v0.1a
This is a tool for extracting information about objects orbiting earth. OrbiterTLE connects to a live orbiter simulation thru the localhost loopback, or across the internet (open port 39999 for OUIPC). Information is downloaded with regard to all vessels in a somewhat stable earth orbit. The data is then processed and TLE formatted information is outputted. This is the 'standard' format for defining orbital characteristics for software so there's many programs out there that can read TLE's and do useful things with them.Â
This is a great tool when combined with a good groundtrack prediction software for predicting launch and re-entry windows!
This page: http://www.satobs.org/orbsoft.html contains numerous programs that will load TLE data. Including other utilities that can extrapolate even more data from the TLEs...
The screenshot shows the OrbiterTLE program getting information from orbiter and importing it into Orbitron a freely downloadable sateliite tracking program (google it). I also included a picture of the MapMFD from orbiter to show that the Sim and Orbitron are synced.
Notes:Â Only captures vessels in EARTH orbit and the orbit must be closed elliptical (no hyberbolic orbits) ie: if Eccentricity is not between 0 and 1, the vessel is ignored.
Important Note: This utiltity is written in VB.NET and requires the Microsoft.NET Framework v2.0. So if you try to run it and get some bizarre error messages, download and install the .NET framework (you should have it anyway from Windows Update).
.NET Framework 2.0 can be found here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0856eacb-4362-4b0d-8edd-aab15c5e04f5&displaylang=en
This utility requires the OUIPC (Orbiter Universal InterProcess Communication) Module to be activated in Orbiter. OUIPC is Included, although it is only an unfinished BETA version at the moment. It is however complete enough to support this mod, and perhaps many others.
OUIPC is a multi-threaded TCP server application that allows access to the Orbiter API thru simple ASCII based commands either locally, or across the internet. More on OUIPC will be available in the future.