General Question Doubt about the future Orbiter

[boogabooga]

No. We are talking on the internet, which requires a computer, about a simulator, which requires a computer. If you are unable to buy a computer for whatever reason, why should this concern me on this forum, international or otherwise.

You can't afford to proper computer, yeah that sucks, but it would suck even more if Orbiter's development has to be held up so it can run on your brutal machine. If you cant run orbiter 2014 or whatever it ends up being, then stick with 2010, or 2006.

I dont know what to tell you, but for people building new rigs, it is kinda standard to have well in excess of 8 GB of RAM and more than 500 GB of Hard Drive space. So if you are still using some old Windows XP machine from 2006 then not only is the new Orbiter not for you, but so is pretty much every other game being released today.

Nobody suggested to hold back the development of Orbiter. The man just wants to know if there will be options for people on the "low end". BTW, nobody appointed you to decide the cutoff as to what system will be good enough for future Orbiter versions.

 

[Enjo]

Especially with the advent of SSDs, HDD space is the cheapest thing around these days. As for CPU/GPU requirements, I'm sure that Martins will add according quality settings in Visuals tab. Besides, DX9 client already does wonders to our FPS.

 

[Pipcard]

Especially with the advent of SSDs, HDD space is the cheapest thing around these days.

US$100 or more is "cheap" to you?

 

[RacerX]

It basically comes down to this....Orbiter development has to evolve or it will just simply die or wait for something to take its place. You cant expect to make a better program with better graphics and stuff and still be able to use a 10 year old computer. Upgrade or buy a newer computer man! :facepalm: /rant

 

[Hielor]

US$100 or more is "cheap" to you?

Compared to the average price of a new computer? Yes.

 

[Keatah]

US$100 or more is "cheap" to you?

All hobbies have an entry price. Make no mistake. I bought home some stupid goldfish from a carnival balloon-pop game. And the damn thing up grew up on us and had babies. So the wife wanted a 20 gallon baby tank to incubate it - aside from the 100 gallon main tank.

What was a fish in a bag, quickly grew to a hobby costing nearly $1,100 last year.

In terms of the computing hobby, $100 is basically pocket change. It will get you a few nice hand tools, maybe some usb keys. A basic small 1 or 2 TB low-end usb hdd. Or perhaps a couple of cables and extension cords.

Some hobbies have a price of entry, and there is no sugar-coating it. I mean I can sugar-coat it if it sounds politically correct and makes you feel good. But then I'm not telling you the whole story.

It basically comes down to this....Orbiter development has to evolve or it will just simply die or wait for something to take its place. You cant expect to make a better program with better graphics and stuff and still be able to use a 10 year old computer. Upgrade or buy a newer computer man! :facepalm: /rant

I have a chillout mood-room in my loft area. A place of social gathering, resting, relaxation, meditating. The bar area is like from a sci-fi space station, all clean lines and what not. Nice comfy form-fitting chairs, all that. A "window" which looks like a window of a deep space cruiser is dressing around a now 100" LCD screen.

I used to use Orbiter to simulate looking out the window, much as an astronaut might do on the real ISS. But I've found Space Engine to be much more pleasing choice for most scenery now. It used to be 100% Orbiter, but now it's 80/20 SpaceEngine/Orbiter.

In no uncertain terms (telling you like we see it) Orbiter needs to up its game. For those of you with older computers. I was one of you. Just use an older version. It will get you by till you make the big bucks. It got me by for long long time! It will get you by too.

 

[RacerX]

All hobbies have an entry price. Make no mistake. I bought home some stupid goldfish from a carnival balloon-pop game. And the damn thing up grew up on us and had babies. So the wife wanted a 20 gallon baby tank to incubate it - aside from the 100 gallon main tank.

What was a fish in a bag, quickly grew to a hobby costing nearly $1,100 last year.

In terms of the computing hobby, $100 is basically pocket change. It will get you a few nice hand tools, maybe some usb keys. A basic small 1 or 2 TB low-end usb hdd. Or perhaps a couple of cables and extension cords.

Some hobbies have a price of entry, and there is no sugar-coating it. I mean I can sugar-coat it if it sounds politically correct and makes you feel good. But then I'm not telling you the whole story.

Exactly my point!

 

[Keatah]

Especially with the advent of SSDs, HDD space is the cheapest thing around these days. As for CPU/GPU requirements, I'm sure that Martins will add according quality settings in Visuals tab. Besides, DX9 client already does wonders to our FPS.

HDD storage space is stupid-cheap! Especially when you re-purpose your older disks for backup purposes or perhaps menial tasks like use in a dedicated word processing computer.

I use one of my older 60GB disks to store a couple of previous orbiter installs. Some day it might be nostalgic, or maybe, somehow, serve a real purpose. Another pair of 120GB disks stores all my active classic gaming and emulation material.

I'm using a 27GB HDD from the 1990's in my journal-keeping computer. Eventually these disks will serve other purposes later, no doubt.

 

[malisle]

Even if it does end up requiring 8 GB RAM, it couldn't have had a better timing. DDR4 is being released next moth, which means that DDR3 will be as cheap as never before in transitional period. Also, hard drives price per GB is less than 4 cents for largest sizes (~4TB) - an all time low.

Similar goes for all the other components. For ~650 $ you can get 6 core CPU, 1 TB HDD, 8GB RAM, 2 GB graphic card, decent MB and a power supply.

 

[Pipcard]

You don't even have to stick with the old version! Just don't download the ultra-high-res textures if your current computer can't handle them.

 

[PhantomCruiser]

My $0.00.

