General Question Do you use UCGO? If so, how?

[sunshine135]

It has now been over a year since Dan released UCGO. A look through the forums shows many developers have created new cargo, packable ships, and a handful of new scenery. My questions are as follows: Do you use UCGO past loading a few containers on the Arrow Freighter and DGIV? Do you use the cars for anything? Do you use the AI? Does UCGO add a significant amount of depth for you to use it, or is the depth of its usage superfluous to your Orbiter enjoyment? Do you go so far as to offload cargo and then pick it up with a forklift? Do you pick your crew up with a rover or bus?

 

[garyw]

I use the cars feature quite a bit.

I've got my landing convoy to meet incoming spacecraft. On Ascension island we've got the Bus, cars and Loru's firetruck.In Russia we've got ummu carrying helicopters and an ATV carrying temporary facilities for the returning crew.

I've also added UCGO to Lorus ships and do sometimes do some cargo moves. There is a lot of things that now happen on the ground in preperation for a mission or post landing from a mission. For me, it adds to the depth of the mission and gives me something to blog about/add to my ISA pages.

 

[N_Molson]

I feel that UGCO is somewhat unfinished, and I eagerly wait for an update.

 

[liber]

I feel that UGCO is somewhat unfinished, and I eagerly wait for an update.

Yeah,agree with that...maybe add more animation...better VC option...

 

[Eli13]

Yeah, I'm still waiting for a VC for his DG-IV which honestly is my favorite spaceplane. Mostly out of sediment, its what i learned the basics of orbiter in.

 

[Kveldulf]

Yeah, I'm still waiting for a VC for his DG-IV which honestly is my favorite spaceplane. Mostly out of sediment, its what i learned the basics of orbiter in.

Dan has said that it's not going to happen.

 

[Eli13]

Well thats too bad, maybe some one out there could do it? I have neither the time, patience, skill, knowledge or even software to do such a thing.

 

[sunshine135]

Dan has said that it's not going to happen.

Correct. Dan mentioned more than once to many of us that he felt that there would be no DGV. I simply do not believe Dan has the heart to make any further improvements to the DG.

What Dan has hinted at is improvements to UCGO, so those who see it as "unfinished" are in a way, correct. This would mean sections of the Arrow freighter like engineering might get some visualization. Autopilots will one day be added that are similar to the DGIV. Also, Dan mentioned that he would have liked to have made better animations on the Arrow in general. This is where his Orbiter heart is at.

Unfortunately, Dan feeds his family by programing, so his pay for efforts come first. Want Dan to build more UCGO? Buy FS PASSENGERS

http://www.fspassengers.com/

 

[Wishbone]

I have used UCGO for rover prototyping, but am in the process of switching to a separate DLL. It is easier than spacecraft, so I'm not waiting for Artlav to implement automatic UCGO-to-DLL conversion

 

[sunshine135]

I had hoped to see a few more responses than this, so maybe not many folks are using it. Thanks to those who responded though.

 

[N_Molson]

Correct. Dan mentioned more than once to many of us that he felt that there would be no DGV. I simply do not believe Dan has the heart to make any further improvements to the DG.

The way I see it is that the XR-Series somehow buried the DG-IV series. They offer more "realism" in some way (it's difficult to say why), though I was loving the way crew was managed in the DG-IV (especially the crew meshes being deleted during EVAs), and the XR2 futuristic look (excellent mesh) also contributed to make the DG-IV look "old".

Also, the standard DeltaGlider offer a few more features at each Orbiter release.

 

[Dambuster]

I haven't played Orbiter in quite a while, but when I do I use UCGO quite a lot. I find it adds massively to the immersion-side of things, even though it can require irritating amounts of micromanagement at times (like trying to set up a base). Two things that I recall finding annoying are: 1) IIRC sometimes objects flew off planets when at high time accelerations, and 2) the cars shut off above 10x time acc - this one I find highly annoying.

Apart from those two things, I love it!

 

[MeDiCS]

I had hoped to see a few more responses than this, so maybe not many folks are using it. Thanks to those who responded though.

I'm currently using UCGO for some raytracing tests. They seem to be ideal for that, since their geometry is simple yet visually good, which means less time waiting for the damn thing to render before doing another micro change to the scene...

 

[theflyingfish]

I tend to use UCGO mainly as a transport, as in I pull a couple UMMU's out of a Prelude base, load them into an SUV, and then transport them to the DGIV or XR2 that I'll be using. I went as far as to plan out special routes, so that once the crew were dropped off I could automate the SUV and it would return to the Prelude. (By the way, is dansteph going to update the Prelude Base? It was one of my favorite vessels, and it couldn't even move.) I also liked using the UCGO ISS, and moving people and supplies between Earth and the ISS.

Outside of that, no I don't use UCGO all that much. I don't use the DGIV anymore because you cannot do manual re-entry in it, which to me kind of defeats the purpose of the craft as I do all of my re-entries manually. (I've tried the RCS+Elevon re-entry method that has been suggested, but it only works some of the time.) For some people the lack of manual re-entry isn't a problem, but these days I prefer to use the XR1 and the XR2 because they are more complicated. (And the XR1 has a VC, to boot!)

For me, I've never been in to the more finite tasks of UCGO, like manually using the forklift to offload cargo or routing a whole convoy of cargo trucks to pick up the 20 tons of cargo I just XR5-lifted into the area. Too time consuming.

 

[Bloodworth]

I do use ucgo for building research bases in many of my flights. Haven't used the cars much except for rovers. I do find that it adds a certain amount of depth to my orbiter enjoyment, in addition to the fact that it can make for some epic screenshots

 

[Interceptor]

I use UCGO to move cargo,and supplies to the ISS,and, ESS station from WAI to earths LEO,and then onto other planets ,and it adds alot of depth ,and enjoyment.It will be nice when ever Dan has sometime to update it Though.

 

[Tex]

I had hoped to see a few more responses than this, so maybe not many folks are using it. Thanks to those who responded though.

Not quite 24 hours had passed from your first post to this one. I'm sure more people will reply after they've had a chance to sift through the hundreds of news posts we get daily. Also bear in mind, not everyone visits everyday.

For me personally I love UCGO! It really was a much needed addon for traveling the solar system IMO. The animations seem great to me. I would rather have local light sources supported so I can see while docking inside the dark belly of the Arrow. I use the cars probably less than others, but I do enjoy having them, especially for setting up a base on Moons in the solar system. I much prefer the XR2 over the DGIV though, so I always have that docked inside for my trips.

 

[Izack]

I almost never use UCGO or the DG-IV anymore, though they were pretty much the only things I used for the first few months of flying in Orbiter. Now all I ever do is some space station building and a bit of development. Somehow it seems lately that flying a Progress up to deliver a few kilograms of intangible supplies to a little space station is more satisfying than having a hundreds-metre-long metallic leviathan hauling tonnes of freight over millions of kilometres to bases on other planets. :shrug:

Although to be completely honest in the last few weeks all I've done is read this forum to see what everyone else is doing with Orbiter. :lol:

 

[Ark]

I use it occasionally, it's good to have some way to simulate cargo. Unfortunately my Orbiter installation has some kind of bug that completely prevents me from using the DGIV, so the XR series have pretty much become my spaceplanes of choice.

 

[Wonderer]

I used to use UCGO quite a lot, but eventually using cars in every spaceport became too time consuming and then the dreadful bug with packages packing themselves up on every restart emerged, which put on hold my every solar exploration plans.