Aerodynamic Wings - blocks for planet atmosphere

This mod adds 3 wing blocks for small ships.

They're all slightly different wing variations, a straight, a slightly angled and a more angled one, all of which are 5 blocks wide, 1 block tall and 1 to 3 blocks in length.

These blocks apply lift when moved against their large area sides while also moving forward in an atmosphere, like a wing.

The higher you go the less efficient the wings will get all the way to no resistance when in space.

Survival ready, colorable.

Internal behavior

The wing blocks resist movement on their large surface sides if they go fast enough, which causes gliding/lift.

Minimum speed is 5m/s where the lift starts and stops increasing at 100m/s.

Force is applied at the grid-group center of mass (can be set to current grid only in the terminal, blocks are hidden in terminal by default).

They require planets with air density (not oxygen) similar to atmospheric thrusters.

On top of that, the different visual styles also come with different force scales, the angle 1 (2x1x5) has the regular (100%) force, the angled 2 (3x1x5) has 125% force and the straight one (1x1x5) has 75% force.

Usage

Simply place the block on a small ship pointed forwards and you're done, you have a glider!

Give it a rear thruster and you have a plane, also some gyros, since flaps are really hard to control with rotors and stuff but it IS possible to do it that way too, just mind that you need to point the wing forward even on the flaps :P

And maybe a forward facing thruster for slowing down easier but that's about it.

Visual debugging / seeing when they actually work

If you're unsure if the design you're making takes advantage of the wings, you can enable the debug mode that visualizes when the wing is in effect.

It only works in creative mode and to enable it you have to go to the ship's control panel, show hidden blocks then select the wing blocks you want to debug and enable "Show in Toolbar Config".

That will paint the wing green if it's working or red if it's not and show a green or red message with information to anyone controlling the ship and anyone within 30m from the wing.

To disable debug mode just turn off that "Show in Toolbar Config" checkbox and the messages will stop showing and the wings will be painted back to their original color.

Worlds, blueprints, etc

I published a world which has that plane from the screenshot and some other stuff, including a really huge flat gravity field provided by my Enhanced Gravity Generators mod, have a go at it: (World) Aerodynamics Playground

Problems...

Well the main problem is that it's easy to abuse it, you can place wings inside the ship and it'll still work, adding checks for such things is complicated and not really worth it, especially since the game itself doesn't do that with thrusters either xD

Programmable block API

With a PB you can read the currently applied force and the world position where that force is applied.

"Wings.AppliedForce" of type Nullable which returns null if the block is not actually a wing. "Wings.AppliedForceAt" of type Nullable which returns null if no force is being applied. "Wings.UseGridCOM" of type bool which is the toggle in the "Use center of mass of:" button in terminal, true is "Grid", false is "Ship".

You can test if the mod is available (or updated) by using GetProperty("name") and nullcheck.

Related mods

Improved Thrusters - Reverse thrust, spinning fans, better jet flame Enhanced Gravity Generators - pulling ships together, literally

This mod is quite simple, there are more advanced aerodynamic mods out there: Aerodynamic Physics (Deadly Reentry + Drag + Flight) Planetary Dynamics - Re-Entry Heat, Drag, and Wings

Known issues

• Fixed in SE v01.164 Since v01.157 wings on rotors with safetylock will behave weirdly after a while (applying forces in seemingly random directions) as well as detecting atmosphere while in space at seemingly random times, these issues are with the game and have been reported to devs.

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