Request for sunlight and velocity controllers

[hallowwordgeorge]

Can we add a controller to detect the intensity of sunlight on the plume? That way, we can have different plume effects for day and night.
Also, can we add a direction-based controller? For example, one that detects whether the spacecraft is ascending or falling.

[JonnyOThan]

Can you describe the use cases for the direction controller?

[DareMightyThingsJPL]

When a spacecraft is rapidly descending through an atmosphere (like, reentry speeds), the particles from the plume engine will be pushed back up toward the engine.

[JonnyOThan]

Interesting ideas. Controllers that are continually changing their values can be bad for performance, but maybe we can find a way.

[JonnyOThan]

I think it probably makes sense to add a "vertical speed" mode to the velocity controller, but I'm not sure if that's sufficient here? Would you also need AoA or something?

[xCuri0]

@JonnyOThan Using a dot product of exhaust direction and vessel velocity would work better than verticalSpeed. It could also be used to influence the plume depending on velocity for usual prograde burns (not sure about the exact physics but should get longer)

Still any burns not prograde/retrograde will look off (plume should curve) but those are rare.