Precisely this. Adding an atmosphere does not take away a ship’s ability to overcome gravity. The only purpose of a wing is to oppose gravity.
Hidden Fold out wings for atmospheric flight - is Fdev holding out on us?
- Thread starter Boff'in
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Deleted member 110222
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All these armchair aerospace engineers need to spend a few months playing nothing but DOS2 so they can appreciate how fun bat-poop crazy nonsense can be.You know I am observing this discussion from a layman point of view and let me tell you, this community is the worst nightmare to game developers world wide. I say that half-jokingly, however, games are about having fun. That idea of "fun" is not necessarily simulating every godforsaken molecule of air tbh. I know that scientific accuracy is E: D's forte, but let's not take things to the extreme... Just add some "roughness" to the way ships handle in atmosphere (due to magical thrusters pushing in every imaginable direction). Add some variance based on thruster class, add some nice atmospheric effect, rain, random wind gusts... Every "normal" gaming community would be happy with that. But here? No siree, someone would run the T9 model through a wind tunnel and start whinging about how this doesn't check out, because it just so happens he or she is a highly trained professional in this field. We're old farts and demanding like old farts while we should really try to hang our disbelief and just accept that it's not real world we're playing with, but magical space pixels in an unicorn magical space galaxy, somewhat modelled after our own using a few simplified rules of physics. Yet here people seem to expect something that is akin to new Flight Simulator from Microsoft (which looks extremely promising btw.) in atmospheric flight, then full blown newton physics and gravity wells, realistic black hole accretion disks, realistic lighting based on star densities and whatnot , comets, space legs with fully interactive environments etc. etc.
So yeah, I pity the developer to have highly skilled critics in every science and tech field imaginable watching their hands, no pressure. I wouldn't trade places with FDev
Basically they need to loosen up. LOL
TBH, as long as there's some representation of the differences between ships, I'll be happy.
TBH, as long as there's some representation of the differences between ships, I'll be happy.
I want to see implosions when I look at that 694,327,229 atmospheres of pressure and decide to risk it anyway.
As a few have eluded to, a brick will fly if you apply enough Thrust. The manovering thrusters alone will carry your ship up faster than a Saturn V or Falcon Heavy.
I suspect it will be more a case of flying in the atmosphere as opposed to 'atmospheric flight' if you get the subtle difference.
I suspect it will be more a case of flying in the atmosphere as opposed to 'atmospheric flight' if you get the subtle difference.
None of the ships will need wings for atmospheric flight. The thrusters are so powerful that aerodynamics will not be as useful.
Given the Thrust and fuel available to ships, do they need aerodynamics?
They can make controlled entry to avoid shock heating, and dont need the lift.
But also, during the Alliance Ship reveal stream, FDev said when coming up with a ship they do assume it will be able to land on planets with Atmosphere in universe even if not in game, so do factor that in in the designs.
In any case, it doesn't mean it is a sneak peak or hint it is coming in game
They can make controlled entry to avoid shock heating, and dont need the lift.
But also, during the Alliance Ship reveal stream, FDev said when coming up with a ship they do assume it will be able to land on planets with Atmosphere in universe even if not in game, so do factor that in in the designs.
In any case, it doesn't mean it is a sneak peak or hint it is coming in game
Deleted member 110222
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My goodness people really are over thinking this aren't they?
Just a discussion mate, don't get too excited. We all know this is just a game with sim elements. There are some basic things devs should consider in order to maintain plausibility, most things discussed here are basic additions that even lite-sims would implement. Funnily enough, the way thrusters operate in ED means life is much easier for devs when dealing with flight dynamics. Same deal with the FBW system our ships use.
True, a B747 flying empty (green configuration) is not typical, but it happens when they are delivered for customization to completion centers or without passengers for simple transfer flights.
Yes, you're proving what I'm saying actually
Higher wing load --> Higher resistance to turbulence (I confirm).
B747 has got a higher wing load than a Cessna (>10x roughly), so it resists more to turbulence.
There is also another component I was referring to, which is the momentum (inertia). The momentum creates a resistance to any change of the body motion. The higher momentum, the bigger the resistance.
+1 for a fellow KSP lover.
I dont think we will ever get that level of detail/control but it would be great if engineering evolved a lot so that ingenuity and unique designs became a real thing.
Gavin786
At any load from empty to MTOW, there is far less difference in density between a Cessna and a 747 than there is between an Eagle and a Cutter.
A 747 doubles in density between empty and full load. An Eagle is forty to fifty times the density of a Cutter.
The actual volumes of ED ships again (mass is easy to estimate, or to calculate on a ship builder): https://i.redd.it/8lphpq3lsfpx.png
Yes, you're proving what I'm saying actually
Higher wing load --> Higher resistance to turbulence (I confirm).
B747 has got a higher wing load than a Cessna (>10x roughly), so it resists more to turbulence.
There is also another component I was referring to, which is the momentum (inertia). The momentum creates a resistance to any change of the body motion. The higher momentum, the bigger the resistance.
I never said anything that implied higher wing loading didn't imply a tendency to resist turbulence. I also never implied that a Cessna wouldn't be much more susceptible to turbulence than a 747.
What I did point out was that wing loading cannot be derived from mass alone (you need mass and area) and that when you look at the actual masses and areas involved, an Eagle would have slightly higher effective wing loading than a Cutter.
The Cessna/747 comparison is not at all analogous to the Eagle/Cutter comparison, because Elite does not scale ships the way one would expect. Ships get bigger, but very little mass actually gets added to them. A few thousand tons is nothing in the face of more than a hundred thousand cubic meters of volume or tens of thousands of square meters of surface area.
Some of the more outlandish examples of large ships, namely the Beluga and Anaconda, can have densities on the order of 5kg per cubic meter. This is only four times the density of air at sea level on earth. A planet with lower gravity or a thicker atmosphere could easily turn one of these ships into a dirigible. These ships are going to be subject to extreme aerodynamic forces, despite their absolute masses.
True, we can't compare aerodynamics of ED ships with real airplanes. This was my point too in another part of this thread.
My point concerning the momentum is instead still applicable. Bigger and heavier bodies are less susceptible to turbulence compared to smaller and lighter ones, here you really need to consider the full numbers, not proportions.
There are a lot of ships that seem to have appendages that are attached via hinges. I'm thinking particularly of the pointy things on the wingtips of the Krait, and the fins on the roof of the Asp. I would assume that these have indeed been intended to (eventually) be animated to retract and/or extend, for atmospheric flight.