Does anyone know if this problem is being adressed

[agent036]

I love Orbiter, and have been using it since 2001 (back when the DG looked like a big red blob). While lots of changes have been made to make Orbiter a much better simulator I feel that one important point has been over looked.

When you set how strong the RCS thrusters are on a ship Orbiter always assume that they are 1 meter away from the center of mass. While this works alright for setting up a single vessel is also causes the CG of docked vessels to be completely wrong. Thus if you have a 200 meter long ship that weighs several thousand tons, and you dock a 5 ton work pod to the side of it the handling characteristics of the mother ship are completely thrown off even though the pod is very small.

If Orbiter assigned thrusters to be at the edges of the ship's bounding box then docked ship physics would be much more realistically handled. Has anyone looked into this?

 

[Urwumpe]

In a vessel based on a DLL, orbiter uses the accurate positions of the thrusters. It only applies to configuration files.

And that applies only to configuration files, if you don't read 3DModel.pdf, page 3.

 

[agent036]

In a vessel based on a DLL, orbiter uses the accurate positions of the thrusters. It only applies to configuration files.

And that applies only to configuration files, if you don't read 3DModel.pdf, page 3.

What about Spacecraft.dll ships? I can't code a dll but I'm fairly handy with INI based ships.

 

[Urwumpe]

What about Spacecraft.dll ships? I can't code a dll but I'm fairly handy with INI based ships.

Spacecraft3.dll? you would have to read the docs, I am not knowing how the parameters are called there.

(No such parameter for spacecraft3.dll)

 

[agent036]

I looked at the page you mentioned and I could be wrong but I think the Attref lines only define where the thrusters appear, not where their actual thrust is coming from. I believe that orbiter always assumes that thrusters are one meter from the CG for the purposes of force application. http://orbiter-forum.com/editpost.php?do=editpost&p=21577

 

[Urwumpe]

I looked at the page you mentioned and I could be wrong but I think the Attref lines only define where the thrusters appear, not where their actual thrust is coming from. I believe that orbiter always assumes that thrusters are one meter from the CG for the purposes of force application.

No, according to the API docs, it is really thruster reference.