Project Enhanced Orion 20m (Update 3 - Feb 15)

[atomicdryad]

Zis is not nuts, zis is super-nuts - Richard Courant on viewing an Orion test.

This is a fork of Sputnik's [ame=http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=838]CVEL Orion[/ame], a interplanetary craft that moves by rapidly flinging small nuclear bombs behind itself. Orion was seriously considered in the 60s, but was deemed too problematic; while capable of high thrust and efficiency, the system requires heavy pusher plates, shock absorbers, and sturdy construction. The designs weighed in between 1 and 5 million metric tons, well beyond the capabilities of most conventional launchers. Orion is capable of getting to orbit on it's own with 800 bomblets, but the fallout would be the equivalent of a 10 megaton nuke.

Thankfully there are no nuclear test ban treaties in the simulator. The original CVEL Orion no longer works in orbiter 2010, however I have restored the 20 meter version and have been gradually enhancing it.
2.1 beta 2.1
* Made camera stop spamming syslog, added zooming sound.
* Eliminated certain syslog messages, put
Verbose 1
in the vessel .cfg if you like UMMU spam.

2.1 beta 1
* Feature: Camera/telescope system with meshes, ~300x zoom, and fov/pivot persistance. Soon to be .cfg customizable with object tracking.
* Feature: Remaining DeltaV now displayed on HUD, taking into account all docked vessels.
* Performance: Optimized HUD data gathering to only proc 10 times per second as opposed to ~150
* Code has been cleaned up -and- disorganized further!
** BUG ** Saving scenario will set your FOV to that of the current camera, instead of the cockpit camera.
Pre-update #2
* Working on making the boom visible from ground stations. See http://orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?p=237442&postcount=21
Update #1
* Customizable vessel parameters and HUD colors (see config/vessels/orion/*.cfg)
* Nuke yield adjustment now uses the 5 & 6 keys, and scales as 100%,50%,25%,10%
* Fixed crash when a vessel in solar orbit is destroyed.

New features
* Customizable vessel parameters and HUD colors (see config/vessels/orion/*.cfg)
* Improvements to the original model and custom texturing.
* HUD overlay menus providing documented keyboard control, and a ton of information.
* UMMU support, lighting, and remote EVA entry for all docking ports.
* 2 ports realigned to better accommodate ships such as the DeltaGlider
* Nuke disarming, arming safety locks, and yield selection.
* Preliminary COG shift compensation for RCS thrusters, using thrust attenuation. (z-axis for now).
* RCS: Visible thrusters and exhaust, thrust nerfed, isp and fuel increased - RCS is still a horrible gas guzzler, but the thing is 5,000,000kg so hey.
* Easter egg.

Availability
2.1 Beta 1 http://orbiterfixes.googlecode.com/files/orion-2011-2.1beta2.1.zip
2.0 http://orbiterfixes.googlecode.com/files/orion-2011-2.0.zip, and [ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=5069"]Search[/ame] (awaiting 24 waiting period on orbithangar). Full source code in the .zip.

Warning
It is not wise to engage the pulse drive in close proximity to ships/stations/kittens.

Requirements
Orbiter 2010 -only-, OrbiterSound, UMMU. DeltaGlider and IMFD optional for one scenario.

Todo
* Finish COG shift code.
* Make pretty better.
* Animated stuff; radiators, solar panels, braces to give better support to berthed DGs, etc.
* Better color support for HUD (multiple colors per line, etc)
* Detachable bomblet magazines of assorted sizes.
* Maybe: 2d panels, vc, resource management.

 

[Woo482]

Awesome! :thumbup: I've always wanted a updated Orion addon to play with

 

[Johnman]

I have been thinking about this ship for a week now. Thanks for the update!

PS: The HUD causes a massive FPS drop on my machine. The more text there is the laggier it gets. I'm using Windows 7 64bit. Is this normal?

 

[Woo482]

Vista Boost should help improve your FPS in the panel, assuming you don't already have it installed. you can get it here: http://www.dougsorbiterpage.com/index-3.html

 

[Loru]

Impressive

 

[atomicdryad]

I have been thinking about this ship for a week now. Thanks for the update!

PS: The HUD causes a massive FPS drop on my machine. The more text there is the laggier it gets. I'm using Windows 7 64bit. Is this normal?

I've not noticed a performance hit, but I do need to optimize the hud and a number of other things, I think. It would help if there was a way to buffer it, as it really doesn't need to change more than a few times per second.

Is anyone aware of ways to do this? And are others experencing noticable lag?

 

[Ark]

Freakin awesome! Orbiter deserves a high-quality Orion addon, and this looks a LOT better than the old version. I especially like the COG-compensating mechanism that allows you to dock different kinds of ships without worrying about balance.

 

[Mandella]

Very nice to see this one get an update.

