Excess Gs

[andyman]

Okay, I will be there in my DG-III, waiting for a window of any sort, and change it to 10x acceleration, and be lucky if
it goes for more than 2 seconds before an Excess G warning fires off for a fraction of a second, kicking it back down
into 1x. How does this work? I mean, its not like I am applying thrust or re-entering atmosphere. I am confused.

[Atom]

That's not a bug... it's a feature.

[johnc]

The exsess g's are caused from the way Orbiter calculates the G's on an object. When time is accelerated, Orbiter looks at
the displacement of a vessel, and sees that there is more distance in between REAL TIME steps. It then assumes that it is
going faster and acceleration faster and sends this high G ammount to the DGIII, which dutiffully takes the high G's and
gives the warning.

I don't claim to be an expert, so if I have something wrong, don't hesitate to correct me.


Johc

[canadave]

I don't think either of those ideas is likely, guys, to be honest.  My DG3 doesn't give any excess G warnings at any
point of time acceleration.  Maybe you guys got a lemon model out of Dan's factory?

Seriously...I don't think it's a bug, or a feature...I'm pretty sure it's a problem somewhere in andyman's installation
somewheres.  Andyman, can you give us some more info to help you out better?  Did this just start happening?  Have
you tried reinstalling (preferably from a brand-new Orbiter install)?

[DanSteph]

This is an old know bug that appear on somes computer. (search on this forum about "excess G Bug")

Let me explain:

Orbiter don't provide any value for G so at each step I calculate
the displacement of the vessel VS time this give me the G value.

For whatewer reason on somes computer (often when the proc or GFX card is too busy)
Orbiter make you vessel "warp" to compensate the lost of position.
in brief your vessel really "jump" in space from one location to another.

You don't see it while you are in space and you wouldn't notice even a 10km jump
but my calculation notice it and give you this high G bug wich only reflect the "reality"
of what happen in Orbiter... (warp time Mr Sulu)

perhaps it appear when the GFX card is idle (bad driver, texture transfert via AGP)
or a bus busy ? Anyway something seem to "pause" Orbiter some ms and then
it compensate with those "jump".

There is no solution as it seem to not appear often and only on somes computer
perhaps reducing the charge of the proc (lower res, lower texture?)

Notice I have already a damper fo the G value that lower the highest peak.

The only solution would be to dismiss the G calculation and that's not possible
as it's 25% of DGIII features and as it seem to behave correctly on most computer.

Dan

[DanSteph]

Notice it's possible that an external prog like antivirus etc etc eat proc
cycle ?  
Anyway something in your computer make Orbiter lost some frames...

Dan

[canadave]

ooops...I was going to post something and then realized it was wrong.  Thanks for jumping in Dan!



Post Edited ( 11-19-04 04:31 )

[johnc]

I was kinda right. I knew that it was caused by a large jump in displacement, I just dodn't know that it was the DGIII
calculating it.


Johnc

[canadave]

yep, I was way off on this one *bow* thank youuuuu, thank youuuuuuuu...hold the applause, please

*sigh* I think I'm just going to curl up in a corner before I give someone else more of my "help" and wind up poking
their eye out!

[DocHoliday]

heh, yes, the way I see it, it's one of 3 things:
- you may not have the latest version of DGIII. I remember this happened to me a lot in DGII.
- you may have a low frame rate, because of processor or graphics card. This "bug" gets worse in this sort of
situations... What kind of FPS do you get currently (if you press F while in flight - the figure appears in the top right
corner)
- you may be running some rather demanding program in the background (Antivirus, some CD utility or something
even bigger like Excel, heh)

Try changing variables one at a time to localize the problem.

Cheers,