Future spaceship simulator

[thefreakwatcher]

Hi sim enthusiasts I want to show you a really detailed sim, its a future spaceship simulator wich is being developed by Michael Juliano, he worked for a decaded as a USAF mechanic, studied physics and worked for a few decades in videogame development. The sim is therefore higly accurate in terms of how ship systems interaction with each other in case of failure during combat or deterioration. Of course full Newtonian physics are implemented and every system is physically modeled.

The sim is on Steam Early acces so even if it only has a few (some of them quite challenging) missions and a sandbox to test your abilities a full dynamical campaign is on the line, I´ve been following this sim for 2 years and the developer has never failed to acomplish his goals. Some closer installments are EVAs and inflight repairs. Right now a utility ship is implemented, 3 more combat ships are on the line.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0TwDWk4pEM

If interested have a look at the Steam page or official forums http://steamcommunity.com/app/366000 http://isiforums.net/f/forumdisplay.php/166

Thank you for your time

 

[jedidia]

Ah yes, I posted about that a while ago... nice to see it's getting serious!

 

[Urwumpe]

Well, the price of 27.99€ is a bit high for early access for my taste right now, how is the cost-benefit ratio?

 

[Enjo]

Gee. 12 minutes of a checklist procedure. It would be fun for me until the 3rd time of doing it. I still prefer Orbiter, it's DG-S and all the crazy addons we built around it.

 

[Urwumpe]

Gee. 12 minutes of a checklist procedure. It would be fun for me until the 3rd time of doing it. I still prefer Orbiter, it's DG-S and all the crazy addons we built around it.

Judging the other videos, there are also other "space tug" like missions available, which seem to be artificially more difficult by a higher human workload.

The solar system in the game seems to be using circular orbits... most Orbiter beginners wouldn't really feel challenged by it.

Not that I don't like the idea and the execution looks pretty good so far. But the automation of tasks is pretty much on Space Shuttle level (and that is generally considered bad, since it made things worse that had been already bad on Apollo), which is unrealistic even for a concurrent spacecraft.

Maybe a few EA-releases in the future. Depending on this game for fund rising for hiring more artists and developers in the future feels like a bad choice to me, even in a very optimistic business case, there would be only a few thousand customers around for such a simulation. I can understand the enthusiasm, but it also has to put food on the table. Of course, Michael Juliano could also avoid hiring people and rely on subcontractors for a while.

 

[Col_Klonk]

I enjoy study-sims (DCS.. etc) and this looks like a nice piece of work.
The thing that puts me off is ..Steam.. I don't do it, and never will.

Make it a 'portable app' and you might have a customer here, depending on whether it can match Orbiter's physics.. and KSP ship building capabilities.

 

[Urwumpe]

The thing that puts me off is ..Steam.. I don't do it, and never will.

I quite like Steam, it is just harmful to my bank account. :lol:

The planned list of architectural features is quite interesting:

Detailed Ship Systems: Ship systems are based on both extrapolated real-world, and plausible theoretical, designs–represented in simulation-like detail and inter-dependent. Faults in one system affects others in various ways. Study Sim-Like Control: You can take both high and low-level manual control of your ship from pre-flight to post.
SOI Assistance: Your Ship’s Onboard Intelligence (SOI), while functioning, will be available to help with low-level ship system management, freeing you to focus on the high-level tasks at hand.
Single-Player Hybrid Campaign: Dynamic missions based on current military and civilian assets. You and your squadron’s performance alters key scripted missions to advance the campaign’s story.
Multiple Squadrons/Multiple Roles: You will choose to fly for one of three (eventual) squadrons, each with its own unique role and ship. Both squadrons fly together to achieve mission objectives.
FPS Gameplay: Move freely from one docked ship to another, perform Extra-Vehicular Activities (EVA’s), effect repairs to your ship during flight, and interact with other squadron pilots in-between missions.
Various Peripheral Support: User-defined control mappings. Bind commands to a number of game pads/controllers. Six-DOF Track-IR support. Planned Oculus Rift/VR Support.

Still, I miss some sort road map there.

