How did you get your Friends to Orbiter?

[Lunar_Lander]

I was driving home with a friend yesterday, and because he knows about my interest in space, he asked me all about Apollo, Space Food and so on. I then suggested him to get Orbiter and gave him the links to the main page and the forum. Today he said that he had a look at the website and was interested at once!

So how did you get your friends to play Orbiter? Or, when you showed your friends Orbiter, what were their opinions/attitudes toward it?

BTW: I think I'll point my friend to the Go Play In Space PDF too, as I think it is the best basic tutorial. What do you think?

 

[Eagle]

BTW: I think I'll point my friend to the Go Play In Space PDF too, as I think it is the best basic tutorial. What do you think?

I think a copilot would be most useful.

 

[T.Neo]

Or, when you showed your friends Orbiter, what were their opinions/attitudes toward it?

General disinterest.

Maybe that shows that I'm just smarter then them...

 

[Shadow Addict]

I showed one friend and he was bored by it. Then I got him to watch STS-119 launch and he got excited and was like "show me that sim again" and now he's into it DD

 

[n122vu]

Showed a friend of mine the sim several times. He thought it was cool, but felt the learning curve was too steep for him. I had flown flight sims for years which helped, but that's just not his game. He's very intelligent though, in some areas much smarter than me, so I think if he really gave it a chance he'd get into it pretty easily, especially with tutorials & documentation like Go Play In Space.

 

[Messierhunter]

Same story, general disinterest among friends. One of them did think the physics calculations were impressive and that it had potential if you could make an add-on with a complete story and characters to give the player a direct objective and sense of "purpose." This was before the days of ummu, so now it almost seems possible that you could make such an add-on.

 

[escapetomsfate]

I brought Orbiter on a USB key to school the other day, to show my friends. They asked me where the enemy ships were :/
And then, when I was in orbit, they said that it looked like I wasn't moving and "Star Wars Battlefront space battles are much better". The only bit that they looked particularly interested in was when I deorbited a UMMU into venus.

They don't deserve to call themselves sci-fi fans.....

 

[T.Neo]

I brought Orbiter on a USB key to school the other day, to show my friends. They asked me where the enemy ships were :/

And then, when I was in orbit, they said that it looked like I wasn't moving and "Star Wars Battlefront space battles are much better".

Sigh, sigh...

 

[Eagle]

To be fair, the batlefront games are fun. It would be nice to see a more Newtonian space battle. However the fastest way to win is to infiltrate the enemy ship and bomb it from the inside.

 

[MattNW]

I generally get to the point where I say Newtonian physics when I see their eyes glaze over and they start mumbling, "Uh huh", after every other word I speak. If they are still around when I start talking about orbital mechanics they usually go-- :suicide:


:lol:

 

[joiz]

I generally get to the point where I say Newtonian physics when I see their eyes glaze over and they start mumbling, "Uh huh", after every other word I speak. If they are still around when I start talking about orbital mechanics they usually go-- :suicide:


:lol:

oh yeah, the cursed "uhuh" nothing pisses me off more than ungenuine interest.

 

[Stripe]

Nothing much more than uh huh.
Best (I mean, most interest) response was actually from my mother.

Mum : What are you doing at the moment?
Me : I'm about to go into orbit around the moon
Mum : That's nice, don't forget to take a pack up.

Though now she does ask me 'If I went round the dark side of the moon recently' a bit now :lol:

 

[Rathelm]

Pink Floyd reference Stripe? Anyway no. This is about as niche of a product as you could possibly get. Anyone I've ever shown this game to looks at me like I'm crazy. I just tell them I'm training to be a pilot for Virgin Galactic. You know, that really throws them for a loop.

 

[Orbinaut Pete]

With my firends, it is just complete disinterest.

One of my firends called me "sad" for liking Orbiter, and said "that game is no fun, cos you can't get guns", and that I shoud instead play Call Of Duty 4.

Another of my friends said that spaceflight is "pointless", and that it is "boring".



Orbiter is an intellectual persuit, and will never appeal to the average Joe, who just want's to be able to insert a disc & shoot stuff...

I need to hang out with some more intellectual people (which is why I joined O-F)

 

[RisingFury]

You people are taking things too seriously.

I love Orbiter and it's physics, but I also love Star Wars and Star Gate and other sci-fi series, even if they're full of physics errors.

I also love the star wars-y feel of the game X3, just because it's fun to play.

 

[joiz]

You people are taking things too seriously.

I love Orbiter and it's physics, but I also love Star Wars and Star Gate and other sci-fi series, even if they're full of physics errors.

I also love the star wars-y feel of the game X3, just because it's fun to play.

i have found one place where we agree.

 

[bpops]

My friends never showed interest

 

[atuhalpa]

I don't have any friends.........

 

[Stripe]

Pink Floyd reference Stripe?

I would think so, mum was a fan, well actually she has quite an eclectic taste in music.

Anyway no. This is about as niche of a product as you could possibly get. Anyone I've ever shown this game to looks at me like I'm crazy. I just tell them I'm training to be a pilot for Virgin Galactic. You know, that really throws them for a loop.

I've not used that line yet... Wonder what effect that'll have on them? - probably the same, you know the 'glazed over eye look' the 'slow nod' and the 'slowly backing away' that people do :lol:

 

[Wolfer]

When I show Orbiter to my friends, they usualy say: "It's too complicated." or "Why don't you play a real game." and then they go play warcraft or some other thing. They're only interested when I make "failure simulations" with the DGIV, miss something, eject too low, the craft crashes and almost everyone is dead. But then again I don't do this often because I prefer flying to other planets.