Orbiter wish list

[4throck]

Space is big, empty, and lonely. For me the animated bases are enough, I feel like you wouldn't encounter many ships (read:zero) except those you were trying to find

Not quite. Even on today's real world, you have lots of traffic in LEO.
I'd very much like to see AI flights between bases and stations. Yes, you would only see other spacecraft when landing or docking, but that would be fun. There are some add-ons do do this to some extent.

 

[statickid]

Maybe LEO objects and debris could be rendered as tiny moving specks, which is probably what they would look like most of the time, like when you see a satellite at night. The effect might be realistic, but not heavy on development or processing power. Even Jets in atmosphere could just be little blurry lines not necessarily models or even particles. Basically draw random mostly straight lines that slowly appear, grow, and fade at about 35000 feet.

 

[4throck]

you can do that with 2D bilboards. Instead of a detailed 3D mesh, you simply draw a rectangle and texture it with an image of your spacecraft. It looks OK from distance...

 

[Izack]

Space is big, empty, and lonely. For me the animated bases are enough, I feel like you wouldn't encounter many ships (read:zero) except those you were trying to find

LEO can be pretty crowded. In this vein, I'd like to see some kind of random traffic and noise that isn't meaningless ambience (OrbiterSound has this). Reports of comings and goings at nearby stations and bases, and the occasional collision warning for debris. Even if it has only a 0.1% chance of happening, it's more interesting than the 0% chance of it happening now. Flying in absolute confidence that the only things that could possibly go wrong are user error and your PC crashing, and that absolutely nothing will happen other than what you are already expecting becomes boring after a while.

 

[TMac3000]

Did you read the Iron Hill thread? Believe me, things can go wrong without any of that stuff...

 

[BruceJohnJennerLawso]

you can do that with 2D bilboards. Instead of a detailed 3D mesh, you simply draw a rectangle and texture it with an image of your spacecraft. It looks OK from distance...

Actually someone did something exactly like that & kinda butchered it. It was this plugin module that rendered hundreds of small-child sized rocks flying past you wherever you went. It looked absolutely ridiculous :facepalm:.

LEO can be pretty crowded. In this vein, I'd like to see some kind of random traffic and noise that isn't meaningless ambience (OrbiterSound has this). Reports of comings and goings at nearby stations and bases, and the occasional collision warning for debris. Even if it has only a 0.1% chance of happening, it's more interesting than the 0% chance of it happening now. Flying in absolute confidence that the only things that could possibly go wrong are user error and your PC crashing, and that absolutely nothing will happen other than what you are already expecting becomes boring after a while.

I would contest that. If you wanted to simulate orbital debris & impacts, it could be done internally through the vessels module, even if only when the debris is within a reasonable distance of the vehicle (a couple km or so)

Quite frankly, your comments are true, but the issue is more related to how people use Orbiter than anything else. My first space station was constructed only by UMMU & RMS, and each module could take hours at a time. Trying to land the Aquila safely during testing is still a challenge if youre not using any sort of autopilot. I hear what you're saying, but I cant imagine that anyone could ever actually find Orbiter unchallenging. Who needs to have debris impacts to make it difficult?

 

[Pioneer]

This isn't related to Orbiter itself but one of its great add-on series. I wish that Missleman's Grand Explorations series be updated so it can run on the newest current Orbiter.

 

[Izack]

I would contest that. If you wanted to simulate orbital debris & impacts, it could be done internally through the vessels module, even if only when the debris is within a reasonable distance of the vehicle (a couple km or so)

Quite frankly, your comments are true, but the issue is more related to how people use Orbiter than anything else. My first space station was constructed only by UMMU & RMS, and each module could take hours at a time. Trying to land the Aquila safely during testing is still a challenge if youre not using any sort of autopilot. I hear what you're saying, but I cant imagine that anyone could ever actually find Orbiter unchallenging. Who needs to have debris impacts to make it difficult?

I didn't say unchallenging. There is always challenge in Orbiter, because it allows you to create your own. But if you do not want to spend weeks creating your own challenge for hours of actually experiencing it in, it becomes boring. There is a profound lack of randomness in Orbiter, which is one of the things which gives it its uniqueness in the simulation world, but also something which has lessened its staying power with at least me. Your first few times docking at a space station or landing on x celestial body are challenging, but then become routine and easy to the point of never going wrong. You can create increasingly complex challenges for yourself, but IMO at some point you stop playing Orbiter and start playing a digital paper game which is visualised by Orbiter at the end.

Imagine an Apollo program in which absolutely nothing unexpected happened. After the first mission or two of performing the perfectly organised burns and landing on the perfectly designed and planned-out landing site, only to find nothing that wasn't already known to be there...why bother? :2cents:

 

[4throck]

A living, semi random environment is indeed a need. If you look at FSX (or even FS9) the weather + traffic makes things interesting, although the flying itself if routine.
We only need to follow their example. Have at the very least to see what pads / docks are available in Brighton Beach for example, by having some AI controlled DGs come and go.

Also, add-on should start to offer locked content, upon completion of objectives, along with in-flight checklists or at the very least an event sequence to follow.

---------- Post added at 11:20 ---------- Previous post was at 11:14 ----------

Actually someone did something exactly like that & kinda butchered it. It was this plugin module that rendered hundreds of small-child sized rocks flying past you wherever you went. It looked absolutely ridiculous :facepalm:.

My experiments with clouds are promising, but limited by issues such as no multiple transparencies... The billboards really need that in order to work.

 

[TMac3000]

I didn't say unchallenging. There is always challenge in Orbiter, because it allows you to create your own. But if you do not want to spend weeks creating your own challenge for hours of actually experiencing it in, it becomes boring. There is a profound lack of randomness in Orbiter, which is one of the things which gives it its uniqueness in the simulation world, but also something which has lessened its staying power with at least me. Your first few times docking at a space station or landing on x celestial body are challenging, but then become routine and easy to the point of never going wrong. You can create increasingly complex challenges for yourself, but IMO at some point you stop playing Orbiter and start playing a digital paper game which is visualised by Orbiter at the end.

Imagine an Apollo program in which absolutely nothing unexpected happened. After the first mission or two of performing the perfectly organised burns and landing on the perfectly designed and planned-out landing site, only to find nothing that wasn't already known to be there...why bother? :2cents:

In the Iron Hill Project, when Chronus docked with Discovery on her seventh flight, Indy91 was unable to get the get the outer airlock open--probably due to a glitch involving SAS (we had quite a few of those:lol He cleverly described it as a "faulty pressurization valve", and had to undock and transfer the crew by spacewalk. That could just as easily have occurred in real life, and the astronauts would have had to adapt and form a different plan, just as we did

Sorry, but I'm with Bruce on this one. The fact that Orbiter and all it's addons are created by imperfect people who make mistakes, causes random things to happen quite often. To me, that's part of the challenge. Coding bugs and hardware incompatibilities can cause interesting things to happen, just as they do in real life space flight:thumbup:

 

[Izack]

In the Iron Hill Project, when Chronus docked with Discovery on her seventh flight, Indy91 was unable to get the get the outer airlock open--probably due to a glitch involving SAS (we had quite a few of those:lol He cleverly described it as a "faulty pressurization valve", and had to undock and transfer the crew by spacewalk. That could just as easily have occurred in real life, and the astronauts would have had to adapt and form a different plan, just as we did

I see what you mean there, and I've done it myself.

Sorry, but I'm with Bruce on this one. The fact that Orbiter and all it's addons are created by imperfect people who make mistakes, causes random things to happen quite often. To me, that's part of the challenge. Coding bugs and hardware incompatibilities can cause interesting things to happen, just as they do in real life space flight:thumbup:

That is true. What I linked above was caused by my own faulty programming failing to shut down the engine properly and wasting propellant. Instead of just fixing the bug and restarting the test, I decided to roll with it. The result was my best Orbiter experience yet. In fact I'm intending to keep the possibility of the flight computer making mistakes.

But, while I agree with this to an extent, such useable flaws are rare in release-quality addons, and the most common "We've had a problem" scenario is announced by Windows telling you "orbiter.exe has stopped working" - and that isn't very fun, in my opinion.

A great example of what I want to see more of is the random chance of failure that can be set on Thorton's Soyuz rockets, entered as an item in its scenario definition. It's a tiny chance usually, but there's the possibility that your first stage will shut down prematurely, or simply explode, initiating the abort procedures and ejecting the capsule. If that happens during a launch to a space station you've constructed, it introduces a whole new challenge for you, that you did not expect. Did the crew of the aborted mission survive? Do the station inhabitants have a way to return to Earth? How soon can you reschedule the next flight to avoid whatever potential problems that might have just arisen?

Little things like this I think should be included in more addons, because IMO the greatest challenges in the sim are the ones that weren't planned for.

 

[Donamy]

Awesome story. I missed it when you first posted it. I would read that book.

 

[BruceJohnJennerLawso]

I see what you mean there, and I've done it myself.


That is true. What I linked above was caused by my own faulty programming failing to shut down the engine properly and wasting propellant. Instead of just fixing the bug and restarting the test, I decided to roll with it. The result was my best Orbiter experience yet. In fact I'm intending to keep the possibility of the flight computer making mistakes.

But, while I agree with this to an extent, such useable flaws are rare in release-quality addons, and the most common "We've had a problem" scenario is announced by Windows telling you "orbiter.exe has stopped working" - and that isn't very fun, in my opinion.

A great example of what I want to see more of is the random chance of failure that can be set on Thorton's Soyuz rockets, entered as an item in its scenario definition. It's a tiny chance usually, but there's the possibility that your first stage will shut down prematurely, or simply explode, initiating the abort procedures and ejecting the capsule. If that happens during a launch to a space station you've constructed, it introduces a whole new challenge for you, that you did not expect. Did the crew of the aborted mission survive? Do the station inhabitants have a way to return to Earth? How soon can you reschedule the next flight to avoid whatever potential problems that might have just arisen?

Little things like this I think should be included in more addons, because IMO the greatest challenges in the sim are the ones that weren't planned for.

Ahh yes, very good points. I do plan on adding a few things like that to my work, but the issue is more in actually simulating the systems to be damaged in the first place. I plan on adding engine rattle to future work (slight deviations in thrust direction from a large engine, so that long burns require constant attention & attitude control to stay on target. (If youve tried the Themis-A after SRB sep, thats exactly what Im thinking of)

And obviously, IMS throws things like that at you constantly, even in the absence of dedicated code to simulate it. Ive had to completely restart ships systems on vessels that I neglected for a few days, & finding the right attitude & flight path often requires a lot of patience.

Very good point there