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Orbiter English => Orbiter English => Topic started by: DocHoliday on 31 May 2017, 19:57:43

Title: Questions / creative brainstorming for a mission scenario
Post by: DocHoliday on 31 May 2017, 19:57:43
Greets to all!

So, I've decided to get back into the Orbiter game - as much as time will permit, which is mediocre at the moment.

BUT... I'm working on a mission scenario and I'd like input from the rest of you, especially with some background stuff. I SO wanted to use the Arrow Freighter and the full power of UCGO for this but I guess it'll have to wait and I'll use Deepstar and ICV for the time being.

So here are a few questions:
1) OrbiterSound - I seem to recal there being a utility in which you could have sequential sounds; where you would select a radio frequency, put in a series of sound clips and then trigger them at a specific time. Is it still there (and I'm just missing it) or was it cancelled in some previous OrbSnd version? Some of you forum whores... erm legends! even agreed to do voice acting for it back then.

2) Background story - now, the story is that the Cold war never ended (yeah, I took it straight from Battlezone 1, I know) and that the US and Soviet Union kept it up but in secret. Long story short, I'd like to put a space station around the Moon and I want to make it invisible from Earth or rather prevent it from ever entering the near side of the Moon. Sounds stupid, I know but I originally had two ideas for it:
   a) A Moon-synchronous orbit with the station on the far side. Now, I might be wrong, but the orbital altitude would have to be around 88.000 km, which as it turns out is outside of Moon's SOI, therefore useless.. Or is there a way to get away with it?
   b) The Earth-Moon L2 Lagrange point, which is again on the far side of the Moon and since it's L2, the station would be suspended there indefinitely. Again, sadly, it turns out L2 is unstable so you'd need to come up with something to "afix" the station there. Either constant correction burns (which I understand the Lagrange MFD *can* do, but it's tricky and buggy) or some sort of virtual orbit around the L2 point? I read about that but have no idea how to pull it off... Any ideas?
   c) Do a bit of cheating and define the space station as a natural satellite of Moon, through the sol.cfg file and all that? Possibly forcefully placing it in the L2 spot again and hoping it stays there just because of how Orbiter works... Again, not sure how to go around that either?

That's it so far. I'm going through some tutorials coz I forgot how to use TransX and Interplanetary MFD and this will all play a role later on...

Title: Re: Questions / creative brainstorming for a mission scenario
Post by: DocHoliday on 31 May 2017, 20:44:31
Heh, lemme reply to my own question in case someone else wants to know.  :badsmile:

1) Found it! The Sequential editor is still there. It's in the [Orbiter]/Sound folder -> Sequential_Editor.exe

Was an awesome idea at the time, still is!  :wor:
Title: Re: Questions / creative brainstorming for a mission scenario
Post by: antoo on 01 June 2017, 01:18:32
Objects "almost" stay for long in the L points. I tried it a few times, it works pretty well, but you will sometimes have to do some corrections :) (wich is funny to watch out!).
Title: Re: Questions / creative brainstorming for a mission scenario
Post by: DocHoliday on 01 June 2017, 12:38:34
Thanks for the reply. I'd prefer not to have to do corrections - it's a space station AND there will be flights with time acceleration and I wouldn't want pilot to arrive at L2 only to find the station has drifted off into deep space meanwhile :D

I'll probably try to figure out how to fix the station as a planetary body....
Title: Re: Questions / creative brainstorming for a mission scenario
Post by: reekchaa on 03 June 2017, 09:57:59
Interesting! Keep us Updated :wonder: And Welcome Back, Doc!   :beer:
Title: Re: Questions / creative brainstorming for a mission scenario
Post by: DocHoliday on 03 June 2017, 10:25:02
It's frustrating. A lot of the "good" addons don't work and often Orbiter just CTDs for no apparent reason...
Title: Re: Questions / creative brainstorming for a mission scenario
Post by: antoo on 03 June 2017, 11:11:47
Which ones do you use?
Title: Re: Questions / creative brainstorming for a mission scenario
Post by: DocHoliday on 03 June 2017, 17:14:57
Well, a ton of MFDs - I mostly use the confirmed ones (like AeroBrake, BaseSync, IMFD, BurnTime, HoverMFD, LaunchMFD)... Others mostly work okay, apart from Radio/mp3 (which is a shame, coz you can't even change radio frequency atm), CSSC spawner (again, shame coz Carl Sagan spaceport rules), LolaMFD was twitchy and so was the Universal Auto Pilot... The rest I don't (yet) need and can ignore.

Do you know if Videnie (by Artlav I think) should work in O2016? It doesn't CTD but neither does it do anything when you press ALT-I?

