What's /k/s opinion on the specs for this aircraft from Crimson Sky?
I've got no idea if all the statistics are truly canon or if they are unofficial.
Look at the engine and top speed!! . Over 1000 miles an hour! On a prop driven airplane!
Is that possible? Is it even possible with a 450hp motor?
I think that they never discovered or widely used turbines in this universe because they perfected airships instead.
Also, aren't 40mm guns kinda useless on a fighter airframe? Surely they couldn't hold much ammo for it. I think they had them to use against airships.
>>29830760
Commenting on the realism of a FASA game is dumb, but god damn if Crimson Sky wasn't the tightest shit ever.
>>29830760
>Over 1000 miles an hour! On a prop driven airplane!
Might want to check that number again mate, you could walk faster than that plane. If you meant the space flight, that's not prop driven and the engine for that is over 1000 times more powerful than the prop motor.
On the official wiki it's top speed is listed as 250 MPH.
And I think that's just unrealistically slow.
The other top speed in the OP pic seems unrealistically high...
However it's canon that the Devastator has some kind of "afterburner boost"
>>29830760
Everyone hold the fuck up.
Best Zeppelin fighter coming through.
>>29830760
>1.3 kilometers an hour atmospheric
This is a typo, right?
>>29830822
Whoops. My image was stolen by pirates.
>>29830760
>Crimson Sky
what year is this......2003?
>interstellar
I don't think we're talking about canon Crimson Sky here, guys.
>>29830760
>1.3km/hr
oh
Aerospace engineer here, I don't even know where to start:
>canard layout is unstable
>not enough rudder area to be longitudinally stable
>horrifically underpowered
>retardedly heavy for its size
>terrible cockpit visibility
There's pretty much nothing done right here.
>>29830852
that was a damn fun game on Xbox with the voice chat mic
it really surprised me how much fun it was
Whoops. Forgot the link to the original wiki.
>>29830776
Yea, it was good stuff. Has a lot of potential to this day, too.
>>29830813
Well, to be honest on this universe they spent a much longer time developing and improving prop driven craft..
>>29830839
I've got no idea.
It's also talking about ether, deep space, etc
>>29830860
You're probably right, unless they are developing a new game that takes place in space and they need some excuse to keep the same art deco style and propeller craft.
Hey, anyone got any opinions on Guns of Icarus ship designs?
Would they even be possible?
>>29830876
To elaborate, the US cracked up in the Great Depression so the highways never got built. This was the opening for personal air travel.
It's got a lot of interesting Americana tropes, and some oddities.
>christian communist midwest
>>29830934
>unless they are developing a new game
Nah, this is some retarded internet fanwank.
>>29830873
The thing is, most video games are based around reality, and inspired by it.
There has to be some reason why this plane is basically the games flagship fighter.
I've seen the threads about experimental designs, and we've built some funky and fucked up abominations that still flew well.
If you don't mind, would you comment on the other designs posted in this thread?
I'm going to dump images.
>>29830760
These specs are awful, but the basic ideas behind the designs aren't THAT bad, and tend to be obviously based off real aircraft.
I think this design was inspired by a real design.
>>29831007
>There has to be some reason why this plane is basically the games flagship fighter.
Because it looks cool.
Developers care less for reality than you might think, especially arcadey game developers.
>>29830873
And please, help me figure out how I determine realism in fantasy airships.
I keep thinking the amount of balloon to hull is incorrect unless the hull is built out of superlight material.
>>29831026
They had plenty of other crafts that many people think look better, though.
And a lot of their designs are actually based on reality.
>>29831007
>If you don't mind, would you comment on the other designs posted in this thread?
Sure.
>>29830848
Might be dynamically stable, though the center of gravity might be too far forward compared to the center of lift. Also that aft surface definitely doesn't have enough area or a long enough moment arm to be useful. Plus, you're probably going to have longitudinal stability issues with how small those endplates are.
>>29831023
That's inspired by a Blohm & Voss design (pic related). While it never actually flew, odds are it's actually fairly feasible, at least as a fast bomber.
The Balmoral is definitely based off the Beaufighter, for example.
>>29830873
Almost all the planes in the original Crimson Skies (the based PC game) were based on real aircraft. The sequel is where everything went full retard and shit all over the original.
For example, the Bloodhawk? Based on the Henschel P.75 heavy fighter concept.
