What do you do in Orbiter?

[Pilot7893]

You can post what you are best at in Orbiter, and what you usually do in Orbiter because of that here. I am gr8 at manual LEO's, but I suck at planning target intercepts and interplanetry journeys, so I spend most of my time with the good old Atlantis putting Hubble or Carina into orbit

 

[reverend]

Uhm... I just generally like to fly around....

 

[Bj]

Recently I spend most of my time testing, however normally I make long interplanetary trips and sometimes make missions for the DGIV and various addons.

 

[ryan]

I sometimes do AMSO or NASSP depends on what mood i'm in, currently im in a NASSP mood.

 

[Zatnikitelman]

Up till a few months ago, I was building a current-tech space station in LEO to support future interplanetary missions. Since November, I've been embroiled in trying to build a lunar base pack and have had everything from family to school to just plain bad timing get in my way of finishing this thing. Hopefully, I'll have something soon...
Beyond LEO, I plan to start a phase of lunar exploration including of course, the base I'm building. Then beyond that, probably I'll work on the rest of the solar system. But I don't plan on setting down on Mars till atleast July

 

[Scarecrow]

For a while I was building a space station. Then I was practicing SCRAM ascents in XR Vessels. For the last few days I've been trying some extreme maneuvers, such as an off plane direct ascent from my base at 41.5 degrees North to Mir (that was fun, but I should have put the XR1's ISP setting higher than "Realistic", because I ended up needing an extra half tank of fuel), attempting to arrange a high velocity (about 15 km/s) collision with the ISS, and repetitive slingshots between Jupiter and Saturn, just to see if it was possible.

 

[pete.dakota]

My Orbiteering seems to go in waves. Sometimes, for weeks on end I'll be indulged in lengthy interplanetary trips, usually with the DGIV. Setting myself the target of launching from KSC, landing on one of the outer planet's moons, and returning home. But recently I've been playing around in LEO, and going to our Moon with AMSO.

One of my all-time favourite things to do, though, is to jump into a DGIV and fly around KSC. Doing sub-orbital hops to EAFB and back. Or trying to nail that perfect manual ascent to orbit and docking at the ISS.

 

[gimp1992]

AMSO, NASSP, Gemini, and Mercury

 

[Pilot7893]

Another fun thing I like to do is a quick sub-orbital flight from KSC to Hanaba with the DG.

 

[dutchpirate]

If I'm not flying an XR-class ship, I'm coming up with a new skin for one, or I am trying to build a complex scenario involving several vessels. Testing various aspects of those gives me some fun short-term flights as well.

 

[Andy44]

I've done most of the stuff you guys describe, and got pretty good at it. Manual launches, manual reentries and shuttle landings, navigation to other planets, landings on the moon, intercepts, dockings, construction. It's all good. Only thing I'm not as good as I'd like to be is slingshots. I use TrasX exclusively, but I need to jump on some of flytandem's tutorials, since he is the sling master.

Here is one of my finer missions: http://tekdino.proboards98.com/index.cgi?board=flightarchive&action=display&thread=43

 

[bujin]

I usually take the DGIV up for a quick spin to the moon and back when I get a bit bored.

 

[Whatu]

I do download a lot of addons to see how they behave, if they'r funny... whatever. I also practice manual ascent in the DGIV, trying to get circular in just one shot. Im also trying to make out by myself how all the options of imfd work (quite difficult to me, im not very good with imfd ). Now im trying to do my first orbiter video, just a little test-flight to the moon, to learn to use After Effects CS3... (Take a look in the orbiter video thread, it should be there in a couple of days, "when its done").

I also like to do my own DGIV skins, i'll upload some if I like them enough....

Things to do:

-Learn to fly and use the big cargo bay of the XR-5
-Use the shuttle (im kinda waiting for it to be more developed)
-Do more orbiter videos , and more ellaborated.
-Assemble a semi-realistic space station with SS building blocks 4.1 in Earth Orbit
-The same, in Moon and Mars orbit.
-Assemble the lunar base (that french addon that uses the fictional Ariane 6 to launch the big parts), this promises to be funny.

-And many more things, if i keep thinking things you can do with orbiter my heads gonna blow.

And also I want to know what are the mods I can do without using C++, just CFG editing.. and modelling and texturing.

And in the future, try to learn some c++ basics and do something simple...

Wow this game is wonderful :speakcool:

 

[flytandem]

I just usually sit on the runway in a DG and fish for the interplanetary flightplan possibilities. If I can come up with an interesting flightplan I sometimes post it. Usually however I just enjoy catch and release. If I'm lucky I will eventually forget about the trajectory and some day be treated to finding it again.

 

[mjanicki]

Lately for me it's been a lot of ascent into LEO and rendezvous with ISS or Mir using DG-IV, DG-XR1, or DG-UMMU. My ascent and docking are much improved with all the practice but the "perfect" orbit from launch still eludes me, although I tend to manage < 2 degrees out of plane with ecc < 0.02 nearly every time before any corrections.

When I have more time I like taking the DG-IV and performing satellite placements via MMU or take out Deepstar for a longer voyage with IMFD. For the most part I manage to sneak in whatever I have time for.

 

[agentgonzo]

Most of the time that I get to play with Orbiter at the moment is programming bits and pieces (working on LaunchMFD at the moment). When I get around to flying, I generally do a Launch from KSC to ISS, dock, undock and dead-stick to KSC as a single orbit. Or I go to the moon and back. At some stage I'll carry on building the ISS from modules and do a real-time Apollo flight, but don't have the time at the moment.

 

[craigh]

RE: What do you do in Orbiter

Lately I've been:
1) expiramenting with an ideal basic set-up of Orbiter for my system,
2) trying out the various MFD's that have been released over time,
3) reading the manuals/tutorials in an attempt to consistantly get from point A to B.
4) periodically station building.

And then there's a few other things I've never quite been able to get to work properly. Just trying to understand "why" an image of a vessel doesn't show up in the Custom Scenario editor, or a loaded mesh doesn't show....stuff like that. Tough for me, I just use the software, but know nothing about programming or troubleshooting.

After the kids crash, the drafting of ships and cockpits. I can do the work in AutoCad easily, but need to learn G-max, etc. to put the meshes into a format Orbiter can read. After that, coding, animations, and making new or expanding on existing add-ons.

 

[stjimmy225]

ive been floating about in a DGIV around mars and goin to the moon and back doin short supply tripsespecially the iss resupply mission with the arm etc. also trying not to burn up in the x-15 on landing after visiting skylab is a good way to waste some time

 

[Donald]

I have lately been flying direct flights to Uranus, Neptune, or Pluto in the Vespucci D. I use Attitude MFD for the begining of the flight but fine tune my flight path using manual orientation of the Vespucci to bring my flight path to the correct orientation. Approximately half way there I orient retro and back in to the planets SOI. I know there is a direct flight MFD but it is more fun doing it by deduced reckoning. BTW if you get the Vespucci up to 2,000 kilometers per second, the Bussard Ram scoops up more fuel than you use!

 

[Belisarius]

I like to do various things:

1) Just tool around in an XR-5 (my fave ship - thanks Doug) visiting Luna, Mars, Io, etc and coming home, practising reentry and landing back on Terra.

2) Recreate historic adventures like Apollo, Soyuz-Mir, Shuttle-Hubble and also read up on those events.

3) Create a realistic Mars future circa 2090 with bases, prospectors and so on. Various scenarios relate to this one - prospectors, utopians, rebels.

4) I have an ongoing meta-scenario involving a Vespucci-D called Trinity which wanders round the system circa 2100. She has an Eagle-Merlin and a Delta Glider V to visit here and there. This one I write up as fiction.

5) When I'm too tired for all those, I like to play God. Select your sub-system (Terra-Luna, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn). Focus on the centrepiece using ctl-F1, zoom out till you have a good view of the whole, then just watch those suckers roll around. I feel I achieve an insight into their dynamics, making me a better navigator. And it is just so beautiful to see them do their thing. Often I fall asleep watching the Galilean moons dance around their daddy. Sublime. My wife thinks I'm nuts by the way. She may well be right.

Before I encountered Orbiter I had a vague enthusiasm for space, growing on 40 years of dreams, beginning with the Apollo flights which I witnessed as a child. Now those dreams have solid grounding in celestial mechanics, mathematics, plantetary science, politics, physics, engineering and history. Without Orbiter I'd still be in the Luke Skywalker stage.

Sincere thanks to Martin Schweiger for making my vague dreams into something informed and infinitely more interesting.