New Release Interplanetary Modular Spacecraft RC9

[jedidia]

I thought you had to be a member of that group to post in it.

Nevertheless, I'd like to make a polite request for IMS2 here.

Yes, you have to be a member. Once I get into a reasonably advanced stage there will be a development thread here, but currently I'm still very much prototyping, which is a bit early for feature requests...

 

[Dantassii]

The bumble bee and the expert

Yeah it's big. Interesting the guys in NSF hate my Gateway Station, and it's three times bigger than ISS, but would look like a pencil next to your IMS. I'm thinking NSF would rip you to shreds. I like it, looks cool. Glad your sorting out the bugs with docking and such...

Government bureaucracies and foundations run by bureaucrats/experts in the field tend to hate things that are designed by people who think outside the box. In the early 1960's, when sending a man to the moon was debated, the bureaucrats refused to believe sending a man to the moon was worthwhile to contemplate, let alone actually do. Luckily Kennedy overruled them. When Lunar Orbit Rendezvous was being talked up by people thinking outside the box, the bureaucrats and the experts refused to believe that rendezvous was even possible in Earth orbit let alone Lunar orbit. Luckily, von Braun (and others) overruled them.

When I was working on my MS Thesis, I was told the story of the bumble bee and the Aerospace Engineering Expert. An expert in Aerospace Engineering had 'proved' that there was no way that a bumble bee could fly, even though reality said otherwise. It was a graduate student who proved that all of the expert's assumptions on how a bumble bee's wing worked were totally wrong. The expert had assumed that the wings on a bumble bee were flat, inflexible, stayed in a non-lifting shape, and did not rotate during wing flapping. Using a strobe camera on a bumble bee in flight, the grad student proved that the wings were curved in an airfoil-like shape, that they flexed and changed their shape constantly during each wing flap, and most importantly, they rotated around several axis.

A wise man once was paraphrased:

If an expert says something can be done, he's probably right. If an expert says something cannot be done, then he's dead wrong.

I suspect that our first manned, long range ships to the outer planets and beyond will be quite HUMONGOUS. Possibly even larger than anything we've seen in Orbiter or any science fiction story to date.

Dantassii
HUMONGOUS IMS shipbuilder

 

[Cosmic Penguin]

Government bureaucracies and foundations run by bureaucrats/experts in the field tend to hate things that are designed by people who think outside the box. In the early 1960's, when sending a man to the moon was debated, the bureaucrats refused to believe sending a man to the moon was worthwhile to contemplate, let alone actually do. Luckily Kennedy overruled them. When Lunar Orbit Rendezvous was being talked up by people thinking outside the box, the bureaucrats and the experts refused to believe that rendezvous was even possible in Earth orbit let alone Lunar orbit. Luckily, von Braun (and others) overruled them.

When I was working on my MS Thesis, I was told the story of the bumble bee and the Aerospace Engineering Expert. An expert in Aerospace Engineering had 'proved' that there was no way that a bumble bee could fly, even though reality said otherwise. It was a graduate student who proved that all of the expert's assumptions on how a bumble bee's wing worked were totally wrong. The expert had assumed that the wings on a bumble bee were flat, inflexible, stayed in a non-lifting shape, and did not rotate during wing flapping. Using a strobe camera on a bumble bee in flight, the grad student proved that the wings were curved in an airfoil-like shape, that they flexed and changed their shape constantly during each wing flap, and most importantly, they rotated around several axis.

A wise man once was paraphrased:

If an expert says something can be done, he's probably right. If an expert says something cannot be done, then he's dead wrong.

I suspect that our first manned, long range ships to the outer planets and beyond will be quite HUMONGOUS. Possibly even larger than anything we've seen in Orbiter or any science fiction story to date.

Dantassii
HUMONGOUS IMS shipbuilder

At the risk of being hammered, I suggest you read the discussion mentioned above here first.... :tiphat:

 

[Dantassii]

Nearly done with the design of my SSTV

The Solar System Transport Vehicle is nearing the end of the design phase. If all the parts align the way I expect them too (I still have several days worth of puzzle fitting to verify this) and the RCS system I've installed is able to hold an attitude during a main engine burn, here's the 'final' tally of modules that make up the SSTV:

All modules except the NTEs are from the IMS modules that come with IMS 1.0 R2. The NTEs are from the add-on Release 2 of additional modules for IMS 1.0 that was posted a few weeks ago.

