab)use of the control base, but I'm not sure how.
Under Game Settings (Pause menu -> Settings -> Game Settings), set AI Air Traffic to "None". This will make the game stop automatically spawning AI planes.
[text you want to display](url)For example:
This link goes to the main page of the site
[This link goes to the main page of the site](https://www.simpleplanes.com)Ok bye.
A lot of learning how to make "good planes" comes from digging into planes that other people have made, seeing and then understanding the methods and techniques they use, and then adapting those techniques to fit your own personal building style. It isn't just a flip-of-the-switch, "follow these steps and you'll build good planes" thing.
Sure, there's general tips to be had ("use blueprints", etc.), but there can be no definitive answer on what makes a "good plane", because everyone has their own standards regarding what makes something "good".
Additionally, clickbait posts like this are really not helpful for those who are actually looking for information and tips on how to advance their building skills.
T
Main Menu -> Settings -> On-Screen Flight Controls
Pretty easy to check. Spawn at the airport you want to measure from, spawn an AI on your head (while paused), then change locations to another airport and measure how far away the AI plane is.
Wright <--> Krakabloa is thirtysomething miles (depending on whether you're measuring Yeager or Bandit)
Wright <--> Snowstone is 67ish I believe
Wright <--> Maywar is somewhere between 40 and 60 depending on where on Maywar you measure from
And Wright <--> Sky Park City is like five or six I think.
@Mrgoofy Apologies, I've been preoccupied with more important things (no offense intended) this week, so I haven't had time to respond.
If you want to tag me on an unlisted post of your tank, I can check it out, sure. Should be a super easy fix for you to do, but I can still take a look if you want.
Hard to say for certain given the lack of specifics, but the likely issue is the weight of the turret relative to the weight of the body. Either make the turret weigh less or make the body weigh more.
@Phox e
I imagine it would be pretty easy doing it that way, yes...
Are you, by chance, crashing or exploding? The cockpit is an indestructible part (barring the rare glitch where it too vanishes after a particularly nasty crash), meaning that if enough force is involved in the crash it can go quite far, and fast. However, I haven't heard of it yeeting itself into oblivion just all on its own. It generally occurs due to collision or explosion.
But why?
@Jaspy190 Yeah, that's the other problem with it. Not sure how to fix that since a dedicated height variable for the bomb isn't possible, apparently. The only other thing I can think of is to just scrap the code entirely and set the chute to whatever activation group the pylon itself is on, so it activates immediately when the bomb is dropped. Not nearly as interesting but it should work without issue.
@Jaspy190 ...Okay, so unfortunately after some testing it seems that the parachute can't be activated by a custom variable, so the altitude would in fact be dependent on the altitude of the plane (meaning that on the plus side you don't need the flight computer, but on the minus side you'll either have to dive after dropping the bomb or just have the chute deploy immediately). I have no idea why this is the way it is, but the parachute has always been particularly difficult to work with when it comes to custom inputs.
Anyway, for this method you'll need to set the parachute's input (*via Overload because otherwise it won't work since the parachute makes things difficult for no reason) to: GS > 1 & Altitude < 200 & Activate1. You can change the numbers around if you want, so the chute will only activate above a certain speed or below a different altitude (in meters), and change the activation group to whatever you want.
Then, you'll need to attach the bomb to a detacher or pylon set to whatever group you set the chute to use, and launch the bomb with that group (dropping it with the "drop bomb" button will not trigger the chute).
It's somewhat of a clunky process, but the parachute doesn't seem to quite work properly with FT code, so it's the best I can come up with.
@Jaspy190 They're basically equivalent to cockpit blocks, except they're smaller and don't have a camera associated with them. You need it in this case because just telling the parachute to read the standard
Altitudevariable would make it depend on the altitude of the plane, instead of the altitude of the bomb. Attaching a flight computer with its own separate Altitude variable to the bomb itself avoids this problem (in theory; I haven't tried this myself but it should work).A parachute activating by height after being dropped can be done, though I believe you'd also need a flight computer attached to the weapon, and it would need to be fired from a detacher or otherwise armed with an activation group or button.
If you set the flight computer's Altitude variable to something (e.g.
BombAltitude), you could then set the parachute's input to (Activate1 & BombAltitude<100) ? 1 : 0 and I believe it should open when the bomb reaches 100 meters above sea level. I'm not sure how to do an air burst bomb though, since you can't "tell" the bomb to blow up, but I do believe I've seen it before so it's probably possible.Still there as far as I can tell. Here's the link.
@U2 1GB VRAM should be fine. I'm on half that and don't have any significant problems with anything even on close-to-max settings. I'm not certain whether the part count a device can run is more dependent on the graphics card, the processor, or the RAM, but I'm able to run up to 2000 parts and still hold 15-20FPS, which is an entirely playable framerate for SP.
