This is about New version (1.1) Wingspan 1.68m Weight 0.23kg 0.36kg or something, but now it does not explode when you drive over it with a Miramar. Max allowed speed is 80kph, use airspeed UI app, because above that steering is not possible. Going faster than 90-140kph makes you crash, guaranteed. Min speed is 50kph, it does fly even 30kph but steering at such speed will cause stalling very easily. Map T-function to gamepad button and use that to speed up, then glide, JATO is just replacement of cruise control for level flight, but I might remove that in future as it is pretty useless. It will actually even land by itself, you can take a break from crashing and stunting, just set thing to glide and relax as wing will fly itself mostly. You can't really tell if thrust vectoring is there or not, seems not to make huge difference, but there is a little effect. New version (1.1) is also faster to accelerate and climb, it also works as a submarine, you can fly in water if you so wish. 48 wings running 60fps realtime, just make sure they don't touch each other, because of super light weight beam damping has to be very low and it is at edge of instability, pushing the limits, so when nodes touch each other things fall apart. (v1.0, v1.1 has improved stability) However I did test 100 of these planes flying in formation, you can count them if not believing, 100 vehicles @ 60fps, interesting: Demonstration video: Old stuff Spoiler I just got stupid idea to test out flying wing, this is not very good, realistic or anyway optimized, does not even have a mesh or any kind of controls. Thing weights only 250 grams, so in theory it should fly with quite low speeds. Have been tweaking stability a bit, while it is perfectly possible to fly this thing at 230grams, it really does not like to collisions with other vehicles. Have to increase weight something close to double to get it stable enough to be run over by car etc. This is what you should get from .jbeam file, goes to vehicles/flying_wing or any new folder really. Also I'm re-using my jbeam files for other experiments, so there might be junk. I did try to check everything to my best ability, but for some reason it does fly in very odd way, maybe it has something to do with how beam has simplified aerodynamics and maybe I should set some coltris to have zero lift, but as you can see from the video as I drop the thing, it seem to fly best with narrow side generating lift. It is kinda amusing and confusing, so I thought I ask if anyone else has experimented with such and if there would be some wisdom to be found so I could save for inventing wheel all over again. Also forgot WARNING, IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO FLY IT! Disclaimer and no responsibility disclosure I did put thruster to my version, but it just is not behaving way I except, maybe I try to do some controllable control surfaces, but I would like to get it to glide before that, simple plane I made earlier glides quite ok. when I manage to set CG properly, that is just bit fragile because of too many nodes:
I don't know if it has ever been done in Beam... but it was done a long time ago in RoR. So I see no reason why it couldn't work. As for yours, it almost looks like you might have some overlapping coltris or something that might be giving you some odd effects... I say might because I have no idea... haven't really delved into beams aerodynamics all too much yet. That being said, have you tried turning on the wing force calculations debug? The one with all the lines that show the direction forces are being generated in... that might help you pinpoint where all this extra side force is coming from. Perhaps we will see those little extra winglets on the sides are given WAY too much lift for their size... Edit: one thing I will say is that without control surfaces, you will be hard pressed to get a flying wing to stay aloft on its own... more than likely you will have to take control of it to get it flying the way that it should.
I think that key problem was COP and CG being too far apart, as I now moved CG rearwards where COP resides mostly, it does fly bit better. However I think other issue is being coltris that are at front of the wing, I think that lift is not really done by upper part of wing being longer than lower, but more of just angle of attack of Coltris, so front edge of wing is probably generating downforce. Also I think that COP should be above CG if possible. Thing flies better upside down right now. Trouble is that COP is way back, which might be because of the wing leading edge coltris, so I try to make those zeroes. Adjusting CG resulted weight coming down to 210 grams, with thruster factor 1.2 and limit 6 this thing is a rocket, now if I can make it actually fly and be controllable, I will have hotrod of the planes here Coltris sides are 2.5cm apart, so two surfaces of the wing will be 5cm, this is pretty much smallest I could make it: Idea is to replicate one of those styrofoam RC flying wings, but this one's scale tends to be bit bigger. I have played with aero debug, but TBH I'm not getting much wiser from it, maybe I should use wind app and set few nodes fixed type as poor thing gets blown away even with slightest breeze. --- Post updated --- There is latest one, use nodegrabber to lift nose up, then hit T for terror... Update2: After removing coltris from the front of the wing, it works much more sanely, even glides, just needs hydros and lua for control surfaces, which will be huge obstacle to cross.
The control surfaces should be relatively easy to make... The only ones that might need some LUA would be elevators, but the ailerons could be made with just regular steering hydros. Granted, on the wiki, they claim that Hydros can be setup for just about any keyboard key... so it might just be doable with that.
I doubt flying wing has much other than elevators, turning is just by banking to side, I think, never really examine that, but from drawings I saw only two control surfaces, so some clever logic is needed to have two inputs on one control surface, I think some plane reverse engineering is in order. This might show the scale of the thing better, despite very simple, I kinda like the looks, which some might recognize being similar to UFO I did quite some time ago, I like the color combination:
Well... rather than making things difficult, you can just use hydro logic... I used to do this all the time back in RoR. That's how I got the automatic wing on my Bugatti to work. Anyways, the short of it is if you wish to just use one control surface, then just use one control surface. You can stack hydros inline to basically add their commands together... the Node Beam structure may look a little silly as you will end up using something that looks like a bell crank with a hydro on each end, but the end result is a surface that is fully movable by two commands... no coding needed. This is actually the thing I thought about when I read the title for this thread
Technically that is a flying wing indeed I think I need to split control surface to four, it would make things much easier, but then that adds weight, but maybe I can manage that better than two control surfaces and challenging jbeaming with that, but I try either way, because that is way to learn, try things, fail things, try new things
Well... you could get away with 3 if you wanted to keep things kinda simple... left aileron, right aileron, and then a center elevator.
Huh... well that's something I never even considered... usually on model flying wings like the foam one described above, they usually just have normal ailerons and elevators, thus just fully negating any Yaw control whatsoever. Usually they just have turned up tips which I suppose are probably there to prevent slipping and keep the craft moving straight. I see no reason why either wouldn't work on beam though... I feel like the split aileron would be the most effective as well.
Well it does work, stalls bit easy and certainly I have lot more tuning to be done, but concept seems to be working just fine. Those wing tips are what kinda guide thing to stay on track, but you can spin out of control quite easily and this my craft likes to generate downforce at higher speeds, so need to tweak things a bit, also can't make very tight turns as it loses control. Note that weight is just 250 grams and wingspan is 1.7 meters. Motor and battery needs to be installed I guess, so that will increase weight a bit. Here is my jbeam, I don't claim to be good at making such, so it might be horror to eyes, but that is how I figured out how to get 4 control surface working, I did aim for minimum number of nodes, but it might be possible to make better with skills, I don't have much of those. For quick hack job I did cut out few coltris, I need to put them back on and start adjusting drag and lift parameters of them. I could make control surface to be just one plane etc. however I thought that if aerodynamics simulation becomes more complex, maybe it is good to have some shape to them, then of course I would need to set them properly hinged etc. This one uses just wonderful flexing, not so terribly good jbeam. I guess. I can, at least in theory, set adjustable CG to this thing, but I'm currently just adjusting weight of nose nodes to find best balance. For controlling hydros I did examine how Strato was build and used code from it, which I did adapted to this flying wing, but even there is not many words same, I'm puzzled if I can share this wing without carlosair's permission now. Input actions is very heavily based on Strato.
--- Post updated --- instead of motor and batteries, maybe a front-mounted model nitro engine with a working propellor, and a rear-mounted fuel-tank as an adjustable ballast?
I doubt that this will see combustion engine, those are bit old fashioned for hitech flying wing that was invented at 30's
I guess mine is set up so that it actually is biplane, I can get it up to sky by holding T and then it glides down 52-51kph, lands by itself and is ready to go again, of course I can steer and control altitude too, I will try 2D plane version too, but I think this one is quite nice toy to have too. I guess there is not much chance to vary in inputs file I need to sort 3D model though, it lacks few versions behind and thing needs refnodes and cameras, but it is possible to test fly it, just select orbit camera and hold T to take off, also one needs to set controls, but after being up for 21 hours I think I get some shuteye, meanwhile anyone can test fly one of the lightest flying things in this game. Just don't go over 70kph or under 30kph, it is best as glider, climb up using T and then relax gliding around city or something. There is new version on first post for download.