Ships, too many to list - I'm trying everything on for size at the moment...Well, the ones that use UCGO work if you remove the UCGO stuff from the scenario, but it's not 100%... DG IV is also hit and miss I think...

Orcus Patera is my Mars base of choice - again, not working fully... Niven base on Moon CTDs if you use the domes for some reason... The Ascension island seems to be the only Earth base that works atm... others are submerged :D

I'm looking for a cool large space station - ESS is twitchy (I think it also depends on UCGO), the only one that is large and seems to work ok is the NASA space station... and Papy's bar (haven't tested it much tho). I haven't tried Ceres yet, but I doubt it works... USS Nemsis doesn't work for me.. Or rather there seems to be a problem with the config/mesh (it's invisible)...

Well.... There you have it...
Title: Re: Questions / creative brainstorming for a mission scenario
Post by: DocHoliday on 03 June 2017, 18:13:23
Antoo, btw, I like you Youtube videos. Didn't know you're Pockocmoc!

What did you use for voices in "Alone in deep space"? Sounds like synthetic voices but quite good.
Title: Re: Questions / creative brainstorming for a mission scenario
Post by: NukeET on 10 June 2017, 21:19:16

Orcus Patera is my Mars base of choice - again, not working fully... Niven base on Moon CTDs if you use the domes for some reason...


I never saw that when I first opened a Niven scenario with domes in O16.  There was a non-level lunar surface issue that made the meshes flicker on the dome interconnects...which I fixed.  Unfortunately, that fix only resides with me at the moment.  The new Orbiter version has caused me to rethink a lot of things...and there are a lot of changes I'm still considering, hence delaying any updates on the base.
Title: Re: Questions / creative brainstorming for a mission scenario
Post by: DocHoliday on 10 June 2017, 22:05:50
Oh, good to hear from you! Love the Niven base!

As far as it causing CTDs, well, I might need to revise what I said. Turns out Orbiter CTDs on me quite randomly. I have a basic setup for a scenario (Nasa station, Fuel Service station, XR fleet, Deepstar and ICV, Edwards AFB, Ascension island). It turns out O2016 sometimes works and other times it just CTDs. I'd resigned it was the Niven domes' fault but the CTDs kept on coming. I've narrowed it down to Aerobreak MFD, the rest seems to be random - possibly related to Orbiter Sound (it never CTDs without OS)... I'm kind of frustrated atm...

So, I guess I'll try the full Niven again and get back to you.
Title: Re: Questions / creative brainstorming for a mission scenario
Post by: DocHoliday on 10 June 2017, 22:46:28
Well, that's interesting...

I tried your original scenario again (Introduction to the new Niven.scn) - CTD
I disabled Orbiter Sound - CTD
I removed the UCGO content from the scenario - CTD
Then I decided to change focus from Dome8_C to the ShuttleA and removed the camera portion from the file too:
BEGIN_CAMERA
  TARGET Dome8_C
  MODE Extern
  POS 44.99 87.82 -18.02
  TRACKMODE TargetRelative
  FOV 30.00
  BEGIN_PRESET
    Track:Dome8_C:30.00:RELATIVE 4.000 0.000 0.000
  END_PRESET
END_CAMERA

And it worked! Did see some clipping but no flickering. The base sits nicely on the ground. I have the HD Moon textures, btw. I forgot how to post screenies here....

BUT, the domes are all invisible (orbiter.log doesn't complain about any missing meshes) and hanging in interplanetary space (I installed only Niven 3.2, should I have installed the original version also?)...

Ideas?
Title: Re: Questions / creative brainstorming for a mission scenario
Post by: DocHoliday on 10 June 2017, 22:50:22
Also: all the airlocks are shown and the animations work.
Title: Re: Questions / creative brainstorming for a mission scenario
Post by: Face on 11 June 2017, 08:45:20
Do you know if Videnie (by Artlav I think) should work in O2016? It doesn't CTD but neither does it do anything when you press ALT-I?

Videnie is unsupported since a long time now. Artlav abandoned it completely - and as it seems, Orbiter altogether. I never got it to work in 2016.

However, there is Orbits (https://www.orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?t=37171 (https://www.orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?t=37171)) by jarmonik, which "only" works with his D3D9Client. It is not as polished as Videnie was, but the code is there (and also works - compiled and tinkered with it myself  :) ).
Title: Re: Questions / creative brainstorming for a mission scenario
Post by: DocHoliday on 11 June 2017, 09:27:37
Thanks Face. I've been away for quite a few years :) I'll give Orbits a try.