616 BCCH (that's 17+ full XR5 payload bays)
6 BM004
8 BM012
17 BM203
2 BM204
2 BM213
2 BM215
18 BM216
40 BM222
11 BM230
14 BN200
99 BN301
18 BR200
90 BRCS2
8 BT100
316 BT101
70 BT102
2 BT201
8 BT301
6 BT302
5 non-SSBB Hab rings (25 modules total)
3 DADG (2 for docking XR5's)
7 Hyper Engines (5 forward, 2 reverse)
64 non-SSBB H2 tanks (the HUGE ones)
60 NTE (all forward, they are in case the experimental Hyper Engines fail)
16 640m2 High Temperature Radiators (these are used during burns when the BR200's are facing the sun and are unusable)
108 BTanks 103 (for RCS fuel)

For a total of 1,636 Modules (if my math is correct).

I haven't integrated this ship because I haven't finished attaching all the modules yet (I still have about 350 BCCHs and 20 BRCS2s to attach).

My plan is to take it on a test spin around the Earth-Moon system to see how it handles. I had to add a whole bunch of BRCS2s in the last update because it took nearly 2 orbits of the earth to align itself for a O+ burn and once the burn started, it couldn't hold the alignment. So I increased the BRCS2's by a factor of 5. I also discovered I needed more RCS propellant, so I increased the RCS propellant tanks by a factor of 17.

After I get it all together, integrated, and tested, if I like how it handles, I'll post some new pictures.. maybe even a zipped up copy of the scenario file of it in next to the ISS with 2 XR5's docked just to give something to size it against and to allow folks to view it from various angles.

My framerate is now 10 FPS when I view it from the outside....

And Jedidia, IMS 1.0 is still able to handle it...

Dantassii
HUMONGOUS IMS shipbuilder

 

[Dantassii]

I just used the Scenario Editor to dock the SSTV with the ISS

And it actually FITS! I mean nothing in the SSTV interferes with the ISS components when I dock using the central docking port of the SSTV with Port 1 on the ISS.

And how big is my ship?

It's about 5 times as long, 3 times as wide, and 4 times as thick.. and probably is 200-300 times as heavy. :OMG:

I bet if I kept the ISS docked I could drag it out of LEO and all the way to an orbit around Titan... Imagine the ISS in orbit around Titan... :woohoo:

All that's left is 224 more BCCH's and maybe 4 more sets of RCS thruster pods (each RCS thruster pod is a BT102 with 5 BRCS2's docked to it). This is a good thing as I'm running out of unique names to name things so they don't CTD when I reload the scenario. I've been saving it after every 4-8 modules and testing the reloadability every 4 saves just so I don't waste a lot of time building and then find I'm unable to reload it.

I'm still not looking forward to docking over 700 BG cargo modules to the finished ship. And it would take 18 XR5s to bring up a complete payload loadout, not to mention 2 more fully loaded XR5s to dock with it. :facepalm:

Oh and Jedidia? My framerate is down to 8 FPS, but IMS 1.0 is still hanging in there!

Dantassii
HUMONGOUS IMS shipbuilder

 

[Michael_Chr]

My new IMS vessels

In the meantime

While Jededia is working the the new/updated IMS code I have been working along with my project. It now consists of three vessels:

• One large Space station in LEO
• One Heavy Lunar Supply Ship (LSS) (an updated/graded version of the same ship I presented earlier.
• One Maintainence module(M-module) that docks on to the Supply ship

Please follow the link to a forum album containing the screen shots of these vessels: http://www.orbiter-forum.com/gallery/showgallery.php?cat=672&ppuser=0

The idea is that the space station acts as a yard since one of the docking ports is actually a bay that (almost) completely surrounds the LSS whilst docked to the right port. The M-module then docks on the aft end of the LSS thus making up for some interesting and challenging docking work. The new RV orientation MFD is an exellent tool for this
[ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=6221"]http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=6221[/ame].

One thing I must say while working with this is that I'm really looking forward to the possibility of using IMS with the DX9 client. Below you will see a screendump of my FPS. The situation is that all three vessels as listed above(+ a XR2 instance) are freshly spawned (after finalisation) and docked as mentioned above.


