Question Docking port stuff

[Col_Klonk]

Has anyone coded docking sequences and/or animations yet ?

I have seen anything yet, besides 'ramming' into the ship.. a bit of docking noise and then 'magically' you've docked.

Thought it would be nice to actually physically dock onto something 'real'.

 

[Interceptor]

I like your idea.

 

[jangofett287]

IIRC Orbiter doesn't like it if you modify a docking port while something is docked to it. This hampers any attempts to animate them in a meaningful way.

 

[Capt_hensley]

Docking............................. Berthing

Phase 1 Ready to capture Mon Phase 1 Ready to latch Mon
Phase 2 Capture Act Phase 2 Latch Act
Phase 3 Hard Dock Act Phase 3 Pre-Load Bolts Act
Phase 4 Thermal Match Mon Phase 4 Thermal Match Mon
Phase 5 Procede to Ph-6 Phase 5 Final Torque Act
Phase 6 Umbilical Seal Mon Phase 6 Vestibule Seal Mon
Phase 7 Vest. Purge Atmo Act Phase 7 Vest. Purge Atmo Act
Phase 8 Vest. Pressurize Act Phase 8 Vest. Pressurize Act
Phase 9 Vest. Air Quality Mon Phase 9 Vest. Air Quality Mon
Clear to enter Vest. Act Clear to enter Vest. Act
Camera Attch/Rel Camera Attch/Rel
Near Hatch open Mon Near Hatch open Mon
Target Power Target Power
Clear to enter Far Act Clear to enter Far Act
Far Hatch open Mon Far Hatch open Mon

Sequence I found in a NASA PDF somewhere, and placed into a table for GWS. I was going to animate this sequence at some point.
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...BBHDbXqCzwu7qosBMLE_bQ&bvm=bv.103073922,d.cGU see page 2

 

[Col_Klonk]

Docking port with cover action

Thinking about this..
This is a early version of the active port.. on the passive one the guide will stay in place.

 

[Lisias]

IIRC Orbiter doesn't like it if you modify a docking port while something is docked to it. This hampers any attempts to animate them in a meaningful way.

Not willing to add noise to the question, but how about attachment points?

You set an attachment point "floating" some meters ahead the docking point, where the "first stage" of the docking animation begins.

The you animate the attachment point.

In the last animation stage, you deattach the vessel and immediately dock it.

 

[Col_Klonk]

I'm not sure how it works yet, but I'm thinking on similar lines where the docking port would be 3 seperate parts (covers, base and guide ring).
2 parts controlled in code (base is rigidly attached to the ship), so there's 'no animation' as you see in these blender examples, and the contact point and orientation is linked to the guide ring.
Once the guide ring 'pulls in' the other ring, a docking flag is signalled .

 

[Lisias]

By "animate", please understand the classes and functions we use to animate meshes (CreateAnimation, MGROUP_TRANSFORM derived classes, AddAnimationComponent, etc).

You can transform a single vertex using any of the MGROUP_TRANSFORM derived classes , so I'm suggesting to try using the VECTOR3 that defines that attachment point to feed the transformation functions as it was a vertex.

Kind of a long shot, I'm assuming that an attachment point can be "updated", or that we can fetch and transform the structure that defines the attachment point directly.