Real Space Launch

[Simonpro]

A Delta II rocket carrying a new GPS satellite blasted off into space a few minutes ago. If you tune in now you
can catch the live feeds from nasa. Meanwhile, im off to bed as nothing will be happening for 60 mintues

[schumanna]

N I C E ! ! !  Whats the missions name?



Post Edited ( 06-24-04 01:51 )

[Simonpro]

Erm, big rocket to put a nice new GPS sat in orbit?
I dont know GPS-12R or something i think.

[AphelionHellion]

Hehe, catchy!

But yeah, I'd run out of names too after launching, what, 40-something of these satelites?
Still pretty cool and these are in fairly high orbits, not just LEOs.

Just curious, does anyone know if it'd be possible to have the actual GPS constellation in Orbiter? Or would that many
ships just hog all the CPU time?
I've never had problems with slowdown from an excessive number of orbiting ships, but then the largest number I've
ever had in one scenario was only about 10 or 12...

[freespace2dotcom]

I wouldn't forget about all those moons flying around the gas giants. that sucks up more cpu time, I'd say.
Regardless, I've never had a problem with slowdowns during normal time (no acceleration) though a lack of CPU time.
My main problem is graphics. Having all those high rez textures running can be quite a hog, and It seems as though I
experience the worst slowdown when I can see the horizon of the planet I'm orbiting.

[AphelionHellion]

Freespace: I figured Orbiter uses a different method for the planets and moons...Has them in some sort of fixed path?
I mean I've never made a moon de-orbit by running at 10000x acceleration

I know what you mean when it comes to slowdown. Whenever I'm orbiting a planet and I need to hit time acceleration
I always turn so the cockpit view isn't pointed at the earth (and in such a way that I need to make nearly half an orbit
before the horizon pops up again). Takes a little doing, but In higher than 10x acceleration, if I hit that texture
slowdown in low orbit the whole thing breaks down and I go hurtling off into the void
Sometimes I can even get it so that I'm very slowly rotating, once per orbit, so the earth stays out of view the whole
time.
Seems to happen much more around planets with upgraded hi-res textures, which isn't surprising I guess.
I have a tiny amount of video memory (It's 32 megs and SHARED on top of that - it's an on-board chipset for laptops).
Still during normal time I don't have problem. Even at very low framerates Orbiter still seems usable - moreso than a
lot of flight sims where you're making millisecond-by-millisecond corrections constantly.

By the way, what the heck is "schniggling"?  

[DocHoliday]

AphelionHellion: Yup I think the whole point of sol.cfg is to have Orbiter interpret planets differently as a constant.
We had that problem a while ago, when we tried to have a binary planet. You can either have a planet and a moon,
but not two mutually orbiting planets without some virtual heavy planet in between and even that was sort of
weird so I guess moons don't eat up CPU time as much..

A GPS constellation would probably work below 1000x I guess Try telecom sats Earth has an actual RING of
these ))

[Simonpro]

You should easily be able to create your own constellations, but note that orbiters accuracy will prevent you from
using some real world satellite data.

[AphelionHellion]

Doc: The Ring!
I think I've seen reference to it - I can't think of the site but there's a great page out there with a 3-d view of every
(publicly known) satellite in orbit. Wow. WHatever number of satellites you're guessing are up there before you see
that site is low. Very low

Now that I think of it, though, the only fun part of having a constellation like that is launching them or practicing
navigation between them all. That requires time acceleration, and that'll probably throw a number of the birds into the
drink
This probably depends on the computer, though. I'm sure with a very fast box that sorta thing isn't nearly as
prevalent.

[Simonpro]

Last time i looked there were well over 10000 satellites in orbit. There are of course a number of military satellites up
there, but most of those can be seen from the ground anyway.
You can usually tell whwre a milsat is going from its launch anyway, the only exception is the occasional milsat launch
duall with another satellite. Anyone recall seeing launches where the LV has a large shroud (suitable for, say, two
satellites) but only one on the cargo list? It has happened ocassionally but there are very very few satellites that
would not be known to the public

[DocHoliday]

Ah, I do believe you are referring to this:
http://science.nasa.gov/RealTime/JTrack/3d/JTrack3d.html

You need Java for that guys.

[freespace2dotcom]

hehe. I smell a conspiracy to take over the world!

... With monkeys!

[Simonpro]

Heh, best line i ever did see is about Ham, the monkey nasa sent suborbital in a mercury capsule: "Ham appeared to
be in good physiological condition, but sometime later when he was shown the spacecraft it was visually apparent
that he had no further interest in cooperating with the space flight program."

Hehe

[freespace2dotcom]

That is pretty good.

[RJGrandia]

AphelionHellion wrote:

<snip>

I have a tiny amount of video memory (It's 32 megs and SHARED on top of that - it's an on-board chipset for laptops).
Still during normal time I don't have problem. Even at very low framerates Orbiter still seems usable - moreso than a
lot of flight sims where you're making millisecond-by-millisecond corrections constantly.

<snip>

I've got the same problem (COMPAQ Evo N115, Duron 1 GHz, 256 Mb of which 32 shared for video). Surprisingly
enough, Orbiter runs well enough in 1024x768 full-screen, 16-bit colors.

I've noticed two problems:
- you can lose a surface tile from the planet or moon that you're orbiting. Every now and again, you see a big square-
edged "hole" coming at you over the horizon. It doesn't appear to happen once you're further out, like 10.000 km or
so. Funny thing is, if it's Earth, you CAN still see the clouds floating over it ...
- some of the MFD's (specifically the Map MFD) have display problems. Usually, you can see your orbit, location and
base(s), but the map itself is missing or there's a big chunk missing, mostly at the top.

I "throttled back" from 32-bit color when I found out that in NASSP you end up "trapped" inside the Saturn V, and at
liftoff time you CTD'd. In 16-bit color it runs OK, even though the frame-rate is nothing to wite home about (6-10 fps if
I'm lucky).

[AphelionHellion]

Doc: I think that's the one  Still amazing how many of those things are in orbit. I wonder if most commercial
satellites have a de-orbit system for when it becomes obsolete or breaks down. Or if they simply leave them out there.

Simon: Hehe! Poor little guy. Probably was just humoring us weird humans at first, but after getting back he decided
he'd had enough. I mean if someone wanted to put ME into a tin can and fly me around without my consent I'd be
pissed too

RJGrandia: Hmm, never had the missing surface tile problem myself - but perhaps those momentary freezes when
rotating the planet "into" my field of view is the same phenomenon? With only 32 megs it seems Orbiter has to dump
textures from video memory and load the new ones every so often.
Never had a problem with map MFD, but for some reason my MFDs that show orbits (orbit MFD, Transfer MFD, TransX)
have a weird V in the middle of the orbit. Instead of an unbroken elipse, part of the orbit breaks off and travels to the
other side of the orbit, then comes back in sort of a V shape. It's annoying but doesn't seem to hinder flight operations

As for NASSP, do you mean you had trouble with NASSP in 16 bit color mode or 32? Myself, I can't see out the darn
windows in 16 bit color mode - the transparent areas are all pink

[Simonpro]

Most commercial satellites in GEO use what remains of their maneuvering fuel to boost out of GEO into a  higher orbit.