General Question Enjoying Orbiter as a Totally Blind User

[BlindGuyNW]

Hi All,

I figured I would post this in General since I'm not sure I'm quite ready for add-on development discussion yet

I'm a totally blind fan of all things space—or at least used to be, and was recently reminded. I've been re-reading Apollo 13 and got to wondering what exists out there for realistic spaceflight simulation. I'm a screen reader user already acquainted with fairly elaborate sims, such as the PMDG aircraft for Microsoft Flight Simulator, which are accessible thanks to the Talking Flight Monitor add-on.
It seems to me that Orbiter is similarly flexible, since a lot of the core data is already numbers and math under the hood. I'm just wondering about the best way to expose it to my screen reader, since obviously a graphical MFD is rather useless for me.
I've seen and started messing with the OrbConnect project, which seems like a potentially interesting starting point for exposing the kind of info I would want. Essentially the problems are twofold: how do I get info out of the sim in a meaningful way, and how do I send input back in? Can I avoid, or somehow manage, manual flight?
I'd love any ideas from people more familiar with Orbiter about how this might be arranged. The SDK and Lua API are comprehensive but also a bit overwhelming.
Something like a verb-noun AGC system?
Thanks for any notions.

 

[dennis.krenz]

To be honest, I think a blind person could indeed achieve manual flight, as long as it is orbital. You would just need a good solution of the timing problem, while the available autopilot modes in Orbiter are enough for orienting the spacecraft in space.

It would be a piece of cake, if you could simply describe the maneuvers you need in speech or by keyboard inputs and receive the currently relevant orbit parameters via text to speech. And execute burns semi-automatically to permit the necessary accurate timing. Not sure if OrbConnect can pick up there, for my non-blind perception, the available commands are rather basic and too numerically verbose to at least be easy to navigate just by them. But modifying OrbConnect towards a "Interactive fiction / Infocom adventure" mode would be possible.

Another way to include blind people into Orbiter, would be making add-ons that operate on the mission control level. But those don't exist yet, since the focus is on first person flying (and excessive workload for the single human onboard). I could easily imagine a blind person acting as flight director, even though NASA might object there.

 

[BlindGuyNW]

Thanks for such a warm response.

I attended, around twenty-five to thirty years ago now, a specialized space camp for the blind. At the time I won an award for demonstrating the qualities they most looked for in future astronauts or something of the sort. I don't remember the details now, alas, and my career took me in a different direction.

But yeah. I do wonder what might be possible with Orbiter. A text UI of some kind seems like a good fit.

I can see some of the extant MFD text with screen reader OCR and/or image recognition tooling, but that obviously isn't really practical for interacting. Still, baby steps.

 

[BlindGuyNW]

I hope double posting is permitted here

I just thought folks might be interested to know that I've managed to use Claude Code, my AI of choice, to write a small console plugin which hooks into Orbiter and lets me use commands to display orbit information, change time warp, and so on. I was able to complete the first tutorial in Go Play in Space, at least for one of the two gliders in the scenario.

I'm eager to see where I might be able to go next. Since I have more or less the entire SDK available I can probably display almost anything, maybe even some sort of equivalent to the map MFD?

This is honestly very exciting to me.

 

[jedidia]

Since I have more or less the entire SDK available I can probably display almost anything, maybe even some sort of equivalent to the map MFD?

There comes a bit of a hickup here.... Essentially, MFDs are not part of the API. It's going to be difficult to get data out of them. Now, for sure, all the data the MFDs get from orbiter, you can get as well. But you can't get at the data an MFD itself calculates unless you have the source code of that MFD, in which case you can make a more blind-friendly version of it. Otherwise you have to write the darn thing from scratch...
What you're aiming for here is definitely possible, but to adapt something like TransX MFD that does a lot of calculations on its own would be quite some effort...

 

[BlindGuyNW]

I can understand.

I think for now I'm just focused on trying to get the default experience working, but definitely appreciate what you're saying. It's unfortunate but not discouraging.

I wonder if a more comprehensive MFD API is possible. It would be seem to be just the thing for home sim people.

 

[BlindGuyNW]

Hi All,

Just as an update.

I've found an imperfect, though reasonably straight-forward, way to read the text content from MFDs today. IT obviously doesn't help with the issue of things presented in graphical form, such as by TransX, but it's a start.

I've also been trying to brush up on orbital mechanics generally.

The biggest issues I run into are related to controlling ships. A lot of custom vessels obviously have control panels and so on which are opaque, as far as I can tell. There are often supplied hotkeys, but it's still a bit confusing. Frankly I've been doing all my flitting around in the delta glider.

I do have an auto takeoff program which, while not ideal, works to get me into orbit and lets me practice circularization and so on.

Of course, if I can figure out how to use more of the add-on infrastructure available that also may become less of an issue

I just thought people might appreciate a brief note. I'm enjoying the learning process even if it is complex.

 

[BlindGuyNW]

Another update

I decided to try the XR series of vessels and am actually quite happy so far. They expose a ton of API data which my tooling can connect to, so I don't actually need the fancy touchscreen panels, though I'm sure they look lovely. I just managed to circularize at 200 KM parking orbit based on the procedure in the manual, which feels pretty good for a morning's effort.

One of the things I appreciate is the XR callouts. They were obviously not intended for accessibility but do provide a lot of context awareness of what's going on, when I've spent too long in thick atmosphere and am burning up and so on.

I have submitted a PR to the developers for a fuel management API, which was conspicuously missing, and will do so for other issues as I encounter them.

Another minor thing I've realized I'm not quite sure how to do is to land or take off from a specific runway. That is, if I want to get to the ISS, I need to be able to turn to the proper azimuth reliably. The scenario editor lists landing pads but not runways for whatever reason. For now I'm just using the default scenarios that come with the game and/or add-on craft as I'm still very much in the developing things as I go phase, but it's still something to consider.

Happy Sunday all

 

[Sword7]

So impressive! Blind astronaut/pilot can fly/orbit!

 

[N_Molson]

There's a series where a blind astronaut is Head of the Astronaut Office.