General Question How is Kerbal more famous than Orbiter.

[dbeachy1]

Speaking personally, I like to create add-ons that I personally enjoy. (The coding is also fun, particularly since I can do it whenever I have time and not under constant deadlines like at work.) That way you don't really care how many other people use it, you just make it "for yourself" primarily, and if other people enjoy it, too, great! if not, hey, you still have an add-on that you enjoy using.

TL;DR: "If you don't enjoy making the add-on, it's probably not worth making it in the first place."

 

[Urwumpe]

Speaking personally, I like to create add-ons that I personally enjoy. (The coding is also fun, particularly since I can do it whenever I have time and not under constant deadlines like at work.) That way you don't really care how many other people use it, you just make it "for yourself" primarily, and if other people enjoy it, too, great! if not, hey, you still have an add-on that you enjoy using.

TL;DR: "If you don't enjoy making the add-on, it's probably not worth making it in the first place."

Exactly my attitude there. I do it in first place for my curiosity. Then for people I personally respect. And in the very last place for the rest of the world.

Also, I think David413 is a name that has to be mentioned in this case, because its an important lesson. Social media can not only give you confidence boosts - it can also destroy you. Quickly. The internet is NO positive thing there. Destructive comments can rain on you much faster than you can handle, because social media can be a nuclear chain reactio there - from a few critical persons, to bots and sockpuppets reinforcing it.

If you are not doing it because you like it, you better think twice about asking for comments.

 

[jedidia]

while the subreddit for Orbiter has only 596 and gets one or a few occasional posts each month.

Huh, Orbiter has a subreddit... I learn something new every day.

 

[Pipcard]

If that is the important thing for you, I'd say developing Orbiter addons is not worth it. You will not get much likes/upvotes/<your_social_media_acknowledgment_of_choice> with Orbiter, so if that is what you seek, look elsewhere. KSP is certainly a good choice in this regard.

The problem is that if I choose to switch focus from Orbiter to KSP development, I will lose the ability to show off my custom island spaceport, which is basically the cornerstone of my imaginary space agency's canon (There's a KSC switcher for the Real Solar System mod that allows you to put the Kerbal Space Center anywhere on our Earth, but you cannot make custom islands in RSS). I might also lose the ability to show off detailed space stations, such as my recreation of the Shimizu space hotel, without killing my framerate.

For the latter example, I've been considering making the Kankoh-maru space tourism SSTO in Orbiter. Someone else wants to make it, too, but they don't have the code for the precision landing. I haven't really played with BrianJ's Dragon DLL, but someone said that

automatic reentry was great fun: splashed down just a few hundred meters from recovery vessel.

It might be possible to adapt that for Kankoh-maru (I'm not sure if it could be made more precise), but it took me several months for me to reverse-engineer and adapt BrianJ's Falcon 9 boost-back and autopilot code for my M-III launch vehicle.

For KSP, it might be easier and faster to recreate the functionality of the Kankoh-maru (as the MechJeb mod offers a wonderful universal landing autopilot that works on atmospheric bodies), but trying to show it docking to a space hotel as in the original concept image would be a pain.

 

[boogabooga]

KSP?

Are people still playing that these days? Have not heard anything in a long time.

 

[Artlav]

I've been feeling conflicted if it's even worth it for me to develop add-ons for Orbiter, because almost no one would seem to care.

At some point you get to realize that creation can only really happen if it still works on it's own.
If you can't write for the drawer, then you won't enjoy writing.

These days i only publish things i don't care about, because there is no enjoyment in having to hammer something you like into a shape that other people would like.

Huh, Orbiter has a subreddit... I learn something new every day.

There are thousands of dead subreddits per every slightly active one, and hundreds of slightly active ones per every popular one.

Are people still playing that these days?

Yeah. The guy who made it quit a few years ago and the game/company got sold off to some evil corporation (can't quite remember which), so there is a lot less noise about it these days, but it's still a game that exists and is fun to play.

They never fixed the performance scaling, however.
And auto-staging is STILL broken.

 

[Frilock]

Yeah. The guy who made it quit a few years ago and the game/company got sold off to some evil corporation (can't quite remember which), so there is a lot less noise about it these days, but it's still a game that exists and is fun to play.

