New Orbiter Beta Released (r.13, Mar 7, 2015)

[Evil_Onyx]

I've encountered some strange behavior when using the torrent download of the high res texture packs, and inline and D3D9(rev8) clients.

On the inline client it is drawing the high res textures but not showing the higher terrain data, whilst with the D3D9 is showing the high res terrain but not the textures.

I will try and reproduce on another install and use one of the single area downloads from alteaaerospace tomorrow.

---------- Post added at 01:49 ---------- Previous post was at 00:58 ----------

never mind, I some how installed the files adhoc and some of them went astray. Now that they are in the right place, all looks OK, and an awesome improvement on 2010.

 

[SolarLiner]

I just noticed that non-spherical gravity seems to switch-off at time-warp > x2000.
With the non-spherical gravity box checked in the parameters tab, I was targeting the ISS and as soon as I time-warped from x1000 to x10000 the LAN, ApA and PeA remained fixed. I brought up the "Orbiter: Time acceleration" tab and I noticed that the equatorial LAN precession and ApA and PeA oscilation were working up to time-warp of ~x1900, but at x2000 and above they remained fixed.

Can anyone else confirm this?

I think that is coming from the Orbit stabilization functions that prevents your ship to be torn out into NaN space.

 

[jroly]

The 2d cockpit view is not working for deltaglider in rev8?

Also the deltaglider is not working now in some scenarios.

 

[jarmonik]

OAPISURFACE_RENDER3D

There is a small issue with the OAPISURFACE_RENDER3D flag. It could be implemented in a two different ways. Which one should be preferred ?

Method 1:

SURFHANDLE hCam1 = oapiCreateSurfaceEx(320,320, OAPISURFACE_TEXTURE|OAPISURFACE_RENDERTARGET|OAPISURFACE_RENDER3D);
SURFHANDLE hCam2 = oapiCreateSurfaceEx(320,320, OAPISURFACE_TEXTURE|OAPISURFACE_RENDERTARGET|OAPISURFACE_RENDER3D);

oapiRenderCameraView(&mViewMatrix1, hCam1);
oapiRenderCameraView(&mViewMatrix2, hCam2);

Method 2:

SURFHANDLE hCam1 = oapiCreateSurfaceEx(320,320, OAPISURFACE_TEXTURE|OAPISURFACE_RENDERTARGET);
SURFHANDLE hCam2 = oapiCreateSurfaceEx(320,320, OAPISURFACE_TEXTURE|OAPISURFACE_RENDERTARGET);
SURFHANDLE hDepth = oapiCreateSurfaceEx(320,320, OAPISURFACE_RENDER3D); // Create Depth-Stencil surface

oapiRenderCameraView(&mViewMatrix1, hCam1, hDepth);
oapiRenderCameraView(&mViewMatrix2, hCam2, hDepth);

In a Method 1 every surface would have it's own private depth stencil sub-surface. The Method 2 would be able to share one depth stencil surface with every view using the same dimensions and therefore saves some memory. Which one is more practical in DX7 ?

 

[Flightoffancy]

I've been out of the loop for several months, so I'm glad to come back and see Martin is still developing Orbiter. I really like the direction the beta is heading in.

Forgive me if these have already been reported, but I did skim this thread and did not see them:

1. Planets using The old cloud system (Jupiter, Venus, Titan), go dark when view above a certain radii. I confirmed this by borrowing the Earths textures and applying them to those planets and changing the cloud type to 2 and they came up fine.

2. Neither of the Martian moons are rendering at all. I am assuming this is just due to them not yet having elevation data and that the static mesh is no longer supported.

 

[jarmonik]

It looks like OAPIFUNC void oapiGetBaseEquPos (OBJHANDLE hBase, double *lng, double *lat, double *rad=0)

Still returns a planet mean radius.

 

[cessnapilot]

Ok.
Is it me again or has everybody got this?
On trying to load Deltaglider in Revision 8

Same error for me after updating to Rev 8.

---------- Post added at 03:11 AM ---------- Previous post was at 03:10 AM ----------

Just do what jangofett said;

Yeah, I tried that, but it didn't work for me. Will dig deeper and see what I can find.

---------- Post added at 03:24 AM ---------- Previous post was at 03:11 AM ----------

Ok... Found the problem with the revert.. Permissions issue wouldn't allow me to revert, although it appeared to actually revert. Once I set the permissions correctly, I was able to revert and then update.... All is good now.

 

[jroly]

The few issues that really stand out currently in the Beta for me are

1, 2d cockpit for DG not working.
2, the graphical problems with Mars and the Moon.
3, base errors
4, radio/mp3 mfd crashes

It would also be great to have rovers working on the moon because I think it would be fun driving up and down big hills. Perhaps the base install of Orbiter should now include a car type vehicle?

 

[jedidia]

You can drive around with UCGO cars... you just can't enter the cockpit. For some reason that crashes still. But as long as you remain in external view, they actually work quite nicely.

 

[Enjo]

You can drive around with UCGO cars... you just can't enter the cockpit. For some reason that crashes still. But as long as you remain in external view, they actually work quite nicely.