I'm as much of a fan of the awesome visuals that are available o a high end machine as anybody, but there are some things that strain my system. When I discovered Orbiter 2006 I was elated that a really nice (and free, did we mention free?) space simulator would run on my system (and run well!). I'm middle class, had a kid in school, bills, commitments, etc. I can't run out and get the latest graphics card on a whim. Some of those graphics cards cost as much as the car I bought my kid when she started driving.

Everybody is in a different place financially, and this should not turn into a treatise on socioeconomics.

Also, Orbiter (free again, thanks Dr. Martin!!!) isn't "held back" at all. It's a project of the good Dr. that he elected to share with us, and he works on it in his own time. He's also made it easy to modify to our hearts desire, as I'm sure none of us has a copy of Orbiter with the same mods as the next guy.

The "repository" over at the 'Hangar, last I looked had all the previous incarnations of Orbiter. If a 15 year old computer donated to a school in country X runs Orbiter 2005 causes a little boy or girl to get hot about science, physics and spaceflight (manned or otherwise); man, I'm all for it.

If it inspires anyone to reach and rise beyond, I'm all for it. Orbiter (for me) is so much more than pretty visuals, they help with the immersion and imagination, but it's beyond that for me. I can't describe it exactly... There was a time not so very long ago, that I would trade everything (and I mean everything) to be in the astronaut corp. Even not, given the the opportunity, I'd have to give it serious thought. Orbiter lets me imagine, and imagination can be powerful.

end of my $0.00

 

[Glider]

It can't require 8 Gb of RAM because it means it has to become 64bit and that means that every 32bit addon will not work with that new 64 bit version. So this will probably never happen because one of the best things about Orbiter is it's addons and noone wants to make them incompatible.

Don't know why everyone thinks that terrain require some huge amounts of RAM... it only does if u have really bad memory management so that textures stay in memory when they r not needed anymore or if u load entire 1-4 gb file into RAM which is not necessary as well. For example u can look at Outerra which is 32bit, require about 600 mb of RAM and can render terrain of a very good quality... or SpaceEngine which doesn't require Gbs of RAM for its terrain too.

 

[Pablo49]

Don't know why everyone thinks that terrain require some huge amounts of RAM...

Probably peeps who don't understand the difference between RAM and HDD space.

 

[MattBaker]

Probably peeps who don't understand the difference between RAM and HDD space.

I think we have two concerns here:
1st: HDD space. We all probably need a few hundred GBs for the new terrain (which is optional, yeah. But seriously: It's like THE thing about a whole new version, isn't it.). Some guys already have that storage, some are willing to invest a few bucks into a new HDD (special Orbiter HDD:hmm and some will have trouble.
And then you have to download that HDD space which might turn out a problem for some, too. At least my machine is currently set up in my old flat in the middle of nowhere with a great downstream of 300 kB/s. That might take a while for 600 GBs. On the other hand I'd have a work laptop at my new flat with 18 MB/s.
And that whole thing might be an issue for the Doctor, too. Hosting a few hundred GBs? I'd like to see that stuff torrented.

2nd: RAM. Yes, some of us might still be running 4 GBs of RAM. Probably a lot, at least IIRC my change from 4 to 8 was in 2011. And other stuff might use up RAM too, so if Orbiter uses >3 it might actually become close.

Then again this is all speculation and IMO the new version will probably take its time. I'd be happy if there's still an Orbiter 2014 but would be totally OK with Orbiter 2016. It's one guy in his free time working on it, not a dozen guys as their jobs.

 

[Glider]

I think we have two concerns here:
1st: HDD space. We all probably need a few hundred GBs for the new terrain

LOL.:lol: Entire SRTM heightmap with resolution of 90m has abouf 40 Gb size uncompressed. And this is the most detailed global heightmap today AFAIK. Compression can reduce it twice or more (water areas compressed almost into 0). Best visible textures have size of 12 Gb for Earth at 250m. Again compression can reduce it 8 times or more (water areas have same texture repeated many times). No way u will ever need few hundred Gb for orbiter terrain - maybe 50-75 Gb for all planets.

EDIT: I've seen somewhere a heightmap data for Earth with 25m resolution and ~100 gb size but the next version of orbiter will probly have something much simplier anyway

 

[Quick_Nick]

I'm not worried about hard drive space or RAM. I'm assuming multiple resolutions of terrain will be available.

 

[Artlav]

Gentlemen, big HDDs can only do 20-50Mb per second read speed.
If your terrain was to be 100s of GBs, then it simply would not have worked.
Therefore, it won't need that much space.

And AFAIK, terrain would be optional - if you don't want it, you don't turn it on and don't buy a gaming rig to run it.

 

[Matias Saibene]

Gentlemen, big HDDs can only do 20-50Mb per second read speed.
If your terrain was to be 100s of GBs, then it simply would not have worked.
Therefore, it won't need that much space.

And AFAIK, terrain would be optional - if you don't want it, you don't turn it on and don't buy a gaming rig to run it.

Thanks for your explanation.
At first I thought I had to throw away my new computer, and buy a Cray Titan (that's an exaggeration).
Or I had to acquire the super-fast ultra-expensive Internet (in my country the Internet is not very fast).

Thanks for all the explanations, and I think it's great that Orbiter make better in graphics, for a (physically and graphically) more realistic simulation.

One more question is: will work the new Orbiter with D3D9?

Sorry for my bad english.

 

[orb]

One more question is: will work the new Orbiter with D3D9?

The base requirement is still Direct3D 7 compatible card, so it will work with Direct3D 9 cards (but if you mean will the D3D9Client work, then after rebuilding it using that Orbiter's SDK).

 

[Keatah]

Placing files sequentially (and unfragmented) ups their transfer speed quite a bit. And the cost of a HDD should not be a barrier to anyone.

HDD's of 320-500 GB are routinely thrown out in the trash around here. And new ones go for the cost of some smokes.