Just bought some new software...

[D_Hall]

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008

Which means I'll probably be revamping GGDT/HGDT in the near future. Actually, revamping is probably a bad word. Rewriting (starting from scratch) is probably better.

So.... Now is the time to air your ideas on what you'd like to see.

(And don't say open source. I've done that before. It always ends up being a royal PITA. Somebody tweaks the code and then comes whining to me wondering why it doesn't work like I'm under some obligation to help them with their cluelessness. Or even worse, somebody gets hold of a tweaked version but doesn't realize it's tweaked and then comes to me asking questions on why the software does something a certain way and I spend a week chasing my tail before I realize what's going on. No thanks. Never again!)

[btrettel]

I could give you a great number of them but I don't have my to-do list for BAGS in front of me at the moment.

The two main things I want to do at the moment are optimize guns and accurately model transonic guns. Anything towards these goals would be helpful, especially to check my own code against. The book I referenced earlier should be helpful towards a transonic model. I can suggest some others if you want more information.

By gun optimization I mean more than ideal barrel length or ideal initial pressure. I mean stuff like "What pressure and barrel length give the highest muzzle velocity?" and "What pressure, barrel length, amount of dead space, chamber volume, etc. is the most energy efficient at a certain muzzle velocity?"

As for open source... if you get anyone who's wants that, send them my way.

[jrrdw]

Reverse calculating. Meaning - I have a tennis ball, I want it to shoot 150 yards, what size and length pipe do I need. For pneumatic and combustion. To much to ask for??? I really suck at math so I don't know. A instruction manual would greatly help...

Thanks for any help and the tools!

[Lockednloaded]

My only recommendation is to make it compatible with mac

[D_Hall]

Reverse calculating. Meaning - I have a tennis ball, I want it to shoot 150 yards, what size and length pipe do I need.

I'm not sure I follow you... Can you elaborate?

My only recommendation is to make it compatible with mac

When somebody buys me a Mac I'll think about it.

[Heimo]

Reverse calculating. Meaning - I have a tennis ball, I want it to shoot 150 yards, what size and length pipe do I need. For pneumatic and cumbustion. To much to ask for??? I really suck at math so I don't know. A instruction manual would greatly help...

Thanks for any help and the tools!

that is a really good idea. It would be nice if it is doable
and yea thanks for the trouble you are going to, I know writing programs is a time consuming thing

EDIT: elaborating on jrrdw's idea using the tennis ball as a example it would be nice to tell the program I got a projectile of x weight and x diametre and and I want to use x pressure how long should the barrle be and what volume the chamber should be I an hoping I am not straying too far from jrrdw's idea also a suggestion from my side would be the ability to toggle between the metric and imperial system cause lots of people lives in metric world and it would be nice not to havd to convert every thing

EDIT 2 sorry about the spelling errors I was typing al this from my cellphone no spellcheck

[kjjohn]

For pneumatic and cumbustion

cumbustion?

I think that a major improvement for HGDT would be an optimization feature - a tool to find, say, the best barrel length to get the highest velocity with the specifications entered, etc. Also, what jrrdw said, a reverse calc tool, meaning that I could enter in the chamber and barrel dimensions, or some other values, then enter that I want a projectile to go 150 yards and then have it tell me the best mass of the projectile (or some other variable) to go that distance.

[D_Hall]

a suggestion from my side would be the ability to toggle between the metric and imperial system cause lots of people lives in metric world and it would be nice not to havd to convert every thing

Umm... The current versions ALREADY allow you to toggle back and forth.


edit: Regarding the "I want to go 150 yards" comments... I'm still not sure I get it. I mean, there are any number of ways to go 150 yards. You could use a lofted trajectory or a direct trajectory. High ballistic coefficients... Soooo many variables. How are you expecting to use this such that the software can read your mind on what you're really after?

[Heimo]

a suggestion from my side would be the ability to toggle between the metric and imperial system cause lots of people lives in metric world and it would be nice not to havd to convert every thing

Umm... The current versions ALREADY allow you to toggle back and forth.

how on earth did I miss that sorry about that

[jrrdw]

elaborating on jrrdw's idea using the tennis ball as a example it would be nice to tell the program I got a projectile of x weight and x diametre and and I want to use x pressure how long should the barrle be and what volume the chamber should be

Yes, that's what I was getten at.

Edit, it would be ideal if it could give pressure as well.

[D_Hall]

I don't see any way to get what ya'll are asking for.... Reservoir size, barrel size, and pressure are independent variables. Sure, a sim could come up with a solution that would work, but there would be MANY such solutions. Without constraints, it's an indeterminite problem.

[btrettel]

D_Hall's right. There are many solutions when you're looking for a particular distance, muzzle velocity, or something similar. What I asked for was an optimizer to find an approximately ideal configuration that would get that (that's the final constraint). I wrote BAGS partly because GGDT wouldn't do this as is.

[POLAND_SPUD]

The current versions ALREADY allow you to toggle back and forth.

uhmm yes but you have to switch from imperial to metric every time you start the programme...

"What pressure and barrel length give the highest muzzle velocity"

That's certainly a good idea

ohh and it it would be cool if you could create a slightly more advanced version of the ballistic calculator... it would be cool if it could model saboted projectiles or calculate the angle needed to achieve a set range

[D_Hall]

uhmm yes but you have to switch from imperial to metric every time you start the programme...

True, although saved files save the current configuration so if you're working from an existing file you don't need to switch; just load the new file and the configuration comes with it.

ohh and it it would be cool if you could create a slightly more advanced version of the ballistic calculator... it would be cool if it could model saboted projectiles or calculate the angle needed to achieve a set range

Sabots are definitely on the list.

[rp181]

I say smush (what a great word...) HGDT and GGDT together for a single utility.

oh, and smush is together with a virtual box so it runs on mac