General Question New to the game

[Pesso114]

Hey guys, I registered on this forum a few minutes ago and now I'm trying to get some help.

I'm not entirely new to the game, I tried a very long time ago to learn how to use this Sim but stopped after a few days...I don't know why. I know space and normal flying are 2 different things, however, I've been using Flight Simulator for a lot of years so at least I know the basics of flying...I'm not a total noob. My biggest goal right now is to learn how to take off and dock with the ISS (if someone can tell me how long it will take me to do that, I would appreciate it). And in order to do that, I have the manual called Go Play In Space if I remember right.

Anyway, I'm not going to ask at this moment about the things I mentioned above because I haven't even started reading...what I would like to know for now is what are the basic things I need to download for the best "visual quality"....I've been redirected to this page http://www.orbiter-forum.com/download.php and downloaded the installer...I assume next step is to download the patch. Then should I download all the texture packages?

Another thing I remember is that the launch pad didn't had any textures last time I played the game...

PS - one last thing, in order to make the Sim not so hardcore, I remember someone talking about an FMC or something like that...basically a computer that let's you select a way-point (like the moon) and the shuttle will fly straight to it...that would be fun to have.

Thanks and have a nice day

 

[Kaito]

The tutorial "Go Play In Space" is the go-to thing for all of the basic needs. It starts you out on the moon, getting used to the controls, then works you up to getting into orbit, deorbiting on the moon, orbit on earth, and docking to ISS.

As for addons: http://www.orbiter-forum.com/addons.php?v=2010

A note about texture packs: The super hi res textures will make a slow computer cry. Keep that in mind.

Welcome aboard the SS Orbiter, fellow Orbinaut

 

[Pesso114]

Thanks a lot...well I started with some tutorial flights using the Delta Glider. I learned how to use the auto pilot so at least now I now how to get out in space.

Low FPS aren't a problem cause my PC can handle the game. I'm experiencing 2 problems right now:
1. It looks like the game has no antialiasing, the edges are very rough
2. Don't know if this is a problem or not but the outer space is red for some reason...I don't remember it being red last time I played. I will post soon some screenshots if that will help.

 

[Polaris]

Welcome to the Orbiter Forum.

 

[ADSWNJ]

Welcome aboard. Search this forum for D3D9 and add that on. It's a DirectX 9 graphics client that really makes the game look pretty. You use the Orbiter_NG.exe client instead of the default Orbiter.exe, but otherwise everything is identical.

D3D9 makes use of the graphic card capabilities to offload computations. Result - much faster framerates.

 

[Pesso114]

Thank you very much for the warm welcome guys...and for your help. I'm happy to announce that I finished watching the tutorial with Atlantis docking to the ISS (MY GOD flying in space is a lot different then what I was imagining:lol

As a first learning lesson, I can say that things aren't that complicated and I did learned a lot of stuff. In certain situations I don't understand why you need to do this and that but I'm sure I'll figure it out eventually. The only part I did understand (except the launch itself which is basic stuff compared to everything else) is the approach and dock, it is very tricky to control the shuttle and line it up with the ISS but from the looks of it, the most complicated part to do is the only part I fully understood.

One thing I can say for sure: I will be extremely happy when I'll be able to do what I just saw in the tutorial.

Thanks again for your help and warm welcome

I'll come back in the next days for some further questions

 

[asbjos]

Hi, and to this forum!

For your question about the red space: Open Orbiter Launchpad, then go to "Visual effects" in the left menu and go to the bottom of the window where it says "Celestial sphere". Here you can change your background. It sounds like you have it set at "FAR IR (IRAS)". You can change this setting, and even download new backgrounds on Orbithangar.com! It may be that your problem is something else. If so, ask here on the forum, and some of the users will be there right away and help you.

Understanding Orbiter and how spaceflight works can be hard, and the learning may take long time. After a year playing Orbiter you maybe learn something new from now and then (it happens to me).
When I downloaded Orbiter, I thought that to go into space and orbit the Earth would simply require to launch vertical and you would stay in space, but after two years I've learned that it isn't that simple.

I'm happy to see another Orbinaut, and I hope that you enjoy your stay here as much as I do.

 

[ADSWNJ]

When I downloaded Orbiter, I thought that to go into space and orbit the Earth would simply require to launch vertical and you would stay in space, but after two years I've learned that it isn't that simple.

It depends how far you go up . If you keep going till you are out of Earth's influence, you are probably fine going straight up.

(But yes - to get to a typical Earth orbit, you need about 7500 m/s forward velocity.)

 

[Tommy]

I seem to recall an issue with space being red that was tied to a graphics driver issue, with ATI cards IIRC. If adjusting the celestial sphere doesn't have the desired effect you may look into that.

As to the rest, flying in space is nothing like flying in an atmosphere - so your prior experience with FS won't help much (and can hurt because you may think you know more than you actually do!). It's not actually that hard - you just have to learn a few simple rules first - once you have a basic understanding of the mechanics of an orbit it becomes fairly simple to adjust your orbit any way you want.

