Put a speed limiter on it so it won't go faster than 30mph, but then make the front wheels bump. This thing has 'cruising lowrider' written all over it. I can't even drive this one without whistling that song
Also, when you mirror a wing, your flaps will go up on one wing and down on the other because SP took them for ailerons. You really have to test them on the runway and invert the direction by hand where you in order to get both flaps down when you want them.
Psst, to be counted in a challenge, you have to build your plane around the cockpit given in that challenge. This is how 'successor' works in SP. So delete your cockpit and save the rest of the plane as a 'subassembly'. Then download the cockpit HERE and attach it to your plane.
And while we're at it. If I can have one request: make a fixed landing gear that looks like it is borrowed from a Matchbox car. Pretty much just a resizable wheel on a flattened fuselage block. The plane will look much more Toylike that way.
You might want to try your hands on this toy plane challenge . This plane already looks like a toy so if you make something like this and just paint it in toy colors rather than camouflage, it will not be the least interesting of all submissions.
Besides, Santa Claus is counting on you....
Also, posting in challenges is the best way to get noticed as all other participants and interested builders keep checking out the other entries for inspiration.
I'm playing on a mobile phone. So I really can't switch until SimplaPlanes2 is available for Android. Even if I had a good gaming PC at home, I wouldn't know if I would want to actively withdraw to a computer room or game corner just to make my planes. If I wanted that, I could just as well go build a balsawood model airplane in my garage.
The P.stands for Project. According to Lippish's own biography, this was a design study for a dour-engined bomber or transporter he and his team made for the 'Department L' at Messerschmitt.... Mostly to keep themselves busy while the development of the Me.163 was entering a slow phase.
@SimplyElegant
'labels' are on the bottom of the 'cockpit Interior' tab. Originally only designed to put 'labels' on the different switches and lights, someone quickly figured out that you could also use it to print serial numbers on tail planes and wings and then someone figured out that if you put 3 'dots' of different size on top of each other, you basically get a 3-color cockade. (Hope I'm spelling that right.) So long story short: you can use labels to put texts or serial numbers on wings and fudge the special symbols such as +, ° , and . To make insignias.
For practical applications, feel free to look at any of my airplanes and copy what you want. The Corgy has a n actual RAF roundel you can borrow
You can still join tht challenge. You won't get any points, but your plane will show up as a successor and be listed with all the other 25-part planes.
The short version to get the plane into the competition is to just detach the cockpit, then save the plane -without cockpit- as a subassembly. Then download the cockpit from the challenge, and add the plane you just saved to that one. Simpleplanes looks at the cockpit to determine'successors' and by building your plane on your previous one, you made it a successor to that.
Nice little retro plane with the look and feel.of an old plastic toy. Flies quite well too, although pay attention landing, the prope are really close to the ground. If your props keep exploding after the third try, use overload editor to make your landing gear bigger
Love the details. Unfortunately the poor thing is impossible to fly. I had to move the wings forward, give them dihedral for stability and enlarge the front leg just to be able to take off. And it still needs extra care not to flip over.
Love tht little details. Two ideas for improvements though 1) Bigger control surfaces for better handling, 2) Longer nose wheel strut so you can make the propeller bigger too (120 in. At least) Speed will improve at least by half.
@Thad23 so my best option so far is not to use just one rotator engine but make a two-engined plane with both rotators counteracting each other. It's a dirty fix and it somehow feels like running away from a good fight, but what the xxxc, if it works, it works
Roll: left/right. Yes, I want to do the steering with my right hand
Throttle Engine input. As throttle only goes from 0 to +1, this only lets the car move forward
Therefore:
Trim: Reverse: Trim in highest position flips the input for Throttle so that the car can move backwards. Power/speed is still controlled via Throttle, only now it is in reverse
Yes, I love to make thr helicopter go up and down with my left joystick, as for the engine: I first and foremost use the governor option to have the engine run at optimal speed for the pitch settings. To start and run the engine itself, I have 3 methods, ranked by preference, lowest to highest:
- Assign engine input to VTOL slider or Trim
- Start/stop engine with activate button (Activate1 is my standard choice) and a button or switch on the dashboard in pilot view/VR mode
- just assign engine input to Throttle but set the governor real low (5-10%) so that the first 5 % is for starting the engine, for settings higher than that Throttle controls the pitch and the governor takes over the engine speed
@MonsNotTheMonster I experimented with RainMCDeer layout. Although I get used to it fairly quickly I prefer tht flaps on the right side: if I have to take a hand of its joystick to work with the flaps, I rather drop the Throttle setting and have my other hand on the pitch and roll than vice versa.