As you can see the lowest framerate with the inline client is 14FPS which is representative of a docking situation. The spikes in the graph are when I reposition the camera and therefore not representative. The slope at the end is a situaion where an XR2 was undocked seen from inside view and therefore quite representative. The HW used is a laptop (Core I5 + 1GB dedicated graphices card). I dont think that running it on better hardware will help that much. I should also...in all fairnes...add that I have made extensive use of various kinds of trussed modules which I believe makes the polygon count increase

Therefore Jedidia... Your work with optimizing the IMS code is highly appreciated :thumbup: and I look forward to be able to work with my IMS ships using the DX9 client. I believe that it will make a huge difference. And I'm also one of the people who monitor your progress carefully and makes a sigh of relief when you get closer to the goal

Also a big thanks to Peter Ross for inspirering with the Airdocks. The airdocks used on the station are from Greg Burch Airdock 2.0 in an IMS resized version with an updated cfg file.

Right now I will get my self into develop some documentation and preparing future mission about and with these vessels while waiting for the IMS update... :tiphat:

Best regards

Michael

 

[jedidia]

I believe that it will make a huge difference.

I wouldn't bet too much on it. The problem with Gregs modules is that the polycount is, quite frankly, insane. Some tests have hinted that the framerate for large vessels in D3D9 client might indeed be lower, because there's more calculations per poly going on than vanilla orbiter. While the calculations are generally faster, the high poly overhead is just overkill. IMS would work best on D3D9 client with modules with a much lower polycount, compensated by detailed textures and normal maps. Alas, that would call for an expierienced modeler and texturer, and none has been found yet that would be willing to put in the vast ammount of work necessary to make a comprehensive library of modules (quite understandable, really, since IMS doesn't even support D3D9 client yet...).

Anyways, thanks for the pics. Some nice construction there!

 

[PeterRoss]

Also a big thanks to Peter Ross for inspirering with the Airdocks. The airdocks used on the station are from Greg Burch Airdock 2.0 in an IMS resized version with an updated cfg file (attached to this post). Feel free to include them in any SSBB upgrade package...Peter
View attachment 12091

Thanks, Michael. The problem with including the rescaled AirLock into SSBB package is that it is a modified mesh originally made by a person who we weren't able to contact yet to receive his permission on modifying his meshes, you see. Modifying config files isn't very good by itself, but configs are not this much of a work of art, and everyone is doing it on Orbithangar anyway. So we decided to keep all the modified meshes to ourselves and not include them into release packs until we have Greg's approval.

P.S. And, hey, your vessels are great!

 

[Michael_Chr]

So we decided to keep all the modified meshes to ourselves and not include them into release packs until we have Greg's approval.

I concur...Something of a brainfart on my part with the mesh. So I removed the zipfile from my posting containing the mesh. If its OK with you I can PM you the file for later use - in case you do get Gregs approval.

 

[Michael_Chr]

Vanilla ORB vs. DX9 FPS with regards to SSBB modules

I wouldn't bet too much on it. The problem with Gregs modules is that the polycount is, quite frankly, insane. Some tests have hinted that the framerate for large vessels in D3D9 client might indeed be lower, because there's more calculations per poly going on than vanilla orbiter. While the calculations are generally faster, the high poly overhead is just overkill. IMS would work best on D3D9 client with modules with a much lower polycount, compensated by detailed textures and normal maps.

Hi Jededia

I did a quick comparison test between Vanilla Orbiter and DX9 client using an old (non-IMS) spacestation design based on Gregs SSBB 4.1 module I had lying around. The number of highly trussed modules on this design are much higher on than on the one I had on the IMS version. I believe that there are more than 600 modules on this design.

I did the test using the same scenario and used time skipx10. The slope in the FPS count are due to focus on a ship that initially are docked then undocked and then moves away whereby more and more of the large spacestation structures come into view end therefore increase processing demands.

The flukes you can see in the end of the graphs are my attempts to coax a low as possible FPS count. As you can see the lowest stable count for the DX9 was 19FPS with the Vanilla version going as low as 9FPS.

The test was run on a Core-I5 laptop with a 1 GB dedicated ATI graphics in 1920*1080 resolution.

I do confess that I'm not skilled in programming at all to understand or interpret what I'm seeing in this test so I'm not sure what this test is telling us.

But could there be a potential FPS gain FPS in switching to DX9 ??

