Orbiter is now open source

[Kyle]

Suggestion from a pure user perspective:

It can be pretty difficult to recommend Orbiter to newbies when a lot of the essential addons (Orbiter Sound, InterplanetaryMFD, SpaceX addons) are not included in the base package.

Maybe, once the developers are able to update the addons to Orbiter x64, ask and see if they'd be interested in having their addons released as part of the Orbiter package? At the very least Orbiter Sound should be included imho.

 

[Pioneer]

Suggestion from a pure user perspective:

It can be pretty difficult to recommend Orbiter to newbies when a lot of the essential addons (Orbiter Sound, InterplanetaryMFD, SpaceX addons) are not included in the base package.

Maybe, once the developers are able to update the addons to Orbiter x64, ask and see if they'd be interested in having their addons released as part of the Orbiter package? At the very least Orbiter Sound should be included imho.

And I'd also suggest incorporating UCGO when that gets updated.

 

[n72.75]

Suggestion from a pure user perspective:

It can be pretty difficult to recommend Orbiter to newbies when a lot of the essential addons (Orbiter Sound, InterplanetaryMFD, SpaceX addons) are not included in the base package.

Maybe, once the developers are able to update the addons to Orbiter x64, ask and see if they'd be interested in having their addons released as part of the Orbiter package? At the very least Orbiter Sound should be included imho.

This is mostly a question of licensing. Orbitersound cannot be packaged due to its license.

 

[GLS]

I, personally think there should be a 2016-p1 release based on R90/what's in github now, before we jump to Orbiter x64.

Yes, I also think there could/should be a new release with the current state of things + a few bug fixes, before new things are added. Of course the new stuff can (and should) be worked in branches.

Suggestion from a pure user perspective:

It can be pretty difficult to recommend Orbiter to newbies when a lot of the essential addons (Orbiter Sound, InterplanetaryMFD, SpaceX addons) are not included in the base package.

Maybe, once the developers are able to update the addons to Orbiter x64, ask and see if they'd be interested in having their addons released as part of the Orbiter package? At the very least Orbiter Sound should be included imho.

The big problem is defining "essential addons". For some Apollo is what they want, so that is essential and the rest isn't, for others it's the Shuttle, others might want both, and others still prefer fictional spacecraft.

 

[Kyle]

Yes, I also think there could/should be a new release with the current state of things + a few bug fixes, before new things are added. Of course the new stuff can (and should) be worked in branches.



The big problem is defining "essential addons". For some Apollo is what they want, so that is essential and the rest isn't, for others it's the Shuttle, others might want both, and others still prefer fictional spacecraft.

I agree that it is difficult to quantify what is essential and what's not. I feel like sound is probably the one thing most of us can agree on is pretty essential. But I can understand the issue regarding licensing.

 

[DaveS]

From an user/add-on dev perspective what I would like to see above all is for the current handling of docking events to be changed to a more realistic one that incorporates the two stages of a docking sequence which are the initial soft capture (AKA "soft-dock") and the later hard capture ("hard-dock"). Currently only the second stage is simulated, somewhat. The first stage is critical as it serves actually capture the opposing docking mechanism and allow the relative velocities to dampen out as you have one vehicle more or less slamming into another and if things aren't entirely right, can lead to either a bounce off (best case scenario) or damage to either mechanism (worst case scenario) which would prohibit any future attempts at docking.

 

[dbeachy1]

I agree that it is difficult to quantify what is essential and what's not. I feel like sound is probably the one thing most of us can agree on is pretty essential. But I can understand the issue regarding licensing.

The staff has been chatting about this in Discord. For what it's worth, I like the idea of both sound clients (XRSound and OrbiterSound 5) and their corresponding sound bridges being open-sourced under the MIT license, and then we add a setting to the Orbiter launchpad to select the active sound module and corresponding sound bridge. That way, 1) users get sound out-of-the-box, 2) users can easily toggle between the two sound clients in the launchpad, and 3) since the corresponding sound bridge would be activated as well, all vessels that use sound would work with either sound module (at least for the features common to both sound modules).

tl;dr: I'm happy to open-source XRSound 2.0 under the same MIT license (the version would be XRSound 2.1), but ideally, Dan would release OrbiterSound 5 under the same license so it would be easier for users to use OrbiterSound 5 if they prefer. But even without that, users could still manually install OrbiterSound 5 if they prefer -- it's just not ideal, because it's more work for the users.

EDIT:
I haven't looked into this, but it may even be possible to make the active sound module a scenario setting so that different scenarios will activate different sound modules if the scenario specifies one -- this would provide an optimal per-vessel experience. But that will take some Orbiter core changes, for sure.

 

[Thymo]

First of all, thanks Martin for all the work you've done for Orbiter. I still remember first playing around with it when I was 10 years old. If managed properly open-sourcing Orbiter will bring a lot of good things and I look forward to be apart of those. I'm glad to see people already are bringing creative ideas to the table.

Suggestion from a pure user perspective:

It can be pretty difficult to recommend Orbiter to newbies when a lot of the essential addons (Orbiter Sound, InterplanetaryMFD, SpaceX addons) are not included in the base package.

Maybe, once the developers are able to update the addons to Orbiter x64, ask and see if they'd be interested in having their addons released as part of the Orbiter package? At the very least Orbiter Sound should be included imho.

This really needs to happen, especially sound as the major sound addons technically can't be used without straight up violating their license as addons makers need to statically link them.

 

[jedidia]

It can be pretty difficult to recommend Orbiter to newbies when a lot of the essential addons (Orbiter Sound, InterplanetaryMFD, SpaceX addons) are not included in the base package.