As for docking, it's the hardest thing in the game. Keep the relative velocity low (less than 10 ms) during the approach, patience is the key (so use brief bursts of time accel rather than increasing R-Vel).

 

[Pesso114]

When I downloaded Orbiter, I thought that to go into space and orbit the Earth would simply require to launch vertical and you would stay in space, but after two years I've learned that it isn't that simple.

Tell me about it, I thought going to the moon means 2 things: point the nose of the aircraft towards the moon and "floor" it.:lol:

I have to be honest, I never liked doing things that require a lot of time, patience, reading and learning...I either understand how to use something by figuring stuff out all by myself or don't use it. Til now, I have experience with just 2 games that require some learning and a lot of practice. But reading Orbiter's manual is pretty fun, I mean you read cool stuff that you actually get to use so I'm fine with it.

I started playing Flight Simulator back in 2008 and I didn't know anything about the basics of flying, let alone controls of the game and stuff like that. But slowly I started figuring out how things work and in 2 years or so I went from completely zero (in term of flying knowledge) to following real world procedures, being able to use the autopilot and all it's features (FMC, ILS and so on) without reading 2 words and without any help from other people. The only time I actually learned something from someone else was when I started learning how to use the FMC and ILS...watching 2 or 3 times a 10min long video solved the problem.

And yes, I agree with the fact that you're always learning something new because I still don't know everything there is to know about Flight Sim (and I probably won't).

Anyway, sorry for the off-topic, let's get back to Orbiter. I fixed the red space problem (I feel like a dork)...I messed with the visual settings asbjos mentioned, now everything is alright.

@Tommy I don't really feel like knowing much from FS that might help me in Orbiter...except what's involved in flying the aircraft on Earth.

I discovered a scenario in which I have to take off with the Delta Glider and dock to the ISS. This is what I was looking for, a detailed manual that I have to follow (not a playback). For me this is the best way to learn something. Except getting used to the controls and some other basic stuff, for now the biggest challenge is trying to learn how the entire orbiting thing works (when you have to go round the earth a few times til you meet up with the ISS). I didn't understand that part at all, I have no idea what I need to do, what to follow etc....I'm sure it's in the Go Play In Space manual because I remember reading about it.

Time to get back to reading and learning:hello:

Thanks

PS - do you know if I can set the pitch angle in the Delta Glider's autopilot MFD or whatever it's called? My joystick is kinda dead at this moment and it's pretty hard to maintain a certain angle using the keyboard.

 

[Ripley]

There is a ton of videos, tutorials, manuals, whatever...
I don't think orbital manoeuvers and mechanics are something one can learn without actually reading (studying) something.
I'm also one of those who thought that to go to orbit all that was needed was a vertical launch...

Try watching this excellent video by Tex, detailing how to dock with ISS.
Many of us started with this.
http://www.orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?t=2055

About the DG pitch angle: I think the default DG doesn't have such a feature, but Dansteph's DGIV does.
http://orbiter.dansteph.com/index.php?disp=d

Oh! And welcome to OF, btw.

 

[ADSWNJ]

Except getting used to the controls and some other basic stuff, for now the biggest challenge is trying to learn how the entire orbiting thing works (when you have to go round the earth a few times til you meet up with the ISS). I didn't understand that part at all, I have no idea what I need to do, what to follow etc....I'm sure it's in the Go Play In Space manual because I remember reading about it.

Yeah - it's all in Go Play in Space. Follow that and you'll be doing pretty docking maneuvers in no time.

It's amazing to think that in the Gemini era, astronauts routinely did rendezvous calcs and maneuvers from pencil, paper and slide rule. See this:
http://www.vectorsite.net/tamrc_18.html for historical context (search for "slide rule").

When you think of rendezvous in atmospheric flight (e.g. jet refueling), then you simply fly up, down or sideways to get to your target, and speed up or slow down to get on station. In space, though, it's all different.

Say you were in an identical orbit to ISS, but say 1000km away. Speed up, right? Wrong! More speed causes your orbit to balloon out exactly 180 degrees away. Doing this makes your orbit time longer as it takes longer to go round the oval. So your relative distance will start to drift apart as you ride the oval watching ISS carry on in a circular orbit.

With an overpowered fictional spaceship like the Delta Glider, you can manually wrestle it down to a docking by brute force, but when you 'graduate' to say the Shuttle, with relatively much less powerful engines, you will really need to work on understanding the rendezvous mechanics. (I wrote an article on how to 'reel' in the ISS a while ago, if you want more info sometime.)

Remember - Ctrl-S is your friend ... saving the situation so you can try something, and if it screw it all up, restart and come back to that save-state.

 

[Pesso114]

Thanks for the tutorials, I will definitely check em out. Right now I finally started reading the GPIS manual (pretty weird the manual starts with 2 Delta Gliders docking), hopefully I will start understanding the basics.

At this moment I have just one question.

