Project Universal Car for Orbiter (UCO)

[the.punk]

Will it be released with UCO or as seperate ship?

 

[dansteph]

Will it be released with UCO or as seperate ship?

With UCGO (new name of UCO ) it's a demonstrator of cargo possibility.

Dan

 

[mattch49]

Beautiful stuff!

 

[PriestLizard]

Dansteph, some minor questions... would be nice if you answer them sooner or later

1. Like me and others already said, the mother ship looks awesome. However, two questions came to my mind:
a) Since this looks impossible to launch from earth, its logical that it would be build directly in LEO. Do you plan to release some kind of "orbital hangar" where people would "launch" this vessel?
b) The ship is probably meant for orbit-to-orbit transfer. Like going from LEO to lunar orbit and back, to bring cargo, supply, ressources etc. Is the design meant to actually LAND on the moon? If not, how will the cargo be transfered from orbit to the ground? (same question for LEO-earth)
While the DGIV is an awesome ship, its use for cargo transport is limited. The Shuttle-A could be used for moon/lunar-orbit but not for earth-LEO (realistically). Any thoughts/ideas/plans for this?

2. Do you plan to create some kind of "crane" to load/unload cargo from vessels and trucks? I always wondered how to get these beautiful cargos out of the DGIV payload bay when on the ground

3. This might be a little bit off-topic, but do you plan to ever release a "Spacetech"-launcher ( ) for the DGIV? While the ENERGIA project is an excellent launcher for the DGIV, it would be nice to have a "matching" launcher for the DGIV for the sake of consistency and overall quality. Just a suggestion... I know I'm demanding too much hehe...

Anyway thanks again for your great work - you'd actually deserve to get paid for that.

 

[dansteph]

Will reply to your question later.

I AM HAPPY !!!

I do yet the "vessel SDK for Cargo" wich will use the freighter above.
Anyone can also design new cargo (a mesh a texture a config file) as
said in config file you can use one of the following keyword for description of content: "oxygen fuel food water hydrogen gold helium metal rock"


Now get this idea:

The freighter will be able to "eat" fuel cargo and replenish its tank as cars also, but later author can extent their ship to eat also other types.

NOW what about a factory base that can convert rock into precious metal or other processing ? you would go to Mars , mine sone "rock" cargo then go to factory on earth or mars that would convert it in gold for example. (you trow it near base and hop, you get a gold cargo instead) Possibility wich such cargo system are infinite.

YOU GET A WHOLE NEW GAME !!! Become rich with Orbiter, have fun while doing spacetrip

With a lot of free time I would do a update of DGIV and Prelude to this standard, I would also do a factory a launcher for UCGO cargo etc etc...

But as real life command you may wait several month to have such update or new addons. Anyways the C++ SDK will allow such possibility for vessel. (I recall for cars you don't need programing, only a config file and a mesh)

Cheers

Dan

 

[jinglesassy]

sounds cool dan and how about you make alot of simple bases on all planets and moons and you can get a mission to like go to mars collect rock go to earth make it into gold and gems then you bring the finished product back to the base that requested it? just somthing to do with the gold and gems and all

 

[Ghostrider]

Why do I have this feeling that someone will begin a new career as a space pirate?

 

[dansteph]

sounds cool dan and how about you make alot of simple bases on all planets and moons and you can get a mission to like go to mars collect rock go to earth make it into gold and gems then you bring the finished product back to the base that requested it? just somthing to do with the gold and gems and all

That or an infinity of other scenario. It's all about transportation

An updated prelude would for example need all humain need as oxygen, water, food. Ship would come from earth with such and would take bake the gold (or rock) found near base by some rover.

You start from home to pad with your car while truck bring cargo to load on vessel you do the trip to mars, transfer cargo to ground with a DGIV (or another ship updated for UCGO cargo) use a rover to bring them to base etc etc...

UCGO open the pandora box of sim world for authors and users

Dan

 

[Arrowstar]

NOW what about a factory base that can convert rock into precious metal or other processing ? you would go to Mars , mine sone "rock" cargo then go to factory on earth or mars that would convert it in gold for example. (you trow it near base and hop, you get a gold cargo instead) Possibility wich such cargo system are infinite.

YOU GET A WHOLE NEW GAME !!! Become rich with Orbiter, have fun while doing spacetrip

Do it do it do it. :speakcool:

 

[Dambuster]

Do it do it do it. :speakcool:

+1
:speakcool:

This is beginning to sound unbelievably cool! What will instrumentation for this cargo spaceship be like? Is it going to be similar to DGIV?

 

[Tommy]

I had a few thoughts on the UCGO. It's a fantastic idea, of course, and coming from Dan is sure to be very well done. I had three main thoughts, which may be covered in the docs/SDK, but here goes:

1. What are the possibilities of increasing the number of cargo "keywords". It might be good to have more than one type of fuel. Also "hydrocarbons" may be good - there are oceans of liquid hydrocarbons (mostly methane and ethane) that form on the poles of Titan each "winter". Also, what happens if a cargo has a "keyword" not on the list? Is it treated like a generic (non-consumable) cargo and the keyword retained? This would allow other devs to expand the "inventory" without needing to constantly update pre-existing vessels.

2. Perhaps also a larger size cargo as well? Something along the lines of a standard shipping container (like a XR-5 payload or TEU)? Then someone could develop a "rack" that could store a few of the smaller size containers (for visual purposes I'd recommend having some sort of curtain for the sides, this way when the curtain is closed the meshes for the DGIV cargos wouldn,t be needed, and it wouldn't look funny when you stowed the larger unit). This larger size unit could also include a "passengers" category, for transporting "tourists" or whatever - without needing to load and unload 50 - 100 UMMUs!

