What kind of add-on do you think would change Orbiter forever?

[IgnoreThisBarrel]

I hate to bring this up, but managing time acceleration would be a tiny bit of a problem.

But if multiplayer was implemented, then it would be nice to have a relativity module.

 

[Pyromaniac605]

I hate to bring this up, but managing time acceleration would be a tiny bit of a problem.

But if multiplayer was implemented, then it would be nice to have a relativity module.

How would it be a problem if all the players are inside the same vessel on the same mission?

Darren

 

[IgnoreThisBarrel]

Well if they all were then it wouldn't be a problem, however it would be a problem on large servers.

Which I guess is why it'd be better to have servers dedicated to specific missions. That way it'd even be possible to have multiple players on multiple ships! As long as they were in cruise phase at the same time.

 

[Frogisis]

Collision detection, relativity, full interstellar travel, and more detailed terrain and sky are the only big things I feel Orbiter's missing at the moment. Smooth interstellar travel plus relativity would really be almost a whole new sim.
In the interim, the only improvements I'd be really excited about would be cosmetic:
- Lens flare
- Bloom, or some kind of glow around objects on their sunlit side... It could be subtle around Earth's orbit, grow to a frightful glare around Mercury's orbit, and fade to nothing past Mars or so. It'd be a great way to add some "character" to areas of space, making hot and cold areas a little more visceral.
- A way to get rid of those "seams" in clouds you see in LEO. Every time I see one of those roll by under my ship I'm taken out of the experience for a moment (I have no idea if closing them up is possible, though)

I'm down with what some people already said about seeing little procedurally-generated details as you near the surface of a planet, like boulders of various kinds, or on Earth some little trees or buildings. Really, I'd be satisfied with trees just being a single sprite always facing the camera, like smoke trails are now. The same thing might even be doable with buildings, but you'd have to be very clever about drawing and placing them, like how an impressionist painter can suggest a small, far-off house with just a few brush strokes. Ultimately I'd rather have just a whisper or a suggestion of ground detail than a full, system-resource-and-developer-time-hogging full recreation of terrain.

As long as we're making wishes, I also would love to one day see a UMMU walk cycle.

Really, like someone else already said, we're in it for the detail and realism, so more of the same, please. But to me, immersive graphics and other elements are part of the realism, so...

 

[IgnoreThisBarrel]

I'd personally like to see a Celestia-type Mie-Rayleigh atmospheric rendering system. It can produce amazing results.

Also, procedural details such as terrain or rocks would be very cool. Like Moon-rocks or basalt rock slabs on Venus.

 

[HAL9001]

with a collision detection you could land on rooftops or on a big flying airport (for sci-fi-fas)

 

[Urwumpe]

I am still very confused about the lack of lesbian witches in Orbiter. The realism is deeply disturbed by this shortcoming, especially the long-term secular perturbations are wrong now, as well as many periodic perturbations just don't taking place.

Also many astrological events have no effect on objects in geocentric orbit, which is not helpful at all. The effects of Ophiuchus are still overrated.

 

[deltawing777]

I am still very confused about the lack of lesbian witches in Orbiter. The realism is deeply disturbed by this shortcoming, especially the long-term secular perturbations are wrong now, as well as many periodic perturbations just don't taking place.

I to am very discouraged by this lack of prioritizing resulting in the changing of the time space continuum causing a space ripple which results in the permanant changing of my future with no lesbian witches. This WILL NOT be tolerated!

 

[IgnoreThisBarrel]

Quick! Somebody make a double-planet pair!

 

[Aeadar]

Not really revolutionary, but I'd like to see some reduction in the light level as one gets further from the sun.
And for UMMU, some sort of 'flight record' for each UMMU: Number of missions flown, missions commanded, accumulated EVA time. I like the idea of 'aging' UMMUs as well, for long term missions.

 

[Kyle]

Orbiter being able to re-create this identically would be on my wish list.

