Perfect Thruster Stability Hovering - NO RANGER!!

[Xtensity]

SpaceBuild servers have been pretty popular but to many people hate using hoverballs. Using some experiments and logical thinking, I created an expression to make something hover with stability on the Z Axis.

How it works is you press 1 to set Current GPS Cord as the Target GPS Cord. Then to change the altitude of that, I linked up a dual input with 2 values, -10,10.

Pressing the (+) on the keypad will add 10 to the Target GPS Cord, and pressing minus will take away 10.
You can change the 10s to higher numbers for faster altitude changing.

The only negative side to this for now is that the hovering item wont keep still. For example: if any force is applied to the side of it it will move and coast above the ground due to perfect stability.

Post your thoughts on this.

Applying this to a big ship from say the Space Build Model Pack would be hard considering you would have to change the weight of things and the force of the thrusters. It is possible because I did it before, mainly changing the force and weight of the thrusters. You have to experiment with those 2 values.

Any ways what you do is this.

1)First Spawn a PHX 1x1 Metal plate.
2)Flip it over, and spawn these
-A Thruster(Mine has a multiplier of 40) in the middle of the bored.
-A GPS
-A Number Pad input, linked to what ever key, this key is just used to start it mainly.(MUST OUTPUT 1)
-A Dual Number Pad input, 2 Values, 10,-10, 0 for off. You can change the 10 numbers for faster movement up and down, thats just how much the Z coordinate changes when the button is pressed. Also it is best to link the -10 to the (-) sign on your num pad and the 10 to the (+) on your num pad.
-Now Spawn this Expression

N@Hover
I@GPS Num1 Num2
O@Thrust GPSZ
Num1 == 1 -> GPSZ=GPS;
Thrust = GPSZ-GPS-$GPS*5
GPSZ += Num2

Fixed.. it should work
Now for the wiring, also note this, when this works it will go off balance unless you apply Keep Upright angular limit 10000, or unless you add my gyro stabilizer tutorial to it.
3)Wire The GPS Input to the GPS's Z Output
4)Wire the Num1 input to the single numpad that is outputting 1
5)Wire Num2 to the Dual Input numpad, do not worry about the GPSZ output, thats just used in the expression and it has to be there for some reason for it to work.
6)Finally wire your thruster to the thrust output.
7)Now it might spaz out right here because I had mine made already, but if you press 1 on the number pad, or whatever button you had num1 linked to, it will set the current GPS cords as the target cords.
-Pressing (-) and (+) or what ever you set for dual input, will add 10 or minus 10 from the target Z Coord.

If Done correctly you should get this.

YouTube - Perfect Stability Thrusters - No Ranger, Gmod

YouTube - Perfect Stability Thrusters - No Ranger, Gmod

Note, when its moving in the video every time it changes altitude it is be changing it, it has perfect stability for its items mass. If you need to make bigger item hover just experiment.


TIPS!!

• If your bigger object fails to stay stable, or it cant be lifted, try to change the weight and mul of thrusters. The weight of thrusters greatly effects its performances depending on what it is lifting
• Experiment with this, the possibilities are endless.
• This is important, If the object is way bigger then the thruster, you WILL need more then 1 thruster, rising the weight of the thruster will allow the object to be lifted BUT it will take a few seconds to get to stability when rising and falling. I tried this on a PHX plate 4x4 metal and one thruster could barley lift it, changing the weight of that thruster helped but it still took time to stabilize. I added 4 more thrusters to it, and it was perfect, note, the more thrusters you have do not have to have more expression chips they all go to the same expression

I took my time out to try to get this as perfect as I can, now its your turn to tweak it and post tips for people trying to make it lift big big objects.

[six-five-two]

Awesome! Thanks for helping me, I've been trying to make this for my plane for quite some time.

Reading tutorial...

[Xtensity]

Originally Posted by six-five-two

Awesome! Thanks for helping me, I've been trying to make this for my plane for quite some time.

Reading tutorial...

The way I made it its designed for a PHX plate, you can still use it on a plane seeing as it will attempt to thrust the plane up until it is at that elevation and try to keep it stable

A tip is, if it cant stay stable, change the weight of thruster to like 50+ and see what it does.

[six-five-two]

Problem!
Thrust = GPSZ-GPS-*5 is invalid.

[Xtensity]

Originally Posted by six-five-two

Problem!
Thrust = GPSZ-GPS-*5 is invalid.

Weird... that part of the code always gets cut off

I'll fix it

[six-five-two]

Still didn't work. Here:
Thrust = GPSZ-GPS-$GPS*5

Worked fine for me, best hover ever! Adding it to my awesome ship now.

[Xtensity]

Originally Posted by six-five-two

Still didn't work. Here:
Thrust = GPSZ-GPS-*5

Worked fine for me, best hover ever! Adding it to my awesome ship now.

Yeah thats what the code is but for some reason when ever I post $ in my post it deletes them and the word after it.

see lol look at when I quoted you

[six-five-two]

Interesting. Well I modded that expression a bit and now it works perfectly with my ship. Thanks again for this tutorial.

[six-five-two]

Double post...
Num1 == 1 -> GPSZ=GPS;
And
If Num1 == 0 -> what?

Sorry, I'm a bit of an expressionoob.

[Xtensity]

Originally Posted by six-five-two

Double post...
Num1 == 1 -> GPSZ=GPS;
And
If Num1 == 0 -> what?

Sorry, I'm a bit of an expressionoob.

Doesn't matter if it == 0 or not....