3. This is probably answered in the SDK, but is there a way to transfer a cargo directly from one vessel to another? This would enable custom made forklifts and cranes. For instance, a truck pulls up with a couple cargos. You pull a forklift up to the truck, position it (unfortunately no collision, but that's what imagination is for!), then switch to the truck, select the desired cargo, and transfer it to the forklift. The forklift takes the cargo to the loading area and sets it down. Then an overhead crane picks up the cargo, posistions it in the DGIV cargo bay, and transfers it to the DGIV.

Just wondering, and anxiously awaiting this new toy like a kid before Christmas!

 

[dansteph]

1. What are the possibilities of increasing the number of cargo "keywords".

Well, one can add the whole dictionnary but it would cause a problem:
the larger the list is the lower there is chance that you find a cargo type that interact with somes vessel.

There mich be some authors that support "metal" or "gold" or "fuel" and you might find also some user done container of this type.

Now if one author want to do a mining car that load "ethane" and he do also the ship that understand this keyword, no problem. He can do it.

2. Perhaps also a larger size cargo as well? Something along the lines of a standard shipping container

I was thinking to do cargo that can occupy 2x3 normalised "slot" for example, two could be loaded on 4x6 truck. Now with the variety of possible shape of ships and cars same as above we might end with a lot of cargo that doesn't fit in ship or cars.

Also if cargo place on cars are flat (row&column) on ship you can add slot where you want. so slot 2 might not be close to slot 1 at all.

the more complex an addon is the more possibility you have but it become a pain to use or create for. (and thus you have less peoples that create things for it)

Normalised cargo, period. Simple straight

3. This is probably answered in the SDK, but is there a way to transfer a cargo directly from one vessel to another?

Sorry no.

This would enable custom made forklifts and cranes. For instance, a truck pulls up with a couple cargos.

There is a lot of neat feature that can push Orbiter 1000km above what it was intended for. But I must stop at one moment or never release anything

(UCGO is already a huge things, lot of models lot of features, lot of dev time)

Best

Dan

 

[Eagle]

Dan, what would you think of having a 2 levels of material type:

Highest level is restricted to the types of cargo you listed (maybe add other too it)
Lower level can be any string less than x alphanumeric(maybe allow _ and spaces) characters.

Both should be accessible in the SDK in some standard way: cargo.getMajorType(); cargo.getMinorType().

That way authors could say: my vehicle only uses Fuel:LH2, while another author could just use any cargo of type Fuel.

 

[dansteph]

As it is now fuel are universal, it will please peoples that don't bother to load their cars and also their vessel with the same fuel BUT can also please the hardcore player, they just need to not load their vessel fuel from what is obviously a barrel of oil.

I'll provide different fuel cargo, one obviously for space and vessel and the other for earth (the barrel you see)

After that peoples can do LOX, LH2 or whatewer fuel cargo (meshes & texture), player have the choice to be realistic with them but are not restricted by code.

Loosing my time to restrict possibility add complexity and more difficulty for authors is a loose/loose situation. Of course you may think it's "just" LH2/oil but there is probably 5-6 ideas for UCGO per Orbinaut

Cheers

Dan

 

[jinglesassy]

dan what does ucgo stand for?

 

[Eagle]

Fair enough, I mostly proposed it because it wouldn't take much work to implement compared to getting the first cargo type. It would mostly be copy-pasting and changing the name of the variable/function and the occasional change of == to s1.Equals(s2).

Just seemed like an interesting enough thing to add. No worries though.

 

[dansteph]

I mostly proposed it because it wouldn't take much work to implement

NEVER assume something is "simple" to implement for a programmer
Anyway in this case it wasn't too difficult, but it add more documentation, more complexity, restriction and more problems, I wasn't in the mood but it took me time to understand your idea. "primary" "secondary" is not KISS (Keep it simple Stupid) for peoples that want to make a car or a vessel and that must deal with dozen informations already. It would not be simple for some users either, not everyone want to spend hours reading one addon's doc. ("WTF why this fuel cargo don't load in my ship !!!???")

Fuel= you load fuel in every object that is a kiss idea. Now peoples that want complexity are allowed to stick to realistic fuel cargo.

Just seemed like an interesting enough thing to add. No worries though.

No worry, some idea are nice. It's just my job to listen and see if it's in the addon possibility or not. (it's all about dev time vs ergonomy, coolness etc)

Cheers

Dan

 

[sunshine135]

Dan,

I'm flipping out over the mother ship. I want to load it and take it out into the solar system for a shakedown. What is the empty mass, loaded mass, and thrust behind that bad boy, and does it have O2 systems like the DGIV?

 

[Eagle]

NEVER assume something is "simple" to implement for a programmer
...
No worry, some idea are nice. It's just my job to listen and see if it's in the addon possibility or not. (it's all about dev time vs ergonomy, coolness etc)

I've done enough programing to have some guestimation of difficulty, of course it only takes one blasted line of code to ruin all your fun time. If that's the case, bad programing structure!

Hey, its your addon. Its not like I'm doing any work blathering about what extra features are tickling my fancy today. I've had to say, "No I'm not doing that." for addons before (well mostly just one addon).

May the compiler be with you!

 

[TalonHawk]

Thank you!

Thank you so much for the mothership that's coming Dan. The lack of a good mothership is what has caused my interest to fade in Orbiter lately. I just can't believe in crew members stuffed in smaller ships making trips to anything further out than Mars.

And it's certainly exciting that you are working on it, in my opinion you are the best ship creator out there. Only the XR series has given you any competition and they seem to lack the little details you supply.