New Release XR2 Ravenstar 1.0 / XR1 1.5 / XR5 Vanguard 1.2 Released

[Biscuit]

I downloaded it a little while ago on an AT&T DSL line, and had nice steady throughput (about 6meg/minute or so) with no problems.

 

[bradfirj92]

Alright no problem, I'm downloading the rar parts now.

 

[markl316]

Is there any way to adjust the max vertical speed at touchdown manually?

 

[TSPenguin]

None that I could find, but you can disable damage due to touchdown alltogether.
Change:

HardLandingsDamageEnabled=1

to:

HardLandingsDamageEnabled=0

 

[MattNW]

More download problems. I downloaded the .zip file with both Firefox and IExplorer and got corrupted files. I downloaded the .rar files and only the 1st one was valid. All 35 others were only 1.9mb and 7Zip reported errors in all of them.

I also noticed that .rar file 02 was a copy of the .pdf maunal that was installed in the .rar file 01. A lot of the other .rar files had duplicate files also.

I tried downloading other files from other sites (including OH) and had no problems. It all seems to be website related. Is there a chance you can upload to another site like OH or AVSIM?

EDIT: I also tried downloading a .rar file from the XR5 and it was corrupted also.

 

[TSPenguin]

The rar files you downloaded are all intact and in the second rar is not a copy of the manual. It is merely the second part of the manual.
This is a split archive, meaning the program you unpack them with will need to combine them. All you do is unpack the first one and your program should recognize the other parts based on filename and unpack them all together. If it does not do so, use another tool or rename the files in a manner that your program detects them properly (part1 is .rar, the others r00, r01 etc.).

Unpacking the parts individualy will NOT work.

 

[liber]

MattNW why you don't try WinRAR instead 7Zip.
For splited file WinRAR is king...TSPenguin is nicely explain your problem.
With WinRAR click on first file with rigth mouse button and just use option extract here,than program joun all file into one.

Only puzzle me where did you get that add in peaces?
File size 1.9mb seems to be a to small.

 

[TSPenguin]

Depending on how you measure MB (million(=mega) bytes, 1000 Kilobytes or 1024 Kilobytes) slightly differences may ensue in displaying the size. Of course then you can always count the size on disk, which depends on a lot of other factors too.
Doug got the best of both worlds, so to speak and decided upon a filesize of 2,480,000 Bytes. All files have this size except the last one.

 

[liber]

TSPenguin yeah know that,just check on page didn't know that file is splited...
I always download full file,but sometimes need and in peaces,depend...

My mistake,it's splited with 2 MB each part...didn't see right away.

http://www.dougsorbiterpage.com/index-3.html

I usualy avoid downloading file with parts...other day I download 4.4 GB in 90 peaces...always exist possibility that some file is corrupted...than need to use rar repair tools...like with that file...one file is corrupted and all other peaces is usless until you don't fix it or use Recycle Bin...

 

[TSPenguin]

The whole point is to download the same amount of data, but any corruption that might happen to the stream only affects one piece wich you have to redownload.
RAR repair function is highly unreliable. I already suggested to put PAR files up.

 

[MattNW]

MattNW why you don't try WinRAR instead 7Zip.
For splited file WinRAR is king...TSPenguin is nicely explain your problem.
With WinRAR click on first file with rigth mouse button and just use option extract here,than program joun all file into one.

Only puzzle me where did you get that add in peaces?
File size 1.9mb seems to be a to small.

Because 7Zip doesn't cost anything and I'm a big cheapskate. I finally had to do it though and WinRAR worked fine (I just didn't want to spend $30 right now). Glad to get this ship working it's beautiful and it's atmospheric flight dynamics are great. Just a little bigger than the DG and feels that way in flight. Still learning to use the scramjet so I haven't had it in orbit yet.

