I Built a Simulated Ornithopter and the Results Surprised Me

Can an Ornithopter REALLY fly?
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- Gatsby: (GUNNER)
Thank you for watching! :)

[@jagermantis]

"*Starts designing ornithopter*" "*vision of how to solve design issues comes to you in a dream*" Must have been a coincidence.

[@nospoon4799]

Loolz. Dream ftw.🤔

[@SALEENS7GTR5]

Bro snuffed spice that night

[@Kleinage]

@@SALEENS7GTR5the spice was in the air of his tent; he did not realize it.

[@DeltaC4137]

Dreams are messages from the deep...

[@stephensmith1118]

an old technique hence the saying i will sleep on it, part of the brain just carrys on trying to solve problems whilst the conscience part of the brain is at rest... ive had many insights and solutions just by this method...

[@EnnesArms]

Messier: _gets the solution to the thopter wings in a dream_ *Lisan al Gaib!*

[@Viper555]

*cue Mongolian throat singing* Dreams are messages from the deep

[@ryantonytonytony]

As written

[@Fury9er]

The sleeper has awakened!

[@NoPantsBaby]

The spice melange!

[@alodelore9597]

​@@Fury9erA man of culture as it seems, I like it

[@spiritbear7781]

While MANNED ornithopter aircraft taking off (har-dee har) is next to never going to happen due to practicality reasons, ornithopter drones are probably very likely to have reason for existing, mostly in the civil and spy senses

[@carlosandleon]

they already are used for those purposes

[@thebugmonster38]

When I was younger I had the wowee dragonfly ornithopter, it still required a tail rotor for yaw but it was genuinely the coolest thing I've ever owned.

[@fredashay]

With the popularity of the newest DUNE movies, I'm pretty sure someone is gonna show up at Oshkosh in a manned ornithopter one of these days.

[@1LEgGOdt]

You forgot Artillery Spotting and Reconnaissance for individual Soldiers. And they can also be used as a mobile Security Camera system that’s far more natural than the high pitch whizzing we get with traditional quad, octa, and penta drones. And we could even make these ornithopters look and fly just like birds that we see would see in the area(native species) that would have landing areas set up for them where they could land and recharge via contact with the perch similar to how birds are able to sit in a power line or wire and not fall off while sleeping. Then when the bird is needed to move. It just generates a bit of lift with a flap of its wings while pushing off the charging wire/perch where they would then fly off to the next point to repeat the process

[@TrogdorBurnin8or]

The question isn't whether small thropters can fly, the question is whether they have significant advantages over swashplate helicopters and multirotor helicopters.

[@ShadowDragon1848]

As we all know, Ornithopters are just cats purring. Love the fluff!

[@jakubk.584]

I've got my kitty resting on my neck as I'm watching this, and I couldn't tell which sound was which for a second.

[@ShadowDragon1848]

@@jakubk.584 As we all should do. Btw: I once had an ace girlfriend and know they seem to pop up everywhere. Hello there 😂

[@Spooglecraft]

Bo approves

[@metalfusionf]

At eardrum breaking volume, as the tips of those wings would likely need to go supersonic.

[@Kilovotis]

@@ShadowDragon1848 how does that work?

[@Beef3D]

The "flapping wing" motion that gives the Ornithopter it's name is technically also it's biggest 'Achilles' Heel' while it's technically possible to create a manned ornithopter, we simply do not have the sufficiently advanced technology and strong enough material that can withstand the high frequency flapping motion of the wings and the insurmountable amount of aerodynamic forces that it has to endure every couple milliseconds.

[@Wood-In-My-Eye]

It’s not that. It’s over complicated and has a number of fail points that can not have redundancies. That’s pretty much the main reason. All aircraft have to have redundancy that a secondary system can take over.

[@nateharder2286]

What if instead of moving the outside tips of the wings, we move the inside base. Maybe stabilize the tips with T shaped spar.

[@ddjohnson9717]

Its not made because we have things better. just like the da Vinci aerial screw - possable? maybe. but we have better so why mess with old tech?

[@MrJuanmarin99]

Seems like something that a magnetic bearing or the Meissner effect of a superconductor could solve. The wing attached with a free-floating ball joint and then a ring slightly offset ring of electromagnets that turn on and of attracting a metal core inside the ring can provide the full movement of the wing along 2 axis. With the metal rod behind instead a magnet you can also rotate the wing providing angle of attack control of the wing.