 

[Quick_Nick]

I enjoy study-sims (DCS.. etc) and this looks like a nice piece of work.
The thing that puts me off is ..Steam.. I don't do it, and never will.

Make it a 'portable app' and you might have a customer here, depending on whether it can match Orbiter's physics.. and KSP ship building capabilities.

I like the DCS style as well.
And I don't do non-Steam!

 

[Col_Klonk]

Orbiter..KSP ?

 

[Urwumpe]

Orbiter..KSP ?

KSP is Steam here.

Orbiter is "consuming 140 GB on a 1 TB HDD and growing" :lol:

Still, I don't want every game to be just the same here.

 

[PeterRoss]

Well, after some practice it took me 6 minutes from mission start to undocking, and it was made without any haste. Author promised that pre-launch procedures will be heavily assisted by onboard computer when it will be finished. The fully manual startup will be needed only in the situation when onboard computer is malfunctioning, I guess.

At the current state of develompent there is a sandbox system where you can fly from planet to planet, find a station on its orbit, rendezvous and dock with it.
Interplanetary autopilot can only do constant acceleration direct transfers, but some non-implemented yet but already placed indicators are hinting Hohman transfers will be there too. Autopilot is quite smart, can insert you on orbit around target body, and you can pre-define orbit's PeA, ApA and inclination. While it can achieve required PeA with quite a precision, an ApA error may be a couple of hundreds of km, but I guess it will be fixed one day.

There are currently no any means of getting tagret's orbital elements or any other data required for manual rendezvous planning, but you have relative velocity vector indicator and its numerical value too, as vell as distance to the target. It makes orbital maneuvers a game of guessing. Still its possible, I did it, and will do again.

Docking is almost the same as in Orbiter, even somewhat simplier.

Game lore is kinda crazy. Humans made some kind of space superweapon surprisingly resembling a Death Star, and when using in on rebels' fleet they accidentally tore the space apart and, well, rebels fell into the hole and unexpectedly committed first interstellar travel. They were dispersed among stars and colonized some of them. Of course then they started to fight with each other. Humans are so human.
If I remember right, it's the first mention of colonising space by spraying people around it like fungi spores or stuff.

In the whole, I like the game. I hope it will grow into something more. And the panel boards are causing a warm feeling in me by its resemblance with IMS interface :lol:

 

[Urwumpe]

In the whole, I like the game. I hope it will grow into something more. And the panel boards are causing a warm feeling in me by its resemblance with IMS interface :lol:

I can agree. I bought it yesterday despite my concerns after some immense amount of frustration at work (About 14 years too old legacy software for Linux kernel 3.3, with too new C source code for a Solaris gcc from 2004 :facepalm

I really recommend doing the tutorials, because they explain the intended functions of the various subsystems, not everything is as you are used from a Space Shuttle.

The controls are a bit edgy, but the flight behavior is sound. The possibility of IVA is also interesting. A quick math check on the orbit elements also suggests that it is at least on par with KSP, hard to tell right now if it can compete with Orbiter.

So far, it is a pretty nice potential, the question is, will all those features come eventually.

The possibility of modding it also sounds interesting, having a framework for large crewed spacecraft would be more interesting than doing it in Orbiter and inventing the framework...

The default keyboard bindings are a mess if you are using a laptop - better use everything else but that.

 

[jedidia]

having a framework for large crewed spacecraft would be more interesting than doing it in Orbiter and inventing the framework...

Working on it... Still think I'll get there before him... :lol:

 

[Urwumpe]

Working on it... Still think I'll get there before him... :lol:

Well, I still keep on doing similar here, but I think he'll be quicker than I will in the next years.

But with the new features for Sketchpad2, I can now do an even better implementation of ARINC661Container than I ever planned... not too bad.

 

[jedidia]

There's been a Sketchpad2? Hell, I didn't realise that yet! :blink:

 

[Urwumpe]

There's been a Sketchpad2? Hell, I didn't realise that yet! :blink:

It is coming in the new beta.

See example here:

http://orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?p=534481&postcount=512

We mostly need it for more efficient rendering in SSU, but we could use it for a lot more than just that.