 

[Liberator]

Excellent. I still remember when I was flying a DGIV and a XR1 to try to dock them. The end result, never dock while on earth atmosphere. :rofl::rofl:

 

[Arkalius]

I want to thank Doug Beachy for releasing these awesome ships! I really love the XR2. It's slick looking and is just the right size I think. The ability to carry extra fuel and LOX is also a really cool thing. In fact, that is the main reason I'm writing this post.

I've made some realism-related observations. I pulled off a Mars mission with XR2 (landing at Olympus with just 2% fuel left, fun!). Doing this without modifying settings or cheating requires taking extra LOX along to make the trip. Well with enough LOX on board, launching into Earth orbit is quite a bit more inefficient than it is without. I've been considering trying either carrying an empty LOX tank to orbit and filling it at a station, or simply launching into orbit and collecting a tank there. But, I also stopped to wonder if it was realistic that the LOX tank could carry that much LOX.

So, I did some calculations based on the shape and size of the container. It's overall volume appears to be about 8.5 cubic meters, which means it's internal capacity is probably something around 7.5 to 8 cubic meters. With the density of LOX at 1.141kg/L, the full capacity of 10545kg of LOX would require about 9240 liters of space which is more than those tanks could hold. At most they should hold maybe 9,000kg or so. Maybe you want to revise that for the next version?

After figuring that, I began thinking about the main fuel tank and how much it carries. The question would be what the fuel is. The image for the tank indicates it's "naquadah" fuel which is a nice Stargate homage. But in that show, the density of refined naquadah is very high... so one would imagine a fuel tank that size would be able to hold a much larger mass of that kind of fuel... but then I guess since it's imaginary we can make up anything we want! If you choose to consider the main fuel as being LOX and LH2 (which is typically kept fuel rich with an O/F mass ratio of 4 having an average density of 281g/L), The 3350kg of propellent the tank holds would occupy a volume of nearly 12,000 liters, which is obviously more than the tank could hold. RP-1 has a varying density, but generally no lower than .8kg/L which means that 3350kg wouldn't fill up the tank. But, LH2/LOX and RP-1 have mass-based specific impulses that are an order of magnitude less than what the XR2 is configured for, so it's probably safe to say those aren't the fuels we're using.

The SCRAM tanks hold the same mass as the main fuel tank and the image marks it as Tyllium fuel (BSG is the best!). I guess naquadah and tyllium fuels are just not very dense... less than half the density of water!

I wonder if it would be worthwhile to increase the mass of the fuels we are using to make their densities larger... and reduce the specific impulses to compensate? This will obviously change the performance of the ship as it burns fuel. I guess it really doesn't matter but I thought it was kind of fun to consider all of these things.

And what's the deal with the SCRAM diffuser temp getting up to 8000 K? That's hotter than the surface of the sun! Is that right? As a side note to that, the Kelvin scale isn't measured as degrees... it's just 8000 Kelvin, not 8000 degrees Kelvin.

Also... I'm wondering if in the future we can get an autopilot mode that tries to perform level flight at a particular speed, and can be configured to use either main or scram engines to perform it? We can kind of do it with hold speed and hold attitude... but it can be kind of tedious trying to maintain a specific altitude this way and it doesn't work with scram engines.

 

[TSPenguin]

How about using a naquadah generator to accelerate the fuel mass? That way you don't need to use actual fuel that holds it's own energy, you just need something with mass.

 

[dbeachy1]

So, I did some calculations based on the shape and size of the container. It's overall volume appears to be about 8.5 cubic meters, which means it's internal capacity is probably something around 7.5 to 8 cubic meters. With the density of LOX at 1.141kg/L, the full capacity of 10545kg of LOX would require about 9240 liters of space which is more than those tanks could hold. At most they should hold maybe 9,000kg or so. Maybe you want to revise that for the next version?

Actually, you're close but not quite. I did actually run LOX density numbers at design time -- if the container was perfectly rectangular the volume would be 10.14 cubic meters, so allowing some room for container walls and the top being angled I estimated 9.25 cubic meters internal volume. 9.25 cubic meters x 1140 kg-per-cubic-meter = 10545 kg, which is the capacity of the LOX tank.

