@PPLLAANNEE I wish someone would do a tutorial on just how to embed the custom images into SP. I've tired a few different ways and nothing seems to work, and I'm stuck with the three standard screenshots.
@that1devil
Do what you like. If you don't like designing and building stuff (and there are times where I hate doing it-"Why's it banking to the left?!!") then don't do it as much and play more. You bought the game to have fun, so do whatever you enjoy.
Whatever you do, don't play the game just for rating points or you'll always be dependent on other players for your enjoyment of the game.
It's not that you are doing anything wrong per say, it's more a case of where you sit on the learning curve vs. what people are looking for.
When most people start off in Simpleplanes they build fairy basic, simple aircraft, as they should. But these basic designs usually do not have much that would interest more experienced builders. So new players don't get much traffic or feedback. Also keep in mind that all new designs sort of compete with each other for attention and advanced designs will coll features tend to attract more attention, downloads and feedback.
Just keep plugging away and as you make more designs and as your designs get progressively better, you should eventually make something that interests people and gets more feedback. It just takes time. I've been playing SP for 5 years and I only have about 1400 more points that you do. Most of those came from things that I didn't expect earn points, while most of the stuff I though would get points didn't.
@IndoMaja When I downloaded it I removed the fuel from the tail and scaled the mass down for the tail section a bit until the CoM moved a bit ahead of the CoL.
The problem is that the Center of Mass (the red line) is too close to the Center of Lift (the blue line).
If you reduce the weight in the back of the airplane and/or increase the weight in the front of the aircraft it will take off properly without flipping.
Definitely built it. Not only will it appeal to train enthusiasts, but it could be used as a launch platform for aircraft and gliders.
In fact if someone were to put a winch on it they would have a perfect winch tow system for a glider. I could see someone like @TheGliderGuy laying out a whole winch track line on Wright Island or Maywar based on your concept.
So this might get more than just the train people excited.
@Korzalerke2147483647
They don't seem to work, If i recall correctly when you have an conditional statement that is false, nothing that follows it gets processed. In the past I've had to multiply and add up several conditions to get around it.
On a positive note MrCOPTY 's https://www.simpleplanes.com/a/8bjkWo/Grumman-F9F-2-Panther-FULL-EXPERIENCE, has a waypoint system that is almost exactly what I was going for. I just have to reverse engineer his variables. The variable do seem to be much better than typing out formula's multiple times.
So at least now I know it can be done, because it has been done.!
@WinsWings
That would depend on the size of the rotors. I think a 4 rotor one with, say 400" rotor blades might just work. Oh, btw, if you increase the virbration damper on the rotors it won't shake.
@WinsWings Since you recognize the aircraft and expressed an intenest here is what my "Little Nellie" looks like: https://www.simpleplanes.com/a/B0H05W/Jan-28-23-Little-Nellie-Control-Match
It's not finished and doesn't quite fly and take off the way I want yet, nor are the weapons quite right, so fly at your own risk
@gigachad The first ones were odd, as were every other one. The rest were even! ;)
Seriously though, the early versions of practically everything seems odd because the designers are focused on getting the thing to work, and optimizing the design happens much later. Typically the design sort of stabilizes into what become well known forms, but...the process doesn't really end. Aircraft are still relatively young forms of transport (120 years), and it's quite possible that the designs we think of as normal today will be horrible archaic a century or two from now. Just look at how ships have changed over the last 500 years. Maybe in the future, autogryos will become ring shaped with the rotor in the middle, a cockpit at the front, and engine and tail at the back?
@WinsWings I have quite a few other designs myself. I started building them a couple of years back for that egg-shapped aircraft contest and took an interest in the Wallis autogryo from You Only Live Twice.
The problem with autogryos, as far as the SP community is concerned is is that they aren't fast and sexy like fighter jets, they do not have have the sort of fanbase that World War 2 and Cold War era aircraft have, they aren't feasible for combat, their role has mostly been eclipsed by improvements in airplane and helicopter designs, and they don't promote any new cutting edge technology that attracts attention.
So they are just a niche thing, much like airships, ground effect vehicles, and parasails, but the autogryo's unique thing, the rotor, isn't all that unique, or even noticed by most people. The average person usually mistakes them for helicopters.
@gigachad Fair enough. I just wanted to point out that this is pretty much how the orginal autogryo's looked. Basically they were an airplane with a rotor blade on top.
@WinsWings Your welcome. Sadly, autogryos are not well known, and most people misidentify them as helicopters. Most people don't even realize that the main rotor is unpowered (well...mostly unpowered). Most people today know more about airships despite the fact that the autogryo is still around and still quite viable.
@WinsWings
Thanks. As for the neglect, well autogryos just are not very popular around here, probably because most people don't know what they are, and just take them for being helicopters. There were only four entries in the Autogyro Challenge, and only half of those were actual autogryos.
@WinsWings
It's sort of the Fisher-Price version of Little Nellie for the Eggcraft Challenge. I'm working on the actual "Little Nellie", WA-116, but it's not finished. Some stuff in SImpleplanes acts weird at lower weights.
If I recall correctly, This one has a flaw with the guns not being zero'd out properly, although I might have spotted and fixed that before posting.
It's a pretty standard early gryoplane design. Back when Juan de la Cierva invented it, he used an airplane fuselage. The idea was that this design was safer than the more conventional fixed wing airplane, since it would be stall proof, and if the engine gave out, the gyroplane would auto-rotate safely to the ground. Some designens even had fixzed wings in addition to the rotor blades.
Even today, this sort of design is considered safer than the modern pusher-propeller autogyros, with maybe the Benson-Wallis designs being the exception, because, well, Ken Wallis probably knew as much about autogyros as anyone.
@Kendog84
Actually the FT code for determining the heading and distance is the easy part. People do it in real life. check out: https://www.igismap.com/formula-to-find-bearing-or-heading-angle-between-two-points-latitude-longitude/
I probably take a stab at that later and use Wright Airport as a test.
To me, the hard bit would be selecting the destination. I can see a few ways to do it.
1) Each of the islands (and the Kraken/Cthulhu) could be it's own table, perhaps tied to an activation group. This would be easy, but lead to a lot of locations and clutter up the dash board.. Perhaps it could be put on some sort of rotating part (think revolving license plate) that use use a slider so as to only show one location and heading at a time.
2) The VTOL and Trim sliders could be the X and Y coordinates. Since the SP world takes up around a 200 mile by 200 mile area, we'd have to multiple the sliders and add the result to a centrally placed location. This means you could find the heading and distance to practically anywhere worth going to on the map, but in fairly large increments (about a mile per 0.01 difference on the sliders).
3) Somehow each locations and it's coordinated could be assigned to a position on the Trim slider. Something like Avalance, Krabola, Wright Island, and Maywar. I think it's possible to do that, but a bit beyond my current understanding.I might be able to program 3 locations to a slider. Maybe if I used a slider and an activation group I could get more.
@WinsWings
I get your point too. A true autogyro needs to by able to fly with the many rotor unpowered and many so-called autogyros posted on SP don't do that.
@Kendog84
THe slow flying on autpilot thing is more when I'm testing a build to see if I got the fuel rate and range right. It's annoying to run out of fuel while island hopping.
As far as the circling thing goes, yeah, it seems possible. Basically it would have to check the coordinates to determine if the plane was within a certain distance from the island, and then initiate a slight bank and a bit of pitch to hold altitude. And then hope the plane doesn't fall into the sea or fly into a mountain, as there is nothing that prevents a plane of autopilot from doing either of those things.
What I think might be easier to implement and a bit more practical would be to select a destination (in SP, one of a handful of islands) and then the nav system displays the heading and distance to that destination. So if someone was in the ocean north of Wright Island and they wanted to go to Krakabloa it might show a bearing of 60 degrees and a distance of 20 miles/32km.
@Kendog84 Well getting lost depends a bit on what type of aircraft I flyy and how I
fly it. If I'm flying fast jets and fly near an island or fly from one to another, then I almost always know where I am. But if I am flying something slow like a small prop plane or autogyro that is going under 200 mph, then I might use more autopilot when going from one island to another and watch a video. At those time I might overshoot an island or undershoot it and not know quite where I am.
This is nice, thanks. It can really help me figure out what direction to turn to when I get lost in the middle of the ocean. I just need to visit all the islands and get their general coordinates.
BTW, if you want an 360 degree heading instead of the +180 to -180 use {Heading<0? floor(Heading+360):floor(Heading)}
The problem seems to be that the center of lift is too far back and the tail is too big for the main wing. Try increasing the wingspan to about 24 feet (7.3m) or so, and maybe reduce the tail a little.
Since this looks to be a combat airplane, you also might want to consider adding some elevators to the main wing to give it bit more pitch control (the forward wing lifts up while the tail pushes down) to assist in it's climbs and dives.
@FirstFish83828
If you want I could take out the pre-rotator. It doesn't really help much on this build. During testing I mostly just did AG1 and full throttle and waited until I hit 47 mph and took off.
@FirstFish83828
Sure it does. Once you got the rotors up to speed you hit AG2 again to disengage the clutch and the pre-rotator turns off. You can test this out on the ground.
Basically the propeller and the rotors are never powered at the same time.
@FirstFish83828
No, it's a pre-rotator. Many, if not most autogyros use the power of the engine to pre-spin the rotor blades before take off to shorten the takeoff run.
For example, check this out youtube video at about the 2:50 mark
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tu_y0angRqY
You can take off and fly this without turning on the pre-rotator. Just start off with AG1 and throttle and it should take off at around 47 MPH.
@mlksback You might be able to get away with one or two degrees. It probably won't completely stabilize the airplane (It didn't when I tried it), but it might be enough to work with some other method.
If it makes you feel better you're not really cheating by adding other stabilization. Simpleplane physics are not quite the same as real world physics and often we have to tweak a few things in game to get them to work like the real thing.
@BlackGearCompany
It really depends on what you are trying to do with it. Some things are easier, others not so much but you get better at them as you use them again and again. It can also be frusting when something that looks like it should work doesn't, and you have to look it over ans figure out what you did wrong.
It;s not all or nothing though. I suggest that you try out one or two features at first to see how it all works and then add more things as you get more conformable with it. It really helps if you got something you are trying to do and work to figure how to do it rather than just do random stuff.
@TheFlightGuySP
Thanks again. Oh, and if you want to see what sort of monster you helped to bring into the world: https://www.simpleplanes.com/a/XriRWP/725t-Autogyro
Note- it's a testbed, not a finished design. But it does help to reverse engineer how some things work so as to the desired performance out of a build. Because autogyros are weird.
seems to work in the HUD to change the speed from green to red when it stalls. I did reduce the IAS factor as 5m/s is borderline "too late" for this particular build, but the code does the trick.
Thanks, you saved me a lot of work. I was going to try and use the rate of change of the latitude and longitude with trig to get a direction of movement and then compare that to the heading to see if it is moving in the direction it is facing or not.
@LonelySea22
LOL! I'll send you a link to my current build. It's still a work in progress but it flies.
@LonelySea22
Glad you like it. BTW does "Little Nellie" ring a bell?
@KornAerospace
I know. SAAB 29.
@KornAerospace
That's exactly what I thought when I saw the US one in white.
Nice autogyro
@PPLLAANNEE I wish someone would do a tutorial on just how to embed the custom images into SP. I've tired a few different ways and nothing seems to work, and I'm stuck with the three standard screenshots.
@that1devil
Do what you like. If you don't like designing and building stuff (and there are times where I hate doing it-"Why's it banking to the left?!!") then don't do it as much and play more. You bought the game to have fun, so do whatever you enjoy.
Whatever you do, don't play the game just for rating points or you'll always be dependent on other players for your enjoyment of the game.
It's not that you are doing anything wrong per say, it's more a case of where you sit on the learning curve vs. what people are looking for.
