Screenshot Contest

[AphelionHellion]

Shmi: I'd do it gladly but for two things - First, I've never edited plantary textures before, only spacecraft ones.
Second, I'm not sure how the transparency works. If I made a cloud layer with flying saucers in it, wouldn't the
"saucers" be translucent like the clouds?
Any advice from anyone would be appreciated

Aircraft contrails might be fun, too... Hmm

[DocHoliday]

Hehe I've had an addon with the Independence Day saucers in FS2004. Killer the FPS though as the saucer was an
actually 3dmodel with textures and landing strip on top

by the way, doc. Is there any tutorial for making a base or am I gonna have to get my hands dirty and go for
a trial and error approach?

Well, I got my hands dirty. I just copied the contents of the Olympus base into another one and then MANUALLY
changed one dimension by 2000m for all objects in the added base, so it was not in the same place. That was
tedious.. What I would really like is a utility, where you just put in the objects, move them around the map and when
you're happy with the whole setup have it export it into base cfg file....

You have the Orbiter.pdf, where the default objects and their parameters are described but I didn't detect a tutorial
per se. It's actually easy, just tedious.....

[AphelionHellion]

Woohoo!! Just took a great flight (yes, aerodynamic flight) across Mars in Kulch's TX
That darn autoretracting landing gear made takeoff kinda impossible, but once I was airborne it was smoooth sailing!
The TX was made to fly in the upper atmosphere of Earth, right?

 Of course I owe this flight mostly to the Mars 2101 pack's thicker Martian atmosphere. The "real" Mars atmosphere is
just a tiny bit too thin for the TX.  It's amazing how great the difference in handling is considering how small the
density and pressure changes are.
**** I sure do love abusing poor innocent Orbiter add-ons in ways Martin and God never intended

[DocHoliday]

I just saw that Mustard was elected for this months best screenshot prise on the main and moonport.org forums.
Congratulations Mustard Wish I knew earlier, I'd post some of the shots there too
http://orbiter.dansteph.com/forum/index.php?topic=214.msg1817#msg1817

 

TX on Mars, eh? I never try that... Guess if you're not using a joystick, atmospheric flight just isn't fun.. I was testing out the T-38 the other day and that thing is SO nimble, you can quite easily stall it and it start flipping around without control... or maybe the atmospheric model is off... will try the TX too.. Would be nice for those long trips to Olympus Mons, could pack all of my friends into it too



Post Edited ( 06-24-04 11:50 )

[McBrain]

AphelionHellion: Try flying the TX on Titan! There the AtmPr is about 15kPa, that's way enough for the TX!
The density is even higher, so you can take off at VERY low speeds! (about 80m/s)

You must have the Outer Planets addon to have an atmosphere on Titan.

[freespace2dotcom]

AphelionHellion wrote:
Woohoo!! Just took a great flight (yes, aerodynamic flight) across Mars in Kulch's TX
That darn autoretracting landing gear made takeoff kinda impossible, but once I was airborne it was smoooth sailing!
The TX was made to fly in the upper atmosphere of Earth, right?

 Of course I owe this flight mostly to the Mars 2101 pack's thicker Martian atmosphere. The "real" Mars
atmosphere is
just a tiny bit too thin for the TX.  It's amazing how great the difference in handling is considering how small the
density and pressure changes are.
**** I sure do love abusing poor innocent Orbiter add-ons in ways Martin and God never intended

You know, there was nothing stopping you from editing the mar.cfg and adding a higher pressure to it before the
addon came into your hands. Personaly, I like the thinner atmosphere. I'm just not an atmospheric pilot. that's just
all there is to that.

[DocHoliday]

I'm just not an atmospheric pilot. that's just all there is to that.

Me neither. I barely managed to master reentry to Earth atm... now with this 200km Mars atmosphere and a whole
different gravity and radius, I'm lost )) Wrecked about 6 Shuttle-A2s so far...

[freespace2dotcom]

I'm ok there, but I tend to come in like I do on earth, so I come in too shallow. I haven't wrecked anything, but I
overshoot worse than on anywhere else.

[AphelionHellion]

Free: Of course there was nothing stopping me before, but since someone else built the add-on it doesn't feel quite as
much like I'm cheating

Doc: I don't have a joystick at the moment so it is a bit tricky, but judicious use of trim and some practice makes it
possible. The TX is big and bulky enough that it doesn't swap ends and start spinning unexpectedly on ya

McBrain:  Actually I got the outer planets pack in order to get that thick atmosphere on Titan
Now I need to build some bases there...
Anyone ever play a game called Hardwar? Really great, much-overlooked trading/fighting/piracy/scavenging game. You
can download the entire thing fairly easily because it's been more or less abandoned (the folks who made it released
a patch that makes the demo into the full game, minus the video cutscenes)
Not too realistic, but it takes place on Titan, which is a first for games - at least the one's I've heard of.
They did a decent job with the soupy atmosphere and clouds, considering the older graphics technology (it came out a
few years ago).