As for the fuel densities, the names are indeed homages to SG-1 and BSG, but the fuel densities are comparable to the default DG's "magic fuel". The ship's fuel capacity was calculated by taking the volume relative to the default DG times the fuel capacity of the default DG. And as you said, changing them for the Mk II would completely change flight charactistics and screw up everyone's learned XR2 flight techniques, so I don't want to do that.

And what's the deal with the SCRAM diffuser temp getting up to 8000 K? That's hotter than the surface of the sun! Is that right? As a side note to that, the Kelvin scale isn't measured as degrees... it's just 8000 Kelvin, not 8000 degrees Kelvin.

Good catch on the incorrect 'degrees' symbol for K -- that will be fixed in the next version. As for diffuser temps, the SCRAM algorithm is based on the one in the default DG-S -- with velocities that high the internal diffuser temps are actually even higher than that. I'd need a new SCRAM algorithm (i.e., one different from the DG-S one) to redo the temps/thrust numbers, but figuring out how to write that is way more than I want to tackle. I suppose I could cheat and lower the displayed diffuser temperature further by cooling it even more with the cryogenic SCRAM fuel...

Also... I'm wondering if in the future we can get an autopilot mode that tries to perform level flight at a particular speed, and can be configured to use either main or scram engines to perform it? We can kind of do it with hold speed and hold attitude... but it can be kind of tedious trying to maintain a specific altitude this way and it doesn't work with scram engines.

That would be doable, but somewhat involved as you said. We shall see...

 

[Arkalius]

Actually, you're close but not quite. I did actually run LOX density numbers at design time -- if the container was perfectly rectangular the volume would be 10.14 cubic meters, so allowing some room for container walls and the top being angled I estimated 9.25 cubic meters internal volume. 9.25 cubic meters x 1140 kg-per-cubic-meter = 10545 kg, which is the capacity of the LOX tank.

I've attached an image below to show how I arrived at my volume. I calculated it in two sections. The bottom section is straightforward, it's 3.28 * 1.454 * 1.454 = 6.9343 m3. The top section is also pretty easy. I figured it's height by looking at the sides of the bottom section and noting they were square. Since the total height of the container is 2.128 meters, I figured the height of the top section is 2.128 - 1.454 = 0.674 meters. The volume of the top would be half of what it would be if it were not in that triangular shape, so that's 3.28 * 0.674 * 1.454 / 2 = 1.6 m3. Add the two together and you get about 8.54 m3.

Let me know if this looks right to you.

 

[dbeachy1]

Well, the top part of the tank is not a perfect triangle either -- it is flat on top in the middle, which would give it more volume than a plain triangle, which is how I arrived at the ballpark estimate of 9.25 during design. So we're only talking about a few tenths of a cubic meter possible deviation here, a difference of less than 5% (and changing the default LOX tank mass would affect both max duration of a mission as well as the vessel's flight characteristics). However, what you can do is edit your Config\Vessels\XR2PayloadLOX.cfg file and set 'PropellantResource3' (max LOX loadout) to your liking -- that way everybody's happy.

 

[Arkalius]

Well, the top part of the tank is not a perfect triangle either -- it is flat on top in the middle, which would give it more volume than a plain triangle, which is how I arrived at the ballpark estimate of 9.25 during design.

That's true... but there's also a bit of a trench through that top flat part which might compensate... Anyway I think 9.25 is probably too large but hey, it's your (very awesome) ship, and it's not as if it matters that much

However, what you can do is edit your Config\Vessels\XR2PayloadLOX.cfg file and set 'PropellantResource3' (max LOX loadout) to your liking -- that way everybody's happy.

I already did that I also updated the cargo containers to EableFocus = false, as it was kind of distracting having all that cargo on the ship list when trying to switch ships. It hasn't broken anything for me yet so I assume it is ok to do that?

Hey... do you think you can update these fuel canisters so that you can change the amount of propellent/LOX in them using the scenario editor? Is that easy to do?