Orbiter Magazine

[garyw]

I'm interested in submitting an article but I agree with pablo49 and will take a step back until some firm submission guidelines and a framework is established. Even by 'looking for a cover' you are heading down the route of getting something, anything out there.

 

[ky]

The guidelines that you posted before are a start.

A single article should be no more than 1,500 words and submittied in either text format or MS word format. Graphics should be cropped to show the image you wish to convey rather than an entire orbiter screenshot. Smaller articles are fine but must convey something of interest related to orbiter rather than just looking like an Orbiter Forum Post.

Tutorials, walkthroughs and so on are very welcome but must be something new and not already published on the forum. They can be extensions of whats on the forum.

 

[Columbia42]

Articles are not the only thing that can be submitted, though. I think if someone wants to submit a screenshot for inclusion into the magazine (or one of those spoof ads or something) that would be fine also.

 

[Pablo49]

Ky, I'd like to ask if you are sure you want to coordinate this. It's been five pages of thread, and so far you've just directly copy/pasted one of GaryW's posts, and ignored (in whole or in part) plenty of other submission guidelines that were proposed (i.e. text format, graphic format). If you don't plan to carry through with this and do it fully, then it's probably best to just help suggest ideas and let someone else, who will actually devote the proper energy and time, keep things in order. That is, if we want this to actually happen.

 

[Xyon]

I'm going to adopt Gary's approach here as we're in the same boat - I'm also interested in submitting an article but have some serious concerns about how it will be organised and presented.

So, I'll be keeping an eye on things, and I'll come back when things seem properly organised.

 

[Spacethingy]

Can I make a suggestion?

Get a very rough skeleton of what's gonna be in the mag:

E.g. I personally would like things such as "Addon of the Quarter", "Questions From Readers", "Missions to Try" etc. (OH! Don't forget the cartoon! ALL mags MUST have a cartoon!

Then, you can do nice details like covers.

 

[ky]

If you don't plan to carry through with this and do it fully, then it's probably best to just help suggest ideas and let someone else, who will actually devote the proper energy and time, keep things in order. That is, if we want this to actually happen.

So your saying that I shouldnt be apart of this?So your saying if I don't pass the editor poition to someone else this will fail?Yes,I want to see this succeed,but really?I am totally capable of managing the magazine.I will type up duidelines and post them,incorporating all the suggestions people have made.

 

[Zatnikitelman]

So your saying that I shouldnt be apart of this?So your saying if I don't pass the editor poition to someone else this will fail?Yes,I want to see this succeed,but really?I am totally capable of managing the magazine.I will type up duidelines and post them,incorporating all the suggestions people have made.

No offense, but you're already working on/have worked on several VSAs that haven't amounted to any thing yet. Your track record in properly organizing and seeing projects through is less than stellar.

 

[ky]

No offense, but you're already working on/have worked on several VSAs that haven't amounted to any thing yet. Your track record in properly organizing and seeing projects through is less than stellar.

Im going off topic here:OFSS III(started,successful),VOSSA(flew one mission,everything was disorganized,I was only a pilot,I suggested making it a closed VSA,I never heard from the admin after that suggestion.),USC(Flew a few flights with the SCA and DGIV,and an orbital flight,still succesful.)Those are the only VSA's I have joined,and will join.Projects:CST-100(Still working on it,no set complete date,textures are an issue still.),Shuttle middeck(still in early development stages).DGIV skins(working on a few at a time,making sure thry are perfect after the AEB skin comments).

 

[Xyon]

Indeed we are straying from the topic somewhat, and I think we'd do well to avoid getting personal here. Ky, I don't think Pablo meant his comment in the way you took it - nobody is saying you should not run the project, at this stage titles mean nothing. What Pablo is doing is what the rest of us who have concerns are doing; voicing them, and trying to clear the air on what's what.

You produce a comprehensive list of VSAs you are either managing or involved with, and this concerns me, too - with all this going on, do you really have the time for another project? Without getting personal or bogged down in the nitty-gritty, it sounds like you already have an awful lot on your plate, and I think those who are interested would benefit from some reassurances that you will be able to devote the time and attention required to carry this project through to a lasting success.

Nobody is criticising you here, people are merely probing to make sure we'll get this going and keep it going, and how much help you'd need to accomplish it, should you be the best person to run it.

 

[jangofett287]

Getting back on track, I would just like to point out that Word, and by extension, Microsoft Office, is a program/suite that not all people are going to have, so they may be unable to submit items if we use the .doc or .docx formats. I suggest using a format like .odf (OpenOffice) as anyone can obtain the programs to read and write to these files.

 

[ky]

Getting back on track, I would just like to point out that Word, and by extension, Microsoft Office, is a program/suite that not all people are going to have, so they may be unable to submit items if we use the .doc or .docx formats. I suggest using a format like .odf (OpenOffice) as anyone can obtain the programs to read and write to these files.

