Apollo 9 Docked SPS Burn Question...And One Totally Unrelated Question

Wedge313

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Trudging along with the Apollo 9 mission. During the docked SPS burns, how much should the engine be gimbling? Would it be safe to assume that full-scale deflection back and forth in the Y axis is not normal? My SPS 2 and SPS 3 ended up looking a bit like the scene from the Apollo 13 movie where the spacecraft corkscrews all over until shutdown. (I'm thinking this issue may be caused by my really slow laptop? I had a somewhat similar problem during the Apollo 8 re-entry, as the G-load built the spacecraft developed an uncontrollable gyration.) I'm running Orbiter 2016 Beta build 190914 and using D3D9 Beta R30.1

And (possibly) unrelated: As I orbit over the ocean, there are these strange shapes below me that I THINK are supposed to be clouds but look more like large areas of pack ice, or huge grey algae blooms....is there something I can tweak to improve this, short of turning off the clouds completely? Thanks.
 

indy91

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Probably performance related. The CMC might struggle to keep controlling the stack if the framerate isn't high enough. Right now I can only recommend using the split main panel in the 2D panel or the virtual cockpit, which should give better performance. Can you post a screenshot of those "algae blooms"? There are some weird stripes at certain longitudes, but I'm not sure I have seen what you are referring to.
 

Wedge313

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I think these give you an idea.....
 

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STS

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Does it happen only over that area on Earth? To me, it looks like some glitch in rendering sun reflection over the water.
 

Wedge313

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I notice it most whenever I'm over an ocean, doesn't seem to be limited to any specific geographic area. FWIW I never saw this when using Orbiter 2016 or Orbiter_ng with a D3D9 client, I first noticed it when I started using Orbiter 2016 Beta and the associated D3D9. Could I have loaded something incorrectly, or failed to configure something correctly? Or is this another CPU performance related issue?
 

n72.75

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That's definitely an odd one, and something I can't remember ever seeing before.

@jarmonik is probably the best one to ask. You have the latest D3D9 client for Orbiter beta, not 2016, right?
 

kuddel

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Could be the "normal-mapped clouds shader & textures" feature introduced in August 2020?
You can enable/disable it in the "D3DClient Advanced Setup" Dialog (Launchpad => Video => Advanced):

CloudNormalMapsConfig.png

The shader file (Modules\D3D9Client\Surface.fx) has a special "quick-exit" in CloudTechPS when the planet is not Earth...
Do you have a different Solar-system? Not the "regular" sol.cfg? I don't know if some NASSP Scenarios use a special sol_nassp.cfg or something like that.
That might beak the "is Earth" detection there.


EDIT: I've checked and the "earth detection" works fine with NASSP scenarios ?
 
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Wedge313

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Thanks for pointing this out. Disabling the "Cloud normal maps" seems to help, the clouds are more cloud-like. I'll play around with the settings, try to fine tune it. Thanks for the info.
 
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