Question Delta II develompment questions

[kwan3217]

So, I'm working on a Delta II/Kepler model in preparation for the launch next week. (Sweet, I'm going! My first launch view ever! :hotcool I know there is already a Delta II, but it's not mine. I have a serious case of Not Invented Here syndrome.

Anyway, I have the basic flight model and meshes, but I have a couple of questions.

1) Does anyone know anything about nutation control? I need it for the third stage. I have a nutation control thruster, but I don't know anything about how to use it.

2) Is there a convenient way to set the center of gravity relative to the meshes in every frame? If there were, I could simulate the draining of propellant tanks and such. I know about ShiftCG, but it seems to take a bit of time and is more for staging than fuel shift.

3) How do you control the "skin" of a mesh? I know how to apply a texture to a mesh, but I want to control which texture is applied problematically, like DeltaGliderIV and the flags.

Thanks in advance, and as always, when and if I publish, it will be with full source code.

 

[tblaxland]

1) Does anyone know anything about nutation control? I need it for the third stage. I have a nutation control thruster, but I don't know anything about how to use it.

Nutation shouldn't be a problem for you because your idealised third stage should spin up nice and symmetrically. That aside, I expect that a nutation control thruster would fire perpendicular to the axis of rotation of the thrid stage (the Z axis in this case) such that it pushes that axis of rotation so that it aligns with the vector required by the vehicle guidance.

2) Is there a convenient way to set the center of gravity relative to the meshes in every frame? If there were, I could simulate the draining of propellant tanks and such. I know about ShiftCG, but it seems to take a bit of time and is more for staging than fuel shift.

ShiftCG is what you want because you want the thruster positions and so on to be updated automatically. If the frame rate hit is too bad, do it less often. Every second or so should be more than enough without out creating significant visualisation problems.

3) How do you control the "skin" of a mesh? I know how to apply a texture to a mesh, but I want to control which texture is applied problematically, like DeltaGliderIV and the flags.

You want oapiGetTextureHandle, oapiLoadTexture and oapiSetTexture.

 

[kwan3217]

Does ShiftCG really work that way? In the docs, it says that this shifts all the meshes and thrusters and drags the camera viewpoint in a smooth manner. Does the center of gravity change instantaneously, or does it drag with the camera? That's what I meant by taking time.

 

[tblaxland]

Does ShiftCG really work that way? In the docs, it says that this shifts all the meshes and thrusters and drags the camera viewpoint in a smooth manner. Does the center of gravity change instantaneously, or does it drag with the camera? That's what I meant by taking time.

ShiftCG works instantaneously. The just camera motion is smoothed.