Welcome to another episode of Trailmakers! Today I am testing if power couplers can make ornithopters easier to build!
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About Trailmakers:
In the toughest motoring expedition in the universe, you and your friends will build your own vehicles to cross a dangerous wasteland. Explore, crash horribly, use your wits to build a better rig, and get as far as you can with whatever spare parts you find on your way.
Welcome to the Ultimate Expedition!
Journey over grueling mountains, hazardous swamps, and bone-dry deserts on a distant world far from civilization - it is just you, your fellow adventurers and the amazing, jet-powered hover-buggy you built yourself. Explore, crash your vehicle, build a better one, and get as far as you can with whatever spare parts you find along your way.
Trailmakers is about building very awesome vehicles and machines, but you don’t need an engineering degree to get started. The intuitive builder will get you going in no time. Everything you build is made from physical building blocks. Each block has unique features like shape, weight and functionality. They can be broken off, refitted and used to build something new. Individually the blocks are fairly simple, but combined the possibilities are endless.
Expedition Mode is the challenging campaign mode of Trailmakers. You are competing in an off-world rally expedition with only a few building blocks to get you started. You must build, tinker with and rebuild your machine to progress. Journey through a big world, overcome deep gorges, angry wildlife and dangerous weather to progress and find new parts that will juice up your machine. The world in Expedition Mode will test your survival skills and ingenuity.
Sandbox Mode is where you want to head for an unrestricted, sandbox, vehicle-building experience. Here you can build anything you can dream of, and play around with it in the world of Trailmakers. It is a great place to test out crazy machines, and experiment with the physics engine. With tons of different blocks, hinges, thrusters and interactive vehicle parts - the skybox is the limit.
Trailmakers is even more fun if you play it with other people. Build cool vehicles and compete in mini-game modes with your friends or other Trailmakers online. Build a helicopter, send it to your friend, and shoot them out of the sky. Put two seats on a tank, and let your friend control the turret. As we get further in Early Access development Expedition Mode will also be adapted to multiplayer.
Learn more about the game on www.playtrailmakers.com #scrapman #trailmakers
Scrap man maybe the reason those helicopter blades don't work is because they might be canted one direction slightly, if you flip it on the other wing it should work. . . Hopefully
That's exactly what I thought you can see that they are tilted
That’s not how trailmakers helicopter blades work. That’s not the solution.
It doesn't work cause it also is on my helicopter
@@ThePhonaxhi
@@zionjarman3610 they are not tilted
You know the editors is invested in his work when he pull out animations just to illustrate a sentence
yeah it's a very simple animation but still takes a bit of work
I wouldn't call what Scrapman said much of a sentence. 5:56
@@johnadams5513 I think they're referring to the bit at 4:20 (And the point he's trying to make is that he needs the wings to adjust their angle of attack as well as they move from anhedral to dihedral positions during the flapping motion.)
ornithopter dogfight
That will be extremely hard, but I guess they can try?
What'd be interesting, atleast aesthetically is something towards Avatars water tribe where it's a ornithopter but the tail must always touch water...
_Yes._ Been wanting this for months.
I agree
nice idea, it would be very entertaining.
5:58 this was honestly so impressive, editor. Amazing translation 😂
I love that they make simulations for Scrapmans analogy, makes it so much easier to understand lol
😂
😂
This man totaly just cursed some one and there whole familie
I thought Scrap edited his own videos? lol
Let us take a moment, and really appreciate Scrapman's editor. Honestly one of the best editors I've seen in awhile. They are able to make funny edits when needed. They work very hard to give us information on topics we wouldn't generally know. The editing is clean, concise, and nice to look at for the brain. Very simple. No overbearing memes all the time or constant jump edits. Let us just appreciate all that from the editor 😌 Thank you Scrapman and editor for such great content
and has a nice taste in music, too (where can I contact him/her for the tracklist, lol... srsly, this channel introduced me to so much good music... I know there's a "scrapman music" playlist, but it hasn't been updated for a year and I like the new music brought by the new editor... especially like these ambient synthwave/electronic tracks, gives the videos a nice sci-fi vibe)
@@ArinJager1 I always assumed Scrapman did his own music. He released an ep a couple years ago. scrapman aka Catarinth kzhead.info
@@cargasm383 nah, these are mostly royalty free songs you can find on youtube... catarinth is like the outro and that's about it, really (ofc I know it's him)... just search "scrapman music" and the playlist should show up (but the description says it's no longer being updated, because of the new editor and new music... I heard this one song recently on other channel, can't find it, because there's A LOT of these royalty free songs... like, epidemic sound and such... the "scrapman music" playlist has 416 songs, I've made it to 69th and didn't continue, yet... I usually write the songs in a txt file when I find them...)
