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Cross products aren't as useful in the case where the two vectors lie along the same line. Did you try calculating the angle between two vectors pointing in opposite directions? Seems like VectorMath::angle would result in atan2(0,1) for both the same direction and also for the opposite...

Similar is Kutta: Where I went to school and worked (Northwest, USA), amongst working engineers, in aerodynamics it is always the "KOO-tah Condition". (Proper German pronunciation.) However, it seemed most often to be the RUNG-gah - CUT-tah (Runge-Kutta) family of integration methods...

> Would be great to get hold of a free static analyzer too CppCheck does good work. It doesn't catch everything. It's primary concern is low false positives. It is getting steadily better. http://cppcheck.sourceforge.net/ Make sure you push the compiler warning level to the highest. It is...

Microsoft FSX flying and air traffic controlling on VATSIM (Virtual Air Traffic SIMulation), various air traffic control games - Radar Chaos was fun before the recent graphics upgrade, iRacing - now that the virtual Indy 5000 is past, I'm practicing with the Ford GT. Sniper Elite is fun angling...

Another organizational benefit in large projects derives from the actions of Source Code Control systems. These tools keep track of every change. if two or more programmers (starting from the same state of the code) change the same line of code then check the changes back into the system, the...

It depends on the school. It was a University or College of Engineering-levied requirement at the University of Washington. I ended up having to pay for almost half of an entire quarters worth of credits that were not counted toward my degree in order to make up for not having any foreign...

Checking that every member variable in a C++ class is initialized to some valid value, in every constructor, is critical in C++. It even doesn't matter very much what value that is. What is most important to me is that the value not be random. (If you don't initialize it specifically, some...

I've read some of the 1950's books available on Gutenberg in the last few years, and Rodion's RIP Foster is now one of my favorites. Almost all of it seemed at least semi-plausable. I'm disapointed the author didn't end up writing a series with that setting and characters. :thumbup: Maraming...

or, ... doing any simple task online, in front of everyone, while exposed to the variability that all those other people put into the system.

CppUnit is another xUnit system, open source in C++. I use it for Orbiter C++ code testing. http://cppunit.sourceforge.net/doc/lastest/cppunit_cookbook.html

http://dscb.larc.nasa.gov/DCBStaff/ebj/Papers/TM-107580.pdf Gives landing configuration weight as 19100 pounds force.

I suggest using standard coordinate frames and converting on input and output to the Orbiter API. Life is too short otherwise...

I would suggest using the plugin as a model of some vehicle subsystem that is always on. The MFD would be designed to: 1) display data from the plugin 2) accept commands from the user and send them on to the plugin With this architecture, the plugin is always on. If the MFD is not processing...

I was taught that Germans published everything in a "wierd font" up until 1945. I suppose it all depends on what one is familiar with.

One of my co-workers (a Canadian citizen) at NASA/JSC went almost all the way in the Canadian selection, making it to the "round of 20" . It was a great experience for her and quite a compliment. What I found interesting was the numbers. Something like first selection in 17 years for Canadian...

Yes, this is annoying. I had access to this a dozen years ago and remember it as very useful. I looked it up expecting $20 and found it was double that. (Like Texas property taxes, they have only one useful tax so they charge enough to be painful.) I use this frame for rendezvous work, for...

Wikipedia's Orbital Mechanics page shows an equation for r = p divided by (more) in the "Formulae for free orbits" section. This gives the distance from the center of the central body to the orbit (this is r, the orbital radius) as a function of some constants and the cosine of an angle. That...

When you expect to fly through a dispersed atmosphere, one strategy is to reenter with the lift horizontal and at the flight path angle that will bring you to the desired landing site, possibly with some roll reversals. This gives you the maximum amount of margin because if the atmosphere...

My suggestion is to scrap the left handedness and convert Orbiters highly non-standard coordinate systems to standard orbital mechanical frames at the start of any calculation, perform the calculation in the usual manner, then convert them back into Orbiterness only as needed. This way you can...

Density is probably the most appropriate criteria to use for determining the atmosphere limit. Density affects the trajectory through atmospheric lift and drag. Density affects the heating (most models seem to use density times velocity to some power). Density is used to scale "reentry flames"...