[McBrain]

Where can I get it?????

[freespace2dotcom]

home of the underdogs, of course! what can't you get there?

http://www.the-underdogs.org/

I've tried that game out, too, but I think it sucked. But then, it could be that I just couldn't figure out how to play it.

I did like the solar power concept, though.

[AphelionHellion]

Freespace: Indeed! All hail HOTU!

If you want to talk about Hardwar strategies, gimme a ring  I spent way too much time building an empire on that game.
Also I'm not sure if you downloaded any of the updates, but there are updates that let you buy new Moths and missiles and
hire computer-controlled pilots (though the text command system is a little clumsy for my liking).
I liked playing as a merchant/bounty hunter, but it's good to start off as a scavenger or use the Corrupt Cop scenario.
The fun thing about that game is that it's as much a free market commodity game as it is a space shooter

Anyone interested should check out this site: http://zedo.hardwar.org.uk/
It's got an amazing amount of info on Hardwar - trade routes, prices, manufacturing and trading info, where to get the game,
strategies, skins, scenarios, etc. I only wish Orbiter had such a comprehensive single site

[McBrain]

I downloaded HardWar and unzipped it.
When I want to install it, it says "There's less disk space"
It requires 28MB, I have 7GB free.

Anyone else experienced that before?

[AphelionHellion]

McBrain: I think it's only made to recognize HDs with less than 2 gigs free space (remember it's a few years old). Check that
zedo.hardwar site I linked above, I think it has more info on how to deal with this problem
I guess I didn't run into it because I didn't have more than 2 gigs free when I was installing the sucker. All that file
sharing

[AphelionHellion]

McBrain: Ok, found it (I think)
From a FAQ at http://www.capsu.org/hardwar/faq/

7.1.1. When installing the game on Windows 2000 or XP I get a message "not enough free space on target drive" - how do I
install?
This problem often occurs where the free space on the installation drive is more than a few GB. Mun and PlaguedMind have
written a utility that skips the free space check when installing F2.0 or F2.1: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/muneer_ilyas/ .
The best manual solution for W2K is to temporarily fill the disk until there is less than 2GB free space - copy some large
files a few times and/or change the swap disk/page file size. Remember to reset the changes after you have installed.
Alternatively partition your disk to make a smaller disk onto which to install Hardwar. In XP locate setup.exe on the CDROM
drive, select properties (right click), and then turn on 'Compatibility mode for Win98'. Now run setup.exe. Compatibility
mode can also be enabled in W2K - see http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;279792 (thanks Seamonkey).
Alternatively copy the contents of disk 1 to the hard drive and double click on the hardman icon, then the install button
(from Sniper). W2K method should also work with XP.

I hope this helps

[Simonpro]

I installed it to a usb disk

[AphelionHellion]

Simon: Hehe, good plan
Yeah I didn't think it made any changes to the windows registry or added files to system directories.
Like Orbiter, it's simple and unobtrusive

Swiss referees what now?  

[McBrain]

Aphelion:

Works now!

Thanks!!

[freespace2dotcom]

hehe AH? File sharing?

We need to "share files" somewhere.

[McBrain]

HardWar ROCKS!!!

Cool game!

[DocHoliday]

The  latest from my works.. A specialized drydock facility for smaller craft, adapted from the new Vespucci rigging. I
also has a crew access tunnel (which takes them nowhere atm, hehe) and virtual side docking ports (call them
magnetic interlocks if you want) so drydocks may be connected side by side in orbit, so they don't drift away I don't
know how to include textures yet On the sample shot above. A shuttle A and DG3 ready for servicing.

[McBrain]

Cool!!!

Now you only have to add a passenger terminal!

[AphelionHellion]

Doc: Wicked cool!  

Maybe this is a dumb idea, but it occurs to me that if the side docking "interlocks" were at an angle, say, 20 degrees tilted
"up" relative to their current orientation, perhaps you could connect them together to form a ring (in this case  9 of your
minidocks)

[Atom]

Cool Doc! 8o

[DocHoliday]

Thanks,

AH, I actually had the same idea, but at 45 deg angles. 20ish (I guess 22.5)  is better. I didn't test it out much, you
you have to change the dock direction numbers and I'm not sure they allow anything different than 1,0 and -1 and
combinations which give you 45 deg angles.. will try and see what happens.