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: