... I'm going to update Captain Jatobe now... as it's still my favourite prototype I've made so far
...
Floating around has always something special to it. The interactive forces
esp. the non-linear one are pretty hard to mimic using simple translation
and rotations. I can imagine a game of yours similar to CM but now everything
based on a surface if water. Could be pretty interesting to play with waves
for accomplishing missions etc., waves that also reflect upon the ship etc.
making things way interesting and dynamic.
I have a distant idea of mine building maps, levels, etc. solely out of water
hold in check via some force fields. But this requires an entire different
method resp. more complicated equations so to speak than the shallow water
equation used for many of the 2.5D water effects.
Some experiments with aerodynamical forces for Superstall:
I played for a while with the aerodynamic forces like lift, drag, and the
pitching moment and it seems that using NASA/NACA's airfoil data won't allow
me to model the stalling regime for any of their airfoils to a sufficient
degree, since the data is always only given for the operational range a wing
is/was designed for, gained from wind tunnel experiments. Wind tunnel tests
are hard to set up and also pretty expensive. Hence, there is virtually no
data beyond 20 degrees of angle of attack. If I would build a standard flight
simulator, I would be done and everything would be fine since stalling an
aircraft is a no-go in any flight simulator to begin with, not to mention any
good simulation of it. However, the forces acting during a stall (there are
still aerodynamic forces acting even if the aircraft is stalling) are very
important since they can have a huge effect on the behavior of the aircraft.
Well, I thought about to inter- and extrapolate the data, but it's useless and
it becomes cumbersome since one needs also to align for some quantities
depending on lift and drag, or the pitching moment. For example, solely
extrapolating the pitching moment post-stall will lead to some odd rotations
(torques) of the airfoil because the pitching moment varies a lot during a
stall due to the strong change in pressure over the airfoil. Hence, the drag
and lift will have to vary in some related proportion.
Unfortunately, in general, the stalling regime is pretty hard to come by.
Even today using all the wind tunnels and flow simulators, it is very
difficult to say exactly what the air does behind a wing while stalling, i.e.
the process of stalling, i.e. how the flow separates from the surface and how
the (impulse or resisting) forces of the air will distribute over the surface
determining the aerodynamic forces.
Well, considering this problem, and because the stalling characteristic plays
a significant part of Superstall, I will take a step back and will consider
this problem on a more fundamental level. Instead of relying on the data and
associated formulas for lift, drag, and the pitching moment, am intending to
build sort of a model, based on elementary hydro- as well as fluid-dynamic
principles, from which I hope to compute these quantities to a degree
sufficient for the game. Basically, am trying to derive sort of a simple
model to compute (in realtime) the lift and drag coefficients (combined) for
any angle of attack given some airfoil characteristics. An idea of mine
already tells me that this will also allow for quite some interesting effects
not incorporated into the standard lift and drag equations, for example the
dependence on acceleration. Hence, such a model may lead to some interesting
dynamics during a stall since not all parts of an aircraft (esp. not during a
stall) accelerate equally, which will offset the balance much more and will
as such influence and amplify the torques an aircraft undergoes while
stalling.
I hope it turns out way cool...
