[Feature Request]: A 'Wind Tunnel' Simulation system

[Shuudoushi]

Kind of self explanatory, but I'll go over why I'd like to see this anyway.

Mostly for people who can't get a good grasp on just the numbers and graphs from the FAR window in the VAB/SPH mean. I think having a visual representation of what air is actively doing over the aircraft will allow people to better under stand why their aircraft is suddenly nose diving into the ground.

[ferram4]

...but that's already there. The data that FAR provides, the CoL indicator, those are all things that come out of a wind tunnel once you actually process the raw data into something usable. What else do you want?

[Shuudoushi]

Hmmm, maybe I was too over encompassing with my request... Active smoke stream, or stereotypical representation of a wind tunnel.

[ferram4]

The active smoke stream, streamlines, or anything like that, in addition to being extraordinarily expensive to display (we're talking, walk away for 5 hours and come back at the level of stuff FAR tries to simulate), won't even provide any valuable information to players. There is no way to differentiate a stable and unstable plane with just streamlines, nor a way to determine if they have enough pitch up / pitch down authority. It looks cool, and will help detect stall, but the current tools will already detect that as well.

And for a stereotypical wind tunnel representation, that would really just be replacing the hangar / VAB visuals with a metal tunnel and a windscreen in front of the player and attaching a probe and lever to mount the vehicle on... really nothing all that helpful. Looks cool, but FAR isn't in the department of making things solely for the sake of looking cool.

[Shuudoushi]

That is a very good point. I didn't think it would be quite that hard on the host machine to give a visual representation of what the FAR window provides (outside of the super imposed graph lines). And while a 'dedicated' wind tunnel would look 'cool', I also think it would be rather pointless. Perhaps just drop all the rest and add something for detecting how likely a part (or the aircraft/rocket) is to stall? That information at the least wouldn't be useless.

And thank you for responding as to why this idea was silly and not just closing the issue outright!

[Shuudoushi]

Errr... visually detecting stalls... That little bit of info is important and I must teach my fingers to keep up with my brain....

[ferram4]

Visually detecting stalls would likely simplify to nothing more than providing the color change that is already available in flight. That's possible, but it will not be as clear and I'd need to figure where to put a toggle for it and make it obvious what's going on...

[Shuudoushi]

You could add the toggle to the (I don't have the game running right now, but it's the bottom most item on the drop down list...) window along side the other three existing options. As far as what's going on... Help text over hover I guess would be the fastest way of letting people know what the new glowing stuff is?

[Shuudoushi]

I just had a thought as for the visual representation of parts/ect. that can cause a stall that is more, well, visible. The 'Mach' effect in flight (unless that's what you were talking about when you said 'color change').

[willwill2will54]

Perhaps a different kind of wind tunnel, for use in testing aircraft might be a good idea as well. By which I mean a function that will push a craft in an straight line at a set speed and altitude, while allowing free rotation. Might be useful for getting a 'feel' for a craft without crashing every time you go too far (pun not intended). Have a representation of a wind tunnel around the plane, and bam, wind tunnel! Or not. I have no idea how hard this would be to implement, or how useful it would be to the rest of the community.