>>29831097
Thanks :)
I think >>29830848 was meant to be a fast interceptor, if that helps it's design make any more sense.
What do you think of the Kirov airship? I just don't think it could exist :/ and that kinda bums me out because I love airships.
>>29831131
https://tekeli.li/crimsonskies/equivalency.html
That page has some good comparisons to real life aircraft. Not like we haven't tried weirder designs. Like this, the Airspeed AS.31.
>>29830852
found the millenial
>>29831141
>redalert2.jpg
>>29831089
Fairly feasible, looks like it's based off of another German design (pic related, though there's plenty of similar tailless designs from just about every German manufacturer). Of course any real example would require a lot of refining, as flying wings are tricky to get right.
>>29831108
Definitely not the Beaufighter, probably just any of the countless heavy fighters that looked like that.
>>29831131
Some of the designs (like the one you posted) are fine, but a lot of them seem to completely forgo any semblance of reality.
>>29831141
Generally any airship shown in a game is going to be hilariously unrealistic. Take the Hindenburg, for example. Largest airship ever built, with a capacity of something like 200,000 cubic meters of hydrogen. Problem is, hydrogen only provides just over a kilogram of buoyancy per cubic meter (at sea level), so for every kilogram of weight you have, you're adding another cubic meter of gas. This also varies with weather and altitude. IIRC, the Hindenburg only had a useful payload capacity of about 10 tons despite being the largest aircraft ever flown.
>>29831131
Not him, but most fictional canard designs get it wrong in general. You'd either need to have the plane be fairly rear heavy (which is natural for a pusher configuration), or the canards themselves need to be very large (like the Saab Viggen). Otherwise, there would be too much lift in the rear and the plane would dive like a lawn dart.
...at least, that's what Kerbal Space Program taught me.
>>29830947
Oh yea, that's right. And travel was so dangerous, even trains, because of pirates. This meant technology grew slower and the existing tech they had got perfected as time went on.
>>29831026
Ironically, Crimson Skies has the most realistic looking airships I've ever seen in video games.
I'm in love with the airships in Guns of Icarus, though... I want to justify my fantasies about them with realism, though.
>>29831158
Thanks for that link, I've seen it before but didn't bookmark it. Now I have.
Also, here's the flying wing from Raiders of the Lost Ark
>>29831216
Could you find me a source that puts in simplest terms what the capabilities of lifting gas are? I'll probably forget about 1 kilogram per cubic meter.. I'll cap what you said.
Also, here's a picture of the Aeromodeller II. It's a concept but they've gotten pretty far into the R&D. It's absolutely amazing, designed to never land. The pic is a cutaway showing you what's beneath the rigid hull.
http://aeromodeller2.be/
Here's the website, or you can just google image search "aeromodeller ii" to see cool pics of the design.
>>29831023
That's an overly complex free falling bomb.
>>29831216
In the sequel, shit went right off the rails. Aircraft designs lost any sense of realism, characters were either deleted or had their personalities altered, and the interesting '30s world was replaced with
>Giant sandworm robots and death rays and zeppelins that literally eat other zeppelins because we caaaaaaan
That being said, I'm a huge fan of the original.
>>29830873
The aircraft and many others in game are based off of a real life design, the XP-55. It had a couple flaws, but it was real and did fly.
>>29830876
I remember playing a crimson skies arcade game at the local chuck-e-cheese when I was younger. Shit was so cash, blowing zeppelins out of the air with my kestrel, or whatever p38 inspired thing it was.
>>29831407
Well the concept behind the buoyancy is really simple:
>lift = (ρair - ρgas) * g * V
where ρair is the density of the ambient air, ρgas is the density of the lifting gas, g is the acceleration of gravity, and V is the volume of the gas.
That formula really shows what the problem with airships is. Lift is dependent on not just the gas you're using, but the density variations in the air. Air density can vary wildly with weather, and it drops off incredibly fast with altitude, as we can see here:
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/standard-atmosphere-d_604.html
The air density at 20,000 ft/6,000 meters is only half that at sea level, meaning your lift is halved if you're trying to reach that high.
>>29831229
You generally have the right idea. Unless you're factoring in artificial stability controls (something we don't really see until the '70s), the only way to make an aircraft stable in normal flight is by having the center of gravity forward of the center of lift, but not so far forwards that whatever provides your pitch control can't keep the nose up.
