Project XR2 Crew swap

[gamer19]

c'mon guys give him a break... making Xeno would be almost impossible.

how bout Winona Ryder then ?

nah just kidding...
?

 

[dgatsoulis]

Well, for a fictional female character I'd love to see Ellen Ripley...

Can't believe I forgot Ellen, will be in the next update for sure. Now... who to pair her up with...

A new mesh would be needed for the other crew member...

Nahh... I think I'll go with Bishop...

 

[GLS]

Can't believe I forgot Ellen, will be in the next update for sure. Now... who to pair her up with...

Yeah, I absolutely would not dock with that spacecraft.

 

[dgatsoulis]

Sooo.... I decided that I want a full crew for the XR2. Male or female able to sit in any of the 14 seats of the ship. And optional helmets.
I'll need to further reduce the triangle count and pose the male and female XR2 suits, using the default EVA suits that come with the Ravenstar as a starting point.
Oh well, at least it's not completely from scratch.
Oh, and I want to be able to do EVAs - both space and walk arounds.
Maybe I'm biting more than I can chew here, so will see how it goes.

 

[Ripley]

Aren't EVAs disabled in the XR Fleet (and anywhere else), while indefintely waiting for the updated Ummu/Ommu?

 

[MarkWatney2015]

Another fictional couple ideas:

• Jim Preston - Aurora Lane (Passengers)
• Obi-Wan Kenobi - Satine Kryze (The Clone Wars)
• Boba Fett - Fennec Shand (The Mandalorian)

Are non-human characters feasible here? If yes, here's some of my suggestions:

• Anakin Skywalker - Ahsoka Tano (The Clone Wars)
• Kanan Jarrus - Hera Syndulla (Rebels)
• Spock - Nyota Uhura (Kelvin Timeline)

 

[dgatsoulis]

Aren't EVAs disabled in the XR Fleet (and anywhere else), while indefintely waiting for the updated Ummu/Ommu?

Yes they are, that's why I want to bring them back. The plan is to use GeneralVehicle as a base and make a GV-mmu class. The walking around is already done by GV, all it needs is to add thrusters for when you are in space. When close to a ship with a docking port, pressing a certain key will enter the ship (delete the GV-mmu and shift the focus to the ship).
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Here is a todo list:

1. Create 4 separate poses for the male and female XR2 suits with removable helmets (pilot, co-pilot, passenger, EVA).
2. Shift the code to an XR2CrewMFD.
3. Once that works and I can place any suit in any XR2 seat, work on the EVA.
4. Create as many head meshes as I can.

I should be able to do #1 and #2 and I can definitely do #4. The EVA would be awesome but it might be tricky. I'll give it a shot and even if I can't make it, we'll get lots of eye-candy for the XR2.

Another fictional couple ideas:

• Jim Preston - Aurora Lane (Passengers)
• Obi-Wan Kenobi - Satine Kryze (The Clone Wars)
• Boba Fett - Fennec Shand (The Mandalorian)

Are non-human characters feasible here? If yes, here's some of my suggestions:

• Anakin Skywalker - Ahsoka Tano (The Clone Wars)
• Kanan Jarrus - Hera Syndulla (Rebels)
• Spock - Nyota Uhura (Kelvin Timeline)

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll see what I can do.
I am shifting the goal post farther, so hopefully when I'm done, there will be no need for male-female pairs. We'll see how that goes first and then I'll add more head meshes.

 

[dgatsoulis]

A quick progress report:
The framework is about 50% done. The male/female pair restriction no longer exists. I can place a male or female suit mesh in either of the crew chairs. Here is a quick vid showing the process.

One takeaway from that vid is that I have lost the ability to type.
The other is that this framework opens up many more possibilities...

 

[WolfAngriff]

Wow... This would be one of the most waited addon.

There's already a walking EVA available using GV with the Deepstar spacecraft (https://www.orbiter-forum.com/threads/deepstar-development.26879/page-12#post-587708). Something simple, but well, it works/walks.

For this vessel, i've suggested using the UCSO addon, as to take in count the mass of the passengers and their spacesuit (https://www.orbiter-forum.com/threads/ucso-development-thread.37374/page-3#post-587925). It could be a way to make EVAs come back to vessels. I don't know anything about licences and authors' rights, and i even know less about programming, but Deepstar and XR vessels work realy good together. So, sorry in advance if i say stupid things, but if this addon could become sharable between any addons, in the future, it would be one of the most important one since Orbiter 2016's release. I know, there's a lot of work before, testings, beta, time spent, energy consumed, night shortened, and always unhappy end users. But it's qo exciting, so inspiring that i can't keep silent. Thanx a lot for this.