As openoffice is free we can use that.

 

[Nistenf]

Why should an article have a maximum number of words? As long as it stays centered, why can't it be as long as the writer wants? Of course, writing an article that covers 5 pages and talks about 7 different things makes little sense, but one well written, interesting and with a specific theme doesn't need to have a limit imho.

 

[fireballs619]

Why should an article have a maximum number of words? As long as it stays centered, why can't it be as long as the writer wants? Of course, writing an article that covers 5 pages and talks about 7 different things makes little sense, but one well written, interesting and with a specific theme doesn't need to have a limit imho.

As is the old adage, quality, not quantity. I don't think we should be so concerned with word count as long as, as Nistenf said, we stay center.

.odf is a valid document type, but .rtf and .txt are just as good. What should we use for pictures and graphics? .png?

 

[Keatah]

I recall many newsletters from the early days of computing (Apple II, Atari, Commodore-64).. These were little more than 6 to 20 page bulletins. Back in the 1970's we didn't have an internet or any way of disseminating information other than printed material through the mail. 300 baud modems were just coming out and BBS'ing was still a few years away. So we had few choices, printed material or a full-blown radio/tv show. Needless to say, printed material won. Especially on such a niche field of endeavor.

There was a great need for little publications and club newsletters. We looked forward to each and every issue. Some of these went on for many many years. Each issue had programming tricks, maybe one advertisement for another local start-up operation, a call-for-articles section, user Q & A, user program listing submissions.

Each issue of a particular "publication" sometimes had a "Letter from the Editor", perhaps a table of contents all of 5 lines long, updates and advertisements for classes & seminars, meeting times & places, Machine Language tutorials, in-depth product reviews, Q&A sessions, letters from readers, articles describing hardware projects.. And so on and so forth. Sometimes sections would be missing, or new ones introduced in successive issues.

The one thing that made these publications so important and vital in getting the computing scene "going" was they provided real, usable, and vital information that was available nowhere else. NOWHERE ELSE! Content was king and actual typesetting and layout took a backseat. Title cover graphics were often hand-drawn. Some of these "magazines" were formatted little better than an engineer's notebook. The actual layout and appearance evolved over time. But they got the point across. The authors inspired their readers to experiment and try things never been done before. The authors enlightened their readers. The authors presented material not previously available. You get the idea..

One of these publications is still running today! Its printing schedule varied across many time frames, has gone out of business and re-invented itself from time to time. It also has a nicely put-together website.

The magazine in question is C.A.L.L. A.P.P.L.E.
http://www.callapple.org/
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You may want to take a look at the early issues of these newsletters.

Also, more relevant to our hobby is a magazine simply called AERO. It's a Boeing company-produced publication, it seems to also have an irregular schedule (either that or the archive is incomplete). It is short, maybe has 5 or 6 very well researched articles relevant to the aviation industry.

The general theme seems to be based around engineering and how it fits into commercial airliners and their operations. It includes industry trends and focuses on the big picture and details equally well.

It also talks about an industry that has something to talk about! Commercial airliners are endlessly complex, yet simple in principle. Everybody knows and loves them (except for homeowners near airports).
http://www.boeing.com/commercial/aeromagazine/articles/qtr_03_09/article_03_1.html
http://www.boeing.com/commercial/aeromagazine/articles/2011_q3/index.html
When I look here to read these rags, I don't really care about the name or the font or that sort of thing. I'm looking to learn something, to read something I can't easily (if at all) read elsewhere.

So, having said all that, why not get some content together, you start writing an article, get some volunteer contributors together and let the packaging and formatting take care of itself.

One article I might be willing to write would comprehensively cover the multitude of graphical formats, their advantages, disadvantages.. Why use one over the other? How it all fits in together for texturing ships and planets. What programs are good to use and in what situations. It would basically be almost a tutorial. After doing the first initial article I could interview the graphic artists for a second writing, and gain more inside info on techniques. Well, you get the idea!

Another one would be on managing multiple orbiter installations on one system. There are significant tricks to saving space and sharing the large texture files. Multiple installs is required to maintain compatibility if you're an add-on junkie.

Maybe an article on the psychology of the orbiter community is in order. Perhaps these can be explored and researched - What held it together over the years..? Is it growing in richness and complexity or getting too thinned out? Is it a borderline religion? Is the community now more interesting than the program around which it was founded and grew from? How does the orbiter community extend into your life when you're not looking at pixels on a screen? Is it possible to arrange meetings? What are the problems involved in that and how would they be overcome?

