jedidia
shoemaker without legs
Orbiter Galaxy has been streamlined a lot lately, it never crashes anymore... on MY machine, we'll see how it puts up on others. Though I don't expect any trouble, you never know what happens.
For Win7 users it was probably fortunate that I got around to finally update from Win2k (longest OS in use in my whole lifetime, full 9 and somewhat years in service. DOS 6.1 is next with about 6 years of usage, closely followed by Win95 with 5 years. Let's see how long 7 will keep working!), because there was a rather quirky orbiter bug that would crash Orbiter Galaxy in Win7. Just for information, that Bug can crash ANY custom system in Win7, so if you're having trouble with custom systems and Win7, fret no more, Artlav's found you a solution.
There is also one other problem Orbiter Galaxy has to put up with that I can't do nothing directly about: initialising the Hud at great distances from the systems center crashes the sim. I worked around this by deactivating the hud before reload, so the new system loads without trouble. But if you're more than 2 or 3 lightyears out, don't you dare touch that hud, or you'll find yourself faster on the desktop than you can say "hud".
Of course, aproaching your target star might be a bit tricky without the hud, after all you want to know where retrograde is. For this purpose I made the vector MFD more flexible, it can now display the direction to or from either the source or the target star. When leaving the system you usually want to thrust right in the direction of the target star, while when entering a new system you'll want to thrust away from the direction of the new source star, because that should be retrograde. It should be enough to get you a good aproach until you're close enough to activate the hud again.
Another thing I have not been able to solve yet is the rotation of the vessel uppon arriving in the target system. Although velocity and position are correct relative to the systems ecliptic, the ship doesn't face where it should. Neither I nor others have found a satisfactory explanation for this yet, the code seems ok, and I'm somewhat of a novice when it comes to Euler rotation, so I'm having few hope that I'll find the problem. As it is, you'll have to align your ship uppon arrival in the new system.
On the bright side, I added is an absolute killrot function. When it is active, and you engage the killrot autopilot, at the end ALL rotation will be digitally anihilated, so your ship will lie stable on course under high time acceleration. And high time acceleration is what you'll need indeed if you don't want to use a warp drive. Man, it's BORING! Orbiter Galaxy therefore officially recommends this as additional addon :lol:.
Just kidding. I'm now starting the task of putting a fuel calculation in there, so you can skip travel time and still arrive with the right amount of fuel. But it's NOT that easy. It's all very nice to imagine the turnabout to happen in the middle between the two stars, but that would only be correct if both stars have the same mass. Fly from an A star to an M star and that might not work out too well... So I'll have to calculate a sensible distance for the turnabout first, to calculate the length of the whole trip, and then the fuel consumption. I'm afraid it won't work with staks any way I turn it. At least not if you want to use different vessels in the stack for acceleration and deceleration burn. I'm also unsure how to handle the case of fuel shortage... just make the trip longer, I guess. I'll also have to put in a configurable margin of fuel the player wants left at the end of the trip, for understandable reasons. Looks like this will be a bit more work than I thought it would be.
No news from Artlav so far, I'm sure he's working on the texture library every now and then, when he's not having other brilliant ideas.
For Win7 users it was probably fortunate that I got around to finally update from Win2k (longest OS in use in my whole lifetime, full 9 and somewhat years in service. DOS 6.1 is next with about 6 years of usage, closely followed by Win95 with 5 years. Let's see how long 7 will keep working!), because there was a rather quirky orbiter bug that would crash Orbiter Galaxy in Win7. Just for information, that Bug can crash ANY custom system in Win7, so if you're having trouble with custom systems and Win7, fret no more, Artlav's found you a solution.
There is also one other problem Orbiter Galaxy has to put up with that I can't do nothing directly about: initialising the Hud at great distances from the systems center crashes the sim. I worked around this by deactivating the hud before reload, so the new system loads without trouble. But if you're more than 2 or 3 lightyears out, don't you dare touch that hud, or you'll find yourself faster on the desktop than you can say "hud".
Of course, aproaching your target star might be a bit tricky without the hud, after all you want to know where retrograde is. For this purpose I made the vector MFD more flexible, it can now display the direction to or from either the source or the target star. When leaving the system you usually want to thrust right in the direction of the target star, while when entering a new system you'll want to thrust away from the direction of the new source star, because that should be retrograde. It should be enough to get you a good aproach until you're close enough to activate the hud again.
Another thing I have not been able to solve yet is the rotation of the vessel uppon arriving in the target system. Although velocity and position are correct relative to the systems ecliptic, the ship doesn't face where it should. Neither I nor others have found a satisfactory explanation for this yet, the code seems ok, and I'm somewhat of a novice when it comes to Euler rotation, so I'm having few hope that I'll find the problem. As it is, you'll have to align your ship uppon arrival in the new system.
On the bright side, I added is an absolute killrot function. When it is active, and you engage the killrot autopilot, at the end ALL rotation will be digitally anihilated, so your ship will lie stable on course under high time acceleration. And high time acceleration is what you'll need indeed if you don't want to use a warp drive. Man, it's BORING! Orbiter Galaxy therefore officially recommends this as additional addon :lol:.
Just kidding. I'm now starting the task of putting a fuel calculation in there, so you can skip travel time and still arrive with the right amount of fuel. But it's NOT that easy. It's all very nice to imagine the turnabout to happen in the middle between the two stars, but that would only be correct if both stars have the same mass. Fly from an A star to an M star and that might not work out too well... So I'll have to calculate a sensible distance for the turnabout first, to calculate the length of the whole trip, and then the fuel consumption. I'm afraid it won't work with staks any way I turn it. At least not if you want to use different vessels in the stack for acceleration and deceleration burn. I'm also unsure how to handle the case of fuel shortage... just make the trip longer, I guess. I'll also have to put in a configurable margin of fuel the player wants left at the end of the trip, for understandable reasons. Looks like this will be a bit more work than I thought it would be.
No news from Artlav so far, I'm sure he's working on the texture library every now and then, when he's not having other brilliant ideas.
