How do I put a crew member into EVA?

[CarlosTheTackle]

Hi there,

I'm just trying out the DGIII for the first time. Very nice so far.

I can't seem to get an EVA working. The status indicator reports "Airlock or nosecone not open. EVA not possible."
However, I can't seem to get the airlock open. I can open the inner and outer separately and empty or pressurise the
chamber, but I can't find a configuration that lets me put a crew member out. Clearly you need to open the inner, then
put the crew member in the chamber, then open the outer, but I can't figure out how to do this.

Cheers,

Carl.

[AphelionHellion]

If I recall correctly, it's not quite that complicated. I believe you just need to open the outer airlock door and nosecone,
and it'll "automatically" act as if the crewmember you want to EVA is already inside the airlock.
It might be inner airlock door and nosecone... Anyway I remember that the process is missing a step somewhere

[Pierre_le]

click on "open canopy" while in orbit. use force button to do so
all your crew will be in space

[CarlosTheTackle]

Thanks for the replies guys. I eventually figured it out.  So the nosecone is outside the outer airlook then? Here I was
thinking that the nosecone and outer airlock were 2 seperate exits.

Dan, have you considered making it so that you have to do this correctly? Like, open the inner door, put a man in the
chamber, close the inner door, depressurise, then open the outer doors. You could make the 'EVA' button a 'Place man
in chamber' button, and then the crew member could automatically pop outside when the outer doors are opened. And
of course, the reverse procedure would need to be followed on ingress.


One more quick comment: It appears that the life-support systems don't function correctly when Orbiter is not the
foreground app. I Alt-tabbed away from it to browse the DGIII docs and when I switched back my O2 levels were all
up the wazoo. I've killed a couple of pilots now 'cos of this. Is this just, unfortunately, what happens, or is there a way
round it?

Carl.

[DanSteph]

CarlosTheTackle wrote:
Dan, have you considered making it so that you have to do this correctly?

Sure but after a litle brainstorming it appeared to me that after some eva
and appart some "hard core" simmer the majority will find this really
booooooooring:  10 seconde to open inner door, 10 to close
it 10 to empty the airlock, 10 to open the outer and nosecone....

booooooooooooooooring to the death.... and really not so fun when you are in mission,
imagine EVAing 5 peoples for a rescue mission.... not to speak about the headeach
that will have most people finding how to eva one guy...

CarlosTheTackle wrote:
One more quick comment: It appears that the life-support systems don't function correctly when Orbiter is not the
foreground app. I Alt-tabbed away from it to browse the DGIII docs and when I switched back my O2 levels were all
up the wazoo. I've killed a couple of pilots now 'cos of this. Is this just, unfortunately, what happens, or is there a way round it?
Carl.

First time ever I hear that problem...  (and the DGIII exist since several month)
seem to me that perhaps you leaved the ship with accelerated time
or another things ?


Dan



Post Edited ( 07-27-04 01:46 )

[CarlosTheTackle]

Nope, no time accel, just a simple free-floating orbit around the earth. It seems to be just the O2 levels that go funny.
I am running Orbiter in Fullscreen, so I have to use Alt-tab to task switch. When I come back to Orbiter, the O2 levels
have drifted off substantially, but once back, the life-support system quickly automates the levels back to normal.
Weird, huh?


Also, re the EVA procedure, I just wondered what was the use of having all the different airlock doors and
pressurisation control if you were never required to use them correctly. Fair enough, though. One thing you could do,
though, is make it that if you push the EVA button while the inner airlock is open, the crew member goes into some
kind of EVA-ready mode and then automatically pops outside when the outer doors are opened. This way you'd be
catering to the easy-play types and the realism geeks at once. By the way, I do have to say that the EVA mode is very
cool. The helmet view and the breathing sounds - very atmospheric. Well done.

[C3PO]

I realy do like CarlosTheTackle's way.
Open the inner door, press the EVA button, close inner door, empty airlock and finaly open outer door.

I know it can be tedious, but that's the way it's done in space. (Actualy it takes quite a bit longer if you include the
pre-breathing etc.)

Maybe there could an option in the DGIIIConfiguration between the current way and the more elaborate way.

But maybe it's too much work for such a small detail.