13:12 "So now what we are missing is the logic" that needs to be a quote xd
Well now it is
7:55 What I think is happening is that since the helicopter blades are meant to be placed in an "X"-like formation to create lift together, what's happening here is that they just are acting like they're meant to, but acting as if there was only one blade on the X. Or basically what I'm saying is that they're just acting as sideways wings right now.
you're right. The helicopter blades in game have a weird thing that their lift is offset to one side of the blade
Should've modeled it after a dragonfly... they are the most efficient flyers amongst insects. The quad wing design will overcome most bilateral forces and give you even lift with each wing stroke and the forces are balanced out.
The last ornithopter was a dragonfly so he likely didn't want to repeat
@@spook9106A bird also seems the most natural one to choose out of all the flying animals out there. I mean, of all the flying animals, which one do you think of first? Plus it's very satisfying to watch the wings flap.
But a bird is more fitted for the powercouplers. Dragonflies fly better with rigid wings like the long helicopter blade
Dragon flies are the most efficient because of the way vorticies interact between the wings. Same reason geese form Vs when migrating. Trailmakers (and most other aero simulators) don't model the effects of vorticies, so a dragonfly with just be incredibly cool.
_dragonflies are a lower lifeform, birds ftw_ (jk, btw) >:D
Small Helicopter Blade: nah, screw physics, I do whatever I want to do, and that is moving Center of Lift to the middle of nowhere! 7:54
The editing is getting better every single video, really good.
true
"it look like it could be a living creature, other than the fact it doesn't really look like a living creature" i love you scrapman
Alright, so, challenge: Instead of making an ornithopter, can you use this kind of build technique to make an actual flying carpet? Like, one that creates lift by undulating a big flat surface through the air.
One of the things I've done with ornithopters in the past is to power that tilting hinge just off the rotor. That way, the wings are guaranteed to be cutting into the wind and propelling the craft forward. With un-powered, low-strength hinges, there's a bit of time at the start where they're barely (or even not at all) propelling the craft forward.
Alright, now I want to see a no thrust dog fight. Flapping wings only!
Yeah, I had suggested this for the verses. Limiting the power source for movmen to the wings. Ideally to replicate and actual wing you have scrap mechanic wings at the front and outer edge with sails on the inside behind them to provide lift. Also it's the distortion of the tail and wing tips that provide "control" with the general motion of the center part of the wing like a breast stroke for swimming.