I have seen Activate1 for engines, and I believe it makes sense but I've seen a lot more builds where Activate1 is used for the cockpit doors or canopy.
VTOL plane:
- Throttle, pitch, roll, yaw: standard joystick
- VTOL slider down: flaps
- VTOL slider up: VTOL mode: in building menu and on initial spawning, I have the VTOL nozzles pointing back to function as standard jet exhausts. VTOL up rotators them downwards to full vertical and also moves all other flaps/gears/covers into VTOL position.
- Brake: wheel brakes and air brakes
Almost from the beginning I set my VTOL nozzles to rotate a bit past 90°, 120° being my current favorite. This makes that with the VTOL slider at full too, the nozzle points slightly forward to enable braking or even flying backwards.
To start off: my personal favorites: Airplane:
- Throttle, pitch, roll, yaw: standard joystick
- VTOL slider down: flaps
- VTOL slider up: air brakes 0 to 100%
- Brake: air brakes 100%
- Trim all up or all down: special actions
- Braking parachute: I prefer a double approach: either one of the buttons or Trim to 'prime' the parachute, when 'primed', the parachute will deploy when the craft is something like 3m /10ft above the ground.
As said by the other posters: Funkytrees has an if -function in the form a?b:c
This is a conditional formula that returns b if a id true and c otherwise.
For instance: <Rotator input> is VTOL>0.5 ? Throttle:0 returns the value of Throttle if the VTOL slider is pushed higher than 0.5 , and 0 otherwise.
If you want your input to be <x> when the ground speed is 0 and 0 otherwise, you can try: <Input> is GS=0? X:0
Although you might get better results with <Input> is GS<3? X:0
(Ground speed is measured in M/s, which is roughly half of MPH and 3.6 times KmH. So GS<3 would correspond with 6mph/10kmh.
I wouldn't upvote an aircraft that has neither flaps nor air brakes, but this thing has so many other cool features I don't mind having to land at 399 mph, even if I still crash half of the time. Upvote sent.
I posted a version where I changed the controls to VTOL neutral= nozzles straight back for forward flight, VTOL up= nozzles rotate from full back to full down and a little further to 39° forward for flying backwards/braking. You can find it HERE..feel.free.to lol at it and use what you find useful for your next build. You can even repost the aircraft wholesale as your own. You built most of it after all.
Put a speed limiter on it so it won't go faster than 30mph, but then make the front wheels bump. This thing has 'cruising lowrider' written all over it. I can't even drive this one without whistling that song
Also, when you mirror a wing, your flaps will go up on one wing and down on the other because SP took them for ailerons. You really have to test them on the runway and invert the direction by hand where you in order to get both flaps down when you want them.
Psst, to be counted in a challenge, you have to build your plane around the cockpit given in that challenge. This is how 'successor' works in SP. So delete your cockpit and save the rest of the plane as a 'subassembly'. Then download the cockpit HERE and attach it to your plane.
And while we're at it. If I can have one request: make a fixed landing gear that looks like it is borrowed from a Matchbox car. Pretty much just a resizable wheel on a flattened fuselage block. The plane will look much more Toylike that way.
Càn you rotate everything 90 degrees? If you do, it can be used as a hangar and tower for Wright North Runway
You might want to try your hands on this toy plane challenge . This plane already looks like a toy so if you make something like this and just paint it in toy colors rather than camouflage, it will not be the least interesting of all submissions.
Besides, Santa Claus is counting on you....