When most people start off in Simpleplanes they build fairy basic, simple aircraft, as they should. But these basic designs usually do not have much that would interest more experienced builders. So new players don't get much traffic or feedback. Also keep in mind that all new designs sort of compete with each other for attention and advanced designs will coll features tend to attract more attention, downloads and feedback.
Just keep plugging away and as you make more designs and as your designs get progressively better, you should eventually make something that interests people and gets more feedback. It just takes time. I've been playing SP for 5 years and I only have about 1400 more points that you do. Most of those came from things that I didn't expect earn points, while most of the stuff I though would get points didn't.
+1@IndoMaja When I downloaded it I removed the fuel from the tail and scaled the mass down for the tail section a bit until the CoM moved a bit ahead of the CoL.
The problem is that the Center of Mass (the red line) is too close to the Center of Lift (the blue line).
If you reduce the weight in the back of the airplane and/or increase the weight in the front of the aircraft it will take off properly without flipping.
Definitely built it. Not only will it appeal to train enthusiasts, but it could be used as a launch platform for aircraft and gliders.
In fact if someone were to put a winch on it they would have a perfect winch tow system for a glider. I could see someone like @TheGliderGuy laying out a whole winch track line on Wright Island or Maywar based on your concept.
So this might get more than just the train people excited.
+3This is a very nice engine. I hope you get more credit for your work.
Wow, it flies really well, especially for a plane that flies backwards and upside down :)
Nice seaplane.
@Korzalerke2147483647
They don't seem to work, If i recall correctly when you have an conditional statement that is false, nothing that follows it gets processed. In the past I've had to multiply and add up several conditions to get around it.
On a positive note MrCOPTY 's https://www.simpleplanes.com/a/8bjkWo/Grumman-F9F-2-Panther-FULL-EXPERIENCE, has a waypoint system that is almost exactly what I was going for. I just have to reverse engineer his variables. The variable do seem to be much better than typing out formula's multiple times.
So at least now I know it can be done, because it has been done.!
+1@Sympathetic
Is this any better?
https://www.simpleplanes.com/a/dES0Y3/lego-fighter
And here are your first points. We all gotta start somewhere
He's right; they do.
I'm still trying to figure out how you make these vertically stable.
+1@WinsWings Thanks, but suspect it will be a bit of a disappointment. Others have built much better "flappers".
@WinsWings
+1That would depend on the size of the rotors. I think a 4 rotor one with, say 400" rotor blades might just work. Oh, btw, if you increase the virbration damper on the rotors it won't shake.
@WinsWings Ooh, I like this one. Have you considered giving it four rotors?
@WinsWings Since you recognize the aircraft and expressed an intenest here is what my "Little Nellie" looks like: https://www.simpleplanes.com/a/B0H05W/Jan-28-23-Little-Nellie-Control-Match
+1It's not finished and doesn't quite fly and take off the way I want yet, nor are the weapons quite right, so fly at your own risk
@gigachad The first ones were odd, as were every other one. The rest were even! ;)
Seriously though, the early versions of practically everything seems odd because the designers are focused on getting the thing to work, and optimizing the design happens much later. Typically the design sort of stabilizes into what become well known forms, but...the process doesn't really end. Aircraft are still relatively young forms of transport (120 years), and it's quite possible that the designs we think of as normal today will be horrible archaic a century or two from now. Just look at how ships have changed over the last 500 years. Maybe in the future, autogryos will become ring shaped with the rotor in the middle, a cockpit at the front, and engine and tail at the back?
@WinsWings I have quite a few other designs myself. I started building them a couple of years back for that egg-shapped aircraft contest and took an interest in the Wallis autogryo from You Only Live Twice.
The problem with autogryos, as far as the SP community is concerned is is that they aren't fast and sexy like fighter jets, they do not have have the sort of fanbase that World War 2 and Cold War era aircraft have, they aren't feasible for combat, their role has mostly been eclipsed by improvements in airplane and helicopter designs, and they don't promote any new cutting edge technology that attracts attention.
+1So they are just a niche thing, much like airships, ground effect vehicles, and parasails, but the autogryo's unique thing, the rotor, isn't all that unique, or even noticed by most people. The average person usually mistakes them for helicopters.