The FPS gain might not be astronomical but an increase from 9 to 19 feel relatively better over a gain from 30 to 40 :thumbup:

FPS graph using Inline Graphics

And FPS graph using DX9 graphics client

Best regards
Michael

ps. what is also interesting is that the DX9 client does some stuff that causes small FPS spikes - even for no apparent reason i.e. I did not touch anything at that time

 

[PeterRoss]

I concur...Something of a brainfart on my part with the mesh. So I removed the zipfile from my posting containing the mesh. If its OK with you I can PM you the file for later use - in case you do get Gregs approval.

Sure, you can PM me the file - I have quite the collection of different modules already :tiphat:

 

[jedidia]

I do confess that I'm not skilled in programming at all to understand or interpret what I'm seeing in this test so I'm not sure what this test is telling us.

But could there be a potential FPS gain FPS in switching to DX9 ??

Thanks for the test, I never did it really thouroughly. I guess a lot depends on the graphics card... the better the card, the higher the gain should be (not just a higher framerate in general, but in fact a higher difference in FPS).

That said, D3D9 compatibility is looking up. I applied the lessons learned from IMS2 back to IMS, and stability is already much improved, and the transformation code neccessary for D3D9 client has also been adapted. It's not quite free of hickups and I'll have to get autosave back in there, but I like what I achieved so far. It's a bit of a pain because the workflow in IMS is one big noodle incident, but I'm on a stable course for RC3, which will be D3D9 compatible.

Does somebody have a scenario with an unintegrated vessel of reasonable size to test? (somewhere between 100 and 200 modules, maybe...)

 

[Dantassii]

FPS comments/observations

I've noticed when integrating my SSTV and Lunar Station ships that when I start, the 'at rest' FPS inside the control module is somewhere in the upper 70's to low 80's and when I do an integration, it drops down to 55-60 FPS for a second or 2. As I integrate more and more of the ship, the 'at rest' FPS slowly creeps up to a little over 105 FPS, but during each integration it still drops back down to 55-60. This is NOT a complaint, but an observation.

Now I can understand the drop during integration. There's a lot going on in that second or 2. But I don't understand why the 'at rest' FPS slowly increases. From inside the ship, the view out the front 'window' doesn't change during the integration. All the ship parts are behind the camera.

'course, when outside my ships, the FPS is around 8-16 FPS before integration and it gets up around 30-45 FPS when integration is complete. So there is some 'simplification' happening during the integration process. I haven't 'finalized' either of my HUMONGOUS IMS ships yet, but based on what actually happens during the 'finalization' process, I suspect that my external FPS will increase some more after I do that step. These HUMONGOUS IMS ships have around 1,500 construction ports before finalization, but only ~700 permanent docking ports when finalized. Oh, one final observation, during the integration process, the scenario file size initially starts to decrease, but about half way through it starts increasing again and by the time I'm finished integration the SSTV or Lunar Station, the resulting scenario file is slightly larger than the pre-integration scenario file.

Dantassii
HUMONGOUS IMS shipbuilder

 

[jedidia]

But I don't understand why the 'at rest' FPS slowly increases.

Quite simple. Before integration you have a few hundred vessels in the scenario that are all individually processed by the orbiter core. After the integration, there's only one left.

 

[Dantassii]

Ok, that makes sense

Quite simple. Before integration you have a few hundred vessels in the scenario that are all individually processed by the orbiter core. After the integration, there's only one left.

So even though I can't see the vessels, they would impact the FPS by that much? Hmm. Interesting.

On a further note, I spent about an hour last night docking BCCHs to my SSTV. I have just 4 more 'strings' of them to dock, each string is 16 BCCHs, so that's 64 BCCHs to go. Then I'll be all BCCH'ed out. Then I'll need to decide if I want to add a few more storage modules to the design before I attempt the largest integration I've ever attempted. To date, I've successfully integrated a 800+ module ship. the SSTV is now around twice that many modules. Going to be an interesting 3 day weekend... spending the whole weekend integrating! LOL.

Dantassii
HUMONGOUS IMS shipbuilder.

 

[jedidia]

If you'd have waited another week, you'd probably have RC3 ready to go... :lol:

 

[Dantassii]

RC3....

If you'd have waited another week, you'd probably have RC3 ready to go... :lol:

I assume that my scenario file created using RC2.3 will work with RC3.

Actually, I just finished added the 2nd to last batch of BCCHs on the SSTV. Just 32 more BCCHs to add. I've decided that I will add more hyper engines to bring the forward thrust on them to 8x the reverse thrust. Since I have 2 hyper engines in the reverse direction, that means at least 16 in the forward direction. There are 5 so far, so that's 11 more.

