KSP: A Proper Stock Ornithopter: No tricks, No engines

[@scottmanley]

This is of course completely awesome, I'm really glad you made a point of not using control surfaces to avoid accusations of cheating.

[@Tsevion.7]

Yeah... I'm always sad when I see people claiming to have done something cool (really common to see with ion propelled planes), and then I need to tell them their engine is completely extraneous and they've accidentally built an infiniglider.

[@123parallax]

Adam Taliaferro gfycat.com/MindlessFakeGreatdane I made one with IR, procedural wings and it did work with FAR installed, but just barely. I used a rocket engine to help take off, then flew around the island airport and back to the launch pad. she was flapping furiously, but could just barely maintain a very small rate of climb. the ones I made using the stock simulation flew great and could take off without any assistance

[@g_glop]

Best of it is that it doesne't use ANY fuel, now just make it SSTO.

[@lolmandos]

glop cz If this could be SSTO, then we would have a efficient way to take off from Eve to orbit. Altough i feel it might be impossible for any sort of lift-dependant craft to work in upper atmosphere.

[@g_glop]

Mandos Aldmer I sad it as a joke. -__-

[@Alonkr]

I love this thing! I just stuck a kOS module on it's nose and made it flap on it's own. While the script's timing is far from perfect, it flies great :) I left it flying in circles overnight, and by morning it had reached 1215m and is still flying!

[@Mr556x45mm]

Nice you used Beethoven's Piano Sonata 14. One of my favorites, anyways, beautiful craft.

[@StumpedTrump]

Nerd

[@voxel_bonedisk]

Excellent! I award you 10 science

[@remagboy]

Flight of the Bumblebee is /the/ perfect song choice for your trip! That was beautiful!

[@moEGGz]

I honestly think this is the most impressive thing accomplished in KSP I've ever seen. Good work man!

[@ViolentKisses87]

And now to fly a Ornithopter to Minmus.

[@Lord_Amadee]

a fleet of ornithopters ensures the Atreides' ultimate airpower

[@SkyISKult]

i love mankind for this moments of pure awesomeness thanks dude and keep up the good work

[@isaacmyers6909]

Beautiful machine, and such a beautiful and appropriate song. Just beautiful. :')

[@johndavis5220]

lol someone must of lost a bet due to this video, it has one thumbs down

[@allmhuran]

Great job discovering the flexibility of the claws, I haven't even attached a claw to a craft yet. And as always, great kudos for demonstrating something cool using stock parts.

[@allmhuran]

Ro Jasen Nope! Is there any science to be had at asteroids? I'm thinking of redoing a tier-1 science maxout in career mode.

[@ereboros421]

allmhuran Every asteroid has unique sample science on it. Given the time and patience, there is an unlimited potential for science, some 40 (I think) bits at a time.

[@papics]

The most awesome thing I have seen in KSP lately! Kudos!

[@maximyankov834]

The most awesome thing that can be done in a game about rocket science

[@007hansen]

Lovely video and nice music too. You deserve a medal! pie out of 3 points!

[@Inglonias]

You spent 45 minutes flying to that island. You have far more patience than I, sir!

[@vaos3712]

Very cool. I must try this! Thank you for the inspiration. :)

[@SoyBeanSandwich]

I like your videos, I'm glad to see someone making videos on this beautiful game.

[@TheMrgrr]

Spectacular..... i love unique designs :)

[@tutracrafty]

This is literally awesome.

[@generico366]

I just had the best ksp moment ever. "Rodcas, stop being so terrified! You're on a kerbin rescue mission, what could possibly go wrong?!" *3 seconds later ship explodes*

[@lavendersugar143]

It took him 43 non-accelerated minutes to get to that island runway. He is more powerful than any of us and should be feared.

[@condorscondor]

wow! that is awesome! seriously good work there!

[@OldGamingGeezer]

This is all kinds of amazing. I love it.

[@1TW1-m5i]

A magnificent piece of kerbal engineering. Well done.

[@AussieAnnihilation]

Beautiful, i appreciate you sharing, inspiring.

[@khtreakalamer7011]

That's very cool thing. I love it.

[@samuelgordon8950]

This is so creative! Great job!

[@Hetnikik]

That is amazing!!! Well done!

[@cruzanak]

This is awesome man, great job! :D

[@Nszewczak]

this... is... GLORIOUS

[@EddieRodJr]

Awesome video bro, keep up the good work!! :-)

[@wraith444]

Watching the prelaunch gantry thingamabob roll away was weirdly satisfying...

[@isaacmyers6909]

love Moonlight!

[@AlyxMSC]

Masterpiece.

[@Bob65001]

I'm a bit late to the party but this is a work of art!

[@41Extremo]

43 minutes? You are more patient than I am

[@Alonkr]

Instascribed! This is one hot craft! How genius of you to use the claws as a hinge. BTW, is your 3 key still working after that trip to the island? Do you have a blister on your finger yet? :-p

[@delayed_control]

Next challenge: do an ornithopter with FAR installed

[@binkiedontaskwhy]

Genius!

[@zackferguson1661]

I modified this to be automatic by simply a rotor with a beam attached to it and placed them where the landing legs would be.

[@Spacek531]

infinigliders and this use the same principle: lift and forward momentum are created when wings change orientation. On heavier aircraft this isn't noticeable because of the mass of the other components, but on a light one like this and typical infinigliders, your lift/weight ratio is high enough to have a very noticeable effect.

[@Tsevion.7]

I can understand why you think that (as that's how it would work in real life if you had ridiculously powered flaps), but it's not the case in KSP. In KSP it's due to the method they use to make flaps work, which is they generate a force in proportion to airspeed over the flap, and in real life, this force should only be perpendicular to the airflow, or counter to it, from friction, in KSP some of it can go with the airflow, allowing speed gains. For evidence: 1) I can make infinigliders that function holding the key in one direction, no flap movement. 2) If that were the case they'd work best at low speeds, but the opposite is true, they gain efficiency as they speed up.

[@Spacek531]

Matthew Karr if it were a better simulation, you would be correct, and I actually am incorrect in my comment: infinigliders do not create lift, they only create forward momentum. To be specific, I said when /wings/ change orientation, which was deliberate, but also includes control surfaces. When a wing (or control surface) rotates, it creates momentum in the forward direction. You can test this by attaching wings to a robotics motor and pitch the wings up and down. The test craft will accelerate. The craft in the video works with the same principle.

[@Tsevion.7]

Spacek531 That's the thing... for my craft to work the wing needs to move to create forward momentum. What you're saying is totally true about how my ornithopter works. On the other hand, this is simply not true for control surfaces... it's true that the easiest way to see infiniglide is to make an over-controllable craft and turn on SAS, since this naturally counters any rotational forces, leaving you with net forward momentum... but this isn't the only way. I have infinigliders that work when the controls are held in a single direction, they're not moving, but still generating thrust... which I think clearly proves that it's not their motion which is creating thrust... it is simply a result of how they're implemented.

[@mightbetwitchy3323]

You have basically made a hydraulic powered flapping bird of doom

[@thanetospotatoes9483]

Now it's time to fly around kerbin

[@AussieAnnihilation]

i cant get this to work, my wings keep detatching from the grapplers.

[@carpetmonk]

id like to see this attempte in 1.2.+

[@guard13007]

(You might want to turn up your mic a bit in editing next time, it's a bit quiet.) Excellent! ^^

[@Tsevion.7]

Yeah, I do all my editing on a nice pair of headphones that make everything loud and crisp... when I uploaded and listened on speakers it came out a bit quiet. Audio Engineering is hard.

[@mindpotato]

the music suites perfectly when i realised 2014 was 8 years ago....

[@praktykienjoyer750]

thats soo cool

[@casualbird7671]

I have FAR downloaded so no cheaty-infinigliders for me. I wonder if this craft would work with FAR's drastically improved aerodynamics.

[@voidermangd6498]

Wow its flying like a bird!

[@Silverware09]

You sir are a Kerbal.

[@MAL_Razno]

I love the way this game is abused creatively

[@KspManiac]

Awesome! I didn't know that you could attach the ARMs to yourself :D Try making a tank turret :D

[@kujoforever]

You're like the Leonardo davinci of ksp!

[@NPC-kv6ee]

Hello from the future, I want to go back

[@Khalless]

Jeb : what kind of sorcery is this?

[@ManlyMcBuff]

I think you'd be able to flap faster if you had 2 sets of legs controlled by separate action groups.

[@Tsevion.7]

I tried variations on that... it made the task of managing the action groups somewhat more complex than I liked, and it didn't add a whole lot.

[@ManlyMcBuff]

On second thought, maybe that would be a bit difficult :P Though, I failed to mention in my previous comment, awesome plane! Much more creative than anything many ksp players (including myself) could imagine.

[@clouds-through-a-window8942]

Truely amazing, Truely insane! also could try and remake that in a newer version of KSP (like 1.4.1) this is for my own purely lazy reasons of course... but it would be very helpful.

[@ayaffnoneyme6093]

there is a craft file does it not work?

[@clouds-through-a-window8942]

Oh... okay, thanks! 😃 Wait... is it 1.4.2 compatible?

[@ayaffnoneyme6093]

no it is not sadly i tried it out

[@cmr2153]

Actually I somehow managed to build an ornithopter that managed to get up to about 600 ms due to some wobbling with SAS actually every single move makes it a lot faster so it it impossible to land when started.

[@cmr2153]

***** Ok in that case forget what I said. Seems there is more proper work required.

[@carbon1255]

***** It is hard to say how much is glitch, I made a plane powered by an SRB that was only meant to get to the other runway as a competition with my friend. It lost all power as it passed the runway. And it kept on climbing, successfully completing 7 whole orbits in the atmosphere before I got bored and wanted to do actually play the game again. No power, which meant locked control surfaces and no SAS. Clearly the physics in the game are broken anyway, so you are always being assisted by that.

[@Marex333]

Moonlight Sonata ;) Like for design too ;d

[@quentinbibas7525]

why did i think Dune when i first read Ornithopter ? :p nice job by the way, and i'm wondering if your design can be compressed for a cargo bay door system my actual stock assembly weight a lot and take a lot of space :x (using struct pylons for mounts, dock Jrs for door lock and engines for door movement, never had any success with legs)

[@frogsshadow4189]

Brilliant! Now, how small can you make it?

[@m1sz]

wow, that's a really good idea... :D I though about what you said about flexible joints in KSP, it could be a very nice addition to a mod, which maybe wouldn't be that hard, considering that we now have a stock part that has this kind of flexibility. What do you think? ^^

[@Tsevion.7]

If you want to go mods, Infernal Robotics makes things like this much easier, it has pivots that you can power and such. I just love the challenge of doing things like this in vanilla.

[@m1sz]

yeah I kind of know Infernal Robotics :p, but a flexible joint (with no force at all) could be good

[@threeme2189]

Subbed.

[@blackrack2008]

does it work with FAR?

[@Tetracarbon]

A Kerbal vehicle with no boosters? It must be witchcraft. =)

[@CarlosRios1]

Moonlight Sonata !!!! I can play this for sure! P.S. I actually can.

[@Yonkage]

So... I guess it's named the Bumblebee?

[@YsuuB]

How high can it fly?

[@royrequireswifi488]

Wow. All you need to do is slap on some solar panels and whatnot and boom an infinite flight plane

[@hngldr]

Could you work this by just locking and unlocking the suspension?

[@xmrblaqx]

Pretty sure that's exactly what they're doing.

[@birbman6802]

this is completely legitimate

[@Hyopsodus]

How did you make the gantries? and how did you connect the wings?

[@HarpsicusSealius]

I can barely get to Duna, so how in the name of Kerbin will I build that? xD

[@nojuspalevicius1566]

how long did it take to get to the old space center at 15 m/s

[@bigun89]

Have you tried this on Duna/Eve/Laythe?

[@Tsevion.7]

I have not yet... although this does seem to be the most popular question... I may do a video with me trying both this and my helicopter out on all of them.

[@tonyskocic6987]

Would this work with FAR? Good job anyway :D

[@JasonWMorningwood]

It really shouldn't since FAR is meant to be realistic

[@JasonWMorningwood]

***** It didn't actually fly though IIRC

[@joahnaut]

Silly question (but genuine) Would something like this be possible in real life?

[@legofan123123]

Birds do it so.. why cant we do it.

[@legofan123123]

Hellz yeah.

[@TopLists]

Awesome, too bad it's probably a pain to get into orbit, let alone another planet.

[@fridaycaliforniaa236]

It's even more painful as it couldn't flap on anything in vacuum 😂

[@sonic55193]

i wonder if this can work as an SSTO, how high can u get with this thing?

[@kasianvh]

sonic55193 no it goes way to slow. and you need air for this to work

[@juandiegosapotec]

have you tried this bird on Duna or Eve?

[@Drosera420]

Ornithopters on Duna? The spice must flow...

[@Tsevion.7]

I doubt it would work on Duna... the atmosphere is so thin. Eve would likely work, although I've run into other problems there before... the stronger gravity sometimes has a worse impact than might be expected. Combined with the thicker atmosphere the current landing legs may not be strong enough for Eve.

[@chaoko99]

TheGameMouse where is that joke from, I hear it a LOT

[@quentinbibas7525]

chaoko99 DUDE ! Dune ! DUDE ! (see what i did there ? :D) It's a Frank Herbert book, really great scifi stuff. There's a David Lynch movie adaptation (pretty bad) and a Sci-Fi TV series (much better, but only covers the first 2 or 3 books, you can watch it on the interwebs somewhere)

[@user-ik7bl4yg2t]

if only KSP modeled ground effect....

[@electriceelplays2411]

MTG!

[@isocryd]

Hey! Ornithopters are supposed to be VTOL! ;p

[@Tsevion.7]

Who says? or·ni·thop·ter ˌôrnəˈTHäptər/ noun historical noun: ornithopter; plural noun: ornithopters a machine designed to achieve flight by means of flapping wings.

[@isocryd]

Matthew Karr My bad. I thought they came from Dune :p

[@duploman1000]

mun or bust

[@TravelsWithATwist]

5 years, 2 dislikes. Impressive

[@Tsevion.7]

That's much more a reflection of the KSP community than anything I've done in particular. Probably the most positive video game community I've ever been a part of.

[@rd-gk4ho]

i know its late to say that but RESPECT

[@Tsevion.7]

It's never too late :) Thanks.

[@_kuhnn]

wings keep going through the wing supporters, help!

[@Tsevion.7]

+EPIC OLIVER Yeah, this was a much earlier build of KSP... a lot of subtle things (And fairly large things like the aerodynamics model) have changed since then... so unfortunately it no longer functions. I've played around with a new one, but honestly I'm holding off anything major until 1.1, since the update to Unity 5 physics will shake things up again anyhow.

[@KSPDS]

Lol doesn't use control surfaces as not to cheat but uses asteroid grabber to still cheat.

[@Bartekkru100]

How is that cheating?

[@HolidayTheLeek]

So I guess my floating house is faster than this.....

[@HALLish-bl3bm]

Next time you speed up something that much don't look around with the camera. That was hard to watch at the end.

[@FugitiveLama]

You do realize that it was sped up in the editing process? After he had aleady looked around to enjoy flying his wonderful invention? What you are asking for is ridiculous.

[@Tsevion.7]

Heh... it's definitely a problem I have... I'm restless while playing and rarely keep the camera still, which is even a problem when not sped up. This was definitely made worse by speeding the video up that much. I wasn't about to refilm that though :)

[@hermannfegelein4159]

slower than my KSP tank....

[@hermannfegelein4159]

mine goes 22 MS the tank

[@NexusGideon]

Hermann Fegelein I'd like to see you get this thing go faster than this shit without any engine.

[@hermannfegelein4159]

yes i did this i made it go 30 MS

[@NexusGideon]

Hermann Fegelein Did you add any control surfaces?

[@hermannfegelein4159]

nope