About 1 year ago I finished most of the entry upgrades needed for SSU to run in Orbiter 2016. Since then a big chunk of my work in SSU was dedicated to help fixing the 1001 problems in the meshes and textures (most of them exist for several years now) so a release could finally be made, the first for Orbiter 2016 and the first since SSU 4.2 in late 2016, I think.
Sadly not all horses are pulling in that direction. There appears to be little interest in fixing long standing issues and more interest in reflections, handrails and unneeded expensive detail. This was always a project where one did something that he/she liked, but when after several years the simple basics aren't working, and the graphics are nowhere near a releasable state... something is wrong. The project should not only be for the devs personal "pleasure" but also for the community, and the progress in the last year has brought me little "pleasure" and nothing was given to the community.
And so I simply cannot continue in SSU...
This decision was maybe 95% done some months ago, and I was just waiting to confirm the course of things. Today the course revealed itself to be: a brand new ODS/ExtAL mesh, I think the second one in maybe 3 or 4 years... meanwhile the Orbiter mesh maintains its problems... :uhh:
But because I really want an "advanced" shuttle simulation to be available for Orbiter, I will fork SSU and continue on my own (after I come up with a new name :facepalm
. Help is of course appreciated and needed. The first task in the list is to fix the main mesh to enable a release. Although my graphics skills aren't huge, I'll use them to fix the problems. This means that a release it will take some time, but at least there will be one to look forward to. :shrug:
After this initial bump things should be much smoother: I've done some code work (offline, as I already expected this to happen), so subsequent releases with new features should follow in a small timeframe. Eventually I'll open a thread for updates.
icard-facepalm:
