Remember, angle of attack isn't between the nose and the ground, it's between the nose and the oncoming airflow. Thus, you HAVE to consider velocity to find angle of attack.
I used a series of cross products and dot products with my airplanes, as well as a sin(x) ~ x approximation (so I guess technically speaking you could say I found "ratio of attack" or "slope of attack" instead of angle of attack, but really it's of little consequence when it comes to sub-stall flight characteristics).
And also don't forget, once you DO find angle-of-attack and then the magnitude of your lift vector, you're going to need to use velocity AGAIN to properly orient that vector (since lift is, by definition, orthogonal to air velocity). I managed again to simplify it and combine it all into one compact vector operation, but that really defies explanation without some method of 3d illustration.
-DoctorEvo |