Okay, my first more detailed explanation was destroyed by an ad popping up closing the window, but here it goes. You want to have 3 layers of "wing" with power couplers along them and then conected to each other tangentially forming a net in the middle with exstra bits hanging out from the "middle". The first section you want to be non-control serface wing segments with fins on the end. The second section you want to be sails in the middle with fins that continue the line from the previous section. The last section you want to be controllable wing serfaces all in a row. The flexibility of the power couplers can be adjusted as you shown to make the flapping motion. with the center ones that are tangential to the majority of them, you want to make these adjustments so a "bowl" is created on the down stroke. Then at the wing tips you want a adjustable steering hinge so you can tip the fins up and down, well using those adjustable wings on the back row to get your fine controls (it's really to bad you can adjust the power couplers stiffness out side of build, possibly use steering hinges controled to replicate for even more control) If done right the only programming really needed is the down and back swipe of the wing from the joint at the body only, and the adjustments of control serface, but the motion of flapping should work. Additional points the sails in the middle like this should help with lift and speed. A proper and complex tail in simaler fashion would help a lot for this as well. Ps. The small blades might have a weird programming quark where it's not that it provides lift only to the right of the build, but the right side of the blade, so flipping it upside down might fix it
ha ha ha, really love the little animation to help explain the steering hinge stuff
"Water is just air" -Scrapman 2024
To fish it is
I mean hydrodynamics is almost the same thing mathematically as aerodynamics. Fluid dynamics has the exact same formulas for water and air. The variables are just a bit different like density and viscosity. So from a fluid dynamics point of view, water kinda is just air. Really the only thing that makes a liquid different from a gas is that it is incompressable (and concequently but arguably more imporant, decompressable).
You and Yzuei gotta have an ornithopter build/battle challenge!!! That would be so much fun!! 😁
If you want an idea that is truly for the birds, you could try having an ornithopter dogfight where the power couplings are required to make the wings.
You want to have 3 layers of "wing" with power couplers along them and then conected to each other tangentially forming a net in the middle with exstra bits hanging out from the "middle". The first section you want to be non-control serface wing segments with fins on the end. The second section you want to be sails in the middle with fins that continue the line from the previous section. The last section you want to be controllable wing serfaces all in a row. The flexibility of the power couplers can be adjusted as you shown to make the flapping motion. with the center ones that are tangential to the majority of them, you want to make these adjustments so a "bowl" is created on the down stroke. Then at the wing tips you want a adjustable steering hinge so you can tip the fins up and down, well using those adjustable wings on the back row to get your fine controls (it's really to bad you can adjust the power couplers stiffness out side of build, possibly use steering hinges controled to replicate for even more control) If done right the only programming really needed is the down and back swipe of the wing from the joint at the body only, and the adjustments of control serface, but the motion of flapping should work. Additional points the sails in the middle like this should help with lift and speed. A proper and complex tail in simaler fashion would help a lot for this as well. Ps. The small blades might have a weird programming quark where it's not that it provides lift only to the right of the build, but the right side of the blade, so flipping it upside down might fix it
A tip for thumbnails with moving things, you can take screenshots from vids, so you can record a vid for a thumbnail, or even use the vid you want the thumbnail from
that bounce when flapping your wings up can be fixed by adding a hinge in the middle of the wing that points the outer side of it downwards, making the wing look almost like an upside down V, then straightening the wing as it flaps down.
5:02 "water is just air" -Scrapman
As a shark, I can confirm.
Ever since watching a certain movie franchise, whenever I hear the word Ornithopter, sounds of chanting and throat-singing immediately come to mind.
Imagine the feeling when some of us read the books 30 years ago...
ever since i saw the Lynch version in 84
the editors explanation of what scrapman was talking about was absolutely amazing quality for a single youtube video
9:45 I think you need to rotate the helicopter blades from one of the sides to be "up side down" in order to counter the forces
Yha I was saying that to my self too
but that's just weird, isn't it?
I was thinking of that too, but I wasn't gonna say anything because I don't play trailmakers and don't know how the game works 😅
For arguments sake, as someone who's never played Trailmakers, it makes sense in context of helicopter rotors to not automatically flip it as thats relevant for counter rotating blades yet both are viable when used for helicopters...
@@jakobusswart1376 ikr, it just makes sense
16:39 “I’m just gonna center the mirror mode and go BOOP”
5:01 my guy really just said "water is just air" XD good video love the content!
i mean i guess his kinda right lol.
From a fluid dynamics standpoint, which was the point he was trying to make, it actually is. Both are fluids (one a lot denser and more viscous than the other, but still).
