Future Versions...

[Hooper]

Hello,

I'm not sure where to post this so please feel free to re-direct it if needed. I've been with Orbiter since it first came out. I have recently returned to see a lot of new things released after a couple of years away from it which further enhances the experience. I travel with a Dell 8500 laptop for business with only a 32 meg video card, 1 gig of memory, and a 60 gig hard drive. It passes time while in airports and hotels and I can play anything currently offered with FPS (40-50) good enough to enjoy the sim. I understand that tech changes, but I hope future versions will not cause my system to become un-usable for orbiter due to heavier graphic enhancements. I would suspect a number of us use similar laptops for the sim. I know graphics are great, but I'm interested in learning about flights and not as much about eye candy, at least for this sim.

Thanks to all who work so hard to present the program, add-on's and educate us to the history of space flight and this remarkable sim.

Hooper

 

[garyw]

You don't HAVE to upgrade when the new version comes out.

Burn a copy of Orbiter with the addons onto a DVD and keep it in a safe place. problem solved.

 

[Hooper]

Hi Gary,

Thanks for your reply and I understand your suggestion. But what I was trying to say and may not have done a good job of it, as the new version comes out, the add-on developers will migrate towards the new version, and stop developing add-ons for the past version... and if it's done only for more graphics, as the other types of add-ons wouldn't require higher end machines to run, that was my point I was trying to make. I saw this happen with MS Flight Sim, which thier last release required a machine that wasn't yet developed that would allow the user to run the full capability of the software and due mostly because of graphic enhancements. The result, thier sales were not comparable to past versions, many who tired it, returned to the previous version, and MS left the flight sim market. I own every version of MS Flight Sim, and almost everytime a new version came out through the years, I went out and built a new machine to chase it. Finally, I stopped mainly due to the expense. I'm not saying this will happen to Orbiter, heck, it's free it's more of something I'd like to see developers consider if possible.

I'm really all for new tech and futher developments for us sim users including graphics, I work with it every day, but IMHO, the guts of Orbiter is it's system and operational focus (which was the same for MS Flight Sim prior to thier last version). I could be wrong, have been before

Hooper

 

[Zatnikitelman]

Well good news for you. The next version of Orbiter has its core physics module and the graphics module separated. This means that a separate someone will have to write a separate graphics module for Orbiter like Artlav's OGLA. I think Orbiter will come standard with a default Drectx7 graphics engine so it should still work fine on legacy equipment offering not-the-latest-computers the performance they need, and high end computers (with appropriate graphics module) the eye-candy people want!

 

[ChristopherT]

Hooper, as an add-on creator, I always try to keep my projects I release compatible with all versions of Orbiter. For the most part, I don't use textures, I use materials instead. If I do use textures, I limit them to 256x256 so all machines should display them fine.

Well it's natural that authors do gravitate to the new versions, there's still a lot of support for old versions as well. Take a look at Orbithangar and you'll see what I mean.

ChristopherT

 

[Hooper]

Zatnikitelman, That's great news and answers my concern. Thanks for the info.
ChristopherT, nice to see planning is done addressing not only moving forward, but past releases as well.

Since you both design add-on's, I'll ask you both while your here.
Is there any way of doing something similar to what pilots call a knee board or has it already been done and I've missed it? If not, this could be brought up displaying pre written procedures or custom notes a pilot would want for a particular mission. I have used my pda to display a pdf for missions that require a bit of input, but it would be handy to have within the program.

Thanks to both of you for responding and understanding my point.

Hooper

 

[garyw]

Is there any way of doing something similar to what pilots call a knee board? This could be brought up displaying pre written procedures or custom notes a pilot would want for a particular mission.

[ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=683"]Checklist MFD[/ame]

Personally I print out a little 20 or so page booklet but some people say that is overkill.

 

[Hooper]

Thanks Garyw, I missed that one. Will give it a try.

Hooper