[MattNW]

CarlosTheTackle wrote:
Nope, no time accel, just a simple free-floating orbit around the earth. It seems to be just the O2 levels that go
funny.
I am running Orbiter in Fullscreen, so I have to use Alt-tab to task switch. When I come back to Orbiter, the O2 levels
have drifted off substantially, but once back, the life-support system quickly automates the levels back to normal.
Weird, huh?

Definately wierd. I'm always multitasking when I have a mission going in the background and I've never had this
happen. You might try putting Orbiter into "Windowed Mode" and see if you still have the problem.

Also, re the EVA procedure, I just wondered what was the use of having all the different airlock doors and
pressurisation control if you were never required to use them correctly.  

Probably just so we could have more buttons to play with. I wanted the one at a time EVA but several others said
it was too tedious so Dan made it happen all at once. If you really do want to do it the right way you can. Just open
the inner lock and close it then depressurize and open the outer lock before putting a crew member EVA. Repeat for
each crew member you want to send out.

[DocHoliday]

Hm, this task switch problem might be connected to that panel memory-leak bug. I imagine that once you switch
to windows, Orbiter runs in the background and obviously something weird happens with O2 variables. I read this
bug is present on some machines and maybe this is one of it's forms..

Cheers,

[harmsway]

C3PO wrote:
I realy do like CarlosTheTackle's way.
Open the inner door, press the EVA button, close inner door, empty airlock and finaly open outer door.

Me too.

I go through all the boring motions anway

[freespace2dotcom]

harmsway wrote:

C3PO wrote:
I realy do like CarlosTheTackle's way.
Open the inner door, press the EVA button, close inner door, empty airlock and finaly open outer door.

Me too.

I go through all the boring motions anway

me three.

I wouldn't find that tedious at all. Although I agree that some would find it that way. Perhaps "Dan the man" can
juryrig a solution for us die-harders.

[twisterkid]

how do you empty the airlock!?

[Arkalius]

I make it a point never to task switch from Orbiter without first pausing it. I've never actually experienced the life
support problem, but other wierd glitches can occur, most likely due to the computer page-swapping memory, and
the processor usage spiking causing anomalies in calculations. To me, it seems like not a good idea to have a
program like Orbiter that relies on complicated mathematics to be accurate to be second tier on processor priority.

[canadave]

Can I tackle this, Dan?  Since we've already had arguments on the subject

Sure but after a litle brainstorming it appeared to me that after some eva
and appart some "hard core" simmer the majority will find this really
booooooooring: 10 seconde to open inner door, 10 to close
it 10 to empty the airlock, 10 to open the outer and nosecone....

Most people playing Orbiter are already "hard core simmers".  If we wanted quick shoot-em-up's, we'd be playing
Doom 3 or something like that  Also, even if people aren't hard-core, and they're interested in doing an EVA
anyway, the way it's currently set up is counter-intuitive--people get confused, because even casual gamers have a
rough sense of how an EVA is "supposed" to work.

booooooooooooooooring to the death....  and really not so fun when you are in mission,
imagine EVAing 5 peoples for a rescue mission.... not to speak about the headeach
that will have most people finding how to eva one guy...

If I imagine EVAing 5 people for a rescue mission, I'm thinking, why not "assume" (for the sake of simplicity) that the
airlock can hold more than one person?  It DOES look pretty big, after all--why not simply allow people to EVA three
people in one airlock cycle?

Another argument in favour of a "realistic" EVA procedure, if I may  Instead of looking at having to do more than
one airlock cycle to EVA many people as "boring", I think most people would see it as being "part of the intricacy of
the DG3", and thus a desirable feature.  In other words, if you screw up, you kill your crew, which is part of the fun
and challenge of operating a DG3.  

One more argument in favour==look at the rest of the DG3's operation.  Isnt' it "boring" to have to continually follow
the same checklist, over and over again, to get the DG3 ready to launch (turn on APU, enable life support, yadda
yadda)?  No, of course not--because although the *procedure* is, I suppose, boring, the challenge of spaceflight is
often in doing the "little things" that have to be done, in order to preserve the life of the crew.  Sure, maybe I have to
throw that little "O2 enabled" switch a million times, and maybe the 1,000,001th time, I'm going to say, "Hey, this is
getting tedious"--but you know what?  If I *don't* remember to throw that little switch, my crew will die.  THAT'S part
of the challenge of realistic spaceflight.

My .03 euros

[DocHoliday]

heh, I believe that most catastrophies in real-life space programs actually happened precisely because some "little"
thing was overlooked. A switch wasn't flipped, a part of program code wasn't triple-checked, etc...

[canadave]

DocHoliday wrote:
heh, I believe that most catastrophies in real-life space programs actually happened precisely because some
"little"
thing was overlooked. A switch wasn't flipped, a part of program code wasn't triple-checked, etc...

And let's agree to not even talk about that little "metric units vs. Imperial units" Mars probe fiasco!

[DanSteph]

canadave wrote:
Can I tackle this, Dan?  Since we've already had arguments on the subject

Sure but after a litle brainstorming it appeared to me that after some eva
and appart some "hard core" simmer the majority will find this really
booooooooring: 10 seconde to open inner door, 10 to close
it 10 to empty the airlock, 10 to open the outer and nosecone....

Most people playing Orbiter are already "hard core simmers".  

You get the point

But in fact latelly it's all about the time I have to give to the DGIII - no time -

And later if things goes well and I have sometime I would better port the code to another
bigger ship because the DGIII's possibilities are restricted due to it's size
(where to put a probe, payload ? etc etc)

Dan

[canadave]

Ah, okay....so it's really all about the time factor  Now THAT'S an argument I can understand and relate to!

[reekchaa]

It's Delta-Glider III Re-Evolution time!
Since it's always us elite 'Pud-Knockers' what decide Dan's flow of creative output  ...

Lets' work on some more cool new concepts for Dan... complete with space for probes and payloads,
shield generators and revolving anti-matter-dispersal-plasma-projectiles.  
I know freespace's concept was fantastic, but perhaps it was just too perfect?

When the new larger space craft is complete, I suggest we call her 'Debbie'.

[StarLost]

DocHoliday wrote:
heh, I believe that most catastrophies in real-life space programs actually happened precisely because some "little"
thing was overlooked. A switch wasn't flipped, a part of program code wasn't triple-checked, etc...

And reminds me of a sick Challenger joke (apologies to my American friends but it was a New York cabbie that told me this
one, go figure):

Last words heard on the Challenger Commander's voice tape:

"Christa !!!  Don't touch that bu............"

[kinga]

Yeah  I get the same bug when I tab to the desktop and leave it for a while.  In  fact the sim is running at the
moment with

"Critical O2 level:all men dead!!!"
"WARNING: Cabin O2 low!!!"
"O2 level warning : HYPOXIA!!!"

in the System Message box  

Oh well...


Oh another thing I've noticed, if my CPU gets too hot, it shuts down the clock multiplier to try and cool off, when it
does this, Orbiter gets jerky and when that happens and I have prograde activated in the DGIII, all the crew are
knocked unconcious by the excessive G-Forces (up around 12 Gs from memory last time it happened)

As soon as the CPU cools down (usually by me hurridly ripping the case off and pointing a desk fan in there!) the
crew recover conciousness!  LOL!!

[Atom]

that the airlock can hold more than one person? It DOES look pretty big

I'm suprised you didn't pick up on this one. Reekchaa!

[DocHoliday]

hehe, well, the new stock DG, has a female Chinese occupant, so.... the airlock could be a cozy place

canadave: the Mars fiasco. Don't even REMIND me.. I lauhed so hard that day, even though the situation as such isn't
funny. Just the stupidly human part of it

Starlost, hehe nothing like black humor

reekchaa.. okay, you get working on the warp core and tge space-time displacement field manifold, atom and krytom
get working on the quatum guided missiles, the rest of you work on the biometrics for the crew, so we can keep close
tabs on them and Freespace you... play with your katana, you've done enough.. and I'll just sit here and order you all
around

Which reminds me.. we should get back to working on the DGIII docs shouldn't we.

[Atom]

Missles eh, sounds fun. What warhead?

That's true, there's no doc for the DGIII, I never noticed. Well Doc, better get working on the docs.

[DocHoliday]

Gee I dunno. Let's see. low-yield plutonium.. high-yield plutonium, EMP, neutron blast, quantum dispersion, mater-
antimatter.. oh and some for fireworks too!

hehe, well we do have a running project on the DG3 docs:
http://orbiter.vidmar.org/dg3/

I have the password saved in the FTP client, but for the life of me I can't remember it..... It was meant for all parties
interested in contributing to get a password, so they could take a chunk and update it.