Meantime I'd like to introduce an older tutorial that is well put-together and it is what I learned on. http://smithplanet.com/stuff/orbiter/orbitaloperations.htm That and many JPL publications were all very instrumental in painting the picture of practical orbital mechanics for me; such as the new and updated "Basics of Spaceflight" available in a nice and tight .PDF -- http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/basics/index.php
I also ran into these NASA FACTS and found them helpful when printing introductory material for folks that want a little more info than what the typical public news provides -- http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/factsheets.cfm And finally I found this when searching for images -- http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Astrodynamics/Classical_Orbit_Elements#Orbit_Parameters AND [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephemeris"]Ephemeris - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame] -- if you like that sort of thing. Or perhaps -- [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_elements"]Orbital elements - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame] is more pleasant to read because of different formatting

You see - With so much information out there on the internet, we're going to need to work HARD, REALLY HARD(!) to come up with new things that have not been done before, or written about previously. In the meantime while we're doing that, we can look to, critique, and practice with current tutorials. Perhaps even revising them with the author's permission.

We must also be careful not to spend inordinate amounts of effort "reaching" for new things. Once that frame of mind takes hold, sorry folks, it's time to cash it in and call it a day.

 

[ky]

.png is good.

 

[martins]

Writing good articles takes time and effort, so before the submissions start to flow in, you will have to convince your prospective authors that their labour will not be wasted. The only way to do that is to come up with results.

Forget about font sizes, word counts and image formats for now, just explain what your vision for this magazine is (what's the scope, who is the target audience, will it be orbiter-related topics only (may be a bit limited for a magazine), or include general space-related stuff, will it be peer-reviewed, etc)

If you make that sound interesting and convincing, people may be prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt and provide you with enough material for a first issue.

If you receive good contributions you can work with, put in a lot of effort to create a _great_ first issue that will make people want more. Otherwise, you should probably cut your losses and think of something else.

If it works out, you can start working on formal authors' guidelines, style files, publication schedules, special issues, a web site with archives, previews and calls for papers etc.

 

[Keatah]

I'd love to see some sort of resource guide - a list of sites with technical publications that addon developers might find useful.

Comprehensive resource guides, tutorials, publications, technical articles -- this is all available on the internet now as it stands. Problem is is that none of it is centralized and available for easy reference.

This problem is evident with the compatibility lists of 2006 add-ons which work in 2010p1 .. A lot of the info is there, but you have to search through it. And it is in sequential format, ughhh!! But this problem is fading away as new add-ons become available, older ones get updated, so on and so forth.

I absolutely love the documentation that Martin had put together. It's good enough to get you going, and yet, leaves enough gaps to where you have to discover and research on your own. Whether by design or simple omission, this is top quality work.

I would almost rather see an Orbiter Resource Center as opposed to a magazine, or somehow combine both of them.

For an ORC this would need to be a web page listing the following:

1- sources of addons
2- sources of programming tools (visual studio for example)
3- tutorials, tutorials, tutorials - accurate, comprehensive, available, current
4- spaceflight references, including jpl,nasa links, and the atomic rocket
5- orbiter forum highlights like threads that should be made sticky.
6- required add-ons
7- mfd programming tutorials, source code examples.

A lot of this is right here in OF, but I believe it can be made a lot more accessible by making changes to how things are organized.

Uhm ok. My point being the depth and complexity of orbiter deserves some sort of framework to help bring in new folks. To the uninitiated the orbiter community is certainly overwhelming. It is important to not discourage folks, while at the same time presenting a rich and complex world.

 

[Columbia42]

Writing good articles takes time and effort, so before the submissions start to flow in, you will have to convince your prospective authors that their labour will not be wasted. The only way to do that is to come up with results.

Forget about font sizes, word counts and image formats for now, just explain what your vision for this magazine is (what's the scope, who is the target audience, will it be orbiter-related topics only (may be a bit limited for a magazine), or include general space-related stuff, will it be peer-reviewed, etc)

If you make that sound interesting and convincing, people may be prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt and provide you with enough material for a first issue.

If you receive good contributions you can work with, put in a lot of effort to create a _great_ first issue that will make people want more. Otherwise, you should probably cut your losses and think of something else.

If it works out, you can start working on formal authors' guidelines, style files, publication schedules, special issues, a web site with archives, previews and calls for papers etc.

I think the examples posted earlier by Keetah could be good models for the type of magazine envisioned here. As for the scope of the magazine, in my opinion it should be roughly equivalent to the scope of the Forum itself in that there are topics not only about Orbiter but about spaceflight, astronomy and programming/development. As topics become more diverse, however, we run the risk that it will come off as rambling. Keeping a firm topical base and establishing the purpose of the magazine is important. So what exactly is the purpose/target audience of the magazine? Fellow Orbinauts will probably be our primary readers so the question is what are they expecting to get out of this magazine?

 

[Keatah]

It may be that a regularly scheduled magazine is something not doable over the long haul if we stick to orbiter only content. I feel the forums are already filling the need for information quite well.

Maybe we should be focusing on blogs or another category in which to post messages.