 

[predattak]

Is this limited to real life and movie characters? There are lots of cool characters that you could use from the video games side of things. Commander Shepard and his myriad of female followers from the Mass Effect trilogy comes to mind. There is even an ai called EDI that pilots the ship and has human form, it would be a good match for the copilot. But i guess you can't really do that because copyright stuff?

 

[dgatsoulis]

Happy to report that the passengers have been added. Any suit on any seat, persistent between scenarios.

This concludes a major milestone. For the next part, I'll add as many heads as I can, so we can have a working addon that changes the crew on board the XR2.
After that I'll tackle the EVA stuff.

Wow... This would be one of the most waited addon.

There's already a walking EVA available using GV with the Deepstar spacecraft (https://www.orbiter-forum.com/threads/deepstar-development.26879/page-12#post-587708). Something simple, but well, it works/walks.

For this vessel, i've suggested using the UCSO addon, as to take in count the mass of the passengers and their spacesuit (https://www.orbiter-forum.com/threads/ucso-development-thread.37374/page-3#post-587925). It could be a way to make EVAs come back to vessels. I don't know anything about licences and authors' rights, and i even know less about programming, but Deepstar and XR vessels work realy good together. So, sorry in advance if i say stupid things, but if this addon could become sharable between any addons, in the future, it would be one of the most important one since Orbiter 2016's release. I know, there's a lot of work before, testings, beta, time spent, energy consumed, night shortened, and always unhappy end users. But it's qo exciting, so inspiring that i can't keep silent. Thanx a lot for this.

Thanks for the link. I already have a semi-working GVmmu class, but I'll look into the Deepstar to see how it's done there. For now I'll finish the addon in its original scope,(add crew/passengers and have them persist between scenarios). Once that's done, I'll try to migrate everything to MFD format and then I'll tackle the EVA stuff.

Is this limited to real life and movie characters? There are lots of cool characters that you could use from the video games side of things. Commander Shepard and his myriad of female followers from the Mass Effect trilogy comes to mind. There is even an ai called EDI that pilots the ship and has human form, it would be a good match for the copilot. But i guess you can't really do that because copyright stuff?

I have a long list of requests to work on and also some more that I want to add for myself. I try to keep it limited to RL and movies/TV series, but we'll see if I can add anything else later.

 

[dgatsoulis]

28 different crew members to choose from, with a few more to come.

The next goal is to convert to MFD format and make "tie" the crew to the ship name. That way any XR2 with the same name, will have the same crew, but differently named XR2s can have different crews, even in the same scenario.

Link with latest stable version at the end of post #1 of this thread and also in the video's description

 

[dgatsoulis]

A lot more progress made. We are getting past the "pure eye-candy".

The crew persistency is finally tied to the ship's name, giving the ability to have multiple XR2s with different crews in the same scenario.
This also means that any scenario that has an XR2 with the same name will have the same crew loaded. (provided that the script is running).

EVAs: I have already added the ability for the loaded crew to exit the ship. If the ship is landed, the selected crew member is spawned in front of it.
If in space, we have two cases:
If the XR2 is docked, then the selected crew member's mesh is deleted.
If the XR2 is not docked, the crew member spawns at the airlock.

If the spawned crew member is within 3 meters of any free docking port and you press the "V" button, it gets deleted and the focus is shifted to the docking port's vessel.

The next thing to tackle is returning the crew member back to the ship and also handling crew transfers between ships/stations.

I also added a few more crew members, bringing the total number to 31, with a few more to come. This is the list so far:

Done:
Amy_Farrah_Fowler (TBBT)
Benjamin_Sisko (StarTrek DS9)
Bob_Behnken (RL)
Buzz_Aldrin (RL)
Chrisjen_Avasarala (The Expanse)
Deanna_Troi (StarTrek TNG)
Ellen_Ripley (Alien)
Han_Solo (StarWars)
Inara_Serra (Firefly)
Jadzia_Dax (StarTrek DS9)
James_Holden (The Expanse)
James_Kirk (StarTrek TOS)
Jean_Luc_Picard (StarTrek TNG)
Kara_Miller (Default XR2)
Kara_Thrace (BTG)
Kathryn_Janeway (StarTrek Voyager)
Lee_Nash (Default XR2)
Leia_Organa (StarWars)
Malcolm_Reynolds (Firefly)
Megan_McArthur (RL)
Melissa_Lewis (The Martian)
Mr_Data (StarTrek TNG)
Naomi_Nagata (The Expanse)
Neil_Armstrong (RL)
Nyota_Uhura (StarTrek TOS)
Sally_Ride (RL)
Seven_of_Nine (StarTrek Voyager)
Sheldon_Cooper (TBBT)
Spock_son_of_Sarek (StarTrek TOS)
William_Adama (BTG)
William_Riker (StarTrek TNG)

Crew members work in progress:
Geordi_la_Forge (StarTrek TNG)
Tasha_Yar (StarTrek TNG)
Zoe_Washburne (Firefly)
Bishop (Aliens)
Joseph_Cooper (Interstellar)
Dr_Amelia_Brand (Interstellar)
Mark Watney (The Martian)
Hoot Gibson (RL)
Rhea Seddon (RL)

Showcase video posted in the Orbiter Videos section.
Link with beta will soon be added.

