Project Upgraded Olympus Base

[Urwumpe]

OK, technical question: what would be an optimal design for the in-throat radiator for the cooling towers? I am ready to begin modelling it, so any hints or tips are appreciated, especially if they are not framerate killing polycount inducers!

Well, ideally you would try to maximize the surface area, which is pretty bad for low poly-count, unless you make things simpler.

I recommend just making a few circular surfaces with partially transparent textures and exploit the fact that orbiter only renders one side of the triangles. Will look complex enough, if you for example use the following structure from above to below:

1. Semitransparent and visible from above
2. Opaque, dark and visible from above
3. Opaque, dark and visible from below
4. semitransparent and visible from below.

As concept for the texture, I would use maybe use a spiral tube above and below, with the diameter of the tube decreasing as it enters the center and star shaped radiator panels surrounding the tubes.

 

[MaverickSawyer]

Can you give me a few rough 2-view sketches? I'm not understanding what you're saying for the shape.

 

[Hurricane]

Reminds me on one idea I had for Orbiter, making a set of meshes for the most prominent buildings in the world, like large communication towers, power plants or other landmarks and include them as bases. Especially such TV towers that could dwarf a Saturn V.

Well, I think we can get a bit more elaborate than that :tiphat:
I mean, there are tens of thousands of landmarks around the world... No way we could do that! Have you seen XPX's new plausible world? (;

 

[MaverickSawyer]

OK, checking in. Latest pic is at night:

The runway is courtesy of Luki1997's [ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=5244"]Runways for Olympus.[/ame]
It's not close enough to show some of the changes I made to the cooling towers: I put collision beacons on top.

 

[MaverickSawyer]

OK, status update: All the above work has been lost, as I lost the USB flash drive that this was on.

At this point, this project is on hold, pending completion of a smaller, closer to home base on the far side of the Moon. More details coming Soon(TM).

 

[csanders]

You don't have it loaded in orbiter, or did your flash drive have your orbiter?

 

[MaverickSawyer]

Both. I had to rebuild my install from scratch...