SwiftSS Aerospaceplane

[n0mad23]

When was the last time anyone's heard from him? A few years ago, he posted on the old m6 forum (although not often), and was making fairly regular updates to his work. But it's been some time since I've seen any trace of him.

Actually he's a member here. I had a peak at the Member's list and see the last time he visited was 14 May, after registering back towards the end of March. However, he hasn't posted anything.

Love the view of your BA Orbiter Processing Facility Number 3. You're over the top, Greg! Give us more please!

 

[pattersoncr]

Why would you want only 1 SSSLB? Why not have 4, instead of 3 dummy meshes and only 1 good one?

Because there's only one .ini file in the download for a working SSSLB.

 

[pattersoncr]

Greg,
can you post the appropriate .scn file entry foe a lifeboat node with 1 SSSLB and 3 embedded SSSLB meshes? (In other words, it looks like a fully loaded Life boat node but 3 of the 4 SSS's are just dummy meshes)...

Nevermind, I figured it out:

LBN2:LBN2
  STATUS Orbiting Earth
  RPOS -6854970.90 -161984.89 375975.11
  RVEL -462.648 3029.505 -6975.859
  AROT 156.97 -16.23 -72.41
  DOCKINFO 3:0,SSSLB
  NAVFREQ 0 0
END
SSSLB:Spacecraftspacecraft3
  STATUS Orbiting Earth
  RPOS -6854971.57 -161986.51 375974.86
  RVEL -462.648 3029.505 -6975.859
  AROT 156.97 -16.23 107.59
  PRPLEVEL 0:1.000
  DOCKINFO 0:3,LBN2
  NAVFREQ 0 0
  RCS 1
  CTRL_SURFACE 1
  CONFIGURATION 1
  CURRENT_PAYLOAD 0
  SEQ 4 -2 0.004500
  SEQ 5 -2 0.010250
  SEQ 6 2 0.998750
  SEQ 7 -2 0.001000
  SEQ 8 2 0.997400
  SEQ 9 -2 0.005000
  SEQ 10 -2 0.001250
  SEQ 11 -2 0.000000
  SEQ 12 -2 0.000000
  SEQ 13 2 0.999778
  SEQ 14 -2 0.000000
  SEQ 15 -2 0.000000
END

It'll work on orbit but, as Greg indicated, trying to load this combo into a BSP on the ground will invite "bad crazyness"

 

[GregBurch]

I finished the "photoshoot" of the BA hangar. You can see all the images (20) here:

http://www.gregburch.net/BA/BAOPF3.html

GB

 

[Coolhand]

Greg, Nice image, and cool planes! Have you tried inverse falloff for your lighting? it'll make the lights behave more realistically by loosing intensity over distance.

 

[n0mad23]

I finished the "photoshoot" of the BA hangar. You can see all the images (20) here:

http://www.gregburch.net/BA/BAOPF3.html

GB

Thank you, Greg!

This is great work, and really helps in creating a context in which to understand where your projects are coming from.

So humanoid robots are part of the scenario, too. I did a double take on this one, as it wasn't something I anticipated seeing. A delightful surprise.

Very cool work. Thanks for letting us see it.

 

[James.Denholm]

Because there's only one .ini file in the download for a working SSSLB.

I found that there's a work around for that on another thread: http://orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?t=1958

 

[GregBurch]

Greg, Nice image, and cool planes! Have you tried inverse falloff for your lighting? it'll make the lights behave more realistically by loosing intensity over distance.

Actually, I'm pretty sure I do have falloff on this lighting, but there are a LOT of lights in those renders. I may experiment with having a more aggressive falloff, but the strain on the machine I'm using to do the renders (my fastest one) is pretty severe and, at a little over an hour per rendering, the pics on that page represent over a full day of computing time, to say nothing of all the setup, etc.

Another trick that adds realism is to make the shadows "fuzzy." But that REALLY does a hit on the render speed. Maybe for a birthday present I'll invest in some more processing power ....

 

[Coolhand]

Yep definately, they're called soft shadows, and if you can use area lights or something similar then that gives the best results, though sometimes shadow maps instead of raytraced shadows (yours look like hard raytraced shadows) also work well without the huge render time hit. Inverse square falloff is your friend, i don't know if you can make it any more aggressive than inverse, or if you'd want to. What renderer are you using?

 

[GregBurch]

So humanoid robots are part of the scenario, too. I did a double take on this one, as it wasn't something I anticipated seeing. A delightful surprise.

