Latest DGII coding news part 2 (closed)

[DanSteph]

-Tired of crashing on surface ?
-Tired of innacurate descend slope ?
-Tired of rough landing ?
-Tired of other pilot laughing at you ?


TRY OUR NEWS MARK7 "PRO200SPEC7 HOVER" AUTOPILOT
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
-Make other pilot jealous and amazed by your trajectory
-Level your ship
-maintain a constant climb or descent rate from -18 m/s to +18m/s
-Make high precision landing on every planet like mars, moon or earth.
-Selectable climb or descent rate with two key.
-smooth your path
-the module take only two hours to be installed by our
 confirmed technician.


LIMITED STOCK SUSCRIBE  NOW !!!!!
ONLY 1989.-- spacecred

[Christopher Tarana]

 That would be cool!  I can think of some instances when that would've been handy.  I
saw your post regarding the use of "medium" and "high" resolution textures.  I have
a SiS 6326 SVGA AGP 3D card with 8 megs of RAM.  It has a maximum texture resolution
of 1024x512.  I think you'd be alright if you went with 512x512 textures for the medium
resolution textures.  The Medical Skin looks great already, my grandfather drove an
ambulance during WW2.

  Thanks, Dan!

       Christopher

[DanSteph]

Hello Chris,

yes a 512x512 is planned, It take 10 seconde to make

The hover autopilot is very usefull I tested on earth & moon & mars
previously it wasn't so easy to land on a point but now you can stay
at 5 meter high and adjust your landing target with RCS in linear mode
and descend at 1 m/s right on the money. Or when you are still high you can
slowdown your rate of descend and adjust your trajectory, in fact
hover landing are fun now. I wonder if I will not let higher descend
rate than 18 m/s wich make only 60 km/h....

Well, ... done,  40 m/s now (144 Kmh)

First 100 customer will have a special rebate , only 1'900 Spacecred

Dan

[bradz]

Ahhh yes,to sit back and gaze at the instruments and land.
Now imagine auto ILS approach and land oooooh.
all of these great ideas.That fuel item looks really great.
Bradz

[Christopher Tarana]

 Here's a thinker.  The subject was raised on wether or not you could make the next version of
OrbiterSound do a distance call-out while doing vessel to vessel docking? (Eg.  Three meters...Two
meters...one meter.) The poster was looking for a callout MFD and someone suggested maybe
OrbiterSound would be better suited for that.    
 
     Christopher

[harmsway]

[DanSteph]

About call out, why not ... but this can also be done by add-on maker
with the orbitersoundSDK in a few minute.

Anyway if you want me to do that , you may wait a bit because
I'm currently updating the dgII now. Later I will work again on
OrbiterSound but I don't know when. (one month?)

Dan

[bgreman]

I posted in the other thread about my startup sequence, which you said you were going to include.

It's from this thread...

http://orbiter.dansteph.com/forum/index.php?topic=11311.msg175658#msg175658

and the sequence, as stated in that thread, is

Hydrazine valve open
N2 valve open (uses n2 gas to push hydrazine through fuel lines)
Isolation and check valves open
Hydrazine and N2 flow nominal
Catalytic bed temperature nominal
Fuel reaction rate nominal
Turbine speed nominal
Throttling APU down to stand-by mode (would match the 'slowing down' sound effect at the end of
the sound sequence)

This makes more sense with what the APU is supposed to represent than what is currently in the
DG2.

[Christopher Tarana]

 No hurry!  It was more theoretical than request!    I'll have to look at that SDK myself.  

   Thanks, Dan!

        Christopher

[C3PO]

WOW! Brilliant!!! Can't wait to try it out.

PS: Did I just spot a 'Main Engine Gimbal' sign?

[DanSteph]

bgreman:

I think I already modified the sequence but I'm not sure
I'll check that after I'm in an "familly" hurry now

C3Po:  the gimbal was always here since the last version

Dan

[John]

The auto pilot features for landings would be great for reducing the the training time for younger
users of Orbiter and thus reduce the frustration factor. I am trying to simulate space missions for
kids to experience and learn about the world around them but the learning curve in orbiter
requires me to automate as much as I can. Most of the learning comes from the things they can do
in between takeoffs and landings. The the whole mission is a bust if they fail in either the launch
or landing. After all that is the tricky part to teach. Eventually I hope to teach kids to do an entire
mission on there own, but having the option to autopilot launches and landing would be great
from our perspective at NASSAC.
 Dan has done a great job with the launch automation and we have already used it in one of our
missions. So I would love to see as much autopilot "options" for landing as possible. Learning to
program the autopilot is also a great challenge for kids as well.

Thanks Dan for all your hard work. We are patiently waiting at NASSAC for the delivery of your
new DGII. Can't wait to kick the tires, light the flame and take it for a spin around the globe once
or twice.

John
NASSAC Director

[DanSteph]

Now that my site is updated, I'm back to duty
The hover autopilot is really nice, I didn't liked to much
hovering before but now I do all my landing with it.

Here a precise  landing with it, I started at 250km/h and 4000 meter
and after a nice round curve ended here with no speed.
the smoke you see behind are the fuel ventile smoke and the two
engine cooling exhaust.




Now you can use KILLROT it will not disengage the hover autopilot
so with a mix of RCS rotation (that can be "killroted") and RCS lin
you can point your vector speed very precisely while controling exactly
also your descent rate.  All those feature allow you for a very smooth
descent path that end exactly on the money with 0 horizontal speed
and -1 ms vertical speed... Your passenger will hardly notice you landed
now

When you engage the pilot while descending (or climbing) its vertical rate
setting is set to your current one (rounded to -40ms or +40ms if it exceed)
and you can change it with the keypad key 8 and 2 or while clicking on
the onboard computer's keyboard.

You can also bank or pitch until 20° to control your horizontal speed
beyond 20°, the hover stop acting.

John: I think this will also be a cool things for children: learning the effect
of rot, lin RCS and descent rate on the speed vector and how to control it
while staying relax about the vertical speed.

[EDIT] Added an "AUTO" mode: in this mode the vertical speed
setting is  controled from altitude, it start at -80m/s when you are higher
than 1200 meter until -1m/s at 5 meter high. This is the PRO200SPEC8
mode. If you hit one setting key (8 or 2 on keypad) it switch in
PRO200SPEC7 pilot with manual setting of the vertical speed.
[EDIT2] And back also from manual to auto with numpad key 0
so you can control your alignementt with SPEC7, once your right on target
you can switch to descent auto SPEC8 and relax... you can even start to
remove your seat belt

[EDIT3] I must stop adding stuff otherwise this post will exceed the limit  


Dan

[reekchaa]

Faaaaaaaaaaaaaantastic!

I can't wait to play with all these new features!

[Prandini]

Dan, you are doing great!!!

Wish I know how to help you somehow...Im not a good programer...

It's F A N T A S T I C since first version of DGII

Congratz

[]'s

[DanSteph]

Guy that are willing to help and that aren't bad at graphism can
make new skin, basically just repainting the stock DG
with high res texture (512 or 1024) will do the job
I'd put them on the DGII download page, as new DGII skin
with credit of course

Fun Stuff:  mixing normal flight near ground with
PRO200SPEC8 HOVER AUTO

No stall or sink rate anymore when wings lift goes off
the AP take the relay with hover engine.

I have fun testing the hover AP

Dan

[DanSteph]

had some more testing, this work well.

[DanSteph]

dont open this one in space !!!










Dan

[Simonppro]

Wow!
Im looking forward to this one

[canadave]

Wow...looks like I missed a bunch of things since I last poked my nose in here!!!  Hover
autopilots, ship repaints, turning nosewheels....what the heck else is there, stewardesses who
come offer you muffins???

Sorry I've been away....busy craziness over the holiday season, had some health issues....and I
won't be able to be quite as active as I'd like, due to school/family commitments...but I will say I'm
looking forward with bated breath to the DG3

Dan, if you need help with the documentation, just let me know

Cheers,
Dave

[DanSteph]

You are missed Dave

Of course I will need help with the doc, thanks for offer
in fact I was counting on your help again so each modif I make in the doc
already contain the keyword "dave" so you can look only about the added
stuff

Welcome somewhat back and .......

DON'T TROW YOUR MUFFIN EVERYWHERE IN THE VESSEL !!! dang !

Cheers also,

Dan

[Spets]

hot damn..

will the side door also open, or is it just the canopy and standard airlock?

[reekchaa]

Sweeeet.  I noticed in the latest incarnation of the Original Delta Glider(1) that there were some
flipped polys for a few of the passengers.  I didn't see this before last orbiter release... wondering
if it was just me.  Did you have to totally tweak the model, Dan?  You're really puttin' the tease on
us now!  

[DanSteph]

It would be nice but for now there is no way to open the
side door. (I don't have the original DeltaGlider 3ds file, I can only
tweak a bit the mesh file with notepad)
Also those door are only on the medical
skin for now I don't think they will become "standard"

Yes I noticed the "strange surgery" that happened on two passenger
I'll try to correct this....

[EDIT]  Corrected, the passenger are back

Dan

[Chris]

Whenwhenwhenwhenwhen?????
Tell me pleeeease
Can´t wait much longer...
Really a great work of art and programming....