Launch MFD releases

[Ripley]

Wouldn't it be great to have a video tutorial about LaunchMFD's possibilities?

 

[Interceptor]

HI,Enjo can you explain step by step on how to direct ascent syncro with the XR ships,it seems I tried to emulate what you did in the playback,and failed horribly.

 

[Enjo]

OK,Enjo I might have found a bug,or maybe not?anyways when I use the target box,and choose any target besides the ISS, like the Arrow it says manual target,and,the correction option does not work.Thanks

The target's inclination (in equatorial frame) needs to be greater than your latitude, otherwise it's impossible to calculate azimuth for that target

Wouldn't it be great to have a video tutorial about LaunchMFD's possibilities?

We're slowly reaching that stage, yeah I'd gladly at least update the documentation if I only had time ...

HI,Enjo can you explain step by step on how to direct ascent syncro with the XR ships,it seems I tried to emulate what you did in the playback,and failed horribly.

It's hard to tell where your mistake is. I expect that you didn't align and synchronize with the target after the auto burn. Did the auto burn in synchro mode succeed? Do you know that you need to perform alignment and synchronization before reaching apoapsis? It also may happen that the orbital node is placed after the apoapsis. In such case, you need to accelerate Orbit Normal or Antinormal, so that the node gets in front of the apoapsis, so you still can align before reaching apoapsis.

 

[Interceptor]

Thanks Enjo,again for your answers,I guess I need alot of practice at it.

 

[Enjo]

I can finally get back to you guys.

That's weird , both are running fine here and the falcon9 reacts with the PID autopilot.

Could you tell me exactly how to launch Falcon9? As I said, it doesn't react on engine controls.

although with disastrous results and weird behavior, it says ideal pitch 75 degrees for a lot of time.

As Cras said. If neither the PEG, nor the pitch programs give any meaningful info, there's a fixed target pitch. Sometimes it helps. If it's 75* all the time, it probably means that the input can't be read all the time. I have to test it myself on the Falcon9.

Anyway, in the long term, I'd like to use energy based pitch program form Velcro (no individual pitch programes anymore). I've already laid the foundation - included it and cleaned it up, but it needs some testing and fine tuning.

Can anyone confirm if the launch compass has problems: Target (asc) or (desc) are 0° every time whatever the target is.
I tried with orbiter 2010 p1 since I use the beta and the problem is still there. It works with LaunchMFD 1.4.6 but not with 1.5.0.

Oh, thanks for that. Fixed it here.

Ahhh Haaa!!! Now I know why It wasn't working. In OMP's earth.cfg the earth don't rotate. Humm so now what? Anybody have any ideas?

How to reproduce this outside OMP? What is the exact value of rotation in OMP's Earth.cfg?

Thanks for the reports :tiphat:

 

[Enjo]

New version: [ame="http://orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=2802"]Launch MFD - v. 1.5.1 for Orbiter 2010[/ame]
Mostly bugfixes and improvements that should have been there already:

• Direct ascent: specific off-plane correction works not only in autopilot mode (rep. by Cras)
• Direct ascent: improved precision of calculations for synchro ascent
• Compass: fixed variables that were displaying 0 (rep. by Jarod)
• Stages burnout times are now saved to file, providing correct MECO information for staging vessels, which is then used as input for off-plane correction (saving works only when a pitch program is used)
• Time to next launch is saved to a file
• Time to node for celestial bodies as targets fixed (rep. by jgrillo2002 and blane)

 

[RacerX]

Thank you Enjo. Going to test it out now

 

[Enjo]

And another one: [ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=2802"]Launch MFD - v. 1.5.2 for Orbiter 2010[/ame]

Changes:

• Drawing Great Circles, a'la Map MFD to help timing launches. The GCs can be controlled with keyboard, similarily to Map MFD
• Direct ascent: added support for multiple vessels
• Started a major source cleanup – the main classes are thinned and are more readable and removed now unused previous direct ascent code

The GC controls are:
Shift G = Switch drawing of great circles
Shift K = Switch track mode
Shift Z = Zoom in
Shift X = Zoom out

The next major step will hopefully be Multistage PEG, if I'm able to do it. I need to approach it very methodologicaly, and for this I need free time. Other than that, I'd love to bring back the HUD drawing, but for that I'll need to ask for advice our Orbiter pr0s.

 

[Enjo]

Ask and it shall be codeth... What? HUD drawing of course!

[ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=2802"]Launch MFD - v. 1.5.3 for Orbiter 2010[/ame]

======================
Changes
======================

v. 1.5.3 19-05-2012

• Brought back HUD drawing. It's now forward compatible (for newest BETA and external graphical clients), as well as backward compatible (through 2006 release)
• Flight director reacts on “Draw pitch error” flag (switchable with DEF button in standard view) - useful when cruising in atmosphere
• Fixed Sound reinitialization problem after exiting to launchpad and restarting the simulation (reported by Keatah)
• Improved runtime speed in MultipleVesselsMFD library after deletion of vessels, and proper cleanup when exiting to launchpad (related to previous change)

Big thanks go to Agentgonzo, who coded the MFD-to-VESSEL hooking in a self explanatory way, so it was very easy to extend the HUD drawing to the newest Orbiter interface (BETA and external graphical clients!), and of course to Face for inventing the stuff in Orbiter and sharing info about it.

 

[Interceptor]

You rock Enjo,thank you for what looks to be the best version.:thumbup:

 

[boogabooga]

Unfortunately, the latest launch MFD breaks the special surface HUD of the XR series.

XR series had a special HUD that reports vertical velocity, etc., and also a data hud. Launch MFD makes these revert to stock delta glider type HUD.

Other than that, awesome!

 

[Enjo]

Completely forgot about it...
Will be fixed soon.

---------- Post added at 10:15 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:18 PM ----------

One question here: which version of XR were you testing it with? Because when I tried XR2 1.2, the HUD failed to draw, but 1.7 peacefully coexists with my HUD drawing. It seems that the v. 1.2 didn't implement the VESSEL3 interface yet, while my addon expects all vessels to do so. It's required for forward compatibility.

 

[boogabooga]

XR2 1.3.
:facepalm: :blush:

 

[Enjo]

[ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=2802"]Launch MFD - v. 1.5.4 for Orbiter 2010[/ame]

From a user's perspective, it was mostly work on UI. Complete list of changes below:

• Animated Great Circle zooming
• Added a new buttons page
• Pitch guidance switch now available also as a separate button - PTC or Shift+I
• Saving PID values to a SHIP_variables file
• Code cleanups and moved MFD libraries to libMFD folder
• New library: MFDButtonPage for high level multiple MFD buttons support

I predict there will need to be some work done after Dan releases new MFD Sound API. Before that, I wanted to share the work done so far.