So what I'm spending hours on is this, I have several electric vehicles, they are really easy to make, no problems at all, then this one, this one throws error about thermals being nil, while I have clearly marked thermals as disabled. Code: "flying_wing_motor":{ "information":{ "name":"Electric Motor", "authors":"Fufsgfen,Blender Jbeam v0.2.0"}, "slotType":"flying_wing_motor", "powertrain": [ ["type", "name", "inputName", "inputIndex"], ["electricMotor", "mainEngine", "dummy", 0], ["frictionClutch", "clutch", "mainEngine", 1], ], "clutch": { }, "mainEngine":{ "torque":[ ["rpm", "torque"] [0, 3], [5000, 2], [10000, 1], ], "idleRPM":0, "maxRPM":10000, "hasRevLimiter":true, "revLimiterType":"soft", "inertia":0.001, "friction":0.1, "dynamicFriction":0.004, "electricalEfficiency":0.96, "energyStorage": "mainBattery", "requiredEnergyType":"electricEnergy", //cooling and oil system "thermalsEnabled":false, "vehicleController": { "clutchLaunchStartRPM":1, "clutchLaunchTargetRPM":1, //**highShiftDown overwritten by automatic transmissions** "highShiftDownRPM":1, //**highShiftUp can be overwritten by intake modifications** "highShiftUpRPM":2, "lowShiftUpRPM":1.5, } } } "flying_wing_battery": { "information":{ "authors":"Fufsgfen", "name":"1kw Battery", "value":500, }, "slotType" : "flying_wing_battery", "energyStorage": [ ["type", "name"], ["electricBattery", "mainBattery"], ], "mainBattery": { "energyType":"electricEnergy", "batteryCapacity": 1, "thermalsEnabled":false, } }, There is also this: "controller": [ ["fileName"], ["vehicleController", {}], ], You can perfectly well have a engine without gearbox, I have had many of those, but something breaks off with thermals when you have only one engine without thermals and without gearbox. To fix that kind of issue, you add gearbox, this will change in next update I guess, so let's see how I manage to update flying wing for that, I never will learn to remember that with single engine you need a gearbox before this becomes obsolete information
Just so that those who are following thread will notice, there is now new version in 1st post, which is working mod, pretty much finished version. Cameras might be something to set, but I don't really know much of that, I just use orbit camera with this thing.
I have been working on new WIP version 2 of the wing, as @Darren9 mentioned of having main wing just 2D coltris, I did give that a go and it is better, but I think that drag is not working with that, I might need additional coltris to provide drag value. Then again this thing flies quite same in water and in air, so it doubles as a submarine Anything higher than 90kph and steering is not going to work and somewhere beyond that it loses lift and crashes to ground, so it is only 50-80kph that one can fly this thing. CG is way more rearwards than what any documentation says it should be, thing falls nose first or does not even get up if CG is where it should be, wing shape and size should be somewhat as what same instruction says to make, but maybe weight is bit more in this, I think it was something like 360grams now, but much more stable structure, I could even drive over it now. I mapped function T to gamepad button and use that to give boost every now and then, I'm thinking of removing JATO as it really is not very useful. Another update is thrust vectoring which I thought would be nice to have. Then again I don't use thrust but only one or two button clicks every minute or so as things is a glider I needs brakes, or some more coltris, because JRI airfield is too short to land. Ends up into bushes if banking too steeply/flying too fast, best to keep less than 30 degrees of banking angle.
this is really awesome and glides really well! unfortunately, i am temporarily on keyboard for a few weeks (which i'm used to and fine with), but i'd love to be able to control the glider using my keys. not sure if it's possible, but just using the same bindings as throttle, brake, and steering would be great, because then even controller users will have a familiar layout of controls. or they can change them obviously
It is not hard to make that, but I'm not sure if it would work as a controlling the thing, I try to look into that tomorrow though. Thanks @Darren9, saves me a bit of brick walls to bring down with my head, knowing to keep triangles separate alone helps a lot
for some reason the jet engine is not making any thrust for me even after disabled all my other mods and cleared my cashe. does anyone know how I could fix this? --- Post updated --- nevermind I thought I had to use the jato to make it move but I actually had to press T
Yeah, jato is just for cruise control purposes and pretty bad at it, so thinking of removing of that. Should try to get that keyboard support in, but being distracted too much is getting into way, my bad
You can try keyboard flight with attached version, it does require quite quick tapping to get it to fly straight, but kinda possible.
