DGIV Frequently asked Question

[DanSteph]

DeltaGliderIV FAQ


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[Q]: Will you make a DGV ?

Yes but not before several months. I need food and cannot work for free all the time.
PS: Please do not submit feature request for it. I doubt Ill read such old threads when the time comes


[Q]: I have a problem, something is not working

DGIV is not bug free of course. Anyways, for the complexity it offers, there is really little number of them so are you sure its really a problem and not a misunderstanding of a feature ?
Please carefully read the Fantastic documentation which is available in english and in french.see Doc/DeltaGliderIV folder.


[Q]: I want to make a new payload, skin, container repaint, PreludeII texture etc. etc.

You need the SDK which will often contain a doc, photoshop layered format or various other files.You can find them here in the "utilities and SDK" section of DGIV download ;
http://orbiter.dansteph.com/index.php?disp=dgIVMore&cat=Utilities%20and%20SDK
You need SDK wich will often contain a doc, photoshop layered format or various file


[Q]: I have problems with uploading my addons on the upload zone

The upload page is here http://orbiter.dansteph.com/index.php?disp=dgIVUpload file size limit is 4.00MB If you try to send a larger file, the upload will never finish or will simplyabort. Solution Split your addon in more packs


[Q]: Where can I find more addons for the DGIV ?

Here:
http://orbiter.dansteph.com/index.php?disp=dgIVMore

As its open for upload, people might post news things at any time so bookmark and visit regulary.


[Q]: I keep crashing on landing ?

Landing speed should be 180 ms. Lower than that and you might simply stall and crash.Also, when in ATM Auto, RCS engages at 110 ms which is 90 ms below landing speedand 40 ms below stall speed. Its not the reason of your crash.

If you experience gear collapse, it might be because your DGIV is too heavy on landing. The maximum landing weight is 19 metric tonnes. You can find your actual weight on the mini HUD. Gear collapse depends on touchdown speed and weight, so you might be too heavy or touch too hard. Gear collpase values are based on realheavy aircraft data. Its even a bit more tolerant than in reality so you might review your landing procedure if you always get gear collapse.

To help you maintain approach speed, remember you can use ALT-2 autopilot which will maintain a speed of 180 ms and disengage itself at 20 meters above ground ready for flare.

Lastly, a DGIV costs about 240 millions dollars. If you keep crashing, Spacetech Corp accepts cash or money order to bank account 240-37354-4545-12


[Q]: Unable to transfer pilot to a DGIV

When you try to transfer a pilot in a DGIV that already has four crew members, you get the message Error, docked ship is already full. Transfer failed. This is due to the special way DGIV handle pilot and crew seat.

SOLUTION Transfer the pilot first, then the crew


[Q]: No VOR/ILS landing or Shadow on Prelude II base

A Prelude II base is a vessel and not a standard Orbiter base. This has many advantages a standard base cant be active but the downside is that you dont have a shadow on landing pad nor do you have ILS/VOR landing help.

There is information in the documentation on page 23 about that. In brief if you want to get both advantages of a vessel base and a ground base, you can define a new Orbiter base and place a PreludeII base over it.

There is an addon  that adds VTOL+ Shadow to PreludeII base here:
http://orbiter.dansteph.com/index.php?disp=dgIVMore&DId=37



[Q]: I get CTD (Crash to Desktop) during EVA ingress or DGIV destruction

If you experience Crash to Desktop during EVA ingress or DeltaGliderIV destruction, it is 99.99% probable that you have another addon MFD or module that has kept a handle on DGIV or Ummu after is deletion. There is no workaround you can do for this. Delete object is a normal Orbiter procedure. Keeping a handle is a bad programming practice as handle will point on nothing once an object deleted.

The only solution is to ask the other addons author to not keep Objectss handle but instead objects name. Get the handle by name each timestep and always check returned handle before using them. Take care the culprit may be an addon in a scenario but also a plugin module or a MFD.

Some other addons may use tricks that are very dangerous such as spawning more than 60 docking ports orhaving a mesh model with more than 100000 polygons. Such bad practice may lead in some cases to CTD as well.

This said, the DeltaGliderIV is very stable on a fresh installation of Orbiter 2006P1 and works nicely with most other addons.

Note In some rare cases where one addon makes DGIV CTD, it seems that moving all Prelude, DGIV and Ummuvessels to the top of the scenario and above other addons * may * cure the problem. This seems to be the case at least with some spacecraft3 models.

SOLUTION In Orbiter launchpad, disable all other modules or MFD appart from Orbitersound 3.5 and disable all other vessels in the scenario.

Try again and see if you still have CTD. If not, enable modules and vessels one by one and youll probably find which addons caused the CTD.Other method is to install a fresh new copy of Orbiter 2006 with patch P1 and install DGIV and OrbiterSound 3.5. If you dont experience CTD anymore, then there is another addon in your current installation that caused the CTD


[Q]: I get CTD (Crash to Desktop)

During beta testing wich represented hundred hours of testing on various machine CTD were very rare not to say inexistent with latest beta version, the only things that DGIV is sensitive is with other addons that keep vessels handle or do odd things (see QA just above) As there is thousand of addon it's impossible to test the DGIV with each one, don't forget that the quality of addon is very wide, some may have been programmed by newbies and may do  things that are dangerous, this is the counterpart of a SDK that allow almost everything (wich is a good things a DGIV would never be possible otherwise).

If you experience CTD that you can reproduce , the best method is to disable all other modules, MFD and vessels and enable them one by one until you find wich one cause CTD.  Other best method is to install a new fresh copy of Orbiter 2006 with patch P1 and install DGIV and OrbiterSound 3.5, if you don't experience CTD anymore then there is another addons in your current installation that cause the CTD.

Also you might have CTD due to other things not related to DGIV for example with the docking MFD:
"CTD with Docking MFD in VIS mode"
http://www.orbitersim.com/Forum/default.aspx?g=posts&t=8720

Align Plane MFD do CTD if you switch focus to another vessel and back and use F8 and switch panel, this happen also with stock Deltaglider or ShuttleA, solution: don't switch focus while using align plane MFD.








More FAQ will be added soon.

Dan



Message modifié ( 11-11-2007 14:12 )