Project G42-200 StarLiner

[Spacethingy]

Would anyone, for whatever reason advise against this, in favour of having a click-above/click-below interface instead?

No way, I love your idea Moach. :thumbup:

As an example, AutoPilot MFD is a useful tool, but the buttons are a nightmare to use as you have to make several random clicks to find where the + and - areas are. Meanwhile, you've crashed and died.

 

[Moach]

(...) you have to make several random clicks to find where the + and - areas are. Meanwhile, you've crashed and died.

that was precisely my line of thinking :lol: - been there, done that!:facepalm:


now, look at this: that's the VC with the visor UP

and gives off a good view of the (almost) fully modelled overhead panel...


getting those buttons to be flickable now is not too hard, i got most of the repeated code encapsulated for easy expansion...

getting them to actually do anything is another story, tho... that'll take a while longer


let me get back to it :thumbup:

 

[Spacethingy]

Wow! That looks brilliant...

But... um... the view's a bit boring when the visor's down... :lol:

 

[HarvesteR]

looking good!

Glad to see the flight engineer has those hang-on-for-dear-life hand holds

Much needed is various situations!

Cheers

 

[jangofett287]

You are going to add at least seatbelts aren't you moach? I can just imagine how far the engineer would fly after some of my landings.:rofl:

Also, all I want to do right now is just get in there and start pressing buttons and flicking switches!

 

[Eli13]

I know right!!! Anyways that visor almost makes me want to do a MFD only flight from WIN to KSC. Almost. But that would be something to see when you have the ISS docked and you can see it through some STS like windows.

 

[theflyingfish]

Geezuz! That VC looks nice!

 

[Moach]

You are going to add at least seatbelts aren't you moach? I can just imagine how far the engineer would fly after some of my landings.:rofl:

sure will! :lol: - i can imagine a few mins worth of reentry deceleration after which you have to scrape out the crew from the front panel :facepalm:

seatbelts - not only a good idea - it's the LAW :lol:

 

[Interceptor]

Mind blowing,OMG it looks really great moach.thanks

 

[Grover]

i have a better idea for the clicks (though not laptop friendly, perhaps you could have both?)

how about using the mousewheel, FSX style, rolling up for an upward flick and downward for a downward flick? i got used to doing this on FSX, and it would prevent accidental view changes when toggling or toggling when changing view.

the VC looks awesome though, but perhaps you could recolour the consistent black... just grab some of the faces, give them any old UV map, then scale them down to fit on a single pixel on the texture. colour without messing with materials or using texture space

just my thought, dont go burning bridges

laters

 

[Moach]

i have a better idea for the clicks (though not laptop friendly, perhaps you could have both?)

how about using the mousewheel, FSX style, rolling up for an upward flick and downward for a downward flick? i got used to doing this on FSX, and it would prevent accidental view changes when toggling or toggling when changing view.

the VC looks awesome though, but perhaps you could recolour the consistent black... just grab some of the faces, give them any old UV map, then scale them down to fit on a single pixel on the texture. colour without messing with materials or using texture space

not sure if using the mouse wheel is possible... (without some major workarounds) as the Orbiter API doesn't really feature built-in support for wheeel-related mouse events :huh:

which doesn't mean it can't be done... just means it can't be done easily :lol:

i'm still not done modelling and texturing the VC... lots of it will just remain black (as it's not worth the trouble and/or FPS toll to model in detail) but there are still more texturing and vertex-pushing left in the "needs doing" box :thumbup:


but next up in line, we need engines... i mean, we have engines, but these are cheat-mode ones that use no fuel and can go from runway to orbit without ever gasping for air :facepalm:

i'm still considering whether i should use a mathematical model to simulate the engines or if it should just port up the .bmp lookup-table stuff i used for the '100
still undecided on what would give off the best results :hmm:


later!

 

[Spacethingy]

Just a quick thought, any hopes for a UMMU repair system to go with the failure/emergency sim?

I think the XR2 dev team were doing something like that for the next version?
This addon is supposed to do it too.

