Control Surfaces

Control surface ''Airfoil'' (red) attached to a flight surface ''Airfoil'' (blue). This is the recommended configuration for control surfaces in NWH Aerodynamics.

ControlSurfaces are components that are attached to Airfoils to make them into elevators, rudders, flaps, etc. While they can be used as a standalone Airfoil, they are usually part of another Airfoil, e.g. a wing.
They require AircraftController and AircraftInputManager to be attached to one of the parent objects.

Before trying to set up control surface please check out the Airfoil page.

Setup

In this example an aileron attached to a wing will be set up.

A wing ''Airfoil'' that has previously been set up.

  • The wing Airfoil should be set up as in the image above, as per the Airfoil setup guide. Ideally, the wing should also cover the control surfaces (in this case an aileron and a flap).
  • Select the aileron object:

Aileron GameObject highlighted in the scene view.

  • Attach Airfoil component and tick Is Control Surface in the Airfoil inspector. Airfoil gizmo will turn red.
  • Adjust the Airfoil if required.
  • Attach one of the control surface components to the aileron, in this case AileronControlSurface, and adjust its settings if needed.
  • Select the wing Airfoil and at the bottom of its inspector add the AileronControlSurface from the previous step. This will tell the wing that the aileron belongs to it.
  • Slicing of the control surfaces is controlled by the airfoil the control surface is attached to. In this case, that means that when the wing is sliced the airfoil will be sliced along the same lines too. This is required as the wing and the airfoil slices should roughly match up and these slices will get paired automatically. Paired slices between the airfoil and control surface are marked with a yellow line gizmo. This is required for a more realistic control surface simulation:

Wing ''Airfoil'' section paired to a control surface ''Airfoil'' section.

  • Adjust the slicing points on the wing (red arrow handle) to match the edges of the control surface, an example:

An example of a slicing point (red dashed line and a red arrow handle) that is not aligned to an edge of the aileron control surface. The aileron and wing sections still got paired but this is not ideal.

Properly adjusted slicing point. Note that the edge of the control surface (aileron) and the slicing point match perfectly. There is in-built snapping that helps with this.

  • Assuming that the AircraftController is set up pressing play will now result in a working aileron.
Note that control surface `Airfoil`s that are not attached to a fixed `Airfoil` need to have `isControlSurface` unticked as they act as standalone airfoils that can simply be rotated, instead of being a part of a wing.