How and when did you know about Orbiter

[ar81]

I was looking for some space shuttle sim. I asked at Atari forums and they told me about Celestia. I suggested to turn Celestia into a space flight sim and they pointed me to Orbiter on June 2005.

How about you?

 

[Nickmick95]

I discovered orbiter when I was also looking for a realistic space shuttle sim and found orbiter. At first I couldn't download it because I thought it would be a download manager that could download it. But, I figured out that it needed to be saved so, I saved it and I love it.:speakcool:

 

[John_L]

Back in '03, I was playing the oldschool Lunar Lander Arcade game with MAME on my PC one day, and began to think, gee, with all the 3D hardware now, I bet someone out there has made an updated 3D Lunar Lander, so I did a search, and found just that... 3D Lunar Lander
http://www.3dlunarlander.com/index.html
But, at the time, it was crashing after running for about 2-3 seconds. I contacted the owner, and he gave me some help, but alas, it still wasn't working, so back to google, and I ran into Orbiter. Imagine my surprise when I found a program that not only did lunar landings, but the whole ball of wax.

 

[Messierhunter]

I was tooling around on the Home of the Underdogs about 4 or 5 years ago getting ready to download microsoft space simulator because I had lost the disc. I saw the list of recommended similar programs, and while I had already played Virgin's shuttle simulator to death I had never heard of Orbiter before. It immediately called out to me as the "unofficial sequel" to microsoft's attempt. I don't think I even finished my download of MS:SS before I started the orbiter download.

 

[Zatnikitelman]

I had landed the shuttle successfully (mostly) at Huntsville back in 2003 and when I got my own computer with its own internet, I started hunting for a space shuttle simulator and Orbiter popped up! That was back in the 03 version.

 

[Kveldulf]

I was on the GameFAQs message board when the FSX demo came out, and someone commented that orbiter was better, so I checked it out.

 

[orwellkid]

It was the summer of 2000 or 2001... I was running amok through the Internets looking for an updated version of Microsoft Space Simulator, when I stumbled across Orbiter.

Been addicted ever since.

 

[n122vu]

June, 2004, I was searching for freeware games and ran across Eagle Lander 3D and also Orbiter. Never really got into Orbiter until I found it again about April 2006. Ran through the checklist flights in the manual, then downloaded Go Play In Space and ran through the missions there and have been addicted from then on.

 

[Jarvitä]

A couple of weeks ago, came across it while scouring the internet for the ISS' orbital elements and the Space Shuttle's optimal ascent trajectory for my university project - which Orbiter has now been implemented into, a move that likely saved many hours of frustration.

 

[SlyCoopersButt]

Wikipedia I think is what led me to Orbiter over half a year ago. I think I was browsing for astronomy software pages there when I saw this mentioned and it sounded interesting, Soon as I played it, I was addicted and have been doing so ever since!

 

[Coolhand]

Back in '03, I was playing the oldschool Lunar Lander Arcade game with MAME on my PC one day, and began to think, gee, with all the 3D hardware now, I bet someone out there has made an updated 3D Lunar Lander, so I did a search, and found just that... 3D Lunar Lander
http://www.3dlunarlander.com/index.html
But, at the time, it was crashing after running for about 2-3 seconds. I contacted the owner, and he gave me some help, but alas, it still wasn't working, so back to google, and I ran into Orbiter. Imagine my surprise when I found a program that not only did lunar landings, but the whole ball of wax.

I'm pretty sure thats how i found it too, though lunar lander ran perfectly on my ooooooold windows 98 machine i had at the time.

 

[Andy44]

Back in the early 1980s I used to play a game on the Atari 2600 console called "Space War" which was basically like two Asteroids ships fighting each other. One of the variations included a "star" (a single pixel) in the center of the screen which would suck you in while you were trying to fight your opponent. My brother was better than me at most games, but I figured out how to inject myself into an orbit about the star, and then I could coast and blast away at him while he wasted fuel trying not to fall into the star.

I also played a 2600 sim by Activision called "Space Shuttle" which was supposed to be a mission aboard Discovery to intercept and capture a satellite. It was very simple, but for the 1980s it was hella-cool.

In 2005 I was talking to someone about those old games and realized that I had missed MS Space Sim in the 1990s because I had a crappy computer. So I jumped on line to search it and stumbled across Orbiter instead.

 

[pilotpercy]

I was looking for a free chess game to download and found a free space sim! brilliant

 

[astrosammy]

I found it while browsing on wikipedia http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbiter_%28Simulator%29.

 

[Sherrif of Nottingham]

Hey... I found Orbiter about a week ago, but the path to finding it goes further...

I was looking for a flight simulator for a friend, I found X-Plane... which I don't suggest you go for if you like realism.

Anyway X-plane had a plane that could obtain orbit... of course the orbit would last forever... And Completely impossible to descend, woohoo! Of course looked at the X-Plane site, It showed me their space simulator... it was ok... four ships that you could edit using building blocks, add your own engines right in the game, or even turn on stability control.. which stops you from flailing around like you would trying to obtain Pro grade at 1000x time. A basic Autopilot feature.

After playing with that for less than an hour I got bored with it. There was nothing to do in the game but steer through an asteroid field that you could hit all the asteroids anyway. Also there was no community for it, no mods no support.

So I looked for Space Flight Simulators...

Found a Wiki article on the history of space flight or something, in the research section of the links I saw Orbiter... A spacecraft with a generic name? (Don't space ships have more descript names? Like the Orbital Space Station?) I was intrigued.

Clicked on the link, took me to another wiki article... LINK!!!

If you don't care about the article, or have already seen it, it contains pictures of spacecraft. the links at the bottom brought me here and there. Finally I downloaded it
played around... and yeah...

This site was found through that wiki too so yeah, here I am!

 

[Capt. Speirs]

I was on the GameFAQs message board when the FSX demo came out, and someone commented that orbiter was better, so I checked it out.

Orbiter is great, not better than FSX, you can't even compare the two. FSX can't do space well and Orbiter doesn't do earth bound flight well.

 

[Kveldulf]

Orbiter is great, not better than FSX, you can't even compare the two. FSX can't do space well and Orbiter doesn't do earth bound flight well.

The argument was that Orbiter was better because it can actually leave the atmosphere, and go to other planets. Or something like that. It's been a few years.

 

[joshua01793]

my frend when he gets bord he gust looks for sim's and he was around my house one night and he found it on page 127 of google surch i think

 

[eveningsky339]

Earlier this year, someone on an MFS forum showed screenshots of the DGIV and told everyone that the sim was free.

It was love at first sight.

 

[dbeachy1]

I found Orbiter about three years ago while Googling for "space simulator." I grew up playing the old "Shuttle Simulator" from Atari, and a few years ago I remember thinking, "There must be some better space flight simulators by now!" And I was right.

And to top it all off, it's free! Orbiter is one of those rare freeware programs I would happily pay $50 for. So here's to Doc Martin's outstanding simulator taking up many, many hours of my time! I wouldn't have it any other way.