 

[Grover]

the mousewheel thing should indeed be possible... you just need to do some commands manually, rather than using the API. not that i know how to do it that is, im hopeless with C++ at the moment

 

[HarvesteR]

IDK about the mousewheel for switching switches... Having a mouse that is slowly but surely failing on me, I can say that I don't look upon the mousewheel with the same eyes as I did before...

The problem is that mousewheels are different throughout... Some are very sharp and clicky, which would make them good for that kind of job, like flicking stuff... others are mushy and bland, others even freewheel a bit...

IDK, it might be just the broken-mouse-wheel-frustration in me talking, but I don't like mousewheels that much anymore. :sos::compbash2::compbash:

I liked the left-click on, right-click off thing... I don't think it'd disturb the panning, since you could have them trigger on mouse release, and do a did-the-mouse-move check before actually triggering it... So if you hold down the mouse, and move it past a threshold, you can ignore any unwanted clicks there.

Another way, from FSX, is to do a grab-and-push switch flick... you hold onto the switch with the left button, and drag up to toggle up, drag down to toggle down... But I don't really like this option... it feels too cumbersome... you're making a wrist or even elbow movement, to something that in real-life would have been a finger twitch... Not much of an analog... :shifty:

Cheers

 

[Moach]

i don't like the click-n-drag option very much either... perhaps thats mostly because i often click stuff using the thumb-ministick-nipple-thingy on the X52... it's kinda curbersome to drag stuff with it, and then you have to move the mouse back to click something near it.... quite clumsy IMHO...

i think i'll just stick with the apparently much appreciated left-up/right-down approach... requires little "aiming" to click (which is excellent when camShake is on) and you always know what you're doing... more realistic, i also think... a real pilot wouldn't be any likely to unwantingly throw a switch the wrong way...


and i think i'll stick with the lookup maps for simulating the engines... most equations i could find are not suitable for simulations such as orbiter, and are more geared towards calculating stuff for new engine designs.... not what i need... so bitmaps it is! - worked then, should work now! :thumbup:

 

[Dambuster]

I'd definitely prefer that the mousewheel has nothing to do with it. From my experience with them on laptops, it's always a bit of a pain when needed in-game.

IIRC the DGIV used what looked like an extra mesh to produce high-g vapour over the wings. I wasn't sure that it looked too good on there (since it was very consistent, no variation at all), but perhaps you could do something similar that would look nice.

 

[halcyon]

No mousewheel please.
It's hard enough holding the mouse over a tiny switch while single left clicking it let alone having to scroll a mousewheel too.

No thanks. Let's keep it simple.

 

[Grover]

how about using all of the suggested methods, that way, everyone is happy

perhaps you could register each mouse event (L-Click, R-Click, MWheelup, MWheel down) to a function, then use any of the functions to change the state of something

i find clicking harder to co-ordinate than using the mousewheel, and it becomes useful for VC navigation when you get used to it.

and thinking about it, the API may actually have some reference, because orbiter uses the mousewheel to change spot view distance (give it a go in external view)

thanks

 

[Moach]

ok, no mouse-wheel then


got a few new goodies working...

new switches are operating (flicking, basically) - the lights panel is working (tho no actual lights yet), plus we can now switch the afterburners on and off
another one is the mode-switch selector, that alternates he main engines between internal and external cycles... since i haven't programmed the onboard oxydizer supply yet, flicking this one only shuts the inlets and snuffs the engines, starting a worrysome descent into watery shame :lol:


i have also ported the lookup-table system from the '100 :thumbup: - no longer one can cheatingly accelerate into orbit on the turbojets, their efficiency is only good enough for mach 3.5 or so.... but no ramcasters yet, so that's as far as she goes by now :hmm:

and although i have coded the ramcaster doors to animate, i've not rigged the VC switch that should activate it... so that's not fully functional either

i'll post more when i have more...

 

[liber]

That all look fine,but where is balcony?
How gonna people go to smoke?

:lol:

I assume you going to texture it,green is fine but?