The bigger issue is that you can get pitch stability from canards just as easily as you can from a conventional tail, but it comes at the cost of fucking with stability in other regimes (forget which, it's either longitudinal/yaw or roll stability that gets all fucky).
It's been a while since I've done any real stability analysis, though, so I forget the real details as to how the systems of differential equations work.
>>29831544
The XP-55 looks nothing like that, though beyond a vague pusher-canard layout.
The XP-55 also shared several of the issues that I mentioned (mainly with stability), and it lacked others (notably the rudder area).
Plus, my main concerns with the OP design were relating to the engine and structure. The XP-55's lighter than the weight listed in the OP while having over double the engine power. Meanwhile, the OP pic puts that thing as having the kind of engine power you're seeing in fighters from 1917.
>>29830776
OI! Battletech was very realistic. 120mm autocannons that had a range of ~90 m, lasers that were only good for at most 200m, engines so poorly designed that if you fired off all your weapons your mech would blow up. Oh, I forgot the super genetically engineered ultra warriors that had z grade Astarte armour.
>>29830760
>450HP
>191,500 m/sec
HOLY FUCKING SHIT I CHUCKLED AT THIS ABSOLUTE FUCKING AUTISM.
WWII fighters were EASILY over 2,000HP by the middle of the war.
>>29830848
>that center of gravity
They didn't even fucking try.
>>29831158
I don't recognize half those planes from the original, but those are the PC graphics. Strange.
>>29831449
Still based off a successful IRL design. Pic related.
>>29831494
What's the sequel called? I don't think I ever saw it :/
And, yes, the original Crimson Sky was incredible. Literally like a video game of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.
I loved it, I loved the art deco, it was amazing. A new game just like that but with the ability to land and go on ground missions would be incredible.
>>29831711
:)
>>29831866
Most airship games I've seen take place within 5000 feet of the ground.
Also, check out the ship designs in guns of icarus.
What do you think the future of airships are? Instead of using gas, what about vacuums? It would need super strong lightweight rigid materials... what's the lifting capabilities of vacuum compared to helium or hydrogen? Thank you so much for gracing my thread with legitimate academia, by the way.
>>29831925
I think canards best use is simply being another wing flap. It's just to compensate other flaps and provide more maneuverability. But I'm no engineer.
>>29831994
>>29831544
I like the 4 winged design of the Devastator because it allows more space to store ammunition and fuel. It seems like it would be better at dogfighting than a design with only two large wings with the same capacities.
>>29831216
I think you're wrong about >>29831108, I meant to reply sooner, sorry.
The only significant difference is the wings go down to the engines, then change towards an upward vector.
I imagine this is so the wingspan can be smaller but still have the same surface area, if that's the word I'm looking for. The Balmoral was designed to be able to fold it's wings and fit into a small zeppelin hangar, which would explain the small differences between it and the Beaufighter.
>>29832278
>What do you think the future of airships are?
Very, very niche roles like a floating semi-permanent early warning radar.
>Instead of using gas, what about vacuums? It would need super strong lightweight rigid materials... what's the lifting capabilities of vacuum compared to helium or hydrogen?
A vacuum would provide the maximum possible buoyancy (you're just plugging 0 into the density for the lifting gas in that one equation). Problem is that a vacuum also has 0 pressure, meaning you're forced to design a very stiff structure that can withstand the ambient pressure (101.325 Kilopascals at sea level), which is always going to be heavier than a gas-filled envelope. I'm no chemist, so I can't give you exact values for the pressure of hydrogen, but I'd assume that you can get lift out of hydrogen even if the ambient pressure in the envelope is roughly equal to atmospheric pressure, or else blimps wouldn't work at all.
>Canards
Canards have a bunch of niche advantages. They (generally) stall before the wing, protecting you from pitching up enough to stall the main lifting surfaces while still retaining roll authority (assuming you've got ailerons). They also give you pitch stability without the negative lift created by a conventional tail (regular tails push the nose up by pushing the tail down, canards just provide upward force near the nose).
Plus, once you get your hands on fly-by-wire controls, they're the fucking tits for maneuverability. It's the reason why just about every fighter designed since the '70s has been a delta-canard design.
>>29832216
Yeah, practically no engine, but even considering that the listed top speed is too low still. .81mph in US terms, gotta be way below the stall speed of the design.
>>29832458
What do you think of this?
>>29832458
Well, I think you could make a much lighter vacuum cell by using something like aerogel, right? It wouldn't take up much volume but it could still fill the cell and reinforce the shell.
>>29832216
Well, if the thing was designed for space it could do much more with less HP than the same design in an atmosphere.
So maybe we are the stupid autists? I've honestly got no clue where I found that pic :/
>stalling in space or ether
Heh.
>what do you think of this
Of what?
Did you forget to post a pic?
OP here, I meant to dump a few more images but I've been busy in a different thread I made.
I'll get back to that, but first, why are some fighters wings kinda curved downwards at first?
You can see it in this picture... where the wing meets the body, the wing structure banks downwards a bit then it changes vector.
Why?
Also, I'm sorry if I'm not wording this correctly. Communication isn't my forte.
This is the Brigand, I believe.
I like the design of this one.
Not only is it a fighter with a tail turret, it's a tiny fighter with a tail turret. I think that's because it's too easy for other fighters to get behind it. "Flank", I guess is the word?
Again IIRC it's specialized role was to kill zeppelins so fast interceptors would be its main concern.
Never seen this one before :/
I don't recall this one at all
>>29831158
I found this, looks a lot like the one in your pic
No idea WTF this is
I love the Balmoral.
It's a fighter bomber, but more fighter than bomber but it's nowhere near enough bomber to be called a bomber..
Almost a flying tank :)
This one looks very art deco.
I'm sorry it's a picture for ants but it's hard to find high res pics of planes from a game this unknown
I love the brigand, too. It's a fighter but because it's specialized to kill zeppelins, it's not good at handling other fighters so it has a rear turret like a bomber.
Unique.
>>29830760
>wet atmospheres, space, or the ether
the fuck am I reading
fasa what did you fucking do
>>29831925
Inherent stability would be important for an airliner or cargo plane, but a fighter with the aid of computers or a mechanical limiter can fly while being unstable until the time comes when the pilot needs an edge.
>>29831158
>https://tekeli.li/crimsonskies/equivalency.html
It's a my impression or the "Whittly & Douglas M210 Raven" looks like the "SAI-Ambrosini SS.4"?
Bamp by OP
Will other anons contribute with knowledge about battle zeppelins and airships meant for war?
I've heard two things, 1- they are hard to kill and 2- they are easy to kill
I'm not sure which.
I'd like to know their capabilities. I don't think anyone has built an airship meant specifically war and if they did, I don't know much about it. I think they were used in bombing runs? Did they have AA guns and such? Please watch a battle or two on youtube in Guns of Icarus. Would that even be possible?
Also, about propeller driven planes... How fast could they go?
Nobody wants to comment about the designs in Guns of Icarus?
I like a few of their designs, and some even seem realistic assuming lightweight materials..
But then again I'm not knowledgeable
>>29834276
Germans used Zeppelins to do bombing raids on Britain in WW1 which literally did no material damage and rallied the British populace with the London Bombings.
They were untouchable until the development of decent AA and Incendiary Rounds for their plane's machine guns.
The only useful things the Airships did was reconnaissance and naval patrols to assist mine sweeping.
Guns of Icarus is Steam Punk Fantasy, too much weight on the airships.
They would explode if not using modern inert helium.
The air frames couldn't handle stable fire with the weapons used you would fire the flak cannons and go spinning into the ground.
>>29833582
Inverted gull wings tend to be a simple way to make the landing gear shorter while still providing enough clearance for the propeller.
On the Corsair, it has the added (and accidental) benefit of having slightly reduced drag because it happens to meet the fuselage at just the right angle.
>>29834119
Until you've actually got fly-by-wire controls, you want stability, even in a fighter. An unstable aircraft is far too much pilot workload to manage and retardedly dangerous unassisted in any kind of maneuvering
>mechanical limiters
Won't be feasible - a mechanical computer's going to be heavy, and you're going to need a fairly complicated system to adequately manage an unstable system.
>>29834616
Not all of the ships appear to have too much weight, though.
And remember, they might have material technology we don't, or access to elements we haven't discovered.
The periodic table we know is still incomplete, right? And those elements are made of lots of other particles.. I heard someone is creating a new periodic table in the shape of a spiral, probably following the golden ratio or something. Anything is possible
And I did specifically mention Crimson Sky had some of the most realistic airships in any fantasy game I've ever seen.