For a short idea, to keep the vehicle more horizontally stable so it doesn’t wiggle as much, add another set of alternating wings
Awesome build! Having been obsessed with your channel, I've recently started fooling around with ornithopters. I wondered if you'd considered using a servo on the tail to assist with turning. Many birds twist their bodies during turns. I'm not sure what the logic would need to look like, but I thought I'd just throw it out there. Keep up the amazing work!
Next time, consider using parallel power couplings. They should prove to be especially stiff along the plane they're parallel, but you can pair it with mixed stiffness so one side flexes more, and might allow for more tuning of the wing. The technical classification would be having a 2-spar wing, only the spars are energy couplers in this example. And a fun consequence of moderately realistic spars is that they can flex independently of each other, inducing wing roll via a twisting flex. Could produce some interesting results and open up other opportunities, such as piston-actuated wing flex.
helicopter blades is main reason why its working i think. they provide a lot of lift and work no matter what direction they move. perfect choise for random jiggling for lift
What a landing! Great build, loved this one!
I think you could get more speed out of it by trying to stabilize the body vertically. I think a lot of the "pushing" the wings could do is lost to moving the body up and down, but with more vertical drag on the body, and maybe more weight, the body would move less, meaning the wings would move faster through the air and in theory result in stronger forces. Or like some others suggested adding a 2nd pair of wings with the opposite "flap parity", but you'll then have to account for the pitch and vertical drag on the body would help for that too.
Helicopter blades are meant to rotate in a singular direction, so they're slightly thicker & biased away from the edge that initially meets the wind. If you invert one side of with Helicopter blades, it may even out the center of lift.
New playthrough idea. There's this game called grounded and it's a lot of fun to play on your own, or with friends. Scrap, you should play it with your friends sometime. Highly recommend.
Try and make the Dune ornithopter
Yes Please 🎉🎉
𝔹𝕖𝕤𝕥 𝕚𝕕𝕖𝕒 𝕖𝕧𝕖𝕣
I hope he does this.
Good idea
It might be hard to make it but he can probably manage to make it
That looks like a lot of fun, ornithopters are so satisfying to watch fly. Maybe try to make small scale ornithopters for a MM battle?
Scrapman, maybe if you made the wings tilt forward (to make them flap towards the back) if would flap you forward thus giving you more speed
dam the wing movement looks amazing. well done
Something that can help a lot with ornithopters is trying to get an asymmetrical up and down stroke. You want the up stroke to be a few degrees more angled than the down stroke so that the up stroke has less vertical drag than the down stroke, which gives a bit more upwards momentum with each stroke
Well... we need an ornithopter battle now :D
i'd still like to see an ornithopter battle. They don't have to be good, they just have to be fun.
This looks awesome! I wonder if making the body heavier would force more of the flapping motion to the wings instead of the body.
i love the videos with power couiplers lol, they are so cool they made me start playing this again, your wheels inspired me
I think the reason the coupler version is slower is because as the wings give forward momentum they bend forwards, sending some energy out to the sides, rather than straight backwards. You should try doubling up the power couplers (behind one another) to try to reduce the front-back flex.
17:35 it looks like a baby throwing a tantrum.
Could you maybe add a flap or fin to the nose to decrease how much it moves up and down on each flap motion? (it may be too big though) Would look a little smoother and maybe give you more speed as more force will be going into the wings then moving the body?
Awesome video! You are definitely very fun to watch! I kind of want to see you try to make a dragonfly ornithopter like the ones from Dune! I always liked their designs even though I know they aren't realistic. Since this is a game though, it could very well be possible if this much was done already.
The only thing that I would want to change is adding a third hinge to the wings just before the first power coupler to allow the wings to swing forward and back, thus scooping into and pushing the air behind them. I believe that this would allow for not only greater speed, but also better stability.