Regarding the mods you mentioned, smoke trails will be fine. I haven't had any noticeable performance impact from it unless I were to put like forty emitters on one plane and turn them all at once or something. Tracks2 has a bit more of a performance impact just due to the complexity of the track parts, but again there aren't many issues unless you just go completely overboard with things. Pearl Harbor is a fairly intensive map just due to its size, but you should still be able to run it pretty well. Turning Aircraft Reflections back to Static instead of Dynamic is good for getting framerate back if things get too laggy (I have to do that on the Nordschleife map), but again you shouldn't have any major issues.
Edit: My hardware
AMD Ryzen 5 4500U
Radeon Vega 6 iGPU (512MB VRAM)
16GB RAM
T
@Gabriel747 Direct from the rules page: While we allow photoshoped thumbnails, post with misleading thumbnails will be removed.
You can see which activation groups are, well, active by hitting the little arrow on the right side of the main HUD (next to the fuel gauge; the same panel where you can toggle your landing gear or select weapons), or by hitting Right Shift (I believe that's the default) if you're on PC. Active groups will be highlighted in blue, inactive will be gray.
As far as which groups do what, there's a few ways to do this. First is to check the craft instructions (Pause menu -> Craft Instructions). If the builder put any instructions or lists of what buttons do, they'll be in there. (Do note that this is a relatively new feature so most older planes won't have them in-game. Also check the plane's description on the website too just in case, since builders can also often just forget to add them to the instructions in-game).
If there aren't any instructions or lists of what-does-what anywhere, the other option is to just start pressing things and figure out which button does what. Be warned, you might explode if one of the groups is "drop weapons" and you're testing on the ground!
Bye.
In order...
1. Absolutely not!
2. I certainly hope not
3. Everyone cares for someone, even if it isn't readily apparent.
4. Nope. Not at all.
5. I don't think you do, no.
6. No, no, no, no, no, and no!
I know you're going through hard times right now, but there are people who care about you. Never forget that. No matter how bad things might get for you, there is always someone who cares and wants to help you.
I know that this site can kind of devolve into memes and chaos at times, but I like to think that I speak for everyone here by saying that we care about you and we want to help. We're all here for you, got it?
@BritishAirwaysFAN124 I don't think I've seen any mods that add an engine like that. People typically just build them out of fuselage blocks and other parts (with a regular engine inside somewhere).
Which engines are you looking for? There's a few mods that add one or two more jet engines, but you'll need to be more specific than "bigger and more cooler Engines".
The reason it explodes is because of the pistons. Pistons really don't like compressive forces, and your plane weighs 139 tons. I'd suggest either finding a way to do the gear without pistons, or significantly lightening the aircraft (preferably the latter, since even without the pistons 139 tons on two tires will still make the wheels' suspension super jittery).
I mean yeah pretty much
Heggkeska
@Airheaddivision The number of builds you have saved shouldn't affect anything performance-wise, what matters is the part count of the specific build you have loaded at any given time.
Does your game still crash when using the default planes?
What device are you on?
How long has this been happening?
@Airheaddivision Hmm... if it's closing itself like that, it's probably crashing. Usually this happens because people try to run builds with a much higher part count than their device can handle (though that limit varies from one device to another and you really only find it with trial and error), or they're running with their graphics settings too high. Are there any specific builds that cause it to crash more frequently? Does it still do this even when just using the default planes? What device are you on, and how long has this been happening?
Generally the "Rick" tag is used for meme builds, hence the name and description. It's a little more interesting than just a "Meme" tag, don't you think?
If anything I think it's slightly overrated (mainly because it's one of the best of the "remastered" versions of the older stock planes), but it's still a very good plane. I use it a lot in multiplayer.
Is anything on the turret connected to any part of the main hull other than the rotator? Is the rotator's input and speed set to something that will allow it to work (a valid input and not free-spinning)?
@Funt1meTh3Psych0 So, let me summarize this.
You want to acquire digital copies of a series of books. These books cost money. You are unable or unwilling to purchase the books with said money. You want to find a free digital version of a paid item so that you can use the item without paying for it.
That is both copyright infringement and quite literally the very definition of digital piracy. No matter how you look at it, what you are asking for is assistance with theft. I certainly will not be providing this, and I hope that nobody else does, either. I would instead recommend seeking a legal method of acquiring these books, one that will not expose you to the possibility of being held liable under civil and criminal law.
I have no further comment on this issue.
Ooh! Looks great!
@Mrgoofy Because... that's how it works. You have to link to the image from somewhere else, you don't upload it directly to this site. Some people use postimages.cc, some use Discord, some use other places. Once you have an embed URL for your image from wherever you've put it, you add it to your post by typing
.Edit: Ninja'd by Flight