 

[Izack]

I would like to see planet rings rendered as particles, like in OGLA. Saturn's rings are incredibly complex and beautiful, and the Orbiter's static rotating texture doesn't do it justice, especially up-close.

I wouldn't really want to see Orbiter turn into something for high-end computers only, though. Mine has enough trouble with Orbiter's current state.

 

[Pyromaniac605]

I wouldn't really want to see Orbiter turn into something for high-end computers only, though.

Well there is somthing Orbiter has been missing, graphics options for higher/lower end computers.

Darren

 

[NOMAD]

Realistic dynamically generated clouds
Level 20 texture support
Realistic weather system
Realistic collision system
Realistic terrain system(make a crater when you ram your ship into the moon going at high speed wouldn't that be awesome?)
Interstellar travel(Yes i do know this is coming!)
Dynamical generated sounds


So much could be added to our already awesome space flight simulator i am happy to say i am part of the orbiter community of the awesome space flight simulator of orbiter.

And these:
Realistic surface(Like sea with water,rocks on the ground)
Realistic atmosphere model(Especially the giant planet in solar system)
Realistic light effect
The most I want is the realistic trajectory planning MFD(Use the real and accurate method to calculate the orbit. )
so on ! !

 

[Wishbone]

Nomad, how do you plan to interact with a realistic, full-blown trajectory planning tool with only 12 buttons? Also, the screen space of one MFD is so small, that many details won't fit in...

 

[Urwumpe]

Nomad, how do you plan to interact with a realistic, full-blown trajectory planning tool with only 12 buttons? Also, the screen space of one MFD is so small, that many details won't fit in...

Also Mindblast actually works on a offline trajectory planning tool or at least visualization tool... which could sure also be used for planning flights for Orbiter.

 

[jedidia]

Also Mindblast actually works on a offline trajectory planning tool or at least visualization tool... which could sure also be used for planning flights for Orbiter.

Well, that's the primary purpose :lol: And the open Beta is pretty usable by now, I couldn't imagine life without it anymore (and it's not offline anymore either, our OF-Chief integrator Face put it into a dialog box).

However, depending on what NOMAD had in mind by "Use the real and accurate method to calculate the orbit", it still might not be what he's after. It's still a two body solution, although you can switch references on the fly and edit earlier maneuvers to adjust the later ones, etc. I think what nomad is thinking is basically what Orbiter is: A gravity simulator that calculates the trajectory by actually simulating it in an N-body environment. Which of course you can do with the Navigator: Set up the trajectory, do the maneuvers one by one in orbiter in a test run, adjust where neccessary, save the plan, and voila, of you go, the whole flight in one go...

Other than that, I really don't think that a gravity simulator to calculate the trajectory in a gravity simulator would make much sense...

 

[Wishbone]

It does make sense, for accurate trajectory forecasting, at least. Rather than make all authors of predictive MFDs use their own implementations (say, KOST with J2, or classical Keplerian with point masses, or restricted 3-body formulations), esteemed Dr.Schweiger could migrate the interface to actual integration routines into the API.

 

[Urwumpe]

It does make sense, for accurate trajectory forecasting, at least. Rather than make all authors of predictive MFDs use their own implementations (say, KOST with J2, or classical Keplerian with point masses, or restricted 3-body formulations), esteemed Dr.Schweiger could migrate the interface to actual integration routines into the API.

Wouldn't work out well, they are optimized for shorter time steps, for longer segments, you are better served with different functions. Also they are pretty bad for first order optimization.

 

[Wishbone]

Okay, I can take the integration part, but at least the acceleration/grav potential could be opened up to addon developers (perhaps I'm missing some function in the API, where can I get the gravity vector for an arbitrary point in space?) Would be slightly inconvenient to carry lunar or terrestrial or martian gravity model coefficients with every addon (e.g. http://earth-info.nga.mil/GandG/wgs84/gravitymod/egm2008/egm08_wgs84.html)