I could be wrong on this but I believe the centre of lift issue originates from copy and pasting the wing from one side to the other at the beginning. I had something very similar happen on a completely unrelated build and I fixed it by deleting both wings and rebuilding them manually on each side. No issues after. Could be a complete shot in the dark though lol
For a moment there I almost thought it started functioning a little bit more like a stingray than a bird. Maybe you could make a stingray submarine.🤔👌 6:11
I think a great idea would be an EMP battle (could be dogfights, trains, cars, or anything else), but each vehicle must have a self destruct system built in that could be triggered by the EMP. I think it would be interesting to see how each opponent compensates for their built-in weakness.
Other option to improve control is to make the tail able to flare outwards and contract inwards like the tail of a real bird or like a Japanese fan, so not only do you have elevator control on them, but you can also control either the amount of surface area generating lift, or the width and/or depth of the elevator airfoil to produce more or less lift based on what you need to go up or down or stay level. Would require some sort of hinges to do. Also for helping to steer the craft, perhaps use some scissor flaps to provide additional rudder control like those used on pure flying wings instead of actual rudders, but use it in addition to your rudder.
Having seen this now it would be really interesting to see some competitive ornithopter content Be it races, dogfights, or maybe one actual airplane defending against ornithopters
Should have added the power couplers to the body also to make it flex with the tail at the end.
Since the power couplers dampen rotational forces, you could probably get more speed by moving the steering hinges at the base of the wings with the logic controllers in sequence with the servos. As is, the solid wings go faster because they have a more aggressive angle that is carried out through to the tips. The power coupler wings have a progressive angle that lessens for each segment. You can see this looking at a still frame of the wings flapping. 22:51 has a good angle to see this. Compare the rotational angle of the fins at the tip to the segment next to them at peak height.
My friend had made an ornothopter with power couplers and it work really well
I haven't been to this channel or played trailmakers for so long😭 so many things have changed wth
should have added flex to the body
That’s the power of power couplers, baby. The smell of clang.(I know crossing gaming references, but it still works)
We all know what's coming next: a battle/dogfight with Scrapman and Yuzi with the ornithoptors
I wonder if you'd have gained the extra speed and kept the flex if you made the first connection solid and kept the couplers for the other two similar to how bone density is in birds
love your channel, keep up the great work
this thing looks so good.... i need to see an "ornithopter dogfighting" video now
This video helped me build an ornithopter without power cores!
You should try to build as much of the control of the air craft into the forward wings as possible. With a little bit of logic, well a lot of logic, you should be able to do things like flap with one wing and double up the servos so you can control the exact speed their flapping at. Basically creating a situation where you can do low energy glides via a fast flap down and a slow raise after while minimizing down force. Also, for as relatively easy as these things seem to be to make, you should do a multiplier monday themed around ornithopters vs. blimps. Would be kind of fun to see how the erratic movements of the wings play into things.
Awesome video as always, would love to see this dive and catch a Yzuei fish :)
I think if you had flipped the rotor blades on one wing they would have worked. They seem to apply lift in one direction only bc they're supposed to rotate.
Hey Scrap Man!!! We now need a power coupler based ornithopter battle! See who makes the best one. Also the power couplers could be used as a spine for fish based battles!!!
7:57-9:11 Scrapman was the embodiment of “am I tweaking?”
I had this idea recently, which I thought could turn out pretty cool. You could build some arresting wires, set them up on the aircraft carrier and try landing a plane with a hook into them
More force out of the flapping means you need to change the wings angle of attack or increase the length of the airfoil from round front to pointy back. Perhaps set the wings flap default angle to a different degree and add a little bit of wing in front of the flaps, or add a control surface to the front of the wings as well to change the leading edge angle and thus the airfoil geometry to produce more lift, and thus more force when flapping
If you ever made a series on the new Terratech game coming out I'd watch all those videos!
Now for your next task, Ghostbusters Proton Pack.
this somehow did make my morning
15:50 I think the reason that it was slower with flap wings is because the flap wings have a lot of flap rather than all wing, so it gives less lift and thus less speed.
