Project UCGO landing pad airlock

[JackJL]

The upcoming UCGO has given me an idea. Using a UCGO cargo, which undeployed will be a building with airlocks open - and deployed will be a building with airlocks closed AND have a breathable (to UMMU 2) atmosphere, specified in the config. This could incorporate a landing area and a drive in area.

Anyway here's a few pics to illustrate what i mean:
This is the whole building with the roof and side door open (green). From a simulation p.o.v. this is the cargo undeployed, showing the open mesh. For scale the landing pad is 25m square - just enough to hold an XR2.

And here it is closed - i.e. deployed. This will be a separate mesh, swapped by UCGO. The circle around the whole base is the breathable radius (60m in this example).

Here's the view through the side (ground vehicle) door. The blue block represents the centre of the cargo - on it will be a big button to cycle atmosphere.

Using a second UCGO cargo deployed building a control room (red) can be added, with it's own breathable area (the small circle). So that an unsuited UMMU can operate the main structure airlock.

Here's a view from the control room, showing the blue pillar, which is the centre of the big building & presumably the action area a UMMU will see - Thus cycling the airlocks.


This shows the U in UCGO - definitely set to revolutionise orbiter!

The one concern I have is will the action area be in the middle of the building like this automatically? And if so can it be activated without the UMMU activating the inner building?

 

[Shadow Addict]

Awesome, this looks like it'd be great.

 

[JackJL]

Thanks - I think breathable areas are going to be great for building cities.

The pictures didn't quite make it clear that there's room behind the control cabin to store cargo and probably room for a forklift truck also.

 

[Ark]

Will it actually have an airlock so that UMMUs can be stored inside, or do they actually have to exist, standing around in the breathable zone?

 

[JackJL]

They have to exist - all standing in a breathable zone, like the control tower or one of the standard inflatable modules. The whole building will be breathable when the 'airlock' is closed (i.e. when the building is deployed).

For something that stores Ummus as a vessel does, check out
http://www.orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?t=9825&highlight=ummufb


Update - I've done a basic import into orbiter - only with a dummy config. Here's an XR2 just squeezed in & a UMMU in the control room.

 

[Dambuster]

That's looking very nice!! I don't know if dansteph has seen this, perhaps you should post it over on the forums at http://orbiter.dansteph.com and see what they think of it?

 

[Sky Captain]

Looks really nice, but that control building better have to have some heat resistant window shutters to close when ship is landing And it would be good if the whole thing were about 50 % larger. It just looks too cramped for XR2 to land there safely without risk of accidentally hitting the walls.

 

[JackJL]

Yeah it's pretty difficult to land a default DG in there too (due to the lack of a good hover autopilot). Initially I thought of a big circular building, to fully enclose the breathable area, with 3 landing pads taking up 3/4 of the room, a control room in the middle and a cargo handling area in the 4th quarter.

I made this version as the minimum size for landing DG/XR2 sized ships without having a huge breathable area outside the mesh. Perhaps a triangular or cross shape might be better?


EDIT: Here's the floorplan of a simplified semicircle for the landing pad, with the same rectangular other end

This makes lots more space in 1 dimension, but the other is still tight and the control room is still gonna get fried.

 

[Nemoricus]

You could also use UMMU 2.0's action areas to implement doors which can be opened by UMmu action.

This is a neat idea. It will make a nice addition to UCGO.

 

[JackJL]

True - then animation etc. for the doors could be done too (instead of instantaneous mesh swapping). But at the moment this is all do-able with configs and meshes (and UGCO) with no need for a dll.

 

[Brycesv1]

very nice. i do think that at some point a dll would have to be added so that everything could be separate instead of a kill-all mesh switch

 

[dansteph]

Great idea ! congrat !

Of course this cargo could then be grappled by vessel wich would not look so realist but sometime it's user decision wheter to use an addon in realistic or unrealistic manner and a note in doc could inform the user.

I just looked at my code to see if variable breathable area could be done in dll, mean for example and airlock that would be breathable or not depend it's state.

It's a possibility but there is some limit:
For performance concern the cargo breathable area are bounding circle and you can only have one per "vessel" (object, cargo)
In the case of breathable base+variable airlock you could either design the airlock to be outside the circle and just extend the circle when ok, either you spawn the base in two modules with the airlock separated. The airlock could also respond to action area. A keypress near doors button could open/close door and another keypress to Pressure control command panel could switch Fill/unfill pressure.