[@alexanderglass2057]

@@MrJuanmarin99 magnetic ball joints are definitely very possible but they would be very heavy unless electromagnetically powered to be strong enough for use in a manned dragonfly style ornithopter. I have a design for a strong stable single axis bearing, using passive magnets I haven't tested yet, that could function as a brushless motor as well given enough space between the two sides of the bearing and gaps in the main repellent rings, placing a stator on the internal bearing ring and the coils on the external or reverse depending on if the outer ring is the easiest. To replicate the joint system used in this video I would likely have the coils on the inside of the main Rotary, have the blade rotation control/ cancel consist of a unpowered mag bearing and two magnetic repelling rails against repelling stators on the blade itself, the amplitude control or swash plate would be a passive component of two mirrored quarters of a mag bearing with magnet and rubber edge stops, layered between the main Rotary and the rotation cancel, and an active component of an electric ram actuated swash plate, the "plate" being two parallel ring magnets repelling against the top and bottom hold-in-place ring magnets of the passive rotation cancel bearing, possibly pulling double duty with the rotation cancel repellent rails attached to it by way of the casing holding the ring magnets. For the thrust direction rotation system for vertical takeoff and low speed maneuverability a magnetic bearing brushless servo with a 135° rotation range with hard stops, so as to allow easy routing of wires for electrical power and control. 135° also allows 45° off the vertical 90 backwards thrust, this would be your thrust reversing to slow down.

[@solngv8]

If the physics of Flyout is good enough you can try positioning the blades behind each other in a certain way so that the blades can ride off of each other's vortices to create more lift. Sort of like what bee's wings do.

[@soleenzo893]

this is also of course what dragonflies do

[@playyourturntodieatvgperson]

fly-out can't model interactions between multiple pieces. sadly without pre made flight models, the computational difficulty gets to high for a game. uh this sounded pretentious im just trying to be helpful.

[@AchievementDenied]

@@playyourturntodieatvgperson i didn't see it as pretentious, since the way you stated it didn't seem demeaning and gets straight to the point

[@nospoon4799]

@@playyourturntodieatvgperson Not pretentious. Just an intelligent explanation.

[@DrakyHRT]

​@@playyourturntodieatvgpersonyeah, precisely why I thought the "perfectly realistic aerodynamics" comment was insane, this would be sold to the military if it was perfectly accurate and consumed so little computing power.

[@MrEnyecz]

No offense, but ornithopters in Dune (at least in the books) have a jet engine too for horizontal flight. They do flapping only at low speeds.

[@carlosandleon]

alao in the movies

[@nospoon4799]

There was another series of books that had ornithopters too. By a writer called Julian May.

[@andrewevenson2657]

It’s a good thing you said no offense because everything you said after that was blatantly offensive (no offense).

[@therealpils]

@@nospoon4799 have only read the incredible "many-coloured land" series. in which work is the ornithopter?

[@brunitop4753]

​@@andrewevenson2657Don't know if this was meant to be a troll, but the guy only stated a simple fact and said nothing personally directed to cause harm to anyone. You're tweaking (much offense)

[@shingshongshamalama]

One big advantage for the ornithopter used on Arakis is that, assuming they can use some space-age-tech internal energy storage and transmission system, they can operate without air intake. And do you have any idea how horrendously bad desert air is for jet engines? Not having to get sand in your engine sounds like a huge plus to me.

[@carlosandleon]

just use that energy system in a helicopter then

[@CharlesD-qb9nm]

There was a part in the book talking about how the ornithopters on Arrakis are specialized for the climate with stuff like better cooling systems and sand filters on them

[@Lolwutfordawin]

@@carlosandleon it's much easier to keep sand out of a flapping thing - a rubber boot (not the foot kind, think 90s mountain bike forks) will do the job. Keeping sand out of a rotating bearing like on a helicopter is a lot harder.

[@carlosandleon]

@@Lolwutfordawin Not that hard though. All the Isis hiluxes still run fine

[@deekamikaze]

@@carlosandleon a wheel bearing is a lot different than a clutch or other light weight materials used on helicopters. Plus if a wheel bearing fails then you just pull over. If you have a critical failure on a helicopter, you better hope you can auto because if you can't. You better have a will.

[@corvuscorax5775]

I like that Flyout makes it look like the pressure waves coming of the wingtips are so bad, they create shock-wave condensation. Who needs the sound to be generated as audio, when you can literally SEE it ;)

[@hunterswepic]

Yeah I literally just watched another video about the dune ornithopter saying that the blades would be so loud, probably louder than turbines and props

[@EdwardCree]

Fun fact, the "twisting" part of the motion is only necessary at low speeds. Once you get some airflow past the wing, a pure flapping motion generates thrust because the angle of the relative wind tilts the lift vector forwards during the downstroke (and aft during the upstroke, but the lift magnitude is smaller during the upstroke). That may be why your design produced little thrust at low speeds, rather than anything to do with "power bands".