My suggestion: This might be more of an Orbiter limitation and not something you can code in, but it would be nice if the view distance of the blast could be extended. Right now it cuts out at about eighty kilometers, while you should be able to see it with the naked eye from the *moon.*

It would be fun to set a ground observer on the Earth's surface and watch it pass overhead while lifting orbit.

Edit: Really good framerate here, but I'm also using Vistaboost.

 

[orb]

My suggestion: This might be more of an Orbiter limitation and not something you can code in, but it would be nice if the view distance of the blast could be extended.

SetVisibilityLimit?

 

[Mandella]

SetVisibilityLimit?

Err.. Is that something that should be set in Orbiter Config, or the Vessel's dll? I don't see it.

Sorry if I'm missing something obvious here -- it won't be the first time.

:uhh:

 

[orb]

Err.. Is that something that should be set in Orbiter Config, or the Vessel's dll? I don't see it.

Sorry if I'm missing something obvious here -- it won't be the first time.

:uhh:

A VESSEL class member function (in the Orbiter API), so in DLL or set_visibilitylimit in LUA.

 

[N_Molson]

A very nice one ! :thumbup:

 

[n72.75]

I love this ship.

 

[Ark]

How did you do the vessel-destroying effect? It would be useful to put that into a UCGO box and bomb things with it.

 

[Linguofreak]

* Preliminary COG shift compensation for RCS thrusters, using thrust attenuation. (z-axis for now).
* RCS: Visible thrusters and exhaust, thrust nerfed, isp and fuel increased - RCS is still a horrible gas guzzler, but the thing is 5,000,000kg so hey.

From what I recall with Sputnik's original, COG shifting for steering with a pulse-thrust vehicle such as an Orion is a bad idea, because it makes the steering incredibly jerky.

To help with RCS gas guzzling, perhaps you could implement a [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_wheel"]reaction wheel[/ame] system?

 

[Sky Captain]

Nice work! Orion is among my favorite Orbiter vessels.

 

[Mandella]

From what I recall with Sputnik's original, COG shifting for steering with a pulse-thrust vehicle such as an Orion is a bad idea, because it makes the steering incredibly jerky.

To help with RCS gas guzzling, perhaps you could implement a reaction wheel system?

Yeah. I think we might always want to keep "Space Zero" as close to centerline as possible.

Wasn't the original design to stabilize it with gyros? Could it be detorqued under thrust? Or would that just bring us back to the original problem?

 

[Linguofreak]

Yeah. I think we might always want to keep "Space Zero" as close to centerline as possible.

Wasn't the original design to stabilize it with gyros? Could it be detorqued under thrust? Or would that just bring us back to the original problem?

It could be detorqued with RCS thrusters just fine under thrust. Detorquing with off-center COG under thrust would be as troublesome as using off-center COG under thrust for steering in any other situation. The advantage is that, as long as external torques aren't too bad, you can wait a long time between detorquings, perhaps only doing it when you "put into port" somewhere (said somewhere might have extra RCS fuel or special equipment that would be too much of a payload hit to take with you to help you detorque).

 

[atomicdryad]

Wasn't the original design to stabilize it with gyros? Could it be detorqued under thrust? Or would that just bring us back to the original problem?

The ship uses god-awful-high isp thrusters for rotation RCS to simulate gyros. The issue with RCS linear thrusts along an imbalanced axis can be corrected by applying torque against the resulting torque, however imho that is inefficient. The system I have implemented eliminates the generation of torque alltogether by governing the throttle of RCS on the lighter side.

However this currently works only for a z-axis imbalance during linear up/down/left/right movements. Ideally it should correct for imbalance on every axis. I'm planning to do this by calculating the 2d distance of each of the 4 thrusters acting along an axis, from that axis's center of balance, then downthrottling based on the resulting ratios.

This is only for RCS linear, of course, and I'm not sure how big of a performance hit it would be; it would need to be recalculated each timestep due to rcs fuel use shifting cog.

As far as main thrust, sputnik's original code makes the bombs explode slightly offcenter, howeever - as noted - this can turn the ship into a bucking bronco when it'ls low on fuel and lighter.

I'm confounded on how to solve the autopilot rotation issue caused by added weight. This is a problem with the autopilot's logic causing it to overshoot it's target angle due to slower angular accleration. Prograde/retrograde/etc only use 40% rot thrust, but while I have a function to calculate superstructure mass, I don't know how to calculate the extra thrust to add, to give the AP the torque it expects. Ideally there needs to be an AP that takes superstructure and attachment mass into account.

Also it could be fixed by simply shifting the entire RCS array to the new center of balance, but that's cheating. I wrote a function for that, however, and can re-add it to the ship if desired. It looks silly with exhaust, mind you.

 

[atomicdryad]

Updated, and uploading to orbithangar.