Additional info in VAB/SPH about aerodynamic parts

[diomedea]

In Stock KSP, wings and control surfaces have additional info showing Lift rating. That info allows players to rate the effectiveness of the part, and therefore to choose what to use. It could be debated how "Lift Rating" could resemble anything in reality; certainly FAR has a better approach with the surfaces actual characteristics.

Since a number of FAR versions (this issue is present at least since 0.14.1.1), installing FAR deletes the additional info. It is evident that the additional info is associated to the stock module "ModuleControlSurface"; also, is noticed that with the "FerramAerospaceResearch.cfg" file (lines 758-761 in v. 0.14.3) that stock module is deleted, and proper data for each part is associated to modules "FARControllableSurface" or "FARWingAerodynamicModel". However, even if FAR data is associated to a part, nothing is made visible to the player, who therefore loses the ability to rationally choose parts. Moreover, none of the stock KSP data with a part description is of help.

Even if it requires some more effort, it would be proper to allow some significant info to be visible to players from those FAR modules, and not only from the FAR analysis tool (that, for as helpful as it is, provides nothing about single parts).

[ferram4]

The only information that could be made available is geometric information; all the other data is calculated only once wing interactions have been accounted for, and that changes the detail quite a bit. Since giving players inaccurate information is worse than useless, only geometry can be given.

And geometry can be determined from looking at it. Considering that geometry is the only part of it that can be used rationally (and can be determined by inspection), it seems like there is no reason to make more information available, unless you have a better idea.

[diomedea]

It's reassuring to know geometric info makes sense. That would mean the total surface of a wing has meaning in itself. Knowing nothing of how FAR works, I suspected there was also some coefficient to account for wing efficiency due to cross-section shape (its profile being responsible for differential airspeed above and below the wing, thence lift). But probably nobody cares for the additional complexity due to wing profiles in KSP, and their behaviour at different speed regimes.

About the total surface, I personally don't find that easy to determine its amount just by looking at a lifting surface. Sure a bigger wing shows, but control surfaces aren't that easy to evaluate. My best bet would be to grab data from the .cfg file to find out (maybe surface is just MAC * b_2, no need to consider any further complexity from the shape and other data fields). But probably the above shows how far I am from truth, and therefore how better would be if that info could be made available in game.