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Auto Credit Based on analyzer1's SimpleAirways with landing program v1.0 (obsolete)

Watch this video. It was recorded on older version of the program, but it behaves mostly the same.

During flight simply enable Landing autopilot AG and enjoy auto-landing. It will navigate your plane to runway and brake, using reverse thrust, until it stops. Tested on SimpleAirways aircraft.

This release makes it even more reliable than the previous version.

Features

  • lands on Droo's runway
  • lands both east and west
  • tries to reduce speed to 130 m/s with flaps down for a soft touchdown
  • is able to stop before end of runway using brakes, reverse thrust and flaps up
  • aligns with runway centerline
  • if initial position is very far away, it starts by going the shortest path to the runway, i.e. the orthodrome
  • in phase 2 (descent) the throttle is fully automatic; in phase 1 you can control the throttle
  • unlike builtin SR2 auto-pilot, it doesn't bank more than about 40 degrees (for passengers comfort)

Limitations

  • It has been tuned on desktop. It may not work properly on mobile.

Future versions

What can be expected:

  • fix to work on mobile
  • auto take-off
  • ability to land even if initial position with respect to runway doesn't let it land gently - it should fly away and turn around
  • support for more planes
  • maybe PID auto tuning for lighter crafts
  • landing from orbit, a space shuttle support

GENERAL INFO

PERFORMANCE

  • Total Delta V: 0m/s
  • Total Thrust: 0N
  • Engines: 4
  • Wet Mass: 3.25E+5kg
  • Dry Mass: 1.32E+5kg

STAGES

Stage Engines Delta V Thrust Burn Mass
1 4 0m/s 0N 0s 3.25E+5kg

6 Comments

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  • Profile image

    It sucks

    +1 one month ago
  • Profile image

    Pretty cool but I’m glad that’s not a real plane and I’m not a passenger on it. Everybody would need a barf bag. XXD

    2 months ago
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    244 analyzer1

    @Elna512141 Possibly yes, but I haven't tested it yet. I'm going to start some work on shuttle maybe next month. A shuttle as I remember when I played manually was a tough thing to steer.

    3.7 years ago
  • Profile image
    244 analyzer1

    @kittman It's nice that you found it useful for other crafts! Yes, I haven't yet tested it on anything else since I was trying hard to make it work for just one craft - believe me, it wasn't easy :) However once it's quite stable I believe it may be tuned more or less easily. What you need to do is to decrease some PID coefficients for lighter aircraft. I'm going to write a brief guide about it later.

    These lighter aircrafts are more easily maneuverable - they react with less force applied, but this program is currently tuned to apply quite a big force for the big and heavy Jumbo :) So the more easily maneuverable craft the more turbulent it will be probably. Making it auto tune would be quite a difficult thing to do, perhaps some kind of machine learning techniques could be used, but it's too much for Vizzy ;)

    By the way, when I tried to manually land a shuttle in the shuttle landing challenge I finally succeeded after quite a lot of tries. It behaved in a hard to predict way at first, so it was difficult to maneuver and in particular I had to set quite large values in builtin PID controllers and control it very carefully. I think it may be a challenge for my autopilot too - that's one of my next goals to automate landing of a space shuttle :) To make it land from orbit would be even greater, but that's perhaps a very long term goal.

    +1 3.7 years ago
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    4,265 kittman

    ok. again, wow.
    I've had success with it landing the 747... er, I mean the SimpleAirways craft you used, a small-ish, 737-ish 40 passenger jet I converted into a target drone, a DLJ-1fighter jet I converted into the DLQ-1 Target Drone, and the Super Albatros (huge eight-engined cargo plane that is over twice this size as the 747). The smaller planes looked like they were going thru some major turbulence yet still landed correctly. I think the larger the aircraft the smooooooother the approach and auto-landing is. I also like how the program will land both east and west, depending where the aircraft is when the auto-land is engaged. really cool. :)

    +1 3.7 years ago
  • Profile image
    4,265 kittman

    WOW.
    I ain't gonna lie, I was skeptical this was gonna work. You proved me wrong!
    very cool.
    :)

    +1 3.7 years ago

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