When and If Orbiter gets Multiplayer, What would you like to do or be able to do?

Shadow Addict

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Looking at Attack Vector: Tactical, I am certain that space combat is anything but slow and boring. It would be pretty fast and furious.

I'm sorry, dude, but a semi-realistic spaceflight fighter can't compare with the Real Thing, and Orbiter is as close to the Real Thing as it gets. ASATs sound like fun, and they are, to an extent, but they're not (and never will be) fast-paced, fluid space combat, because spaceflight isn't fast-paced and fluid.
 

Hielor

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Looking at Attack Vector: Tactical, I am certain that space combat is anything but slow and boring. It would be pretty fast and furious.

Heilor, you say it is easy to make an MFD in orbiter? Great! Sign me up! I will make my own statistics-based combat MFD! It is so easy, right! Where are the tutorials!
In the OrbiterSDK forum.
 

Keatah

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Well, it is very fluid if you think about it. Every object is in such a dynamic state, it's difficult to imagine. Maybe people are just too fast-paced for spaceflight... :lol:

True enough, there are not enough zooming spaceships and explosions and lazer guns to promote space travel and combat among then general public.

The general public is wrapped up with the likes of celebrities and rock stars and american idol and reality tv shows.

Anything to do with real-life space travel will bore the hell out of joe-schmoe, and I would suspect a surprisingly large amount of Orbiter fans too!!

---------- Post added at 01:17 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:09 PM ----------

I'm joining this thread late and didn't read all of it. But why not simply have a flag pop-up with a 10X or 100X right above the vessel that is in time acceleration. AND from the time accelerated vessel's perspective, have the other ships display like .1x or .01x ..

I think this would work great!

---------- Post added at 01:21 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:17 PM ----------

Thats a good idea you could be like a resupply ship/taxi.:lol:

Darren

Yep, studies do indeed show that folks that like this type of game also like logistics and transporting things from here to there. Common in the real world as well as in cyberspace.
 

Shadow Addict

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Well, it is very fluid if you think about it. Every object is in such a dynamic state, it's difficult to imagine. Maybe people are just too fast-paced for spaceflight... :lol:

Well, of course spaceflight is unimaginably fast. But there's no way twitch gameplay with spaceflight; you don't just decide to fly to the ISS and burn straight towards it. That takes planning, and when you do get there, you creep up to it at the pace of a snail. In an absolute sense, yes it's very fast, but as far as gameplay, it's not. Just think of how much time you (probably) spend in time accel, and how much less interesting Orbiter would be without that acceleration.

EDIT: Of course, YMMV may vary on those last few sentences. I personally enjoy the planning, and actually making realistic burns at realistic times; what happens between isn't usually important and I'm glad to speed it by. Others may feel differently.
 

Hielor

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I'm joining this thread late and didn't read all of it. But why not simply have a flag pop-up with a 10X or 100X right above the vessel that is in time acceleration. AND from the time accelerated vessel's perspective, have the other ships display like .1x or .01x ..

I think this would work great!
Except that player A would see the earth rotating 10 or 100x faster than player B, so they would quickly get out of sync.
 

Keatah

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In my opinion I believe that Orbiter should remain true to its original intent, a realistic spaceflight simulator. Any incorporation of multi-player should be made to fit within those boundaries. I'm sure conducting LEO would would work great with this. Multiple ships can dock and do a lot of things in a 6 hour session. Really. If you are having a hard time waiting for things to happen in orbiter, MMO is only going make it worse! And I would suggest you go play eve or vega strike. The physics is less tedious, the action is faster, there is a lot of fantasy for you to enjoy, ships zoom around and make noise. You have commerce and combat too! Orbiter is *NOT* that. It is probably easier for you to find the game and style and play that as opposed to trying to make something into something that it is not.

If we are to play Orbiter as intended, then we must play within the ground rules set by the simulation. And, unfortunately, for the twitch-gamerz, this means an excruciatingly slow pace in parts of the 'game'.

Well, having said that..

We should stick with accurate physics and real-time. Afterall, NASA/JPL are doing this since the 60's with multiple planetary missions going on simultaneously. We've got Horizons, Hubble, ISS, Planck & Herschel, Giotto, Dawn, MER, Cassini, etc etc.. All happening all at once!

When physics allows us to speed up and slow down time at will then orbiter should properly reflect that. When new physics are discovered & invented that allows for faster than light travel then orbiter's code should be updated to include those laws and properties.

In order to have the *correct* MMO or SMO Orbiter will need to be re-written significantly. It will need to have all sorts of bells and whistles to cater to the twitch gaming crowd. It will need a magic warp drive and star trek physics, it will need a way to compress and visualize vast distances. It will need to negate all the tedious docking procedures and calculations. and so on.. ..It would almost be easier to take an existing space combat game and add physics/realism to it; rather than modify Orbiter.

If time acceleration is going to be used. There will need to be a voting system. Everyone will need to prepare ahead, and set the time and duration. If we do everything real-time as in the real world, then there would be no problem. Or perhaps certain parts of orbiter could be time accelerated or not. Like zones.. Ahh well, then it isn't a true-to-life simulation.

Come to think of it - I remember this from a while back.
http://web.archive.org/web/20050126041846/www.x-plane.com/SpaceCombat.html

Perhaps there are hints in here for things to add-in to Orbiter?:thumbup:
 

orbitingpluto

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When physics allows us to speed up and slow down time at will then orbiter should properly reflect that. When new physics are discovered & invented that allows for faster than light travel then orbiter's code should be updated to include those laws and properties.

Sorry to kill the dream, but FLT is more likely to get more impossible with new science done, not less. If you want to know why, read up.

Now returning to topic.
 

Bonanza123d

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To shed light on the entire situation, I am currently creating an Orbiter Multiplayer. Funny, as it turns out, there is a MP area in the CFG. also, can someone tell me what this Orbiter Server is?
 

Messierhunter

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  • Be able to share a ship eg. 3 people in Apollo CSM at the same time
If you're going to do that, I'd rather go all-out than use a multiplayer client. Build a full-scale simpit of the CM cabin, program it to talk to NASSP, and fly it with a pair of friends who are as obsessed with spaceflight as we are. If I could do anything with orbiter, that's what I'd do. An accurate CM simpit would probably cost a pretty penny to construct though.

---------- Post added at 01:57 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:45 PM ----------

Just think of how much time you (probably) spend in time accel, and how much less interesting Orbiter would be without that acceleration.

EDIT: Of course, YMMV may vary on those last few sentences. I personally enjoy the planning, and actually making realistic burns at realistic times; what happens between isn't usually important and I'm glad to speed it by. Others may feel differently.
I was just about to say, it wasn't long ago I completed a round trip to mars in realtime (week-by-week actually, only using time accel to catch up to where I should be). It's not for everyone, but I think of it as being akin to a prolonged chess game played between distant opponents. Since it's not for everyone, even within our relatively small circle, that probably puts very strict limits on the number of players who would be up for a purely realtime multiplayer simulation.
 

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Whom would you pick for mission control?
 

StevoPistolero

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Well, the realtime thing could work if you could jump in and out of ships while they persist in the world. You could launch your mars mission, jump out, launch some other missions, and go back to your mars ship in a few months. I like this because it would populate the world with hundreds of ships.

Of course, the servers would have to be solid, so that in a few months your ship would still be there waiting for you.

As for space combat, faster than light travel, and other things, each server would have different rules: no collisions, no weapons, faster-than-light enabled, Apollo only, star-trek only, etc.
 
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Wishbone

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So in essence it would delegate the ship to AI/mission control, wouldn't it? Or, you could define a Lua script to guide your ship through contingencies.
 

Urwumpe

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So in essence it would delegate the ship to AI/mission control, wouldn't it? Or, you could define a Lua script to guide your ship through contingencies.

AI mission control is a tough field. You can't imagine how much stomach feeling and experience is needed for this, especially when the data does suddenly not stay within the limits. You need to teach the AI to not trust the data, if needed. And that is often not that easy to explain as algorithm.

A neural network with memory could detect deviations in the data as good as humans, but would then require serious computing power for reaching the speed of humans or simple rule based agents.
 

StevoPistolero

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Why have mission control or AI? You just jump out of your ship, leave a sticky note on the wheel that says "will be back in 183 days". Then you or someone you have given the keys to will come back in and pilot it. When no one is in the ship, it is just a vector floating around, unguided.
 

Wishbone

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AI mission control is a tough field. You can't imagine how much stomach feeling and experience is needed for this, especially when the data does suddenly not stay within the limits. You need to teach the AI to not trust the data, if needed. And that is often not that easy to explain as algorithm.

A neural network with memory could detect deviations in the data as good as humans, but would then require serious computing power for reaching the speed of humans or simple rule based agents.

Currently Orbiter is a "what you see is what there is" environment. You're not burdened with filtering noisy data, and I'm not sure there are plans to introduce this. The only source of noise is trajectory propagation, no need to train ANNs on that (should I say that I don't trust genetic algorithms or ANNs at all?).

AI mission control can use flight rules. These are as algorithmic as one can imagine, albeit several thousand pages long (to cover for malfunctions and randomness). Without malfunctions the rules would be much shorter.
 

Hielor

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To shed light on the entire situation, I am currently creating an Orbiter Multiplayer.
Really? How far are you? How have you solved some of the problems that have been raised in this thread (and others)? Do you even have so much as a demo video of it working?

Funny, as it turns out, there is a MP area in the CFG.
Hilarious.

also, can someone tell me what this Orbiter Server is?
...what?
 
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