[@gamerpl9037]

0:11 Glad to see I'm not the only guy who nicknamed this type of orni "mantis" instead of "dragonfly"

[@fcw2bom]

>unlike a helicopter this thing can taxi on the ground Helicopters can absolutely taxi on the ground. Hinds and Hips routinely taxi to runways and do rolling takeoffs, for an example.

[@diegomolinaf]

DCS taught us so much.

[@fcw2bom]

@@diegomolinaf ...I've been found out

[@velvetkit69]

Any helicopter with wheels and variable rotor pitch can taxi while on the ground

[@Fvv3]

"Spastic washing machine" is crazy

[@crgrier]

You missed one detail from the Dune books. The ornothopter has jet engines for forward thrust at high speed and can fold the wings along the body reducing drag and allowing it to fly balistically like a rocket for very high speed dashes. I'd love to see a follow up design with jets added.

[@s-paceco.6506]

I just finished rewatching the first part of dune, since I’m going to see part two tomorrow, and I see this as the first video in my subscriptions What a coincidence

[@f0rdgamer]

It’s trending because of dune, for sure, but people who have never interacted with the Dune movies (me) are also getting the recommendation today.

[@Jam0nToast009]

Those wings really be going spastic. Every time I look at them, I think my brain has a minor aneurysm

[@macdjord]

Hello Snickers! You are a Good Kitty.

[@decofox6789]

Cheers m8. That thing is so lovely in flight, and the Dune MS paint kills me.

[@kacperkonieczny7333]

I am gonna be pedantic and correct you that he didn't use MS Paint, but GIMP

[@Vlamyncksken]

@@kacperkonieczny7333 Award for the most useless comment in this section for the past day

[@Verminator4]

I’m not sure if I should be more impressed with you or the game itself for the fact that you managed to not only get this working but working this well.

[@myusdmcavalier]

There was an Ornithopter that was gonna be made by the french in the 30s called the Riout 102T Alérion. Blew up during wind tunnel testing and was canceled.

[@cyprienchiron6622]

The prototype version archive flight tho

[@DanielW-ir2ou]

he talked about it in the video 💀

[@baneblackguard584]

Mechanic that maintains that thing is damned good... has it purring like a kitten.

[@DerpsWithWolves]

The ornithopters in Dune actually... Don't have mechanical engines, canonically. Instead, there's a genetically-engineered living creature that filters air particles for food which lives inside the 'engine' housing, and the aircraft uses the muscles of the creature itself to flap the wings, with the controls seemingly prompting electrical impulses to tell it what to do. Upside is technically they don't require fuel. Downside is the creature can get tired, injured, and you need to store ornithopters somewhere with constantly circulating air or the 'engine' will starve to death / suffocate. That lore was also, mind you, written back when they flapped more like a bird, and less like dragon flies, so not all models may operative on such a principal.

[@alexrator7674]

The planes in the movies seem pretty mechanical

[@ElectroNicko_]

Just a little concerning. If they crash the poor creature does to 🙁

[@Beef3D]

I never read the books, but I recall that according to the lore, many aeons ago an AI uprising once happened, and when it was quelled, machines that previously had artificial intelligence were no longer allowed to be "smart" or "thinking" hence the human mentat was born to take over the job of computers. And I guess that's also why the modern dune ornithopters are fully analog machines with very little to no digital parts.

[@mrhonkhonk6116]

@@alexrator7674yhea i think the living creature are from the book Denis Villeneuve took a lot of liberty from the source material with the two DUNE

[@alexrator7674]

@@mrhonkhonk6116 yeah i know

[@teslacamman811]

is that a SAND the movie reference???

[@MrShrog]

Cmon, it's clearly a small rocks, a photo collage reference

[@alexrator7674]

No it's Superset, Union, Intersection, Element of the movie (⊃ ∪ ∩ ∈)

[@rojnx9]

@@alexrator7674 hehehehe :) math jokes

[@Gelatinocyte2]

@@alexrator7674 *Subset with a dot (⊃ ⋃ ⋂ ⪽)

[@Funk1199]

Look up if that wing "collective" has ever been done on an ornithopter before. If not, patent that shit immediately.

[@HALLish-jl5mo]

Patents aren't free

[@raspiankiado]

​@@HALLish-jl5mo Which is simply just... fucked. But, I can see why they now are.

[@7r1p0d5]

I'm not gonna lie, my first thought to him thinking of changing the amplitude was an audible "yeah, no shit" so I'd be pretty pissed if something so obvious as a concept could be patented

[@LoganDark4357]

@@7r1p0d5 welcome to the wondrous world of *✨✨✨✨ Intellectual Property ✨✨✨✨*

[@flyingroark]

Just so you know... Yeah aerospace engineer here. we're watching.

[@hanswang7891]

I've known for a long time that angled counter rotating joints produces the ornithopter flapping motion, since the Besiege days. But a collective joint to control the throttle without changing the RPM? That's just genius, will definitely try that in all the games I play now

[@rafaelcruzs2]

That audio footage playing in Portuguese really caught me off-guard lol

[@evanbeers1644]

Hmm yes, a 3:00AM EST post Goddammit man now I'm staying up for hours trying to make my own. Edit: I actually passed out half way though. Will use the audio files to counter mild insomnia going forward.

[@pontushaggstrom6261]

8:00am here, perfect timing

[@jackblack5393]

wonderful, love the video It also seems that by spending a lot of time tinkering with the design of the mechanism you unintentionally performed a technique whose name i forgot, where right before going to sleep you focus on something really hard so that it appears in your dream or your brain subconsciously performs problem solving regarding that topic. Some people who mastered that technique claim to be able to enter lucid dreams on command to continue studying or working on whatever it is they were struggling with. I wish i could link you an article but I cannot recall the name of this phenomenon. Either way, great build and video, I'd love to see a luxury civillian version too.

[@usnlynn79]

Lucid Dreaming?

[@marcusrauch4223]

@@usnlynn79 lucid dreaming is when you realize, that you’re in a dream, and be able to interact with your dream, instead of having it move along like a movie.

[@dutchdragon2472]

I either don't dream or don't remember them, only very rarely. Is this a known condition too?

[@Vlamyncksken]

Huh, after a long night of studying and giving up because I just didn't get it I went to sleep and when I woke up it just all clicked and I got the subject matter as if I knew it for years

[@tylerphuoc2653]

@@Vlamyncksken Your brain literally does file cleaning and debugging if you have good sleep, so that's where all the advice against cramming at the expense of sleep comes from

[@rojnx9]

I LOVE ornithopters, I have built them in almost every aerodynamics capable game I have played. They just make me happy. Also seeing a name I recognised: Decofox - was very surprising because I learnt a lot from his stormworks ornithopter designs. The way you made ornithopters work in Flyout seems very cool. When it comes to real world applications the forces on the wings and frame are not really worth it, but if you ignore that because you are working in a rigid physics simulation without flex, what about the benefits? I think that they may be useful for stealth purposes, I assume that the flapping wings wouldn't be great for stealth but they could be made with a radar absorbent coating which means that you don't have to worry about a big heat signature from a jet thrust exhaust or big jet intakes ruining the radar signature. Of course the vehicle would still probably be jet powered but with smaller intakes and exhaust like a helicopter. Also VTOL/STOL capabilities are cool. As opposed to a helicopter you wouldn't get retreating blade stall at high speeds. As opposed to a fixed wing propeller aircraft you can have completely variable prop angle depending on speed. (this would require programming tho, so not in Flyout) If you harmonise flapping with wingtip vortices you can probably come close to eliminating them altogether, kinda like how fish are so efficient because they swim in sync with vortices in the water coming off their tail. Thrust vectoring. Wings folding back completely good for carriers + vtol. Spool up times should be fast. But You probably can't go supersonic. And it is probably loud, I don't know if it would be louder or quieter than helicopter rotors.

[@MaskedCorpse]

I wonder if one could recreate the Harkonnen Command-ornithopter from the second movie. I really liked the unconventional look of that one. A sort of big ball-shaped superheavy ornithopter, in the role of an armored gunship.

[@andrewevenson2657]

The biggest issue with this design in terms of making it IRL is that I don’t think there is a material that can exist that you could make the wings out of. This design only works for things like dragonflies or humming birds because they are small. When you scale things up, the volume scales exponentially, and with more volume comes more mass, and with more mass the laws of momentum and inertia become a lot more important. Little creatures have wings so light that they can flap that fast without the momentum of the wings ripping them apart. On top of that, when you scale up that drastically, you may even need to account for the speed of sound of the wing’s material. You can only propagate a motion through an object at the speed of sound for that object. If you had a steel pole a light year long, and moved one end, it would take 58,783 years for the other end of the pole to move. Obviously that’s an extreme example, but the speed of sound is so fast that at the scale of a creature’s wing, it may as well be instant. Scale it up a few hundred times though, and now you may have to worry about the speed of sound of your wing material. Not to mention that repeated motion may cause resonant frequencies to tear apart the wings, the aerodynamics of turbulence generated are totally different on that scale, and I’m sure there is even more to consider. Long story short, I don’t think it is possible for us to create a material that is strong enough to move like that at that scale. Not even just strong and light enough, but I mean strong enough period. To hell with weight, build it out of the strongest nano carbon tubes or whatever fancy metal alloy you want to build them out of, and I think it’ll break. However if someone happens to do the math and finds that some material would work, please let me know cause that’s be intriguing.

[@AdamSchadow]

Well there were much bugger dragonflies in the past so maybe this could still be used to for example replace the current quad rotor fpv drones.

[@andrewevenson2657]

@@AdamSchadow well yeah, a drone is substantially smaller than a full sized aircraft. Like I said that volume is exponential, so a drone would be entirely feasible. I’m just talking about the full sized aircraft he designed in his video.

[@Zach476]

the largest flying animal ever discovered had a wingspan of 11 metres so it should be able to scale up enough to hold 1 person.

[@andrewevenson2657]

@@Zach476 I wasn’t implying flapping wings cannot support the weight of a person, I was explaining that a material does not exist that allows wings of that size to beat 30+ times a second without ripping itself apart.

[@peoplez129]

The speed of sound only matters when you're talking about a rotating propeller. A flapping propeller would be different. It would of course have issues with air compression and drag at high speeds, and probably even create sonic booms. The real problem is they are horribly inefficient at generating thrust, and it's an inherent feature of the design. We simply have better and more reliable ways. For tiny drones, you could use the elasticity of a material to increase and improve its thrust characteristics, especially if you can also increase and decrease the length of the wing rapidly on the up and down strokes. So on the up strokes, the wing would reduce in length, decreasing its drag, and on the down strokes it would stretch back out again, increasing its lift.

[@briandarnell2273]

this is really cool! I love the design, and I might use it for inspiration for my own writing and sci-fi projects! the sound-design work for the montage is really well-done, too! keep up the good work, Messier-Al-Gaib!

[@Losthewaronemus]

I love that these vids keep getting more and funnier subtle edits. It gives it a Game Theory type funny-scientific vibe that I enjoy a lot. Keep up the good work🗿

[@thegodofyesses8722]

I love to see how much your video quality has evolved and gotten better, hope to see more in the future👍

[@jackblack5393]

this is like porn but for responsible people

[@Jam0nToast009]

Uhh… explain, please?

[@jackblack5393]

@@Jam0nToast009no

[@jackblack5393]

@@Jam0nToast009 no

[@CASA-dy4vs]

@@jackblack5393explain or I’ll leak what happened on January 12th 2022

[@sangwangrai]

​@@jackblack5393yes

[@whitetiana3022]

micro fractures IRL: that's a nice wing you have there. be a shame if something were to happen to it.

[@jaspermooren5883]

Well there are a lot more wings, arguably this is less of a problem than in a normal plane. If you lose 1 wing on this system it's probably still very possible to do an emergency landing relatively safely.

[@peoplez129]

IRL you'd probably need a membrane wing that is more like a lattice that can deform/fold in a fixed way, reducing stresses. That's what people get wrong about wings....bug wings have all those joints in them not just for strength, but also to have a controllable way of deforming under stress. An ornithopter wing would need to take these same considerations of being able to deform under stress, rather than to be made out of a solid material that focuses on just handling the stresses. It'd also be possible to create a wing that can rapidly open holes in itself, reducing drag, thus reducing stress. It wouldn't even be particularly difficult, you'd just need a hole and a rotating mechanism that spins like a fidget spinner, synced with the beats of the wing. Put those all over the wing, and you could reduce the drag profile of the wing on the up stroke by nearly half, with the holes closing up on the down stroke. That can remove the need to create any kind of rapid rotation of the wings for the up stroke, allowing for a fixed wing angle. From there you can use small control fans for finer directional thrust.

[@BumpyLumpy1]

Congratulations on 50k! 🎉🥳

[@WelcomeToDERPLAND]

Its not that the concept of the Ornithopter isn't sound- its just that sound is so loud it blows eardrums open- and Dragonflys are scary. Also, we've known this since the science fiction novels of the 50s.

[@Jebotito]

one issue i see for this (or any other realistic) ornithopter design is the speeds the wingtips will experience. in order to generate enough lift to fly with humans on board AND to be able to do more than just mere photo reconnaissance, the wingtips will most likely reach mach1 or even exceed it. we all know what happens if a super prop has super sonic propellers... look up the thunderscreech for more info on that. the name is fitting, it caused ground crew to vomit and experience nausea because of the vibrations and the immense loudness of the props reaching mach1, effectively making the plane - while on ground - a sitting mach1 super sonic boom box, with constant super sonic booms. the pilots didnt enjoy flying the plane either...

[@Maximum_777]

That's actually so wild, 13:26 Back in the days of Simple Planes, we not only did the exact same thing, and built extremely basic Ornithopters, but we even delt with damn near the exact same limitations. We also had no scripts, so we had to make purely mechanical flapping mechanisms from the joints of SP, known as Rotators, and they used the almighty Piston, set to cycle mode. They worked off of magic power as well, meaning you could fly forever with no need for fuel so long as you could get off the ground, and this meant you could use them to cheese all the fuel efficiency and gliding challenges/missions, which was always fun to do. An specific issue we ran into was that the flapping motion barely provided any thrust with how the physics engine worked, but so long as you used huge wings and made sure the thing was basically a glider with next to no drag, you could slowly hobble along the ground, get just enough speed to take off, then you'd retract your wheels, and then that was it, you were flying. We also tried collective like control systems too, but ran into issues with parts not having strong enough connection physics, so they'd stretch apart and brake. Ultimately helicopters didn't work (until they added a dedicated helicopter blade part) you couldn't spin a wing on a rotator and have it make lift, so really even if we got it to cycle properly, which we never really did, the physics were just were not good enough, and as a result it pretty much ended there. Very few working, non modded Ornithopters exist in that game. Anyways it's super cool to see essentially the spiritual successor of SP solve some of these issues, but still leave you guys stuck with most of them. Some day we'll eventually get an aerodynamic/physics simulation sand box good enough for it to work, but I get the feeling I'm gonna have to learn to code, develop a physics engine, and then build an entire game myself before someone actually solves it all in one nice package with multiplayer, and some form of story that actually gives your builds purpose. Right now I'm excited because it seems SP2 is gonna be a thing, releasing some time next year, and there's gonna be multiplayer, which is a huge deal, but idk what the Andrew, the SP dev has in store for the physics, right now it seems to be still on the same game engine as SP, but there's clearly been improvements so all I can really do is hope.

[@rex8255]

Given the advances in materials over the lat few decades, I'm glad to see the idea being revisited. I know the big problem back in the day is that they wings were just to heave, and took to much energy, to make it efficient.

[@roaling2]

It's crazy when you dream of flyout

[@soleenzo893]

"games" like these do this to you lol. happenned to me when i was binging KSP, i would dream of building spaceships and orbital trajectories xD

[@user-cd4bx6uq1y]

I know nothing about planes which is exactly why this is interesting. It also brings me back to the "simpler and calmer" military videos

[@carlpeters8690]

I'd put that rear fan on a gimble so it do everything from turning the vehicle to providing thrust (Forwards, backwards, ...). Well done & thank you for sharing.

[@TalkingHands308]

Aw poor Snickers, I hope she's comfortable for the remainder of her life.

[@SnaptrixGaming]

One of the biggest problems in reality would be vibration, but I wonder if you could shape the tail as a bell tuned to the frequency the blades put out so it'd cancel out the vibrations

[@RodolfoCristanBehr]

Man, Great video. I wish you had more views.

[@weeliano]

Amazing work sir! This looks like it can be built in real life!

[@j.z.2549]

Awesome stuff as always!

[@markfergerson2145]

Wingtip vortices are the least of your problems. The tips of the wings will break the sound barrier, generating sonic booms felt by the aircraft *and* crew (unlike those generated by ordinary supersonic aircraft), *while the craft is on the ground preparing to lift off* and getting worse in flight. Keeping tip velocity below the speed of sound means more wings flapping slower which means more weight… Supersonic wings require a rather different profile from subsonic wings which makes blade design more complex. As amplitude increases more of the wing will go supersonic though. I can’t see a good way to alter blade profile in flight. My SWAG (scientific wild assed guess) is that roughly the distal third of each wing will be supersonic in flight making the booms much louder. The thing will sound like constant thunder, deafening anyone within hundreds of feet. Sufficient sound insulation to prevent permanently deafening the crew will make the aircraft skin thicker and heavier but if the crew is lucky the felt sound will not be in the “brown note” range. The shocks generated by each wing will interact with those from the other blades on each side of the craft. That will also do bad things to lift generation. It might be possible to tune blade length and flapping amplitude to make the combined shocks assist lift but likely only at one particular value of amplitude. Then there’s heating. Pushing pointy things through air faster than sound is bad enough but doing it to blunt objects is much worse. The wingtips will be glowing dull red even before liftoff. See “blunt body dynamics”. On the plus side electrostatic effects as seen with helicopters flying over Earthly deserts will create pretty vertical bands of light for each wingtip.

[@josephfenech9401]

Dune! Ornithopters being designed and made! Coolest thing I have ever seen.

[@p5ychojoe138]

Alot of things are possible, but many suffer from impracticality. Like mechs, probably the biggest one might ever get (assuming power issues are resolved/disregarded) would probably be akin to titanfall, but smaller being more like super exoskeletons. And even that size comes with a lot of drawbacks and that's considering more civilian uses before even thinking of any kind of frontline operation. Still cool to see these things as feasible, even if impractical. Maintenance on that Ornithopter would get the loon bins full in record time I bet.

[@Seraphzero0]

I’m new to the channel but I think this is an absolute masterpiece!

[@resonance314]

One of your coolest projects so far! Have you considered making a ground-effect vehicle in Flyout?

[@tetronaut88]

This is epic, very good job!

[@BiggestMarph]

Messier you never cease to amaze me. Great work.

[@soleenzo893]

This is so cool, and one of the most believable ornithopters i've seen designed anywhere. Could you explain how you decided on placing the 8 wongs in High low low high configuration, rather than duplicating what dragonflies do, but adding a second set? (so making the wings be high low high low.

[@M_Gargantua]

A correct Ornithopter doesn't flap like that. Its not a vertical wobbling motion. You're close using a collective control though. You need a continuously pivoting joint at the equivalent to a birds humerus. The wing sweeps "forward" quickly at a low AoA, generating lift. At the end of the forward sweep the AoA is rapidly increased as it starts its rearward motion, paddling the air down and back to generate forward thrust with some vertical component. Generally you would generally have it sweep "down" and "back" at the same time since you want to correlate the direction of motion to the continuously variable AoA, The rearward speed and throw needs to be scaled with True Air Speed.

[@rockco-iv8es]

Pilot's hearing vanishing instantly after the engine starts.

[@paxxweidert5408]

I've been pretty busy lately, but I think I need to make some time to work on a couple projects in flyout! Thanks for the inspiration, your videos are the best!

[@paxxweidert5408]

Also...would you consider making a glider? I have been trying and I cannot figure out how to make Jimmy fit properly, maybe you could work it out...?

[@Fury9er]

This is awesome, the engineering and style is great. It would make a nice model kit. Maybe higher airspeed mode would have the wings stop and sweep back with the tail fan rotating 90 degrees to provide thrust. Pitch control reverting to the elevator. A flying rc model would be great, what you have done here shows a system of amplitude control is a way to do it. Perhaps independant control of flap angle and blade pitch amplitudes with engine RPM governing frequency.

[@karlkinnard9932]

Came to this the day after I watched Dune part 2. That's awesome. based on your dreams I'd say you had some spice the night before.

[@ivanbiskis2562]

Impressive work man! I’m surprised that Flyout can handle something like this. You think we’ll ever see ornithopters in our lifetime?

[@stevenwolfe591]

Cool design. I've been wanting to see this done in Fly Out.

[@user-bi4wi7th1j]

Cool video!! How about the NGAD type of project??? 🙏

[@magonus195]

9:20 in the Dune movies, the 3D artists executed the same design under the hood. You can see, when the thopters are coming in for a hot landing, that the amplitude is much higher than the normal "stable" flight.

[@mattyman1241]

i was half expecting super unconvining mouth helicopter noises after your hype. got a good laugh out of the idea. great vid!

[@FochArigony]

19:09 Brazilian portuguese. Interesnting choice. Congratulations for 50k! Keep the excellent work! 🎉

[@autogaming8324]

BR?

[@davisdf3064]

imagine if Brazil actually makes the first manned military Ornithopter

[@deltap6967]

I thought it's Czech

[@mountainadventures7346]

I would be afraid those blades would just snap. But nice work!

[@funtimewithfalcon]

I hope Your cat recovers I just realized your channel is named after a starburst galaxy Messier 82

[@thijsjong]

Main problem would be wear and tear on the mechanisms. Helicopters have a lot of wear and tear. I estimate this wil be 10 times worse withan ornithopter.

[@SudsyMedusa53]

Atreidies crew chiefs when they find out that their fleet of aircraft with 800 million moving parts and carefully tuned fully analog systems are getting shipped to planet sand-hell, home of the sand:

[@mr.pinstripe7171]

If more ornithopter, content is a possibility then I will appreciate it greatly

[@lc1138]

Thank you for the great work ! It's cool the game forces you to find mechanical solutions instead of programming. (I mean, cool in the sense "feels more based to me as a lazy audience")

[@xetothex]

Super cool video. Thanks for sharing.

[@tex_the_proto2880]

I also just watched dune and now i know what ill be spending the next few days designing and building

[@douglastaylor43]

You do a great job giving credit when it's due. Nice job

[@rockco-iv8es]

Specifically, that's an anisothopter.

[@OyeVato]

I bet that little CIA dragonfly works fine now.

[@Internetzspacezshipz]

Damnnn, I never even thought about making an ornithopter in Flyout… that’s sick.

[@spleenjacobson203]

If you do a follow up vid, or a video on cyclogyros/cycloidal rotors, I’d love to hear your thoughts comparing the two. To my mind they share a lot of similarities: many long blades protruding horizontally, which provide both propulsion and the main lifting area, ability for higher horizontal speed than traditional helicopters while retaining increased maneuverability and some amount of S/VTOL, and (imo the biggest challenge with both designs) the unusual motion of the blades putting them under complex lateral loads, unlike the simpler centripetal tension of a helicopters blades.

[@mathiaslist6705]

Maybe you can convince people to build a real life remote controlled version of it. Btw why not use something more bionic than standard conventional rotating motors --- something more like muscles ---- probably all speculation but the first thing which came to mind when hearing about the broken wings was that the wings could be somekind of foil or elastic material that gets its strength by pressure (probably air pressure) and loses its pressure when the stress is to high ----something like the wings can be repressurized and become hard again --- as for now I see there room for improvements ((btw butterflies pump their wings up after hatching --- so that's probably why I came up with it))

[@stefenlunn113]

It's nice to know she's actually purring as she flies :)

[@KoenZyxYssel]

Very cool design. The fact that you built it as a gunship makes me wonder how it might behave if one or more wings were blown off. Could you land safely with just one pair of wings?

[@andremetayer1467]

Haven't you ever seen a dragonfly taking a escape suddenly ? In a fraction of second, this marvel is away... At the scale, the speed of the ornithopter must be higher than the presented model. No ? But your reflexion and your work in collabiration is very interesting to follow, step by step. Sorry if I've missunderstoud something, as a french, I've some limits to follow all your explanations. Well done, and the sound source is a piece of poetry.

[@robertknoll1403]

I wonder what would happen if you design your wings with a Prandtl profile, and design a set of wings that get longer from front to back, where the wingtip vortices of the front wing would line up with the point of lift inversion along the Prandtl wing on the wing behind it, canceling the vortices out. Could make it so that you only have full strength vortices on the final wing.

[@nateharder2286]

What if instead of moving the outside tips of the wings, we move the inside base. Maybe stabilize the tips with T shaped spar.

[@jamesliu8095]

The ornithopter would likely not need protection against guided munitions as unless manually guided like a wireguided missile or the hunter killer they would violate the butlerian jihad.

[@sebastiaomendonca1477]

I knew this had DecoFox written all over it! I'm loving this colab

[@SpeedyGwen]

I did make 2 or 3 in brick rigs and it does work tho it depends of the way u aproach it, tho there is a pleaging issue which is simulation frequancy which makes it work best with really wide and super long wings and a kinda slow flapping rate, and its really hard to make fully stable by only using the 4 or 8 flapping wings, tho I did end up with even more controls than a typical hellicopter with my design but yeah, ur rotor design for the wings is genious and I might copy it for my own contraptions and yeah, I wish I had flyout, sadly I dont have money nor enough reasons to get it...

[@RTPJu]

This channel just sat the bar too high... thank you very much, sir!

[@dayabloom9634]

I’m amazed by the builds of decofox that’s a really a great things you get inspired by him and gives him some visibility ! This guy is really crazy !

[@true_xander]

That cat purr sound is so distinctive!

[@xTheUnderscorex]

For the in-universe application in Dune there is something wonderfully plausible about the whole thing, and the ornithopters manage to be both fantastical and extremely grounded. With a setting 21,000 years in the future and a planet where gravity and air density could be a little different, the material science issues with the strength and durability of the wings and joints seem entirely solvable. There's also oodles of time available for the designs to have been refined over the centuries, quite reasonable to assume they'd have coordinated the wing movements well enough to keep vibrations under control. I'm not quite sure what level of fly-by-wire system is allowed before falling foul of the post-Butlerian Jihad rules, but if they can build paracompasses they can make it controllable.

[@spartainwarrior6445]

no way decofox got this good, i knew him when he was making shoddy 4 wing htol only ornithopters

[@Boovb714]

Only thing you’re missing is a deployable cannon.

[@v44n7]

I would take atmphere composition and density of arrakis into account when designing an Ornithopter. Maybe It makes more sense in the atmosphere of Arrakis

[@johnjuiceshipper4963]

Messier never disappoints. Even his Ornithopter has dual boom tail design.

[@legacyunited13]

FYI: helicopters also taxi. Wheeled helos like the black hawk roll and skids like a Iroquois (huey) air taxi. Which is hovering a few feet off the ground while following taxi lanes.

[@RadleyBO0]

Practical or not, now I really want someone to develop a small, drone-sized version of this that actually flies. I would love to see it!

[@terrylandess6072]

Back in the 60's my parents bought for my brother and I some working model ornithopters made by some French company at an Ohio State fair. There was a crank on the tail to wind up the rubber band and the spinning gears inside made the wings flap and they flew wonderfully - while a bit erratic due to the flapping, they were none the less stable in altitude and direction - even more so than the wind up rubber band powered Balsa wood prop planes of the era. You could change the pitch of both rear stabilizers some to account for wind and whether you wanted a long straight flight or the classic circle flight. It also glided without power reasonably well if the 4 wings were fairly level. Stuff like that prompted the desire to learn as a child.