Project Orbiter Battle Simulation Project Needs Developers!

[statickid]

hey this project looks really awesome! I don't know if anybody remembers but it might be fun to search for that old space lasers and warfare thread as it had quite a bit of interesting discussions about space combat. I don't know too much about how you guys are doing all of that, but here's an idea off the top of my head:

could a rudimentary explosion be made by having the explosive mesh's size sphere expand momentarily then having it be destroyed? It wouldn't be the best, but then there could be a primitive blast radius damage to play with running on the current collision detection method.

Another way to look at it would be this: when damage=100% mesh size expands from 2meters to 15meters. since their mesh spheres would be overlapping, it would be like a really bad collision, thus destroying both meshes.

 

[jedidia]

Radius to radius detection is all OBSP really needs,

I think there should at least be a cube option, after all most space vessels are going to be much longer than wide or high. extend that by the possibility of defining several cubes per object, and you'll already have a full fledged colision detection that doesn't really eat up that much resources. Use a .msh file to define those cubes instead of a config file, and you'll give users the posibility to export a perfectly normal collision mesh from the 3d software they create their vessels with. As long as they stay reasonable with the amount of cubes, there shouldn't be much drain on resources. Plus, you pretty much get a damage area feature for free (i.e. you'll know exactly which part has been hit). It's not that hard, and relatively resource friendly.

Indeed, it should even be more efficient: If you use the radius, you have to get the distance from the projectile to the ship. That means a vector substraction AND a trigonometrical calculation for getting the vector length. If you work with cubes, you can simply do three Vector substractions (I think it's three...) without employing trigonometry. You can run a whole lot of substractions in the time you calculate the length of a vector!

 

[Jaakko]

Awesome project. Good luck for this project here.

 

[RisingFury]

Awesome project. Good luck for this project here.

Thanks.

OBSP is looking for someone who is skilled at texturing and UV unwrapping of 3d models. Meshing skills are also helpful since we are pressed for time and I cannot complete everything alone.

Anyone who is willing and able to dedicate their time and skill can contact me via PM.

Kind regards,
T.Neo

So, any takers?

 

[nidhugg]

I don't think so. It would be cool, but would hog resources (we're already trying to cut down on that) and would probably take lots of work, so it wouldn't be worth it in the long run. Radius to radius detection is all OBSP really needs, though we might have to come up with a better system to get around problems like docking etc.

If you use radius collision you could do cones or something from each docking port and just exclude the collision if these intersect. When they drift apart you could apply force in a suitable direction to keep the docking in a sort of docking-tunnel. And maybe apply some damage too if it was a bad collision.

What about shifting between radius collision - box collision -mesh collision depending on the proximity somehow (sphere intersection/box intersection and so on)? (and maybe the relative speeds?) Not using a more advanced method if it's not needed.

 

[Wishbone]

Folks, think you're launching a very huge endeavour, y'need all the luck, and I've got a question: what sensor models do you plan to employ - infrared, telescopes spotting sats and debris (radars are much easier to do in pure space)?

 

[RisingFury]

Folks, think you're launching a very huge endeavour, y'need all the luck, and I've got a question: what sensor models do you plan to employ - infrared, telescopes spotting sats and debris (radars are much easier to do in pure space)?

RADAR and IR scanners are an obvious choice. We still don't know what to use for long range though.

 

[T.Neo]

For long range detection in space, some sort of very sensitive IR or potentially even optical scanner would be useful.

Radar can detect objects pretty far out, but it also isn't a passive sensor...

 

[Wishbone]

There are also neat radiation detectors aboard US early warning sats...

EDIT: and it may be way to go with optics. One doesn't fire engines that frequently to justify IR sensors (at least ground-based), the other way round (from the top) is hampered though by the clouds and aerosols...

 

[T.Neo]

Depends. If you have powerful engines, they can be quite bright and thus very detectable. Even with current technology, you could detect the shuttle's RCS thrusters from the asteroid belt.

Though for space-to-surface and surface-to-space surveillance and detection, optical would probably be better, and radar could potentially work as well- there's an atmosphere with all of it's clouds and whatnot to contend with.

 

[xlns]

...Even with current technology, you could detect the shuttle's RCS thrusters from the asteroid belt.

This would be fascinating, if it's true! :tumbleweed: Can you quote something on the subject? Thx!

---------- Post added at 02:45 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:43 PM ----------

OBSP intends to replicate combat in Orbiter.
...
Thanks a lot,

The OBSP Team - escapetomsfate, RisingFury, T.Neo.

This is excellent idea - I'm sure I'll be enjoying this one. Space warfare and it's weapons are interesting topics to think about:

for an example: I think flak cannons would be quite useful; with timed detonation shells and variable muzzle speed - first choice for melee and spamming weapon - would offer some interesting firing solutions. Or, thermonuclear bombs of low yield; without atmosphere to compress or houses to evaporate, much larger chunk of energy would feed EMP - flash bombs everybody wanna dodge! Or counter with superconducting shield around essential electronic equipment!?