I can provide the code for "dll" breathable area, it's not complicated, 15 lines, but I think such base would be outside the scope of C++ beginner. I don't know if someone would do such things.

Dan

 

[Brycesv1]

could they be spawned seperately but at the same time? the idea is that you add in the base but that action in reality spawns in multiple base parts with their own breathable area.

using this you could also have multiple invisible vessels with small circles that fill in the edges of a large circle, effectively making a square or room. or would this put too much strain on the core with so many vessels?

 

[dansteph]

using this you could also have multiple invisible vessels with small circles that fill in the edges of a large circle, effectively making a square or room. or would this put too much strain on the core with so many vessels?

If the idea is to have "1m" precision breathable area I don't think it worth the performance impact on low end machines or the efforts spent.

What is important is that peoples don't die inside the base, the circle should be big enough to enclose every area. Now if someone want to walk all around base checking if there is 1m precision and be worried because some outside part are breathable he may better download "Super realistic SpaceSim 4" (which does not exist :lol: ) Orbiter is not made for "Sim" like at first place so... I can make better of course but there is three month that I'm 12h/24h on UCGO. Who can work for free this time ? (not me )

It's different in case of one airlock, in this case it would be a cool feature:
the guy set airlock as open, check= not breathable, closed, check= breathable: coolness factor 100% :thumbup:

Dan

 

[Nemoricus]

That might actually be an interesting feature for your Prelude II base, Dan.

If you can work it in, it would be very cool.

 

[Ark]

That might actually be an interesting feature for your Prelude II base, Dan.

If you can work it in, it would be very cool.

True, it would be neat if the Preludes had windows and areas to walk through.

However, IMO they do need to retain their in-vessel mass UMMU storage capabilities. I don't like the idea of putting 20 UMMUs worth of location information in the scenario file.

 

[JackJL]

The circular shape of Prelude II would really lend itself to this. There could be an action area (or UMMU type airlock) inside representing stairs to the upper level which could store the UMMUs.

A stand alone airlock might work. Undeployed it's external door is open, deployed it's internal door is open & the atmosphere is on. The atmosphere would only have to enclose the airlock so the circle could be quite small. The only problem with this is you would still have to walk through the wall of the building the airlock is attached to.

For a simple config based one of these are both the breathable area and action area (just the UMMU deploy/undeploy) always in the centre of the vessel?

---------- Post added at 08:50 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:21 AM ----------

Here's a quick concept of the standalone airlock

This tunnel is 2m across - the big circle at the back represents a bigger base with breathable area. The medium circle is the 2.3m radius breathable area. The inner circle is 1m radius - where the control can be activated.


The 2 blocks on the walls represent control panels, whose texture can change with the mesh


Here's the inner doors open, showing the overlap of breathable area.

EDIT - Here's an idea for the outer wall of a large building that would incorporate one of these airlocks

In the foreground is the wall without an airlock - the brown area is thin with a seperate mesh group and texture. In the background we see the airlock pushing through this area. If the brown area was transparent but with detail on it could be convincing as an outer wall or walk through divider.

For texture on this I was thinking a plastic sheet like this but closed obviously, maybe with a clear window in it so that you can see the state of the airlock doors through it.



Here's a technical question dan, for building like this what would happen if the UMMU attachment point were removed from the config. Would this prevent grappling? If so would the other UCGO features, like breathable area be disabled?

 

[the.punk]

Hey, nice. I think this is the first UCGO addon in develop.

 

[JackJL]

I have been a fool!

In real life people don't land in hangars, they land on runways/pads and taxi to the hangar!

So here's a new version with a landing apron and a circular hangar

Left is open, right is closed - there's just one big sliding door at the front for both ships and cars.

The red building is the control room, with an XR2 parked next to it.

The building is 60m diameter and as it is circular, the breathable area will be all enclosed.

P.S. Don't worry about the black triangle between them, that's just a flipped normal

 

[Lucy]

Those look good. Though I think there's some scope for a kind of "Landing Bay" variant similar to the original idea, I like both.