The question of WHO is doing all this spaceflight is really the one I spend the most time thinking about as I envision my "future history." A very good argument can be made that, by the time the technologies to build a robust space infrastructure come to fruition, biological humans would be more or less irrelevant to the over-all undertaking of space flight. The technologies depicted in this series of addons may well be a lower-probability scenario.

What's depicted is, in a sense, a "compromise" scenario: More or less "natural" bio-humans are still around, and interfaces designed for their monkey needs therefore are very obvious. Humanoid robots become a practical answer to sharing interfaces with more advanced intelligences in this scenario. There are hints about what this means in the documentation for my addons: The visible manifestations of these humanoid robots actually represent a wide array of intelligences, from entities that are actually present in the robots, to ones that have identities shared across multiple individual "robots" to ones that are merely using the robots as "remote manipulators."

GB

 

[GregBurch]

Yep definately, they're called soft shadows, and if you can use area lights or something similar then that gives the best results, though sometimes shadow maps instead of raytraced shadows (yours look like hard raytraced shadows) also work well without the huge render time hit. Inverse square falloff is your friend, i don't know if you can make it any more aggressive than inverse, or if you'd want to. What renderer are you using?

That's Bryce 5.0. I really should upgrade it, since I'm guessing that version is something like three years old at least, and I'm sure they've made great advances since then.

BTW, while I have your attention, I have to say your modeling and rendering work I've seen is really impressive. There's a trick you use I need to learn more about -- "baking" lights and shadows onto textures. I have developed a method for doing this by rendering an object in Bryce and then using the image of the render from Bryce as a texture, but that's very time-consuming and kludgey. I'm betting you use some slick tool for automating this process. Is that true?

GB

 

[Coolhand]

I'm not familiar with Bryce but it sounds like you're missing out on some cool features that i couldn't live without. I do my texture baking with 3DS render to texture, ambient occlusion and lighting - ambient occlusion darkens up corners and anywhere that ambient light would not illuminate. I use the lighting map for things like the cabin lights & the spilled illumination from the control panels.

You might want to try the latest build of Blender for your renders, since its free and probably has more advanced rendering features, i'm pretty sure it does area lights, global illumination (GI makes light spill or bounce from one surface to another) and render to texture. Might be worth trying just to make it easier to render your lighting maps, your current system sounds like a real pain!

 

[GregBurch]

I just saw that, on the 30-day anniversary of its release, the SwiftSS has had over 1200 downloads. Even with all its flaws, that makes it the most popular addon I've done at this stage in its short life.

Much thanks to all who have given me feedback and encouragement, and I'm very glad if it has brought a little enjoyment to the Orbiter community!

GB

 

[santy86]

How couldn't we download it? :lol:

 

[James.Denholm]

I just saw that, on the 30-day anniversary of its release, the SwiftSS has had over 1200 downloads. Even with all its flaws, that makes it the most popular addon I've done at this stage in its short life.

Much thanks to all who have given me feedback and encouragement, and I'm very glad if it has brought a little enjoyment to the Orbiter community!

GB

Flaws? Flaws? What flaws?

 

[pattersoncr]

Greg,
I just noticed the HAL electronic eye thingie in the Swift. I think I would find that creepy, sitting there with all those HAL eyes looking at me from evey angle!
Nice touch.
By the way, hitting your target ApA in the 2nd stage booster is tough!
Keep up the great work!

 

[Rosey]

Greg always does great work .. I thank him for all his add ons and I hope he will do many more

Greg, have you ever considered doing the "Armaggedon" space shutlle ...maybe

 

[GregBurch]

I just noticed the HAL electronic eye thingie in the Swift. I think I would find that creepy, sitting there with all those HAL eyes looking at me from evey angle!
Nice touch.

I try to put little visual "Easter Eggs" like that here and there throughout my addons -- and they're intended to add up to a visual subtext of references to the ideas and art that have influenced my work.

Greg always does great work .. I thank him for all his add ons and I hope he will do many more

Greg, have you ever considered doing the "Armaggedon" space shutlle ...maybe

Not meaning to throw cold water on someone who has paid me such a nice compliment, but hell will be freezing over, the Beatles will be getting back together and I'll be saying nice things about the Constellation program before I make an addon from Armagedon: It's tied for first place as THE WORST big-budget "science fiction" movie of all time:

http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/movies/armpitageddon.html

As hilariously bad as the things described in that link are, there are some he missed.


GB

 

[Michkov]

I finally got round to install this addon. I´m able to run the scenarios, I get CTDs as sson as I switch to other vessel. I´ve tried the DG scenario and the first with the wedge till now. IMO I got all stuff which needed to run it installed. Anyone got an idea was is going wrong.

 

[Donamy]

Cut and paste your Orbiter log txt file here, we may be able to see something.