Request Okay I have two. Three.

[Jacko13]

I really would like collision detection and climate/weather (possibly real-time weather, like google earth.) I read a lot of the descriptions for the scenarios when I open the Orbiter Launchpad. Most of them say things like, "Without risk there is no simulation." Well, without physics there is no risk. I can fly directly through other vessels like nothing's even happening. This would make the game more realistic, thus, the risk. When I crash the Atlantis into the ISS, I expect to see a giant fireball in the sky; not pass through and give a nonchalant, "Oops, my bad." And about the weather. Don't you think NASA takes that into account when launching a multi-million dollar bomb into the air?

I realize that both of these addons would take a LOT of time and energy, but it would definitely draw more people into it.

Aw dang:facepalm:. I just came up with another one. What about DanSteph's Ummu addon? the way they "move" is ridiculous. would it be so much as to ask to make their arms and legs move, or add facial expressions, or even the male/female thing? why do all techs and all scientists have to be girls? I know how to change the names, but I'd rather not. :thankyou:

 

[Wonderer]

There is a mfd for creating different kinds of weather I think it's called "weather mfd".

 

[garyw]

You also have neebo MFD which does add some awesome cloud effects.

The funny thing is, your landings in Orbiter are always out of blue skies which is the same as in the real world (mostly). NASA do take account of the weather and 99% of landings have been out of blue skies. I can only think of a handful that have flown through cloud.

 

[Columbia42]

Well, Meshland 2 does some collision detection. As for the Ummu thing, it really wouldn't be that hard to have an animation of at least walking. I think a combination of two things would need to be done for it to be realistic.
1) Use AMSO's method of bouncing the EVA's along the surface of a planet.
2) Make a repetitive walking animation and command the Ummu to preform the animation (Forwards or backwards) whenever in motion. I think the combination of these two things would be awesome and wouldn't take a whole lot of complicated coding.

 

[Moach]

actually, considering orbiter has no support for keyframe animation, making a character walk is right among the hardest things one can do in programming....

this would either require procedural animation (hard) or a keyframe sequencer of some sort - which not as hard, but quite a handful, since you would need a file format in which to export the animations and an exporter to create such files from a 3d modelling/animation tool :hmm:


see the problem?

it would be very nice to have such a thing... but it's a tricky deal, nonetheless

 

[Tommy]

Someone did have a "walking" astronaut, but it didn't look all that realistic (feet slid, turns just looked silly). As Moach said, this is very difficult to do in Orbiter

 

[jedidia]

that astronaut was animated with the default orbiter animation commands, which needs you to seperate the mesh into several groups (one for each moving part).

For machines (for which orbiter is intended), this is pretty much perfect, since that's the way machines are constructed. For anything with a skin this will look very odd, because you can clearly make out the hinges of the different parts.

So to have a more organic animation, where the whole mesh stays in one piece, you'd have to do exactly what Moach described above. It would take someone with quite some knowledge of 3d formats and scripting to come up with a keyframe exporter for Blender or 3ds Max, as a first step.

Another possibility would be to have, for example, .X support in the orbiter core itself. Most of the code could in that case be taken from 3rd party code, but to implement it into orbiter would still be quite a task, I imagine.

 

[Ragtag]

would it be so much as to ask to make their arms and legs move, or add facial expressions, />

Sims in space? Of what possible use is facial expressions? How is it even remotely a value add to the UMMU character or game play?

 

[Izack]

Sims in space? Of what possible use is facial expressions? How is it even remotely a value add to the UMMU character or game play?

So that when you press Shift+X on Mars, you look like this:

(By Salun, from here. I love throwing this at people! :lol

 

[fireballs619]

So that when you press Shift+X on Mars, you look like this:

(By Salun, from here. I love throwing this at people! :lol

I still have nightmares from this.

I could see collision detection being useful, but I'm fine without it. If I hit something, I just start over, because I know that I would be dead. UMMU's are fine for me.

 

[Jacko13]

Sims in space? Of what possible use is facial expressions? How is it even remotely a value add to the UMMU character or game play?

Yeah I guess your right, but wouldn't it be funny if they did make that face in the picture?wned:

 

[River Crab]

AAAAAUUUUUWWWWWG!!! I can never be safe from that image popping up! :facepalm:

Actually, it's not *as* hard to make them have that face when they die- if I'm not mistaken, UMMUs can have a separate death mesh, so no transforming is needed. It's the bending that's the problem.

Also, might that be solved by having jointed space suits, where each limb is a mesh group? Even then I have no idea how the motions would be done.

I swear, I remember one time Coolhand said it should be easy...
But it might have been a dream...:uhh:

---------- Post added at 13:21 ---------- Previous post was at 13:02 ----------

It was a dream.:facepalm:

BUT, I did find the first mention of it in the XR2 thread, using the art of Google-fu and necropostmancy. It goes on (and off) for a few pages.

 

[Ragtag]

So that when you press Shift+X on Mars, you look like this:

(By Salun, from here. I love throwing this at people! :lol

I see the truth in it.

 

[jedidia]

Also, might that be solved by having jointed space suits, where each limb is a mesh group?

As I said, the best you'll get that way is a somewhat robotic impression of your UMMU. It will never look like a moving human.