Problem Can't refuel in scenario editor or on the pad.

[StevoPistolero]

I can't refuel my ship on the pad or in the scenario editor. I am landed at Brighton Beach and flying my Redtail spacecraft from Cowboy Bebop. My ship is inoperable.

Must be a bug.

Edit: none of my Spacecraft 3 ships I made are working in orbiter_ng mode. There is no fuel and I am getting strange readouts on the HUD and crashes to desktop. Many scenarios won't start at all.

 

[PhantomCruiser]

A dumb question from me, but did you make a symbolic link?

 

[StevoPistolero]

A dumb question from me, but did you make a symbolic link?

What do you mean by "make a symbolic link"?

 

[Ripley]

- Launch orbiter_ng and go to Video -> Advanced
- Click the button at the bottom

 

[jacquesmomo]

I can't refuel my ship on the pad.

Strange... You just have to stop at the right place ...
For me it works ...

 

[StevoPistolero]

Symbolic link worked

I don't know what a symbolic link does, but it was exactly what I needed. All my scenarios now work, because all my ships use spacecraft3.

 

[martins]

A symbolic link is a reference to another entry in the file system (a file or directory). By contrast, a hard link is a new reference to the actual file data, which also increases a reference counter.

In this context, the symbolic links make some (vessel?) configuration files appear in a location expected by certain addons, even if their original hard links are located elsewhere.

 

[jedidia]

I don't know what a symbolic link does

It is more commonly known to windows users as a "shortcut".

 

[Ripley]

Not really. In Windows environment, shortcuts and symbolic links are two different things.

 

[n122vu]

Not really. In Windows environment, shortcuts and symbolic links are two different things.

Indeed. I think a more accurate description would be an alias.

In a nutshell, it creates a link in the location Spacecraft3 is expecting the folder to be, named the same as the folder SC3 is expecting, but actually pointing to where the folder really is (the folder structure that Orbiter_ng uses is slightly different than Orbiter.exe, so the files are not really where SC3 is expecting them to be).

 

[Face]

(the folder structure that Orbiter_ng uses is slightly different than Orbiter.exe, so the files are not really where SC3 is expecting them to be)

I think this is not true. Orbiter_ng uses the same folder structure, but is started in a sub-folder, so the directory of the running executable is a different one (the working directory seems to be the root path, though). Unfortunately, SC3 does not respect the Orbiter directory parameters when opening files, it just assumes that it is a fixed relative path based on the directory of the executable path.

Even if it wasn't for the OVP discrepancy, I'd say that this behavior is a bug in SC3, because it should respect the configuration settings. If one customizes his Orbiter installation with e.g. "ConfigDir = .\CharlyBrown\", Orbiter itself would load configurations out of the /CharlyBrown/ folder, while SC3 would fail. BTW: SC4 seems to have the same problem.

Funny thing is: even Orbiter's stock planet modules (e.g. Sun.dll) fail to respect that setting in both 2010 and 2016 versions.

In the genericvessel project, we implemented a function to get an appropriate path from Orbiter according to the configuration settings, so the SC3 bug did not apply there (aka no need for symbolic links). I suggested this change to the author of SC3 when I dropped the project, so it would be interesting to hear if that found its way into SC5. I suspect that this is not the case, though.

 

[kuddel]

Orbiter_ng uses the same folder structure, but is started in a sub-folder, so the directory of the running executable is a different one

100% correct!

Unfortunately, SC3 does not respect the Orbiter directory parameters when opening files, it just assumes that it is a fixed relative path based on the directory of the executable path.

again 100% correct!


And to add my 2cents to the "What's a Symbolic Link" thread:

The term "Symbolic Link" -used in D3D9Clients dialog- might not be 100% correct, but it is referring to the concept.
Other names are "Junction"/"Hard link"/"Symbolic link"...

For the user (and the operating system) it all comes down to this:
It is like a copy of a folder (but miraculously synchronizes it's content with the source :thumbup: )