 

[dgatsoulis]

Link for Version 0.5 on post #1 of this thread.

Work on EVAs continues. In this version you can exit AND enter the crew back to the XR2. You can also enter any other XR2 that has an empty seat, provided that you focus on that ship first, then back to the EVAed crew member and press V.

Not a very elegant solution, I know. I'll address this issue in the mmu's dll, so hopefully, when it's done, we'll have a more complete method for crew transfers, regardless of the type of ship the mmu enters.

Also added another 4 new crew members:
Geordi_la_Forge (StarTrek TNG)
Tasha_Yar (StarTrek TNG)
Joseph_Cooper (Interstellar)
Dr_Amelia_Brand (Interstellar)

Bringing the total up to 35 crew members to choose from.
Complete list on post #1 of this thread.

If anyone has a little time to beta test this and give some feedback, it would be appreciated.

 

[WolfAngriff]

So, for now, the crew members are not able to walk on the ground ? I'll test this this evening (France time) and don't want to be wrong if i give you any feedback.

 

[dgatsoulis]

So, for now, the crew members are not able to walk on the ground ? I'll test this this evening (France time) and don't want to be wrong if i give you any feedback.

Thanks offering to take the time to test.

They can walk on the ground just fine. They behave the same as Fred18's General Vehicle. See post #1 for usage and keys.
When in space, they use standard rotation/translation thrusters.

 

[WolfAngriff]

Hello dgatsoulis.

I don't understand, nothing works for me. No EVA on the ground, nor in space. I've re-installed a fresh XR2, so 2 options :
1) I'm dumb enough to forget something in the EVA procedure.
2) My XR2 is corrupted with other addons.
I'll tcheck this later and i'll tell you. Sorry.

edit : OK, you know "RTFM" ? I've got a new one : LATFV for "look at the f*****g video"... I'm going to eat something and come back. ?

 

[dgatsoulis]

Hello dgatsoulis.

I don't understand, nothing works for me. No EVA on the ground, nor in space. I've re-installed a fresh XR2, so 2 options :
1) I'm dumb enough to forget something in the EVA procedure.
2) My XR2 is corrupted with other addons.
I'll tcheck this later and i'll tell you. Sorry.

Thanks for taking the time. Sorry to hear it didn't work.
Just to clarify, here is the procedure again.

1. Download the link in post#1 and unzip in your Orbiter directory.
2. Run the scenario 'CrewSwap-Ready for Takeoff to ISS'
3. Open the Ravenstar's docking port. (Ctrl-K) -wait for it to open
4. Open the Ravenstar's outer airlock. (Ctrl-O) -wait for it to open

Once that's done, you should get a pop up dialogue box, asking you if you want to manage the crew.

Can you verify that you followed these steps and it still didn't work?

 

[WolfAngriff]

Up ! I've dited my post.

I didn't follow anything. First option in my post was the good one !

Edit : OK, downloaded last version, used the keybord shortcuts, and it worked. I was able to make an EVA on the ground, and make the crew member walk. But when i've tried to come back to the Ravenstar, V didn't work. Nothing happened. I was realy close to the docking port. And when i've disembarked the astronaut, first, the ground was full black, as if the astronaud was not "on" the ground, but slightly under. When i made it walk, things became as usual.
Then i've made a second try, docked the XR2 to the ISS via scn. editor. I undocked and pushed a little as to not be too close to ISS. EVA OK. I was able to have a short spacewalk (THANX FOR THAT !), but as i tried to come back to the ship, i got a CTD using V. It seems that something's wrong for me with V.
Tomorrow, i'll try to dock two XR2 and egress from one to the other, and then i'll try to see if everything's fine using the inboard commands.
If you mant me to try anything else, just ask.
I hope this could help, and sorry for my too self-confident first try.

 

[Ripley]

....
I also added a few more crew members, bringing the total number to 31, with a few more to come. This is the list so far:

Done:
Amy_Farrah_Fowler (TBBT)
Sheldon_Cooper (TBBT)

Don't you all think we NEED Howard Wolowitz? ?

https://imgur.com/Zawooh1