Also, posting in challenges is the best way to get noticed as all other participants and interested builders keep checking out the other entries for inspiration.
Congratulations. You've come quite a way in one month. Curious on what you will build a year from now.
+2For having no name, it is actually pretty lifelike to the real life [name redacted]. Congratulations.
Great. I'll start by imagining how to put palettes of freight into a fuselage, then build an aircraft around that.
Is the challenge still open? I noticed you changed it half way, so did you update the time as well?
I'm playing on a mobile phone. So I really can't switch until SimplaPlanes2 is available for Android. Even if I had a good gaming PC at home, I wouldn't know if I would want to actively withdraw to a computer room or game corner just to make my planes. If I wanted that, I could just as well go build a balsawood model airplane in my garage.
+3The P.stands for Project. According to Lippish's own biography, this was a design study for a dour-engined bomber or transporter he and his team made for the 'Department L' at Messerschmitt.... Mostly to keep themselves busy while the development of the Me.163 was entering a slow phase.
+1@Seeras thanks
Form over function definitely, but I love it.
+1This just needs a 1950's paint scheme in sky blue and light green. I can see it popping up on Aeroflot posters from that area.
+1@seeras This plane is a contender for the Santa Claus needs Toy Planes challenge. Can you please make it a successor to this
@SimplyElegant
'labels' are on the bottom of the 'cockpit Interior' tab. Originally only designed to put 'labels' on the different switches and lights, someone quickly figured out that you could also use it to print serial numbers on tail planes and wings and then someone figured out that if you put 3 'dots' of different size on top of each other, you basically get a 3-color cockade. (Hope I'm spelling that right.) So long story short: you can use labels to put texts or serial numbers on wings and fudge the special symbols such as +, ° , and . To make insignias.
For practical applications, feel free to look at any of my airplanes and copy what you want. The Corgy has a n actual RAF roundel you can borrow
Made just a little refit with a bigger tail plane and a longer landing gear. Hope you like it. Click HERE to see it.
@ChaseRacliot yea, the name is a bit misleading, but it is a toy plane, even if I would have wished for some battle of Britain decals
+1Love the diecast feel of it. Definitely got that right.
Ps, I got into trouble with physics too when I experimented with 'model' gliders. Especially the engine part
Would have made the floats bigger, but otherwise a pretty solid build. Congratulations for making Silver
You can still join tht challenge. You won't get any points, but your plane will show up as a successor and be listed with all the other 25-part planes.
Just as good a toy as the other one.
No problem. I can request an admin to add it.
The short version to get the plane into the competition is to just detach the cockpit, then save the plane -without cockpit- as a subassembly. Then download the cockpit from the challenge, and add the plane you just saved to that one. Simpleplanes looks at the cockpit to determine'successors' and by building your plane on your previous one, you made it a successor to that.
Looks like the French Sud-Est 4500 Vautour, only a lot chubbier
+2This one actually looks as if it could have been made out of pressed tin. Congratulations
+1Nice little retro plane with the look and feel.of an old plastic toy. Flies quite well too, although pay attention landing, the prope are really close to the ground. If your props keep exploding after the third try, use overload editor to make your landing gear bigger
Love the details. Unfortunately the poor thing is impossible to fly. I had to move the wings forward, give them dihedral for stability and enlarge the front leg just to be able to take off. And it still needs extra care not to flip over.
Oh, no... You didn't....
+1Marvelous. This one should be the SimplePlanes default helicopter instead of tht default helicopter
Wing floats and float struts must be way longer, and you can do without half of the bouyancy in the main float, but otherwise a real nice plane
+1Love tht little details. Two ideas for improvements though 1) Bigger control surfaces for better handling, 2) Longer nose wheel strut so you can make the propeller bigger too (120 in. At least) Speed will improve at least by half.
+1A quick way to improve the stability is to move the wings one block to the back to get more distance between Center of Mass and Center of Lift.
Plus on the details and the paint job.