@gigachad Fair enough. I just wanted to point out that this is pretty much how the orginal autogryo's looked. Basically they were an airplane with a rotor blade on top.
+1@WinsWings Your welcome. Sadly, autogryos are not well known, and most people misidentify them as helicopters. Most people don't even realize that the main rotor is unpowered (well...mostly unpowered). Most people today know more about airships despite the fact that the autogryo is still around and still quite viable.
+1@WinsWings
+1Thanks. As for the neglect, well autogryos just are not very popular around here, probably because most people don't know what they are, and just take them for being helicopters. There were only four entries in the Autogyro Challenge, and only half of those were actual autogryos.
@WinsWings
It's sort of the Fisher-Price version of Little Nellie for the Eggcraft Challenge. I'm working on the actual "Little Nellie", WA-116, but it's not finished. Some stuff in SImpleplanes acts weird at lower weights.
If I recall correctly, This one has a flaw with the guns not being zero'd out properly, although I might have spotted and fixed that before posting.
+1@gigachad What's silly about it?
It's a pretty standard early gryoplane design. Back when Juan de la Cierva invented it, he used an airplane fuselage. The idea was that this design was safer than the more conventional fixed wing airplane, since it would be stall proof, and if the engine gave out, the gyroplane would auto-rotate safely to the ground. Some designens even had fixzed wings in addition to the rotor blades.
Even today, this sort of design is considered safer than the modern pusher-propeller autogyros, with maybe the Benson-Wallis designs being the exception, because, well, Ken Wallis probably knew as much about autogyros as anyone.
So this build is the real deal.
+1@FirstLandFish83828
Urgent care? Sorry to hear that. Get well, the aircraft can wait.
@Kendog84
Actually the FT code for determining the heading and distance is the easy part. People do it in real life. check out: https://www.igismap.com/formula-to-find-bearing-or-heading-angle-between-two-points-latitude-longitude/
I probably take a stab at that later and use Wright Airport as a test.
To me, the hard bit would be selecting the destination. I can see a few ways to do it.
1) Each of the islands (and the Kraken/Cthulhu) could be it's own table, perhaps tied to an activation group. This would be easy, but lead to a lot of locations and clutter up the dash board.. Perhaps it could be put on some sort of rotating part (think revolving license plate) that use use a slider so as to only show one location and heading at a time.
2) The VTOL and Trim sliders could be the X and Y coordinates. Since the SP world takes up around a 200 mile by 200 mile area, we'd have to multiple the sliders and add the result to a centrally placed location. This means you could find the heading and distance to practically anywhere worth going to on the map, but in fairly large increments (about a mile per 0.01 difference on the sliders).
3) Somehow each locations and it's coordinated could be assigned to a position on the Trim slider. Something like Avalance, Krabola, Wright Island, and Maywar. I think it's possible to do that, but a bit beyond my current understanding.I might be able to program 3 locations to a slider. Maybe if I used a slider and an activation group I could get more.
+1@WinsWings
I get your point too. A true autogyro needs to by able to fly with the many rotor unpowered and many so-called autogyros posted on SP don't do that.
@Kendog84
THe slow flying on autpilot thing is more when I'm testing a build to see if I got the fuel rate and range right. It's annoying to run out of fuel while island hopping.
As far as the circling thing goes, yeah, it seems possible. Basically it would have to check the coordinates to determine if the plane was within a certain distance from the island, and then initiate a slight bank and a bit of pitch to hold altitude. And then hope the plane doesn't fall into the sea or fly into a mountain, as there is nothing that prevents a plane of autopilot from doing either of those things.
What I think might be easier to implement and a bit more practical would be to select a destination (in SP, one of a handful of islands) and then the nav system displays the heading and distance to that destination. So if someone was in the ocean north of Wright Island and they wanted to go to Krakabloa it might show a bearing of 60 degrees and a distance of 20 miles/32km.
