Awesome, just found Orbiter

[Andy44]

When I first downloaded Orbiter, the very first thing I did was open the "Quckstart" scenario, throttle up the DG, and start flying around. I correctly guess that "G" raised the landing gear, felt how the bird handled, turned east, and nosed up for the stars. I think I somehow managed to reach orbit on the first or second try, although I couldn't figure out how the MFDs or other controls worked. Once I satisfied my "plug and play" impulse, I started reading through the manual, part by part, whenever I wanted to learn something else.

My advice is to do the same. Stick with the stock Delta Glider and follow the tutorials until you can manually launch, intercept and dock with the ISS, deorbit and land. Don't worry about being sloppy, everyone is at first. Read "Go Play in Space" and figure out how to get to the Moon, enter lunar orbit, and try a landing. It's tougher than you think to come down near the intended landing site without wasting lots of fuel.

Later, when you are ready for a challenge, try launching the space shuttle. Go to OrbitHangar and download David413's shuttle fleet when you are ready to try a manual reentry. Here I recommend using the autopilot first (AutoFCS), as this is very tough. Each of these milestones was a big joy for me.

 

[levans]

So far so good.

I've done a manual launch to ISS orbit, with an orbit plane correction and intercept. No docking yet.

Questions so far:
Is it possible to have the vehicles (I was using XR1 variant of the DG) do the burns automatically? I've been doing these manually, though using assists on MFDs of course, for the proper timings.

Is there a way to refuel on mid-flight (i.e. cheat)? When playing around, if you're inefficient (i.e. large orbital plane correction), or just messing about, it's easy enough to blow through all your main thruster fuel. I think there's an 'infinite fuel' cheat, but I'd like just to refill the tank manually (with a slider or a key press)... any dice?

All in all, I have a feeling I'm going to be enjoying this for a long time.

 

[computerex]

Levans, Orbiter's scenario editor allows you to refuel your vessel quite easily. If you want a slightly more immersible option, try this: http://orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?t=1361

 

[Xantcha]

Looks like i was bit to late with my "the very basics" tutorial

Ah well, happy orbiting, levans.

 

[TSPenguin]

The scenario editor is not able to refuel a XR class. You can (and I actualy do) have any other ship (usaly a standard DG) an dock it to your main vessel via the scenario editor and then refuel with the internal system.

I think the DGIV had some autopilots for circulating orbit and docking.

 

[tblaxland]

Questions so far:
Is it possible to have the vehicles (I was using XR1 variant of the DG) do the burns automatically? I've been doing these manually, though using assists on MFDs of course, for the proper timings.

Assuming you know how big the burn is to be, you can use [ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=3035"]BurnTimeCalcMFD[/ame]. It also includes orbit auto circularisation and some useful info such as total delta-v available. EDIT: You also need to point the ship manually - [ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=3165"]AttitudeMFD[/ame] can be helpful for this.

 

[levans]

Assuming you know how big the burn is to be, you can use BurnTimeCalcMFD.

Thanks for the tip. This works very nicely for orbit circularisation (as advertised). Is there anything equivalent for plane change maneuvers? I know the basic tool tells you when to burn, but you have to manually control the engines, and it seems like one (minor) step away from having the same completeness as the BurnTimeCalcMFD's circularisation tool.

 

[tblaxland]

Is there anything equivalent for plane change maneuvers?

The values TthA or TthD at the bottom of the Align Planes MFD tell you the required burn time for the ascending or descending nodes respectively. In BTCMFD, adjust Target DeltaV so that the estimated burn time matches these (use NV/PV to highlight and +/-/'/'/* to adjust). Enable manual start time (press MD until Time to Manual Start is yellow) then adjust the Time to Manual Start to some time less than your Tn (time to node) in Align Planes MFD. Arm BTCMFD when Tn = Time to Manual Start.

For pointing, remember the rule Anti-Normal for Ascending Node. Anti-Normal is the same as Orbit Normal (-).