At this first chapter (called Smack) you can watch the video tutorial or try the same scenario yourself. My question is if you can have the "annotations" showing up in the scenario in which you're controlling the aircraft. This way I don't have to watch the video, then try it myself, then watch the video again cause I forgot what's the next step.

Oh, and thanks for the save command, I didn't know about that...it sure is useful to be able to save the game

 

[ADSWNJ]

You can run it in windowed mode instead of full-screen, if that's what you mean? So you can have a window up with the tutorial or a video, etc. That's also a nice feature of D3D9 client too, where you can run in a full-screen frameless windowed mode (i.e. you can still Alt-TAB to another window and back again).

If you have any questions on 'the basics', then don't be shy!

 

[Pesso114]

No questions at this moment

I'm finally starting to understand what's the deal with peri-something and apo-something...the very first tutorial that I watched was the one with Atlantis launching and docking to the ISS.

In other words I'm slowly understanding why, when and what things you're required to do (maneuvers)...not bad for 15-20 min of learning and practicing .

Ok, I'll risk at this early stage and try to explain what I learned.

Periapsis is the lowest point of an orbit (just like the manual says) and when it indicates a negative value, it means at some point you're going to enter the Earth's orbit (or how I like to describe it in common words, smash into planet Earth like a boss:lol In order to avoid that, you have to do a Prograde Burn - sorry for the possible spelling mistakes by the way, English ain't my native language.
I'll still have to figure out when and why you have to do this adjustments at a certain moment.

Apoapsis is still not that clear to me, I know that it's the highest point of an orbit and I assume you need to do the exact opposite of the Prograde burn in order to adjust it. Need to read a little bit more about this.

The good thing is that I managed to recreate the Smack Scenario, piece of cake

Luckily I have the gift of learning and understanding things extremely fast and like I said, things make a lot of sense now.

UPDATE: you have to adjust the Periapsis (do a Prograde Burn) when you're about to reach the Apoapsis?

 

[Cras]

Correct. The rule is that when you burn at a point, you will return to that point, so the best you can do is just adjust the opposite side of your orbit. So you want to raise your perigee, burn at apogee. and it works in the opposite as well. Burn retro if you want to lower them.

Of course, you dont have to do this either. You can burn prograde at different times to adjust your orbit and actually move where the apo and perigee actually are. Useful for things like rendezvous.

FWIW, the way I learned Orbiter was using Dansteph's DGIV. It has a tremendous amount of deltaV. dV is the amount of velocity I can apply to my trajectory, so basically the more you got the more you can change your orbit. Useful when learning so you can do something, and if it is either wrong, or a bit off, you can correct. I used that to get the basics down of launching, raising orbits, changing inclinations, rendezvous, going to the Moon, all that fun stuff.

Then move on to the Space Shuttle. Space Shuttle is a bit tricky. The dorsal docking config, the Fluttershy grade OMS, meaning it takes long burns to do things. You have very low deltaV, so you have very little margin for error. For example, you had best get your launch right, or you will never reach your target. the DeltaGlider....that is not so big of a deal because of all the dV.

and

to the wonders that is Orbiter. If you are anything like me, you are already hopelessly addicted. Prepare to surrender hours upon hours of your precious free time to flying in space. :thumbup:

 

[Pesso114]

If you are anything like me, you are already hopelessly addicted. Prepare to surrender hours upon hours of your precious free time to flying in space. :thumbup:

:lol::lol::lol: thanks . I'm not too deep into games, I mean I'm here just for fun. It sure is awesome to fly in Flight Simulator, fly 747s all around the world and stuff like that. But Space Shuttles...it's like switching from driving a Nissan Micra to driving an F1 car. And since the only way to start being able to actually play this Sim is by reading and learning, then so be it...it's worth it.

Oh, and the best thing when learning something...at first nothing makes sense. Then, after you get the hang of things, you're like "wow, this orbiting thing is a piece of cake...soooo easy"

Yes, now I finally understand what's the deal with peri and apo and how to make certain adjustments at certain points. I guess the best way to practice this is by going into space and start orbiting...

What do you guys suggest by the way? Like I said, my initial goal was to be able to take off and dock to the ISS. Instead of docking, should I first learn how to come back to Earth? I have a feeling that might be easier then docking.

 

[ADSWNJ]

What do you guys suggest by the way? Like I said, my initial goal was to be able to take off and dock to the ISS. Instead of docking, should I first learn how to come back to Earth? I have a feeling that might be easier then docking.

Um, no... reentry on Earth is a really tough assignment. I'd suggest continuing with the GPIS progression. I think you will be flying on the Moon next. I remember thinking - gee surely that's harder than flying on Earth, but actually it's way easier. Go fly some lunar circuits, touching and going at Brighton Beach. (BTW - the real Brighton beach in England is all rocks, so the name is very appropriate!)

I personally think the F1 of Orbiter is the XR-2 and its bigger brother the XR-5. The Shuttle is awesome for realism, but the technology in the XR ships is the best. Jump in one of those and try getting from Earth orbit to the Moon!