Also, I'm kinda skeptic of laser fire - even in it's ideal conditions. Reason this is so is basically, when I think of space warfare - I think of submarine war. Take, for an example, two opposing ships in Earth's orbit. In the environment of 12000 satellites and debris, to actively scan with radars and use directional weapons that disclose your position and orbit sounds like a unreasonable strategy. Also, power per surface diminishes as 1/r^2 and aiming is quite a problem to crack. Or at least it seems to me so.

I would go with hide-n-seek strategy, relying on spam fire. Passive IR and radar scanning, fire-and-forget missiles deployed out-of-sight, flak fire followed by a change of orbit. Also, lack of drag would offer great stealth possibilities; for an example it may be possible to construct a cloaking umbrella system. Unused, it would reside folded around long rod along the long axis of ship. When you wanna deploy it, pull the rod out, open up umbrella wide to cover larger part of ship and pull the rod back. Umbrella surface would consist of radar radiation absorbing material, with 3 or 4 surfaces (tetrahedron without base or half of octahedral). With possible cooling system throughout the umbrella with LHe or LN2, this system would essentially vanish your radar cross-section, rendering you invisible head-on, for radar, IR scanning and visual. And probably blind

Just a few idea of the top of my head. Keep up the good work, guys. As for now, I am a newb in space flight, week ago, I barely managed to fly DG from Habana to Brighton Beach. Which is not so good, since I planned to land on Iapetus. I'm off to practice some more, but I'll for sure install this one as it comes up

 

[T.Neo]

Actually a bomb needs to be in an atmosphere to create an EMP. So a bomb detonated in space won't produce an EMP, but a bomb detonated in an atmosphere will produce an EMP that can travel into space.

Lasers are interesting... they don't drop off in intensity as like non-coherant light does. Lasersdo drop off in intensity though, but not as the square root of the distance (it's the square root of the distance, right?). My main issue with lasers is their power supply and the fact that they tend to generate a lot of waste heat.

You've raised an interesting situation there with all the debris and sats around the Earth- there might be a bit more confusion compared to scanning in open space, but a warship is usually a good deal larger than the average satellite.

Thanks for the input xlns, and to Orbiter-Forum! :hello:

 

[Wishbone]

You've raised an interesting situation there with all the debris and sats around the Earth- there might be a bit more confusion compared to scanning in open space, but a warship is usually a good deal larger than the average satellite.

Hence the preoccupation with microsats (the brilliant pebbles reborn) If one cannot tell a microsat from an orbiting monkey wrench, one cannot target it.

 

[xlns]

Actually a bomb needs to be in an atmosphere to create an EMP. So a bomb detonated in space won't produce an EMP, but a bomb detonated in an atmosphere will produce an EMP that can travel into space.

Seems I missed the term. After bomb goes off, it's energy, after turning bomb casing into plasma, has to go somewhere - and electromagnetic radiation is the only way out. I read wikipedia article on EMP and it seems it's used to describe massive coherent drive of atmospheric electrons and I used it as describing thick wall of gamma radiation that follows explosion and actually drives EMP . My bad, thanks for pointing that out.

Lasers are interesting... they don't drop off in intensity as like non-coherant light does. Lasersdo drop off in intensity though, but not as the square root of the distance (it's the square root of the distance, right?). My main issue with lasers is their power supply and the fact that they tend to generate a lot of waste heat.

I offered a bad worded explanation again.

Well, I was checking out an article someone posted on Moon ranging. There, it says that dispersion of a well collimated laser is about 10 arc seconds. After ~750,000 km travel, it goes from 3,5m to 15km in diameter. From that you can calculate stereo angle of laser dispersion and to get surface, you need to multiply that with distance squared(^2). Therefore, power is dropping with 1 / r^2 (since power per stereo angle is constant) - double the distance, power per unit surface will go down four times. I could be wrong, but even if it is coherent light - geometry is merciless

And you are quite right about heat of power source. Firing 1MW laser would make you quite visible on IR scan!

You've raised an interesting situation there with all the debris and sats around the Earth- there might be a bit more confusion compared to scanning in open space, but a warship is usually a good deal larger than the average satellite.

True.

Thanks for the input xlns, and to Orbiter-Forum! :hello:

Thanks, glad to be here !

 

[RisingFury]

Also, RisingFury, is OBSP in the hanger yet or is it still being tested/developed?

Not in the hangar yet. The first version has so much behind the scenes work and so little actual content that putting it on OH would be useless. Next beta should have enough content

 

[Wishbone]

A must have for space combat simulation (SBSS):

http://www.orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=18364

 

[Wishbone]

Would anybody please provide me with the list of features currently implemented in OBSP? Pretty please...

 

[RisingFury]

Would anybody please provide me with the list of features currently implemented in OBSP? Pretty please...

It's all on the first page, as well as 3 YouTube vids SHOWING the features.

 

[Wishbone]

Thanks, wish I hadn't been bandwidth- and utube-challenged (am on dialup at home).

 

[jedidia]

This isn't trying to be a scenario were combat is exciting and fun, you know. This is trying to be as mercylessly realistic as they can get it.