Programming Question Buoyancy in Orbiter

Mr Martian

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hey there, I was thinking about making an airship like craft. I originally thought of simply using hover engines to create the effect of buoyancy, but I thought it would be way cooler and much more realistic if I could actually make my vessel buoyant. I was wondering if this was even possible in Orbiter, and if so, how would I go about coding it?

any answers are much appreciated :)
 

Urwumpe

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hey there, I was thinking about making an airship like craft. I originally thought of simply using hover engines to create the effect of buoyancy, but I thought it would be way cooler and much more realistic if I could actually make my vessel buoyant. I was wondering if this was even possible in Orbiter, and if so, how would I go about coding it?

any answers are much appreciated :)

I remember that there is an add-on for that, not sure if it still works.

[ame="http://orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=1243"]Buoyancy[/ame]

Also Artlav has created a Venus base, that is just a giant balloon floating in the Venusian air.

[ame="http://orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=3488"]Shukra_Venus_Station_080813[/ame]
 

asbjos

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You can dig into the source code for this addon: [ame="http://orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=5092"]JELAIR-HotAirBalloon(UCGOandUMmu)[/ame]
It seems like the developer calculated the buoyant force created by the balloon and added it with AddForce.

But watch out, I guess that it would be very unstable at high time acceleration.
 

Urwumpe

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You can dig into the source code for this addon: JELAIR-HotAirBalloon(UCGOandUMmu)
It seems like the developer calculated the buoyant force created by the balloon and added it with AddForce.

But watch out, I guess that it would be very unstable at high time acceleration.

Yes, you need to solve differential equations there, Runge-Kutta is your friend for this and still, you can get some strangeness at longer time steps.
 
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