+1@Kendog84 Well getting lost depends a bit on what type of aircraft I flyy and how I
+1fly it. If I'm flying fast jets and fly near an island or fly from one to another, then I almost always know where I am. But if I am flying something slow like a small prop plane or autogyro that is going under 200 mph, then I might use more autopilot when going from one island to another and watch a video. At those time I might overshoot an island or undershoot it and not know quite where I am.
@Kendog84
+1Yes, very useful. Sometimes I get lost between islands, especially when using weather effects.
@MAPA
+1So are you going to enter the MAPA challenge?
This is nice, thanks. It can really help me figure out what direction to turn to when I get lost in the middle of the ocean. I just need to visit all the islands and get their general coordinates.
BTW, if you want an 360 degree heading instead of the +180 to -180 use {Heading<0? floor(Heading+360):floor(Heading)}
+1@FirstFish83828
Fair enough. It's just that I doubt you're going to get more entries. No love for autogryos. :(
@FirstFish83828
With only 3 entries maybe you should extend the deadline, and maybe lift the one entry per person limit? Not a lot of people build autogryos here.
The problem seems to be that the center of lift is too far back and the tail is too big for the main wing. Try increasing the wingspan to about 24 feet (7.3m) or so, and maybe reduce the tail a little.
Since this looks to be a combat airplane, you also might want to consider adding some elevators to the main wing to give it bit more pitch control (the forward wing lifts up while the tail pushes down) to assist in it's climbs and dives.
@FirstFish83828
If you want I could take out the pre-rotator. It doesn't really help much on this build. During testing I mostly just did AG1 and full throttle and waited until I hit 47 mph and took off.
@FirstFish83828
Sure it does. Once you got the rotors up to speed you hit AG2 again to disengage the clutch and the pre-rotator turns off. You can test this out on the ground.
Basically the propeller and the rotors are never powered at the same time.
@FirstFish83828
No, it's a pre-rotator. Many, if not most autogyros use the power of the engine to pre-spin the rotor blades before take off to shorten the takeoff run.
For example, check this out youtube video at about the 2:50 mark
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tu_y0angRqY
You can take off and fly this without turning on the pre-rotator. Just start off with AG1 and throttle and it should take off at around 47 MPH.
@mlksback You might be able to get away with one or two degrees. It probably won't completely stabilize the airplane (It didn't when I tried it), but it might be enough to work with some other method.
If it makes you feel better you're not really cheating by adding other stabilization. Simpleplane physics are not quite the same as real world physics and often we have to tweak a few things in game to get them to work like the real thing.
You could angle the main wing so that it is a bit V-shaped. That would make it provide vertical stabilization on it's own.
+1@BlackGearCompany
It really depends on what you are trying to do with it. Some things are easier, others not so much but you get better at them as you use them again and again. It can also be frusting when something that looks like it should work doesn't, and you have to look it over ans figure out what you did wrong.
It;s not all or nothing though. I suggest that you try out one or two features at first to see how it all works and then add more things as you get more conformable with it. It really helps if you got something you are trying to do and work to figure how to do it rather than just do random stuff.
Always fond of erasing aircraft.
+3@WinsWings
+1What about autogyros that have a pre-rotator? They would have a powered rotor but not power it during flight.
@TheFlightGuySP
Thanks again. Oh, and if you want to see what sort of monster you helped to bring into the world: https://www.simpleplanes.com/a/XriRWP/725t-Autogyro
Note- it's a testbed, not a finished design. But it does help to reverse engineer how some things work so as to the desired performance out of a build. Because autogyros are weird.
+1@TheFlightGuySP Yeah that does seem to work, and
<color=#{ IAS>5&(AngleOfSlip>90 | AngleOfSlip<-90) ? "FF0000":"00ff00"}>mph
{round(IAS*2.236936);}
seems to work in the HUD to change the speed from green to red when it stalls. I did reduce the IAS factor as 5m/s is borderline "too late" for this particular build, but the code does the trick.
Thanks, you saved me a lot of work. I was going to try and use the rate of change of the latitude and longitude with trig to get a direction of movement and then compare that to the heading to see if it is moving in the direction it is facing or not.
Your method is a lot simpler! Thanks.
+1