Okay, working on some issues, not going to talk about them at the moment.
Something that interested me was in the Centaur G/G thread, namely how it is
intended to allow for a custom PAF to be affixed to the Centaur US.
I mentioned WAYBACK that I wanted Aquarius to have the option for custom payload adapters, which in principal should be easy to implement, but in practice wasn't very easy.
The main issue stems from the fact that Orbiter treats the COG of the individual stages as the point of the .msh's origin, as intended. This means that the attachment plane for such a adapter must be treated as the positioning of a payload, which in turn, means editing the files directly.
The Centaur G/G goes over this by making the origin the attachment plane, so all you have to do is model your adapter's attachment plane to the origin, and they would automatically stick together when rendered in a simulation. The offset of the adapter's attachment plane (or a payload) would then only have to equal the adapter's own height, and the payload would attach to this.
However, if I were to do this, the stage would still rotate over the now extremely-forward origin, so it becomes rather inaccurate and strange looking. So my question is:
Is there a way to set a point for COG, and if so, how? This would override the origin point as the defaulted COG, so it could be used for the aforementioned payload attach fittings.
Also, There was a lot of work done on Aquarius' technical feasibility before starting on this addon, but one thing I never managed to determine a concrete launchpad design/layout, so I'm not sure what it's going to be like at the moment. I'm wondering if Velcro can integrate animations, so that umbilical drawback and the like can be simulated...