Open Cailean556 opened 12 years ago
s20dan
commented
12 years ago Maybe eventually, but of course first we need an actual lift model, as ships cannot glide without it. Right now all ships are basically like a brick ;) Now while in real life a brick could actually generate lift, ours can't even do that, all they can do is generate drag...
We would like to implement a semi-realistic lift model, its been discussed but no more than that has happened.
TheUncleBob
commented
12 years ago all they can do is generate drag...
They do? I never noticed. At high speeds in in the earth atmosphere, they're definitaley not generating enough. I have never been able to make an unpowered decent, because my velocity didn't seem to bleed of much. Then again, maybe it's because there's no lift, so my velocity does bleed of as it should, I just reach the ground a lot earlier than expected... ?
s20dan
commented
12 years ago Yes you need lift to perform such a descent on Earth. With lift you would be able to direct the airflow, providing an upwards force to counter-act gravity, which also allows the atmosphere to slow you down quicker too as its all added friction. Remember without lift the best you could hope for on EArth would be the terminal velocty of the object you are flying, which for a large heavy ship with totally faked drag calculations means your going very fast when you hit :)
note I don't necesarilly mean a lift generating surface like a wing, which generates lift due to its shape, but rather a flat plate angled downward, simply directing airflow. This is much simpler to model, unless wings are simply faked with settings in the .lua :)
You can however perform an unpowered descent on Venus, as that has a nice thick atmosphere ;) Try it, its quite funny :) An Eagle will do.
Bodasey
commented
3 years ago Still something to do with this? Looks out of date
This isn't an issue so much as a suggestion, I know that right now the auto-pilot initiated landings take the most direct route - which is fine for space stations and low or nil gravity worlds however for planets with gravity, I was wondering if you might consider changing the auto-pilots logic to use a glide slope type approach to surface ports. The idea came to me when I was buzzing Brasilia in a Lanner and I noticed that Brasilia's port has a runway. Speaking of which, would it be possible for ships that have a wheeled landing gear to be able to utilise the runway if a runway is available at that particular starport? I tried it with the same Lanner...really wasn't a good idea. Perhaps all surface based ports on medium (I mean between .75 and 1 G) and normal gravity (1G) or even heavy gravity worlds have a runway based port with several VTOL pads next to it or something.
For Your Consideration/Approval
Thank you in advance for reading.