That sounds like a not so great idea due to different preferences and license issues, making releases a rather complicated and contested affair... It would be smarter to handle this through an installer or mod-manager that allows you to define "mod packages", so one could say "yeah, I'd like the apollo package please", or "I'm gonna go with the scifi package for starters".
There's probably some out-of-the-box software that could be configured for the job somewhere...

 

[Thymo]

I've actually gave this some thought about a week ago, I ran into this thread: https://www.orbiter-forum.com/threa...interplanetary-file-system.35066/#post-536848

NASSP is looking for a way to make the installation easier, as people have been complaining that the current procedure is a bit complicated. I would love to talk sometime and discuss how a package manager for Orbiter would look like.

 

[Kyle]

That sounds like a not so great idea due to different preferences and license issues, making releases a rather complicated and contested affair... It would be smarter to handle this through an installer or mod-manager that allows you to define "mod packages", so one could say "yeah, I'd like the apollo package please", or "I'm gonna go with the scifi package for starters".
There's probably some out-of-the-box software that could be configured for the job somewhere...

Yes, that's a very good idea. Something like CKAN for KSP. That being said, I still feel sound should be included with the base package. dbeachy1's suggestion with XR2Sound 2.0 is a good one.

 

[xlander]

Just want to say a big "thank you!" to Martin for many years of space flight goodness. Much respect to you for open sourcing your brainchild, one of the truly great softwares of our time.

 

[Krishnan]

Ah crap I think I got the wrong message here. Sorry about that I guess I was being too excited. Actually, it's just a small project by 4 or so people who are possibly from the RO/RSS/RP-1 team. Sorry for the misinformation. https://www.openspaceprogram.org/

 

[jedidia]

Yes, that's a very good idea. Something like CKAN for KSP. That being said, I still feel sound should be included with the base package. dbeachy1's suggestion with XR2Sound 2.0 is a good one.

Yeah, agreed, sound is kind of non-optional in 2021...

 

[Mojave]

@martins ,

First, let me say that I hope you and yours are doing fine through this pandemic, and that things are improving in your neck of the woods.

I've been an Orbinaut since back before 2010, and your work has given me many years' worth of fun and learning. Without Orbiter, I would never have found such an interest in spaceflight, and I definitely would never have learned all that I have about the subject. Orbiter kept me through high school and college, and now as I work in the aerospace industry, remains a healthy hobby.

I know it cannot have been an easy decision to open up your masterpiece like this, but I think by doing so, you just breathed a lot of life back into this old community that has been around for decades. The veritable brush fire to hit the ground running in this thread alone is testimony of the strong desire this community has to see Orbiter into the future, and I think a great many things are on the horizon.

Right now, I see in the 'similar threads' section a thread entitled, "Will Orbiter be Open Source?" and that user created that post in 2009. Twelve years later, and the answer to that question is a resounding "yes!" There is something poetic about that.

Thanks for all the years before and the ones to come.



-Samuel

 

[Longjap]

This is great news, and I'm sure all the talented people here will usher Orbiter into a new age because of this. Can't wait to see the progress in a couple years.
Thanks to Martin for everything he has done.

 

[Jordan]

It's been a while ...

Dear Orbiter users and developers,

I haven't been around this place in quite some time, and for personal reasons haven't been able to push Orbiter development along for a few years now. In order to keep Orbiter alive and allow others to work on it, I have decided to publish the sources under an open source license:

GitHub - orbitersim/orbiter: Open-source repository of Orbiter Space Flight Simulator

Open-source repository of Orbiter Space Flight Simulator - orbitersim/orbiter

github.com

This is essentially the 2016 Edition with some minor (and at least one major) fixes. I hope this is of use to somebody. The code is somewhat unorganised and sparsely documented, but it should compile and leave you with a working Orbiter installation. Note that the repository doesn't include all the required planetary textures, so you need to install those separately (e.g. by reusing an existing Orbiter 2016 installation - this is explained in the Readme and only requires setting a CMake option before configuring the build).

I am still hoping to work on future enhancements of Orbiter, but I can't make any promises or commitments. One of the most pressing issues is switching the code over to 64-bit, but this requires ditching the DX7 dependency (and ideally replacing it with DX11), but that is a major undertaking which I may or may not be able to do).

Please let me know of any compilation problems or any other issues with the repository, either here or by raising an issue on github. I am also happy to consider merge requests.

Happy coding!

That's one small step for Martin, one giant leap for Orbiter.

Thanks Martin.

 

[Ripley]

I, personally think there should be a 2016-p1 release based on R90/what's in github now, before we jump to Orbiter x64. NASSP, and the versions of ummu/orbitersound5/DGIV that Dan was working on are all built against the Beta. This would allow releases of these addons, that dont rely on the svn install of orbiter, while x64/D3D11 development progresses. Just my 2 cents.

Out of the top of my head, what I would very warmly welcome as starting out-of-the-box Orbiter experience is:

• complete (as in definitive) multi axis joystick support;
• sound (be it Dansteph's or Dbeachy's, or both);
• latest TransX (and possibly IMFD) included. I never understood why Martin never merged the latest developed TransX, but kept on including that oldish "bugged" version inside vanilla Orbiter;
• other MFDs...

 

[n72.75]

Orbiter Is Now Open Source

We always have it on our list to learn more about Orbiter. If you haven’t seen it, it is a hyperrealistic space simulator. Granted, you can put it in an easy mode, but its real strength is yo…

hackaday.com

 

[usagi]

This is the first time I've logged into these forums in YEARS, and I'm here to say that this is the best news I've had in a long time.

I might get back to this program and put some effort into wine performance (I see there's a wiki guide for getting it running, but still, improvements could surely be made). I wonder if a Vulkan graphics engine would be possible? The possibilities are endless!