 

[yagni01]

The scenario editor is not able to refuel a XR class. You can (and I actualy do) have any other ship (usaly a standard DG) an dock it to your main vessel via the scenario editor and then refuel with the internal system.

The XR-series also has a lot of cheat codes available in its config file to tweak your level of difficulty. Check out the documentation that comes with it for details.

 

[dbeachy1]

The scenario editor is not able to refuel a XR class.

At default XR config settings, that is correct: by default XR vessels prevent Orbiter from auto-refueling the ship so that touching down on a landing pad will not instantly refuel your vessel. However, you can enable Orbiter's auto-refueling (including refueling via the scenario editor) by setting OrbiterAutoRefuelingEnabled=1 in your C:\Orbiter\Config\DeltaGliderXR1Prefs.cfg file:

#--------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Enable or disable Orbiter's default auto-refueling behavior (i.e., when
# touching down on a landing pad.)  
#
# You should set this value to 1 (Orbiter auto-refueling enabled) only if you
# want to use an external refueling MFD (such as FuelMFD), or if you want Orbiter
# to automatically and instantly refuel you when you touch down on a landing pad.
#
# If you will only be using the XR1's built-in refueling features, leave
# this value set to its default of 0 (Orbiter auto-refueling disabled).
#
#   0 = Orbiter auto-refueling disabled (recommended)
#   1 = Orbiter auto-refueling enabled
#--------------------------------------------------------------------------
OrbiterAutoRefuelingEnabled=1

Remember, however, that enabling this will also allow Orbiter to auto-refuel your ship instantly whenever you land on a landing pad.

Something else you can do is change your ship's fuel ISP setting as follows:

#--------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Main Fuel ISP ("Specific Impulse") setting.  This determines how much 
# main/hover/rcs fuel is burned each second for a given thrust level.
# Higher settings allow longer flights without refueling.  Remember to 
# update the 'LOXLoadout' value later in this file as well so the crew will
# have enough oxygen for the mission!
#
# NOTE: The 'Expert' setting (0) is tuned so that you will need to use your SCRAM engines
# efficiently during ascent to LEO ("Low Earth Orbit").
# ISP values for each level are shown in [brackets].
#   0 = Expert    (ISS Only w/expert use of SCRAM engines and expert deorbit/landing)  [13943]
#   1 = Realistic (ISS Only)                [20914]
#   2 = Default   (ISS and Moon)            [25962]
#   3 = Medium    (ISS and Moon w/reserve)  [32981]
#   4 = Stock DG  (Moon w/large reserve; this is the original stock DG setting)  [40000]
#   5 = Big       (Mars)                    [52922]
#   6 = Huge      (Jupiter+)                [366251]
#
# The default value is 2 (ISS and Moon).
#--------------------------------------------------------------------------
MainFuelISP=2

This is the simplest way to "have more fuel available" for a mission so you won't need to refuel as often.

As Randy (yagni01) mentioned, there are lots of other settings in the config file for you to experiment with as well, including the [CHEATCODES] section. However, most pilots should only modify the normal configuration settings -- the [CHEATCODES] section is designed for advanced pilots who want to try something crazy...

 

[Tmaggard16]

i always get an error report whenever i try to launch and so i cant play orbiter could i get some help?

 

[Xantcha]

Tmaggard16: Can you be more specific? what error and what is in your orbiter.log after crash? (you can tell your orbiter settings and computer specs as well)

//also i'm unsure if it's right thread for that

 

[levans]

MainFuelISP=2

This is the simplest way to "have more fuel available" for a mission so you won't need to refuel as often.

This turns out to be perfect for my current requirements (tooling around, getting acquainted with everything). I like the fact that it's equivalent to having "super engines", i.e. fuel is still consumed, which provides a relative score of your efficiency in repeated maneuvers, and you can dial back the 'superness' over time.

Might be nice to have a "fill 'er up" button that could be enabled by one of these config settings, but now that I have a way to throw propellant around like its going out of fashion (!) that's not so pressing.

Cheers.