>>29834690
Thanks for the knowledge, shorter landing gear huh? That's literally the only reason?
And recall the Fallout universe, they never developed transistors or something if memory serves, so they just refined vacuum tubes or something to do the same job, I can't recall. Never played.
>>29834988
>That's literally the only reason?
That's the main reason they did it, yeah. The Corsair did have some minor reductions in drag that came with it, but that wasn't the intention when they added that element in.
>>29835127
Why not just put the entire wing assembly lower on the airframe instead of putting on the middle?
>>29830760
That's a Crimson Skies aircraft, but it's not in the Crimson Skies setting... In 1938, Crimson Skies aircraft did not fly in the Ether!
>>29835302
Because they were generally already mounted as low as possible. Every inverted gull-wing aircraft I know of already used a low-mounted wing, so the drooping of the inner wing sections was just meant to get the wing even lower.
>>29835321
What even is this "ether"? Like hyperspace?
>>29835365
Hmm, you're right. I guess because a lot of them have wings that sweep up slightly I had my perspective skewed just from a few side shots of planes.
MORE FANTASY AIRSHIPS :D
>>29830820
Considering that the thing is described as basically being made of solid metal, I dunno...
>>29835481
Good point, it's built to take hits.
However I think the speeds are so slow because if it was faster the maps would have to be bigger, dogfighting wouldn't be fast paced, and interactions with the map would be limited to almost nothing.
>>29835302
lowering the wing structure tends cause instability issues and can in some cases reduce visibility. Having the wings at an anhedral angle (facing downward) also decreases instability. (Though instability can potential increase maneuverability).
Alternatively, having the wings at a dihedral (upward angle), and mounting them high up increases stability.
here's some more stuff on it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wing_configuration#Dihedral_and_anhedral
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dihedral_(aeronautics)
>inb4 I am completely wrong and an idiot
>>29836937
So, the gist of it is they were too lazy to build landing gear like 18 inches longer.. So they swept the wings down at a steep angle then immediately swept the wings back up so that mathematically the wings surface was on average more or less centered even though in reality the wing was only centered for a very small portion, and somehow it worked out ok.
>>29834690
>Won't be feasible - a mechanical computer's going to be heavy, and you're going to need a fairly complicated system to adequately manage an unstable system.
If it was unstable along one axis it could still be flyable with babying. Limiting the AoA would be the easiest to implement to prevent separation while in normal flight and designing the canards to remain un-seperated while in the stall so the pilot can still control the craft.
>>29838073
>too lazy to build landing gear like 18 inches longer
I wouldn't say lazy is the problem here, the issue is that making landing gear longer also makes it more fragile and stiff, as well as causing the plane to 'bounce' upon landing. You'd also have to store 18 more inches of gear into the wing, which would require screwing around with the wingspan or fuselage, and possibly throwing everything else off-balance. Vought was really pushing for a carrier fighter and since carriers aren't the smoothest places to land, it would either cause the gear to snap, or send the plane bouncing off into the control tower (or island, whatever it's called). Vought more or less decided that it wasn't worth putting in that much effort and pursue an inverted-gull design instead.
>swept the wings down at a steep angle then immediately swept the wings back up so that mathematically the wings surface was on average more or less centered
pretty much, yeah. It's really clear in this pic
> somehow it worked out ok
Early Corsairs had a nasty habit of the right wing stalling before the left one, but that was worked out in later versions.
>>29838583
Why would the right wing stall but the left wing wouldn't?
I didn't even know wings could stall, explain?
They didn't catch air right?
>>29839977
Lift is force generated by air moving over the wings to cause an upward motion. In order for a conventional aircraft to take off, its wings have to generate enough lift. An aircraft stalls when it falls below a certain speed/the air is not moving fast enough to generate sufficient lift. Wing stall can happen for a bunch of reasons, as shown by pic related.
My guess for the right wing stall on the Corsair is that it's due to the engine, considering that it was one of the most powerful engines of that time (hence the big-ass propellers). This stuff can get complicated really quickly and I don't fully understand what else is at play here.
Here's some more on stalling by the way
https://www.eng.fsu.edu/~dommelen/research/airfoil/airfoil.html
http://www.experimentalaircraft.info/flight-planning/aircraft-stall-effect.php
>>29840528
You're right, it is pretty complicated.
>>29840539
Neat, I hadn't considered the interaction between the propeller and atmosphere at speed causing a stall.
