Project Orbiter Battle Simulation Project Needs Developers!

[escapetomsfate]

Orbiter Battle Simulation Project - Development Thread

Latest news is in post #196

OBSP intends to replicate combat in Orbiter.

Features include:

• Damage Model
• Weapons System
• Autopilots
• Artificial Intelligence
• RADAR
• Countermeasures
• Collision Detection and handling
• User interface including HUD and MFD
• Use of Orbiter Sound

For a more detailed list of features, see the page on our website.

We have a youtube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/orbiterbattlesp

Airfield AI:

Combat Autopilots:

OBSP - Introduction and Features (early work):

Meshes used for the weapons and vessels (Ignore the guns, they are not used anymore):

Introduction to autopilots and AI:

Thanks,

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

Thanks to Loru for letting us use his texture and Face for his hooking library.

 

[Jamesep3]

Wow.:thumbup: Hang on was't the point of orbiter not involve fighting? I know people may not care but still. What are we really doing here?:idk:

 

[jedidia]

VERY nice for a version 0.1. I'm in all over my head in Orbiter Galaxy and two bands currently, so I'm afraid I can't help with the beta testing, at least not at the moment. But this is great work, and I really want to encourage you to go on with it. This might get to be the first interplanetary combat simulator EVER!

 

[Ghostrider]

Wow.:thumbup: Hang on was't the point of orbiter not involve fighting? I know people may not care but still. What are we really doing here?:idk:

The point of Orbiter is to simulate realistic spaceflight. If that includes moar dakka, the better for us nuts. :thumbup:

 

[Tommy]

Hang on was't the point of orbiter not involve fighting?

I always considered the point of Orbiter was whatever you want it to be. While I'm not interested in combat myself, the collision detection, Autopilots/AI, and scripting elements are VERY interesting.

 

[4throck]

Second that. The physics do look interesting. I'd like to see that sorted out first, so that we could have more realistic docking / collisions in orbit for example.

I don't care much about the combat but the code behind it can be used for much more intresting things (jn my opinion), such as "asteroid mining" where you break up a large asteroid and then pick up the smaller pieces with richest mineral content. To to that you need to fire at it first... to scan it you have to point the scanner and "fire" it, so yes, the basic code is much the same.

On the other hand, there are real anti-sat weapons the could be simulated and one of the Almaz station really had a cannon so....

 

[Yoda]

Sorry, but I think that's about the dumbest idea I've seen propsed here in a long time.
Why is there a need to add combat or weapons to a space simulator ?????
If that's what your after just stick with "Halo" or any of the other "shoot them up" games.

Not a good idea. :facepalm:

 

[Usquanigo]

If you (plural, not singling anybody speicifcally out) aren't interested in combat, fine, but why read and post to a thread about it. Does it threaten you in some way?

It has been suggested to stick with "shoot 'em up" games. Trouble is, they aren't simulations. There's a reason that there are 20 page all-out slug-fests over flight modeling vs pilot anecdotes and real test data, as well as damage modeling regarding IL2 - just because combat is present does NOT mean that the people playing it are unsophisticated and don't understand or care about the simulation aspects. :facepalm:

 

[Izack]

Sweet battle cylinder! :rofl:

Seriously though, this looks like a good project. As Usquanigo already said, combat simulators are not Halo. The UMMU combat will probably be like that actually, but any combat in space is going to be no simple point n' shoot. It will be just as technical, if not in some cases more so, than most other tasks in Orbiter. I've spent a long time imagining what combat in space would be like, and this looks like -eventually- an excellent platform for that.

Also, for the UMMU bit, the ground combat looks like it will be bland, but will there be space combat? That would be interesting.

 

[RisingFury]

Second that. The physics do look interesting. I'd like to see that sorted out first, so that we could have more realistic docking / collisions in orbit for example.

I'm sorry to have to disappoint you here, but I doubt OBSP's collision detection will ever get that far. Currently we just use the vessel's size parameter to detect if another vessel is within collision range. That works for our simple purpose of detecting collisions when taxing and mid air collisions in areal combat, but it will no doubt fail at orbital velocities and will have to be turned off for docking.

We could in the future implement a mesh based collision detection, but don't hold your breath... that said, we *might* do transfer of angular momentum, so that ships hit on the side will start spinning also...


I believe though that Artlav made a mesh to mesh collision detection that is miles beyond what OBSP currently implements

---------- Post added at 13:46 ---------- Previous post was at 13:42 ----------

Also, for the UMMU bit, the ground combat looks like it will be bland, but will there be space combat? That would be interesting.

The UMMU combat is somewhat undeveloped right now, but we don't just plan to stick a bunch of UMMUs down there to fight it out... tanks, artillery, APC's... that's all on the agenda.

The idea is to implement a system that will allow first person control of any friendly unit on the battlefield, as well as a real time strategic command and control system, as well as a decent AI so you don't need to tare your hair out and curse that your planes just flew through a SAM defended area...

Space and interplanetary combat is still a long way off, but I'm confident we'll get there

 

[Coolhand]

awesome, can it support turreted guns at some point? how about one that could be used as a payload for an xr/dg, etc?

 

[Stevodoran]

it said on the orbiter home page ''make no mistake orbiter is not a space shooter''

 

[RisingFury]

awesome, can it support turreted guns at some point? how about one that could be used as a payload for an xr/dg, etc?

Oh yea

One of the models in TNeo's video is a gun pod
Hopefully we can also come up with a way to aim guns and turrets with the mouse, so we can do artillery and UMMU AK's...

 

[T.Neo]

Actually that's a very good idea. The M61 Vulcan is used in the Phalanx CIWS, which actually exists, unlike my fictional gun pod...

 

[garyw]

it said on the orbiter home page ''make no mistake orbiter is not a space shooter''

Orbiter isn't but that doesn't mean to say that an addon cannot add certain elements such as nuclear weapons.

Personally the only weapon system I'd like to see in Orbiter is an ASAT.

 

[Izack]

Personally the only weapon system I'd like to see in Orbiter is an ASAT.

Well, there's already [ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=4379"]Uragan[/ame] to hold us over until this is done. It still works in O2010, too.

You guys mentioned interplanetary combat. By this, do you mean RKVs?

Also, are you going to be making custom vessels, or an SDK that allows vessels to implement damage and weapons?

 

[River Crab]

Well, it won't become a "Space Shooter." What I hope this addon will be is a semi-realistic depiction of how space combat might play out. Orbiter will never become Rogue Squadron- generalizing a space combat simulator to a space shooter is like comparing IL2 and Afterburner (you know, the old-school Sega...).
Not that there's anything wrong with those games, but yeah.
It's not a transformation, it's a combination. And I totally get it. :thumbup:

 

[RisingFury]

Personally the only weapon system I'd like to see in Orbiter is an ASAT.

And you shall have it

You guys mentioned interplanetary combat. By this, do you mean RKVs?

Also, are you going to be making custom vessels, or an SDK that allows vessels to implement damage and weapons?

Interplanetary combat is still a long way off. We first need to get Earth combat up and running to the point where you can have battles and campaigns.

And yes, we will have both custom vessels as well as a SDK



Let's just say TNeo's gonna be working harder on models then the hamsters powering my computer...

 

[escapetomsfate]

Okay, for all the Orbiter purists out there:

We're not going to turn Orbiter into star wars battlefront. All the way through the development we've been trying to do it realistically. If you don't like the combat side of it (which is completely fair enough) no one's forcing you to download. On the plus side, there's other useful non-combat features that might come out of this, just like how war advances technology in real life.

But from the majority of people there seems to be interest, which I'm really glad about

 

[Stevodoran]

just imagine of nasa was involved in a war and was testing new weapons