@Thad23 so my best option so far is not to use just one rotator engine but make a two-engined plane with both rotators counteracting each other. It's a dirty fix and it somehow feels like running away from a good fight, but what the xxxc, if it works, it works
@hpgbproductions how do you do 'control bases'? I already used XML to set the rotator assembly's mass and drag out 0 that doesn't seem to help.
The Ardelian empire 'pirate fighter' from Buck Rogers?
Car/Truck/Anything wheel-driven:
Therefore:
Helicopter :
Okay, this is going to be controversial
Yes, I love to make thr helicopter go up and down with my left joystick, as for the engine: I first and foremost use the governor option to have the engine run at optimal speed for the pitch settings. To start and run the engine itself, I have 3 methods, ranked by preference, lowest to highest:
- Assign engine input to VTOL slider or Trim
- Start/stop engine with activate button (Activate1 is my standard choice) and a button or switch on the dashboard in pilot view/VR mode
- just assign engine input to Throttle but set the governor real low (5-10%) so that the first 5 % is for starting the engine, for settings higher than that Throttle controls the pitch and the governor takes over the engine speed
@MonsNotTheMonster I experimented with RainMCDeer layout. Although I get used to it fairly quickly I prefer tht flaps on the right side: if I have to take a hand of its joystick to work with the flaps, I rather drop the Throttle setting and have my other hand on the pitch and roll than vice versa.
I have seen Activate1 for engines, and I believe it makes sense but I've seen a lot more builds where Activate1 is used for the cockpit doors or canopy.
VTOL plane:
- Throttle, pitch, roll, yaw: standard joystick
- VTOL slider down: flaps
- VTOL slider up: VTOL mode: in building menu and on initial spawning, I have the VTOL nozzles pointing back to function as standard jet exhausts. VTOL up rotators them downwards to full vertical and also moves all other flaps/gears/covers into VTOL position.
- Brake: wheel brakes and air brakes
Almost from the beginning I set my VTOL nozzles to rotate a bit past 90°, 120° being my current favorite. This makes that with the VTOL slider at full too, the nozzle points slightly forward to enable braking or even flying backwards.
To start off: my personal favorites:
Airplane:
- Throttle, pitch, roll, yaw: standard joystick
- VTOL slider down: flaps
- VTOL slider up: air brakes 0 to 100%
- Brake: air brakes 100%
- Trim all up or all down: special actions
- Braking parachute: I prefer a double approach: either one of the buttons or Trim to 'prime' the parachute, when 'primed', the parachute will deploy when the craft is something like 3m /10ft above the ground.
As said by the other posters: Funkytrees has an if -function in the form a?b:c
This is a conditional formula that returns b if a id true and c otherwise.
For instance:
<Rotator input> is VTOL>0.5 ? Throttle:0 returns the value of Throttle if the VTOL slider is pushed higher than 0.5 , and 0 otherwise.
If you want your input to be <x> when the ground speed is 0 and 0 otherwise, you can try:
<Input> is GS=0? X:0
Although you might get better results with
<Input> is GS<3? X:0
(Ground speed is measured in M/s, which is roughly half of MPH and 3.6 times KmH. So GS<3 would correspond with 6mph/10kmh.
I wouldn't upvote an aircraft that has neither flaps nor air brakes, but this thing has so many other cool features I don't mind having to land at 399 mph, even if I still crash half of the time. Upvote sent.
+1Love the design, but honestly, a third engine just for pitch? And what does VTOL do?
I posted a version where I changed the controls to VTOL neutral= nozzles straight back for forward flight, VTOL up= nozzles rotate from full back to full down and a little further to 39° forward for flying backwards/braking. You can find it HERE..feel.free.to lol at it and use what you find useful for your next build. You can even repost the aircraft wholesale as your own. You built most of it after all.
@YarisHatchback bah, the An-2 has been through worse. It will get over it.
So it's sailplanes only, or are we allowed to fudge something with rotators?
Actually flies pretty well.
+1I'd give it a 10 for looks. Also with some RCN nozzles to the front and the back, you can fly it without gyroscope.
+1You could of course just put a PID controller on each leg with the target value being 1.5 + x times the controller's angle