Definitely a job for Addon Developers, not necessarily Dan.
As for Radio MFD crashing, my MFDs were also crashing. It seems that the MFDs need just a recompilation and linkage against the latest orbiter.lib.

 

[Hlynkacg]

You can drive around with UCGO cars... you just can't enter the cockpit. For some reason that crashes still. But as long as you remain in external view, they actually work quite nicely.

I know that UCGO has some proprietary hud drawing functions that can cause conflicts with other addons.

In such cases a similar thing will happen, where in everything is fine so long as you remain in external view.

 

[fsci123]

I'm curious, when will the utilities for making planet height maps and textures come out?

 

[SolarLiner]

I'm curious, when will the utilities for making planet height maps and textures come out?

When the documentation about those will be ready

 

[fedaykinwolf]

I'm having problems starting Scenarios in Orbiter 2014 beta... I followed the Tortoise SVN you-tube video and downloaded the Low Res images to start.

I start Orbiter.exe and the Launcher works fine, but as soon as I launch a scenario the loading splash screen briefly appears and I get "Orbiter.exe has stopped working".

My system specs:

• Windows 8.1 64bit
• I7-4770K
• Z87-Pro mobo
• AMD HD7970 3GB (Driver 14.6 RC)

it appears, to me, that the video card is not being detected

**** Orbiter.log
**** Orbiter.log
Build Jun 2 2014 [v.140602]
Timer precision: 6.98413e-008 sec
Found 1 joystick(s)
Devices enumerated: 3
Devices accepted: 1
[x] RGB Emulation (SW)
Module AtlantisConfig.dll .... [Build 140410, API 140412]
Module AtmConfig.dll ......... [Build 140412, API 140412]
Module DGConfigurator.dll .... [Build 140410, API 140412]

**** Creating simulation session
DirectDraw interface OK
Direct3D interface OK
Graphics: Viewport: Window 1914 x 1051 x 32
Graphics: Hardware T&L capability: No
Graphics: Z-buffer depth: 32 bit
Graphics: Stencil buffer depth: 8 bit
Graphics: Active lights supported: -1
Loading 15382 records from star database
---------------------------------------------------------------
>>> ERROR: DDraw error DDERR_NODIRECTDRAWHW
>>> [OrbiterGraphics::clbkCreateSurfaceEx | .\OGraphics.cpp | 1507]
---------------------------------------------------------------


BTW I installed Orbiter Sound 4.0, but it didn't work before I did so.

Please help, dying to see the new work...

EDIT:
1. a fresh install of Orbiter 2014 Beta did the same error.
2. I also tried Orbiter 2010 to be thorough, and it didn't work either.
3. So, I installed the D3D11 and D3D9 for Orbiter 2010 and they worked fine.

So my new question is does anyone know where I can turn from here?

I'm dying to test/play Orbiter2014...

 

[jedidia]

This is weird... after installing the hi-res mars textures, Orbiter Beta won't draw anymore. I'm getting this in the log, right before the modules are loaded, and the window stays blank although orbiter is clearly working beneath it:

---------------------------------------------------------------
>>> ERROR: DDraw error DDERR_BLTFASTCANTCLIP
>>> [OrbiterGraphics::clbkBlt | .\OGraphics.cpp | 1592]
---------------------------------------------------------------

None of the settings have changed, I merely replaced the low-res mars textures with the hi-res ones. I deleted the old ones prior to installing the new ones according to my expieriences with the moon textures, but something seems to go wrong.

 

[jangofett287]

You MUST have ALL low res textures. Always. High res textures are optional and where present will be swapped in when you get close enough.

 

[SolarLiner]

The way planetary textures are managed prevents having to overwrite textures when installing hi-res versions. Plus it allows to have very detailled local scenery without relying on separate methods (I've always seen surface tiles more like a "hack" then a proper implementation. Now it is more "normalized").

I have to figure out still how it all works, but I think it should not be too hard to make a surface tiles converter.

 

[jedidia]

You MUST have ALL low res textures. Always. High res textures are optional and where present will be swapped in when you get close enough.

That is very weird... because some pages back, I reported that Orbiter stoped working after installing the moon Hi-Res textures. I solved the problem by deleting all textures of the moon and installing only the Hi-Res textures, so I of course I took the same approach when installing the Mars textures. I'll try with both texture packs installed and see what happens...

 

[Phoenix]

To MartinS: I have found that my Load MFD, which measures G-forces, no longer works properly with Orbiter 2014 beta. It worked with the 2010 version.

When on the ground in Orbiter 2014, the MFD displays the correct G-level, but when the vessel is in free-fall, a residual and oscillating G-level is measured, and this error varies in magnitude depending on the planet being orbited. For the Moon, the error is small, 0.02G, but for Earth, the error is large, almost 0.5G. Here's a screen capture from the space shuttle in orbit:



My MFD uses both oapi::Module::clbkPreStep() and oapi::Module:apiPostStep() to calculate the accelerometers. Have these functions changed in any way, such as being passed a different time step value for the same frame? I can't check because I have lost the source code to this MFD.

Thanks.

 

[Kyle]

Many of the current addons, including many MFD addons like LunarTransferMFD, Interplanetary MFD, et. al., are not compatible with the new beta.