Harvester (heyo if you still ever read here) left, as you said, a few years ago. Then there was a 'mass exodus' of developers a few months later that left the game going to squad internal devs with the exception of Roverdude (There may be one or two of those external guys left but I don't remember off hand who was squad and who was else apart from him). Squad then sold off the rights to KSP to Take Two, with squad being kept as the developer of the game. They just released the new console version (which had to be redone from the ground up because the old one was, to put it nicely, completely terrible) within the last day or so. Currently they are trying to make DLC for the core game and there are rumors that a KSP2 of some kind is on its way.

 

[PhantomCruiser]

What is this "reddit" thing I keep hearing about? :shifty:

Best I can tell it's something else to assassinate my spare time.

 

[MaverickSawyer]

It's a cesspool of extremists of all colors and stripes. I'd recommend avoiding it whenever possible.

 

[Pipcard]

I used to play with Orbiter a lot because I had a mediocre pre-built PC with integrated graphics, and Orbiter 2010 was pretty non-intensive. But when I did my first PC build in the summer of 2016, there were so many other things that opened up. I could finally play Kerbal Space Program with those fancy "visual enhancement" mods and record videos, too. Play Civilization V on a true-start-location Earth map with 22 civilizations. And, play Overwatch (casually on Quick Play, of course; I could never get into the competitive mode with its higher toxicity). Thus, Orbiter fell by the wayside. And then there's coursework to deal with, too.

I might go back to Orbiter if I need to make something really serious, like something for a college assignment. I'm finally in a spacecraft design course right now.

What is this "reddit" thing I keep hearing about? :shifty:

Best I can tell it's something else to assassinate my spare time.

Take it from me: it already has. Even the TV Tropes page for it says it's more addicting than TV Tropes.

 

[Linguofreak]

At some point you get to realize that creation can only really happen if it still works on it's own.
If you can't write for the drawer, then you won't enjoy writing.

These days i only publish things i don't care about, because there is no enjoyment in having to hammer something you like into a shape that other people would like.

I think, other than ideological reasons, that this is where at least some of the attraction to open source lies for a lot of developers:

"Add this feature please."

"Send me a patch and if it's good I'll merge it".

They never fixed the performance scaling, however.
/QUOTE]

It may be that my hardware is beefy and I have less demanding tastes in graphics settings than the average person (and less time to spend on tinkering with designs since graduating from college and entering the workforce), but I've never really run into performance issues with KSP. In designing a large spacecraft, I always reach the point where I run out of patience with the complexity of making such a high part count vessel reliably flyable before my hardware chokes in the part count. There seems to be an obsession in the community with massive single-stage-to-everywhere designs (or, if not SSTE, at the very least putting up whole interplanetary missions on a single launch), but I prefer more manageable launch sizes with separate surface <-> LKO and LKO <-> elsewhere vehicles (and a fuel infrastructure on Minmus so that I don't have to lift full tanks from Kerbin on some massive launch vehicle).

 

[Artlav]

What is this "reddit" thing I keep hearing about?

It used to be a news aggregator, thus a pun on "read it", but over the years it devolved into a mush of people talking at each other.

I think, other than ideological reasons, that this is where at least some of the attraction to open source lies for a lot of developers

Meh, they never do.
And even if they did, i could never quite stomach broadcasting any code i care about.

I've never really run into performance issues with KSP.

I see you never tried to do an orbital assembly of a mothership with a booster stage and several packed space stations on it to be dropped around moons of Jool.
Performance drops quite fast as part count goes up.

 

[Face]

(emphasis mine)

The problem is that if I choose to switch focus from Orbiter to KSP development, I will lose the ability to show off my custom island spaceport, which is basically the cornerstone of my imaginary space agency's canon (There's a KSC switcher for the Real Solar System mod that allows you to put the Kerbal Space Center anywhere on our Earth, but you cannot make custom islands in RSS). I might also lose the ability to show off detailed space stations, such as my recreation of the Shimizu space hotel, without killing my framerate.