After I'm happy with the SSTV design then will resume construction work on the Lunar Station. The Lunar Station isn't actually ready to start construction of the SSTV, so all the work I've been doing on the SSTV so far is what I would consider 'design work'. Actual construction of the SSTV #1 (yes, I may actually build more than 1 of them!) won't begin at the Lunar Station until it's at IRRCC, which at the rate I can fly missions these days won't be for another few MONTHS. There is some disadvantages to building HUGE IMS ships one XR5 mission at a time.

I may actually wait until RC3 before I try to integrate either of them as the Lunar Station has a LOT of problems with the rotation and shifting of unintegrated modules when the module isn't at right angles to the main axis of the ship. From what I've read, you've figured out what probably caused that and have eliminated it from IMS 2.0 and (here I'm hoping) you're able to remove it from IMS 1.0 RC3.

I really am having a grand time just assembling these 2 ships with all the modules. Integrating them and actually flying them around the solar system may actually be an anti-climax to the actual design and construction...

AND hearing the reactions to them when people see the photos and/or try to fly them in their own installation of Orbiter.

I love going back and re-reading the responses to when I uploaded the photos of the Lunar Station at Initial Occupancy. I'm hoping my final design for the SSTV and the Lunar Station at IRRCC get similar reactions. Of course, I may have to migrate the Lunar Station over to IMS 2.0 before I finish it.. since I don't actually see myself finishing the Lunar Station until sometime in 2014 or early 2015. It's THAT big. If I do that, I won't be re-flying all the XR5 missions, I'll just use the scenario editor to build it up to the last IMS 1.0 XR5 mission, and then continue from there.

Dantassii
HUMONGOUS IMS shipbuilder

---------- Post added at 22:32 ---------- Previous post was at 18:15 ----------

I decided to run mission 99 to the Lunar Station tonight. After working with the 1600+ module SSTV, the 800+ module Lunar Station is a piece of cake to work with. Next up is mission 100 but it is going to be at least mission 105 before I can claim IRRCC and even then it will be iffy. Maybe I'll run it up to mission 125 or so before I'll start the construction of SSTV #1. That will give me enough refuel capability to fuel an SSTV enough for a short Lunar Station to ISS back to Lunar Station round trip as a shake down cruise. Been nearly a month since I last flew a Lunar Station construction mission with an XR5. VERY rusty, but I was still able to get an M=1 lift off and landed it w/out overshooting the landing pad.

I still think that IMS allows for some of the prettiest non-atmospheric ships I've ever seen. Especially when you see them in shadow. All the red running lights all over the place and the illuminated windows REALLY look nice.

Dantassii
HUMONGOUS IMS shipbuilder

 

[jedidia]

I may actually wait until RC3 before I try to integrate either of them as the Lunar Station has a LOT of problems with the rotation and shifting of unintegrated modules when the module isn't at right angles to the main axis of the ship. From what I've read, you've figured out what probably caused that and have eliminated it from IMS 2.0 and (here I'm hoping) you're able to remove it from IMS 1.0 RC3.

I didn't so much have to figure out a way of removing the problem, rather the problem removed itself once I threw out the docking port/attachment point duplicity. Unfortunately, doing that in IMS would be very much a rewrite of itself, so no luck there...

 

[Dantassii]

I didn't so much have to figure out a way of removing the problem, rather the problem removed itself once I threw out the docking port/attachment point duplicity. Unfortunately, doing that in IMS would be very much a rewrite of itself, so no luck there...

Ok, well, I still think I'll wait until R3 comes out before I do the final integrations of either the SSTV or the Lunar Station.

I've discovered that if I change the order that I integrate the various modules, the CTD and the rotation problems sometimes go away. Not all the time, but most of the time. And the CTDs always go away if I change the integration order.

Dantassii
HUMONGOUS IMS shipbuilder.

 

[jedidia]

And the CTDs always go away if I change the integration order.

Yes, I know... there's a few things at work here. RC3 will be somewhat more stable, but it still isn't the mother of stability... it works decently enough in D3D9, anyways. I think I'm just about done tinkering with it, only a few todos left, then I'll call it as good as it gets (it still crashes from time to time, and I have no idea why exactly there's still missing meshes every now and then...)