Orbiter Colisions

[Dig Gil]

In the first time I played Orbiter, I "crashed" into the NASA building, but theres a weird thing 8o : DGIII passed trough
the building then I known that Spacestations and other vessels are like ghosts too...
This is a lot unrealist!

[ar81]

Yes, collision detection is not implemented for vessels.
However, Orulex addon by Artlav is working on it.

No collision is a good feature to teach kids to fly.
The first thing kids want is to crash the ship to see them blown to pieces, but the craft bounces.
So they get bored of crash it and start to learn.

Not realistic?  Probably, but that's because Orbiter is permanently under construction.

And such a feature is a good one for adults too.
Some adults, specially those who fear touching a computer, feel frustrated when they crash.
Orbiter removes that feeling.

And if you are in space, collisions are unlikely to happen in deep space, unless you are not a very good pilot.

[Dig Gil]

Yeah, orulex have proven being good to me about the ground!
But... does that island near cape canaveral really exist?
and why only some "spots" on Earth have montains?

[Beerschot]

it doesn't bother me to be honest. ok its not realistic, but look outside your cockpit look at the earth or whatever
planet your orbiting. + all the rest you can do with orbiter . that's realistic enough for me
when i show it to my friends they don't believe that it is a free downloadable space simulator.

and when will there be an update or a "orbiter 2008" version
and what will be improved ?

[ar81]

To me, it is more realistic than Freespace, Wing Commander or Star Wars games...
And it is free, and it is work in progress which was kindly released for our joy.

AFAIK, OVP (Orbiter Visualization Project) required Martin to rearrange the core Orbiter code, and (if I understand
correctly) allowing Visual C++ 2005 graphical engine addons requires even more time and debugging. It will be the
biggest change in the next release.

If it is released by 2008 or 2010 or 2011, I really do not care too much, because then you may need a developer to
create graphical engines, while Orbiter would keep it's DirectX7 default engine.  What is DirectX?  It is a Windows
interface that allows graphics card, input devices and sound to communicate with games.  before that each developer
had to figure out all aspects of hardware support when coding.

[Artlav]

Dig Gil wrote:
But... does that island near cape canaveral really exist?
and why only some "spots" on Earth have montains?

That sounds like you got a long-obsolete version of it.
You could try a newer one ( http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=2686 ) if you want a Google Earth-like Earth
(disadvantage is that it's not for a weak pc).

As the collision detection go, there was that add-on of mine, called Meshland that tried to do it in full-scale, but
ultimately fails due to Orbiter's incompatibility to this kind of things.

The Orulex version provided above goes with the more or less latest version of MeshLand, it will do collisions like DG-ISS
and Vessel-ground, but only at 1X time accel.
Some demos and config for it, like a centrifuge and a hover aircraft carrier can be found here:
http://orbides.1gb.ru/orbf/ml-070424-add.zip , nothing of it is complete.

[Dig Gil]

Thanks you all!!
Now I know that is better to wait for next Orbiter releases, and see suprises (is luck Orbiter be released before
finished).

Special Thanks to Artlav.

[ar81]

For a few months (years?) the only improvement would be technical.  OVP feature which leaves Orbiter open to
developers who might want to make a graphics engine and the addition of support for last C++ version for addons. at
most.  So from a gamer point of view I think about Orbiter as a "finished" product until further notice.

[Beerschot]

well yeah ok i agree i think the only thing that can be improved is the graphical part  and maybe to travel to other
galaxies but for now its good enough for me

[Dig Gil]

"Whatever, it works, don't it?" would be a nice comment, wouldn't it?