General Question Tracks of objects?

[SiberianTiger]

Orbiter is a useful ballistic simulation tool, but it'd also be great if it were a versatile ballistic visualization tool as well.

I was dreaming lately of rockets and other flying things in Orbiter leaving tracks behind them as they fly; the first idea that came to me was a specially crafted smoke particles, but such a trail wouldn't be visible from a great distance, like it meant to be.

So here is my question: probably I'm missing something, and this has already been implemented in the recent version or some addon?

 

[Lucy]

Not strictly Orbiter itself, but Garyw recently made an article explaining how to take flight recorder data from Orbiter and get a trajectory view in Google Earth. It produces shots like this:

They would sort of fit the bill, I think.

 

[garyw]

I've got this in a PDF if anyone wants to give it a go? I'll need to upload it when I'm back at home this evening

I'm in the process of making it into an article here and am POSSIBLY going to make a generic KML plugin for orbiter. My C++ skills are not fantastic hence the possibly!

 

[Urwumpe]

I'm in the process of making it into an article here and am POSSIBLY going to make a generic KML plugin for orbiter. My C++ skills are not fantastic hence the possibly!

Would be nice, if it would be possible to extend the flight recorder feature of Orbiter to output the data as KML file instead of recorded flight.

 

[garyw]

Would be nice, if it would be possible to extend the flight recorder feature of Orbiter to output the data as KML file instead of recorded flight.

I'm not sure if I've the skill to do that. I was thinking more of grabbing lat/lon/alt and generating a KML for the focused vessel. MAYBE for a later version it would be possible to redo the flight recorder plugin to do a bit more but for that I'd need help.

 

[SiberianTiger]

I've got this in a PDF if anyone wants to give it a go? I'll need to upload it when I'm back at home this evening

I'm in the process of making it into an article here and am POSSIBLY going to make a generic KML plugin for orbiter. My C++ skills are not fantastic hence the possibly!

I would certainly give it a try, please post a link here in this thread!

Although, I most probably will do that some 3 weeks after today, when I come back from Siberia.

 

[astrosammy]

I recently made a plugin that works quite well for some vessels, but it does bad things when vessels are deleted, causing the index of the other vessels to change and giving strange results. http://www.orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?t=15875
The main idea was to see where stages of rockets end up, so it records all vessels. But it could be edited to only record the focus vessel or selected ones.

 

[statickid]

that is SO COOL! I WANT IT!:blink:

 

[garyw]

a couple more google earth screenshots:

XR05 telemetry showing lift off and acceleration out of Ascension island.

a VERY wide HAC. This also shows the ability of google Earth to overlay images giving an 'almost' NASA like heading graphic over the HAC.

 

[SiberianTiger]

garyw, can you fly the TMA-19 ascent and post a picture here? I'm kind of limited access to Orbiter right now... :blush:

 

[fireballs619]

Can orbits be tracked doing this? Or is it just ascent/descent?

 

[Woo482]

As long as they're Earth orbits and don't go too high, they probably can, sub-orbital flight is easily recorded and shown so it shouldn't be too different for orbital.

 

[garyw]

Can orbits be tracked doing this? Or is it just ascent/descent?

Orbits can be tracked easily enough. I've done a small test of that but I think I deleted the screenshot.

Ok, process document is on my site -> http://isa.gdwnet.com/downloads/google-earth-process.pdf

Please let me know of any problems/errors/corrections/suggestions, etc.

 

[Lucy]

Orbit tracking;

 

[MeDiCS]

Based on Astrosammy's initial work, I've built an Orbiter plugin that does that automatically. Source code only though, at least for now.

 

[MeDiCS]

Crazy orbiteering
Blue: SRBs
Greyish: ET
Pink: Shuttle

 

[statickid]

I'll try to tackle that this weekend!!!