I think this is the core of your conflict. You want to "show off", and for that you need thumps-up and virtual back-pats from the community. Since Orbiter is IMHO starting to get smaller again, you get only few people doing that here. I think that there will be even fewer in the future, so my advice would still be to focus away from Orbiter, because the social acknowledgement seems to be THE important motivation for you to work on addons.

Sometimes it is better to just relax and let go...

 

[PhantomCruiser]

:hesaid:

Like I've told you before make your addons for you.

As far as KSP, I think it was their forum that did me in. I thought the whole thing was pretty neat, and enough of a game to get people to learn something by accident. Then their forum blew up. For a long while it seemed like it was a bunch of trolls that wanted "moar rockets amirite!!!!" Or bronies that amounted to about the same thing.

One user refused to even take a look at Orbiter because 1] it wasn't realistic enough for him and 2] you couldn't texture (it would seem he didn't pay any attention to the mods). A serious conversation on the forum became an impossibility, so I bailed.

 

[Pipcard]

@PhantomCruiser - I remember that thread, someone thought that the R-7/Soyuz add-on with its textureless meshes represented "flightsim 98" graphics. On the other hand, someone thought this screenshot was representative of Orbiter, but I tried to explain that was post-processed.

 

[jedidia]

Like I've told you before make your addons for you.

In the end, everybody does that, unless there's an option for monetisation.
The question becomes really, what kind gratification do you want? I think social recognition is a valid motivation for making add-ons, though I'd consider it rather stressful.

And it's only fair to admit that if this is the primary motivator, that isn't a bad thing, but Orbiter is definitely the wrong platform.

 

[4throck]

Second that.

The main problem is that Orbiter 2016 has (in my opinion) some conceptual flaws that killed the add-on community.

Serious development now takes too much time.
Too much was shifted from the simulator's core on to the add-on creator.

If I have to program it all from scratch (besides modelling), I'd rather invest that time into a personal project that I could (at least try) to sell....

I do prefer 1$ to 1 like :rofl:

 

[Xyon]

Second that.

The main problem is that Orbiter 2016 has (in my opinion) some conceptual flaws that killed the add-on community.

Serious development now takes too much time.
Too much was shifted from the simulator's core on to the add-on creator.

If I have to program it all from scratch (besides modelling), I'd rather invest that time into a personal project that I could (at least try) to sell....

I do prefer 1$ to 1 like :rofl:

Do you want to expand on what you mean here? I'm not following you.

 

[GLS]

Second that.

The main problem is that Orbiter 2016 has (in my opinion) some conceptual flaws that killed the add-on community.

Serious development now takes too much time.
Too much was shifted from the simulator's core on to the add-on creator.

If I have to program it all from scratch (besides modelling), I'd rather invest that time into a personal project that I could (at least try) to sell....

I do prefer 1$ to 1 like :rofl:

From my point of view, addon development did not change at all. 2016 has new features that impact development (duh!), but nothing that comes remotely close to being a show-stopper. It was a step forward and we now have more capabilities and "toys" to play with.
IMO the "problem" with 2016 is the "problem" with all previous Orbiter versions: devs don't upgrade their addons, and they don't allow others to do it because no source code is available (let's not go there again :lol. This snowballs when "addon A" relies on "addon B" which uses "addon C", etc..., and if "addon C" isn't updated... :uhh:

 

[Face]

IMO the "problem" with 2016 is the "problem" with all previous Orbiter versions: devs don't upgrade their addons, and they don't allow others to do it because no source code is available (let's not go there again :lol.

Which neatly fits into Pipcard's conflict of "not worth it". I guess many devs will see it as he does. The addon was out, too few cared, so now it is not worth updating it.

This together with the API changes that make refactorings mandatory for using the addon in newer version - and of course combined with the closed-source mentality that was established - eventually leads to shrinking of the developer community.

I think many platforms try to mitigate that problem by means of strict backwards compatibility in the granularity direction, i.e. the newer framework always supports older plugins, whereas newer plugins not necessarily support older frameworks.

Orbiter has a problem in this regards, because sometimes the ABI is not compatible anymore, causing addons to be recompiled in order to function properly.