XR2 Public Release Candidate Testing

[dbeachy1]

A few minor issues I have encountered:

• Sometimes when I give trim up using the mouse cursor, and then try to give trim down with the cursor again, it keeps giving trim down instead of up.

Be sure you are clicking below the center of the trim control and not just below the current trim indicator. The clickable areas do not move with the indicator. Also, remember that you can adjust trim using the hotkeys.

When you play a playback of a landing in Orbiter, the ship oscillates slightly up and down; this leads the Ravenstar to call "Wheels Up" "Wheels Down" "Wheels Up".... Maybe adding a small margin for the wheels up call would eliminate this (or maybe it's not even worth fixing this)

Unfortunately this behavior is an artifact of how the Orbiter core repositions the ship each frame based on replay data. IMO it is not worth making the wheels up/down callouts less precise in order to fix the replay behavior given that replays are relatively rare.

I find the airbrake slightly too powerful
Again thankyou!!

Hmm...airbrake performance should be comparable to the XR1 and XR5. All I can suggest is to turn off the airbrake a little sooner.

 

[DarkWanderer]

Haven't touched Orbiter for a year or so. Installed it again lately, downloaded XR vessels...
.... An all I can say is :speakcool:. Great. It's just a new level of quality standarts for Orbiter. Keep it up!

Only one little remark. Scram engines work perfectly on whatever planet they're used, including Jupiter, Mars on Venus (Yes, I've checked ). Not much of a mistake for Jupiter (find another psycho to descent here), but looks strange for Mars.

In other senses - outstanding!

 

[Peskie]

Scram engines work perfectly on whatever planet they're used, including Jupiter, Mars on Venus (Yes, I've checked ). Not much of a mistake for Jupiter (find another psycho to descent here), but looks strange for Mars.

I noticed that too. In Mar's thin atmosphere the scrams are extremely efficient. For kicks try this:

• Landed on Mars, open the scram doors and apply full scram throttle
• Take off with hover autopilot set to a very small vertical acceleration
• Apply just enough main engine power to get the scram engine thrust up a bit (this can be done at a very slow speed, I thought scrams weren't able to function at all at subsonic or even bellow mach 3; the XR2's seems to be able to produce (inefficient but significant) thrust well bellow mach 2 even on Earth).
• Shut off the mains and get into orbit just using the scrams... and not much scram fuel either
• For fun before leaving the atmosphere nose down and reduce scram throttles to see how fast you can go in the upper thin mars atmosphere and still hold altitude. I was crusing and maintaining altitude with a -30 degree AOA (flying interverted would be better but the autopilot doesn't support that) and at above a Mars escape velocity!

As much fun as that is it doesn't seem very realistic; I don't think there is enough of anything that can be used as an oxidizer in the martian atmosphere.
Does Orbiter give any information on the atmosphere composition? If not then hard coding the scams to work only on Earth would work but then it wouldn't allow the XR2 to be used in a custom star system with other earth-like planets. Or for that matter a customized and terraformed Mars.
Perhaps then just a note in the manual that mentions this and mentions what conditions the atmosphere should have for scrams to function and leave it to the users to decide if they should honour this or go ahead and use them anyway.

 

[TSPenguin]

The versatility of the scrams has been discussed before. For now you simply have to roleplay that scrams only work where they should.
In the future there might be a config option similar to the refuel one to restrict scram use. Orbiter does not handle athmospheric contents at all, so all that would do is stop you from using it yourself. Not much point in that IMO, and afterall, this is about enabling you, not restrict you

Happy Orbiting

 

[Cairan]

Don't know if someone remarked on this yet, but the DGIV is put into safe mode when docked, and I think the XR-* should behave in a similar manner. When using a mother ship to get to Jupiter or Saturn, the XR2 burns up and the crew is killed. The hull-temp check should be deactivated when docked.

 

[TSPenguin]

You can always achieve this by editing the config file.

If you do an aerobraking (That is what you are doing, right? How else would hull temps rise) and the XR vessel is exposed, then leaving it on makes sense.

 

[Cairan]

You can always achieve this by editing the config file.

If you do an aerobraking (That is what you are doing, right? How else would hull temps rise) and the XR vessel is exposed, then leaving it on makes sense.

Yes indeed, actually aerocapture, just like in 2010... Didn't notice we could deactivate that in the config files when docked. Thanks, as usual...

 

[Wraith]

A question concerning the use of xxx_XRVesselCtrl.h.
Is there any reliable way to know that a given vessel is of XR-series and so supports the interface? Because calling XR-interface functions through a pointer to something that is not an XR-vessel is likely to CTD.

Edit: That is, apart from comparing class name to a pre-defined list of names.

 

[dbeachy1]

In the current version there is no "IsXRVessel" method; I hope to implement that for the next API version. For now, you can just check the target vessel's classname against a list of the three XR vessel classnames. If you don't want to hardcode that in your DLL you can drive the classname list via a config file.

 

[yagni01]

In the current version there is no "IsXRVessel" method; I hope to implement that for the next API version. For now, you can just check the target vessel's classname against a list of the three XR vessel classnames. If you don't want to hardcode that in your DLL you can drive the classname list via a config file.

Doing an XR interface call on a non-XR vessel will indeed cause a CTD. Trust me. I am doing the hardcoded classname compare in Orb:Connect still. I was going to switch it to the config file in my last release and forgot. Dang it. But the code is there if you want to take a look.

 

[Messierhunter]

The versatility of the scrams has been discussed before. For now you simply have to roleplay that scrams only work where they should.

I know it's been discussed before, so I don't want to derail or start a long winded discussion, but briefly put, couldn't magnesium powder be used as a fuel that would burn in a CO2 atmosphere, as well as an oxygen atmo?
http://www.wickmanspacecraft.com/marsprop.html
I'm guessing the efficiency for such an engine ought to be different for mars and earth (both reactions are exothermic, but they shouldn't be equal), and I have no idea how using a powder fuel would impact a scram design, but doesn't it open up the possibility that an engine could air breathe on earth and on mars?

 

[TSPenguin]

Sounds interesting, but I see huge problems with using powder... I suggest making a dedicated thread for multiathmospheric scrams...