V8 Release Work Thread

[jalexb88]

Mission control support is now available for Apollo 12. As said before this will not be an officially supported MCC mission for NASSP 8 release but I will try my best to keep it up to date with the latest RTCC state.

Functionally the same as Apollo 11 MCC tracking plus a few extra features:
-PDI recycle (PDI-2 support)
-Abort handling:
Use "Request Abort" in CAPCOM menu to enter abort mode. Supported phases are TLC and lunar orbit. Once an abort is initiated you must burn the next appropriate abort PAD which was previously handed to you during the normal tracking, you will then get MCC support through to splashdown.

Please report any bugs.

 

[n72.75]

PLEASE READ

After a long process of review and consideration, we have pushed through a small but important update to the way specific heats and temperatures are calculated in the internal systems' simulation state.

Previously, every substance had one specific heat value, and it was invariant with phase changes. This new update adds separate values for liquid vs gas. and will allow us to do some more realistic systems implementations down the road (including resumed work on my long-running fuel cell project).

Old method:

for (i = 0; i < MAX_SUB; i++)
        AvgC += composition[i].mass * SPECIFICC[composition[i].subst_type];

New method

for (i = 0; i < MAX_SUB; i++) {
            AvgC += ((composition[i].vapor_mass * SPECIFICC_GAS[composition[i].subst_type]) + ((composition[i].mass - composition[i].vapor_mass) * SPECIFICC_LIQ[composition[i].subst_type]));
    }

The challenge here is that this update will drastically change the temperature of systems in users' scenarios. This isn't usually drastic enough to prevent completing the mission, and we're aware that most users only update between missions and/or watch this thread, however our concern was aimed primarily at the portion of our userbase that does not regularly use or check the forum, and to whom this may seem like we've simply introduced a hoard of bugs rather than a cool new feature. Because fluid temperature is calculated from internal energy and specific heat, older scenarios (excluding the launch scenarios) would have different (and incorrect) new internal temperatures if no measures were taken to correct the energy value. The fix below adjusts the energy level, such that temperature remains the same after the upgrade.

Because of this we now have a simple version checking feature that will tell you to check this page if a "breaking change" has been made by the update.

For this update specifically, the procedure to upgrade your scenarios is to run this Python script in a folder containing the scenarios you want to upgrade. (you would only need to run it on your own saves, mission scenarios have already been upgraded using a similar process on our end, so don't "upgrade" those.)
NOTE: This script upgrades ALL of the scenarios that are in the folder with the script.
So please take a minute to read this post, and understand what the script is doing.


If you are even a little bit unsure on how to do the upgrade, please PM me your scenario(s) and I will do it for you.

I realize I didn't provide any instructions for actually using the script so here goes.

1. Install Python, that can be done by downloading it from this link: https://www.python.org/downloads/ or from the Windows Store. You'll want the latest stable 3.x.(x) version.
2. Make TWO copy of the folder you want to update. One for updating, and one as a backup
3. Copy this script into the folder. https://gist.github.com/n7275/8cab7e348507ff4bce4749d09e2c3894 The folder should now contain scenarios and this python script.
4. Double click on the python script to run. (only do this once on any particular group of scenarios. the script essentially goes through and multiplies all your temperatures by a scaling factor. If you do this twice they will be wrong.)
5. Copy your scenarios back into the Orbiter directory that you got them from.

If that's hard to follow or you want my help, I will happily run this update for you, all you need to do is put your scenarios in a Zip archive and send them to me (google drive, dropbox, forum attachment, snail mail a floppy, etc. ...)

You should get something like this when you run it.

I've added a bit of fool-proofing to try to make sure it can't update scenarios that have already been updated. And the script now updates the NASSPVER lines too.

 

[indy91]

The Apollo 13 mission in NASSP now uses LM131R1, the actually flown LGC version!

The LGC software for Apollo 13 had a complicated development history. But basically, we have been using Luminary 131 in NASSP for a long time, which is an earlier version of the software. Fairly late into the development they decided to implement one new feature into the software, Auto P66. They got rid of the automatic landing program P65 and instead incorporated some parts of it into P66. That made it possible to switch back and forth between fully automatic and manual attitude control. Before this change you could only "downgrade", so go from fully automatic (P65) to semi-automatic (P66) to manual (P67) landing programs, but not back. Some people really wanted this feature to fly on Apollo 13 already, so they made the changes to the software despite already having started development on the Apollo 14 software. That is also the reason why there is no known program listing for the flown version.

Instead, @thewonderidiot build an incredible device called the rope reader, which can read the rope modules that were used in the AGC to store the software. A collector owns the flight spare of the one module (out of 6) that was changed for the Auto P66 revision of the software. And he managed to read the software from the module, assembled the full LM131R1 software and we can now use it in NASSP! This being the one spare module that was manufactured, and the other module being somewhere in an ocean together with LM Aquarius and also the possibility that there is no program listing anymore for this version, the module that was read is possibly the only source for this software that still existed. So we got very lucky that this software was recovered at all!

If anyone is on an active Apollo 13 mission I would advise against updating your NASSP install, as it will update the software being used for Apollo 13 and the landing programs will not work due to padload changes. The padload changes aren't very massive though, just 7 numbers would have to be changed in the erasable memory to make the Auto P66 work. So if anyone is in need of help with that, the change could be made without too much trouble.

Thanks again to @thewonderidiot for this miraculous recovery!

 

[n72.75]

The update thread was feeling neglected. Here's a little update:

VC fuel cell temp meters now have proper scaling for temperature.

A few other pressure transducers are now wired to the right instrumentation CBs now too.

When you load an old scenario for the first time, your gauge needle may be missing. Don't panic, just a few minute (realtime) and it will come back.