arkain101 Posted April 28, 2009 Report Share Posted April 28, 2009 I was tempted to put this thread in the 'space' section because orbiter is not in your typical game catagory. If you havnt heard of this yet, but enjoy space, you don't know what your missing. Orbiter is a free download for the Basic game engine. It comes with some decent textures (earth, mars, and the rest of the planets and moons, space shuttle atlantis, plus a few extra other ships). Although the game engine comes with textures, this is NOT the extent of its features. Orbiter is a completely customizable "game". You can download all kinds of add-ons. Such as, textures, ships, rockets, hi resolution ground textures (such as australia) and you can bascially design and make your own series of Orbiter folders, each with different graphics, or atmospheric enhancements. The list goes on. So you can dl and create your own custom game folders, but what else? What is the game all about? The game is a very accurate space flight simulator. That requires a lot of know how in order to accomplish even the simplist of missions. Here are some examples of things you can do. Download the scenario pack of the apollo 11 mission and re-live it the events the astronaughts experience. I was reading a persons tutorial on the mission and they had set all the dates and times to match the apollo 11 mission. He ended up landing back in the ocean only miles from the actual landing site in real life. You can, build your own space stations, or add onto the international space station (iss), either by taking the more realistic hands on method of actual space vechicles that launch modules up into orbit and then deliver the payload at the ISS after synchronizing orbits, then use a variety of tools such as the canadian remote arm on atlantis, or a concept ship called the dragon fly that can zip payloads around and dock them to the station. Or you can take an easier route, using the scenario editor program which can build things much easier. You can fly to any planet in the solar system, or any moon. And if higher graphics textures of that body are out there to download, you can install them and get some astonishing graphics. You can even just sit back and just check out earth from various distances or leave it like a screen saver focused on a planet. Basically, the game is unlimited and you can use it and do with it almost whatever you want to and is a great way to enjoy space, stars, astronomy, ... I can't say enough for it...Just an incredible job by the creator. I understand the creators are professionals. They must be some kind of rocket scientists or physicists... If you wanna know what is behind rocket science this game is for you. Getting the basics on installing the game, setting up the game, and actually controlling the game is a complicated process that will take a few hours time to get settled with. There are forums out there on the web to help with everything. However, it can be a little, hit and miss to find what you need. So if there is some interest in this program, I will post a bit of a guide to follow to set up orbiter so it looks good and sounds good, and also list the basic know how so you can jump into action and fly a few ships into space, and know your way around the program to see if you like it at all. Here is the official website, gallery section: ORBITER Image Gallery Here is some of the addons Gallery browsing section: Add-on Image Gallery I'll try to snap screen shots that show many of the features. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arkain101 Posted April 28, 2009 Author Report Share Posted April 28, 2009 There. Added a ship to each of the 5 docking ports on the international space station, using scenario editor. Cranked the engines on each ship.. it gives an idea of how much you can do. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arkain101 Posted April 28, 2009 Author Report Share Posted April 28, 2009 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Janus Posted April 29, 2009 Report Share Posted April 29, 2009 A year or so ago I used orbiter to model a simple lunar lander mission. I created my own ships for the sim with "off the shelf" rocket engines and made some simple meshes for the hardware. Here's two YouTube videos I made from the sim. The first starts in LEO concludes about 300km from the Moon. The second follows the lander from there to touchdown. YouTube - Lunar lander sim 1 http://youtube.com/watch?v=_15tYYwWyIw YouTube - X-prize lunar landing http://youtube.com/watch?v=n-KcTwMYSgA I didn't do a video of the launch sequence, but here are four screen shots showing different stages of orbital insertion. The order of images runs clockwise. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arkain101 Posted April 29, 2009 Author Report Share Posted April 29, 2009 That's wicked Janus. I don't have high speed internet so I may not have the time to watch those you tube videos. Could you do a recording of that kind of mission? I mean by using control+c to record an in-game file. I was having too much fun just launching stuff and trying out custom ships like the powerful Icarus MK II (doing things like buzzing over my province of british columbia at 10,000meters/sec, low elevations, watching the names of cities zip by at incredible speeds) that I havn't really figured out how to properly use the MFD's (align planes, synch orbit, transfer orbit, transX and all those kinds of things)...At this point I only know how to get realistic ships into orbit about 80% of the time, but even so, I am only accomplishing this by trial and error, I still don't know what all the numbers mean, and how/when to throttle back, or which angle of attack to take at given velocities and altitudes. LOL. The game is NOT for the faint of heart as they say. Takes much study, grasshopper. I noticed in your 4th screen shot, you jettisoned your fairing the same time your jettisoned your 3rd? stage booster? I am sure you are aware, but if possible, it provides a lot more boost to remove the fairing(aerodynamic housing) just after leaving the atmosphere, which is somewhere around 80km I think? Yah, it would be great to see a recording of a real mission accomplished, Maybe I can find those to DL somewhere. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Janus Posted April 29, 2009 Report Share Posted April 29, 2009 That's wicked Janus. I don't have high speed internet so I may not have the time to watch those you tube videos. Could you do a recording of that kind of mission? I mean by using control+c to record an in-game file. It's been a while, but if I remember right, I had some problems doing that. Some events didn't record properly. I finally ended up running the sim while recording the image on the computer monitor with a digital camera I noticed in your 4th screen shot, you jettisoned your fairing the same time your jettisoned your 3rd? stage booster? I am sure you are aware, but if possible, it provides a lot more boost to remove the fairing(aerodynamic housing) just after leaving the atmosphere, which is somewhere around 80km I think? This was an aesthetic choice for the screen shots. I didn't add a mesh of any supporting structure for the transfer booster inside the fairing. So if I had ejected the fairing at an earlier point, this last stage would appear to be floating free from the rest of the launch vehicle after it was uncovered by the fairing (though from the sim's point of view it was attached.) A little poetic license on my part. Yah, it would be great to see a recording of a real mission accomplished, Maybe I can find those to DL somewhere. At one time, I considered creating a sim of an airbag type landing. There is an animate feature that could be used to create inflating and deflating airbags, and I thought that I could come up with a way to make it end upright on landing. It would have been quite an involved project, and I could never quite get myself to start it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arkain101 Posted April 29, 2009 Author Report Share Posted April 29, 2009 I hear yah Janus.. this program is very 'involved'... you damn near need to become an astronaut yourself just to accomplish something.. lol... What is the name of the programs to create ships, textures, animations? I have experience with those kinds of things, so I might be able to do some things with that. If you get back into it, you should check out the newer graphics, atmospheres, sounds etc, camera shake, etc if you already havnt. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Janus Posted April 29, 2009 Report Share Posted April 29, 2009 You need a program like "Anim8or" to make a 3ds model which you then convert to a mesh with "3ds2msh" The animation is done via adding a section to the Initialization file of your spacecraft. A simple file (without animation) might look like this: [TEXTURE_LIST]TEX_1=Exhaust_atrcsTEX_2=Exhaust_atsme [PARTICLESTREAM_1]NAME=engineSRCSIZE=0.2SRCRATE=1600V0=100.0SRCSPREAD=0.05LIFETIME=0.5GROWTHRATE=5ATMSLOWDOWN=3.0LTYPE=EMISSIVELEVELMAP=LVL_SQRTLMIN=0LMAX=1ATMSMAP=ATM_PLOGAMIN=1e-5AMAX=0.1 [CONFIG]MESHNAME="booster"SIZE=20EMPTY_MASS=147.4FUEL_MASS=1324.68MAIN_THRUST=23206RETRO_THRUST=10000ATTITUDE_THRUST=23000ISP=28230TRIM=0.05PMI=(15.5,22.1,7.7)CW_Z_POS=0.09CW_Z_NEG=0.09CW_X=2.CW_Y=1.4CROSS_SECTION=(53.0,186.9,25.9)COG=2.47PITCH_MOMENT_SCALE=0.00005BANK_MOMENT_SCALE=0.00005ROT_DRAG=(1.5,1.5,1.5)FOCUS=0 VISIBLE=1CAMERA=(0,1.22,5.4)MAIN_PSTREAM1=engine [EX_MAIN_0]OFF=(-7,0,-25)DIR=(0,0,-1)LENGTH=20WIDTH=4 [PAYLOAD_0]MESHNAME=retro;landerNAME=RETROOFF=(0,0,2);(0,0,7)MASS=500MODULE=SpacecraftSpacecraft3SPEED=(0,0,1)ROT_SPEED=(0,0,0) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arkain101 Posted May 6, 2009 Author Report Share Posted May 6, 2009 gotcha. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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