Try adding fixed wings towards the front, it should make the nose flail up and down and allow more wing movement/propulsion
you need to make an anatomically correct tail exactly like the wings you built. Aka the tail has to move on it's own and turn left n right. Great wings btw
I think if you put another servo from body to wing (basically a bird shoulder) at a 45 to 65 degree angle so the wings are tilted also power couplers attached to hinges in the body would help bend it and maybe control pitch and fluidity. I haven’t got to play with the power couplers yet..
I wonder what effect more wing segments would have. Different bird species have drastically different wing geometry and flight characteristics. Might be interesting to experiment with sing shapes and see how it affects things like speed, stability, climb rate, maneuverability, etc.
It would be super cool to see a multiplayer ornithopter race.
Hey ScrapMan, message from france ! I tried to design a mechanical battery at home and i think power couplers could be an intresting material to test it. I dont think you ever tried something similar exept the mechanical principales so might as well have a look ! I was thinking twisting the power couplers to store power
an idea you can implement is the back section being like a fan with the helicopter blades to act more like a birds tail resting on a hinge to turn the whole assembly and having further hinges on the blades to further change your angle of attack
IDEA: Scrapman should have an ornithopter battle.
I'd like to see an ornithopter with no additional propulsion but use whatever is needed to keep the body steady whilst flapping
Editing is improving, I like it
I build this but i made the wing 2 times so what i did you have the main wings and you copy them and place them 2 blocks higher with 2 blocks between the lower and the upper wing. and then just connect it so its good aerodynamic and just do the exact same settings as the lower wing and boom you got way better lift stability and it might take away the looks abit but its still really cool
oh and make sure the upper wings are also back one piece
The logic you used to add roll to the tail could be cut in half as in just one Or gate. if you set the base programming for the flaps to roll as in left and right, both have the same rotation, just reversed controls. Use the Or gate selecting both flaps, and this will be your pitch, as in up and down.
17:24 ScrapMan's wings attempt to embrace the fourth dimension.
Never played the game but I have an idea you could try if you look at the way a bird Flys it has tilt at the base of its wings so it can push off the air in a more foward motion a rotor and some logic might make something like that motion work and a potential improvement after that is to have the wings folding back towards the tail and then extending back to its splayed out position In slow motion, the wings would go 1. Flap down while folding back into the body (that would produce forward momentum) 2.on the way up the wing are following a flow so they tilt up while going up while also expanding their wingspan 3. The wingspan should be as wide as it can be and at its highest poin and then tilt the wing down gradually, and when it gets to body level, it should be going into step 1 again You wanna push the air back and down so you can go forward and up just pushing the air down and relying on it to glide for speed might not have the ideal result The idea isn't to make it fly like a plane but instead to swim like a bird of prey
Damn good work editor that was epic
i love this type of videos
i wonder, if you used logic to make the hinge pitch down when flapping down and up when flapping up, more like how birds flap, would that help or hinder? also, i wonder how much putting pitch into the wings and roll into the tail would have effected things.
nice 3d animation for the explanation
I loved your first onrthothopter I’d and I still love it and this video is amazing
Can you program something to change the coupling strength actively, or is it only adjustable in build mode? if so, you could make this more like a bird's wings by making the strength looser when moving up, and returning it to normal for the downstroke. Not sure if that's even a thing, though. There's probably a way to emulate that change with pistons, suspension, hinges, or something of the sort, though, I'd imagine. That sort of system would probably also let you use larger wings with less wingbeats for more stability, as you wouldn't be as reliant on looking up and using the angle of the wings to move "forward" into the air.
I think they should add a cable block, that is exactly the same as the power coupler, except you can't turn it invisible and it has a steel cable texture
@ScrapMan - nice job, didn't know you're going for the bird authnecopter copter design, is there a way to step in the wing on the downstroke, and they make it floppy on the upstroke, to create less drag? Also sorry I don't know the names of the parts call ma I called them rotors...
I now that the trailmakers team watches these so if there is even the slightest chance of them seeing this I've got two Ideas. 1:weaponiced wings. 2:make the propellers stronger. (sorry for grammar English is not my first language 😅)