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.
@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.
@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 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.
Sorry, for now the Bein Army aircraft maintenance pools are too busy building them for their own needs. However feel free to copy the paratroopers for use in your own aircraft. Just update the code for the detacher and parachutes to fit your need and hit me up if you have any questions
@StopBreathingMyAir actually no need to fix it. It looks marvelous in it's light green livery. Just wanted to help you out if for some reason you definitely wanted a brown color
It's actually a light green with some hint of blue, somewhere between jade and turquoise. If you click a color in the custom palette you can see its RGB code brown is a bit of red with a bout half that amount in green and no blue so something like 603000
Just discovered this one. Still debating between a flying camper van or a steampunk jungle land cruiser but I still got 3 days. So you might actually get an official entry.
Nice plane for 180 parts. Also one of the historical planes that deserves a bit more spotlight. Being mostly forgotten for being introduced smak between tht Lockheed Electra and the DC-2
@Trainz448 Udate: after I deleted the gyroscope, I found that the signs on the throttle input need to be reversed in order for the heli to turn in the right direction. Also I found that the hack only works at a throttle smaller than 30%. After that, the RPM governor takes over and rotor speed is the same in both regardless of your input.
However you can trick the throttle governor into going faster or slower by instead of the engine speed, apply the yaw to the collective Pitch input of the rotors.
So top rotor: input collective (2nd tab on XML overload editor) =VTOL-0.3Yaw, bottom rotor: input = VTOL+0.3Yaw
Not bad for a plane built with the materials that were available 7 1/2 years ago. Would be worth seeing how it would look if rebuilt using the latest version of SimplePlanes (VR cockpit, real gauges, custom wings....)
Say, you put in air brakes, but then you set their drag scale to 0? How they supposed to work when they don't generate any drag. I actually cheat by giving the air brakes in my builds an artificially higher draft, 3 or 4, sometimes as high as 7, to have them 'brake' far over their size.
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.
For 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?
@Seeras thanks
@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.
Love 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.
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.
Marvelous. This one should be the SimplePlanes default helicopter instead of tht default helicopter
A 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.
Love 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?
You could of course just put a PID controller on each leg with the target value being 1.5 + x times the controller's angle
Sorry, for now the Bein Army aircraft maintenance pools are too busy building them for their own needs. However feel free to copy the paratroopers for use in your own aircraft. Just update the code for the detacher and parachutes to fit your need and hit me up if you have any questions
I built a successor tweaked for launching paratroopers. And yes, it's brown
So yes, I did post an improved version with automatic launch and the ordinance moved to above the wings. Feel free to take all my changes and incorporate them in your next project.
https://www.simpleplanes.com/a/w0P03p/Bomber-Ground-attacker-Challenge
You still got 10 days to enter
@StopBreathingMyAir actually no need to fix it. It looks marvelous in it's light green livery. Just wanted to help you out if for some reason you definitely wanted a brown color
It's actually a light green with some hint of blue, somewhere between jade and turquoise. If you click a color in the custom palette you can see its RGB code brown is a bit of red with a bout half that amount in green and no blue so something like 603000
Hurray, made the deadline. Although still with barely half the functions I wanted. So keep an eye out for newer versions
Just discovered this one. Still debating between a flying camper van or a steampunk jungle land cruiser but I still got 3 days. So you might actually get an official entry.
Nice plane for 180 parts. Also one of the historical planes that deserves a bit more spotlight. Being mostly forgotten for being introduced smak between tht Lockheed Electra and the DC-2
Nice rebuild. However, landing remains a challenge. Consider adding a braking parachute.
@Trainz448 Udate: after I deleted the gyroscope, I found that the signs on the throttle input need to be reversed in order for the heli to turn in the right direction. Also I found that the hack only works at a throttle smaller than 30%. After that, the RPM governor takes over and rotor speed is the same in both regardless of your input.
However you can trick the throttle governor into going faster or slower by instead of the engine speed, apply the yaw to the collective Pitch input of the rotors.
So top rotor: input collective (2nd tab on XML overload editor) =VTOL-0.3Yaw, bottom rotor: input = VTOL+0.3Yaw
Not bad for a plane built with the materials that were available 7 1/2 years ago. Would be worth seeing how it would look if rebuilt using the latest version of SimplePlanes (VR cockpit, real gauges, custom wings....)
Incredible level of detail. And a designer's dream
Congratulations on making Silver.
Say, you put in air brakes, but then you set their drag scale to 0? How they supposed to work when they don't generate any drag. I actually cheat by giving the air brakes in my builds an artificially higher draft, 3 or 4, sometimes as high as 7, to have them 'brake' far over their size.
Is there a plan to build out the cockpit?