Question Question regarding radiation pressure + coding starter tips

[Longjap]

Hello Orbiters,

Now I'm starting to progress on making an add-on I'm getting a better understanding of our universe and learning of all that Orbiter has to offer. And I'm even more impressed.
Thanks prof. Martins!

1:
One of which is I discovered that orbiter has implemented radiation pressure in it's physics engine. Normally I'd just check everything on, and I'll see what this might effect in-sim not really paying attention to it. Now I've made a solar sail for a satellite, and I would really like to make use of radiation pressure.

There is a stock scenario "solar sail" to show off the effect. Weirdly though the orbiter manual or other docs don't mention the radiation pressure.
I've no idea how it's being calculated on the spacecraft. I reckon it takes in equation the m2 of an axis of the spacecraft, the mass in the config and the angle/distance towards the sun. Does somebody know or does somebody already made use of the pressure in their add-ons to plan trips so I can learn from them?

Now if the spacecrafts dimensions are calculated before hand from the config and not real-time, it means it doesn't take in account that the solar sail isn't there in the beginning but deployed afterwards by animation while in orbit. So I think I need to make some kind of code that changes the scale of the spacecraft if the command to deploy the solar sail is given. That takes me to my second question:

2:
I can't code. I want to though. What are the best tutorials online to kickstart my ambition and preferably orbiter related? For example I'd like to see how other add-ons are build and learn from it. Is it possible to derive the code from a .dll and load it in MS Visual C++?

Thanks in advance. :thumbup:

 

[Urwumpe]

2:
I can't code. I want to though. What are the best tutorials online to kickstart my ambition and preferably orbiter related? For example I'd like to see how other add-ons are build and learn from it. Is it possible to derive the code from a .dll and load it in MS Visual C++?

Thanks in advance. :thumbup:

You can find the sources for that in OrbiterSDK/samples.

You can usually not find code inside a DLL (unless it was compiled with full debug information, including source lines).

The process is coarsely like that:

sources (.h, .cpp) ---> compiler --> .obj ----> linker ---> .dll

(Visual Studio does most of this automatically, no need to worry much)

I really recommend also learning C++ by simpler examples, because being able to read your own code is critical and much better than cargo-cult programming.

 

[Hlynkacg]

Shameless self promotion is shameless. Look down :hide: