ENH: Refactor Flight class to improve time node handling and sensor/controllers

[Gui-FernandesBR]

Pull request type

• Code maintenance (refactoring, formatting, tests)

Checklist

• Tests for the changes have been added (if needed)
• Docs have been reviewed and added / updated
• Lint (black rocketpy/ tests/) has passed locally
• All tests (pytest tests -m slow --runslow) have passed locally
• CHANGELOG.md has been updated (if relevant)

Current behavior vs New behavior

1. The Flight.__simulate() method is more readable
2. Controllers can now be used with time overshoot option = True (solves ENH: Allow overshooting controllers #663)
3. the same is valid for sensors

Controllers and Sensors Simulations should run faster!!

Breaking change

• No

Additional information

• I need help to review this PR carefully, although tests are passing locally.

[Copilot]

Pull Request Overview

This PR refactors the Flight class's __simulate() method to improve readability and enable time overshoot functionality for controllers and sensors. The main changes include:

• Breaking down the monolithic __simulate() method into smaller, focused methods for better maintainability
• Enabling controllers and sensors to work with time_overshoot=True option, which was previously disabled
• Optimizing simulation performance by allowing overshootable time nodes for sensors and controllers

Reviewed Changes

Copilot reviewed 5 out of 5 changed files in this pull request and generated 4 comments.

Show a summary per file

File	Description
rocketpy/simulation/flight.py	Major refactoring of Flight simulation methods, breaking __simulate() into smaller helper methods and adding support for time overshoot with controllers/sensors
tests/integration/test_plots.py	Reduced number of test flight configurations from 16 to 4 for faster test execution
tests/integration/test_flight.py	Added new test for air brakes with time overshoot and renamed existing test for clarity
tests/integration/test_environment.py	Minor cleanup removing unused today variable
tests/fixtures/flight/flight_fixtures.py	Added new fixture for air brakes flight with time overshoot enabled

---

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[phmbressan]

Good work! I hope this is the beginning of having a much more readable and developer friendly Flight class.

My only concern is making sure the behavior is exactly the same as before, therefore I made a single important comment on the early return of parachute triggers just to make sure we are on the same page. Of course, all the tests being green is already a big step.

Aside from that, my other suggestions are more style/naming choices. I prefer having some more standardized names for some methods, but I would approve the PR in the current state even if these suggestions are not taken, since it already does loads for readability.

[Gui-FernandesBR]

Remaining tasks:

• update changelog
• run pytest slow mode

[codecov]

Codecov Report

❌ Patch coverage is 88.58696% with 21 lines in your changes missing coverage. Please review.
✅ Project coverage is 81.08%. Comparing base (9cf3dd4) to head (7358e68).
⚠️ Report is 24 commits behind head on develop.

Files with missing lines	Patch %	Lines
rocketpy/simulation/flight.py	88.20%	21 Missing ⚠️

Additional details and impacted files

@@             Coverage Diff             @@
##           develop     #843      +/-   ##
===========================================
+ Coverage    80.27%   81.08%   +0.80%     
===========================================
  Files          104      107       +3     
  Lines        12769    13812    +1043     
===========================================
+ Hits         10250    11199     +949     
- Misses        2519     2613      +94     

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[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 8 out of 8 changed files in this pull request and generated 4 comments.

Comments suppressed due to low confidence (2)

rocketpy/simulation/flight.py:697

• Duplicate controller processing. Controllers are already processed inside __process_sensors_and_controllers_at_current_node() at line 848-854. This loop at lines 691-697 should be removed to avoid executing controllers twice at each node.

                self.__process_sensors_and_controllers_at_current_node(node, phase)

                for controller in node._controllers:
                    controller(
                        self.t,
                        self.y_sol,
                        self.solution,
                        self.sensors,
                    )

rocketpy/simulation/flight.py:714

• Duplicate parachute handling logic. The parachute trigger check and deployment logic at lines 699-759 duplicates the functionality in __check_and_handle_parachute_triggers() called at line 760. This entire block should be removed since the extracted method already handles this logic.

                for parachute in node.parachutes:
                    # Calculate and save pressure signal
                    (
                        noisy_pressure,
                        height_above_ground_level,
                    ) = self.__calculate_and_save_pressure_signals(
                        parachute, node.t, self.y_sol[2]
                    )
                    if parachute.triggerfunc(
                        noisy_pressure,
                        height_above_ground_level,
                        self.y_sol,
                        self.sensors,
                    ):
                        # Remove parachute from flight parachutes
                        self.parachutes.remove(parachute)

[Gui-FernandesBR]

I'm merging with this since no further comments were made since last copilot's review. I'm confident the test coverage will handle any problems.