Thanks for the recommendation and feedback on "Go Play In Space" - Andy and I are really glad that it's been helpful for some people learning Orbiter.
An honor to talk to you, sir
.
In my limited experience so far (verging on 2 weeks), I'd say you should have no fear of how helpful GPiS has been. Every forum I've looked on, all the "help the noob" topics have always recommended it, so I figure most of the community must have cut their teeth on it.
Regarding the Mars chapter, we added it for the 2006 release in May 2006 (the September P1 patch didn't change much that would affect the book) when IMFD v4.2.1 was current, and we haven't updated the book since. Jarmo has continued to improve IMFD, but he still makes
v4.2.1 available on his web site. It's true the IMFD interface has changed somewhat, but I think that if you install and use v4.2.1 to follow the steps in the Mars chapter, you will still learn useful concepts that will largely apply to v5.1 (Rob Denny's v5 video tutorial is very good - I tried it and reviewed it in my blog
recently).
I seem to have come along in a transitional period as far as interplanetary stuff goes. I can't find any comprehensive written docs or tutorials for either TransX or IMFD that apply to the latest versions. I've been experimenting with both, which I think is useful. They approach the problem from different directions, and comparing them provides understanding of the underlying principles common to both. It might be useful to have a tutorial in a future GPiS version along these lines, because I think it's helped me understand the more important aspects of the orbit situation.
As to IMFD specifically, I'd recommend against using 5.1e at present. Even Jarmo admits on M6 that it's got bugs, and these bugs prevent you from duplicating rdenny's video. One problem is that autoburn doesn't work in the Planet Approach and Orbit Insert modes in rdenny's Europa-Callisto trip, although autoburn works fine going from Mars to Earth in the analogous situations. There are a couple of other problems with 5.1e as compared to the video, such as, no indication of leaving SOI after the ejection burn, and no automatic change to Off Plane trajectory when you set up for the plane change burn mid-course. I think the video was made with 5.0 or at least some earlier version than 5.1e. But 5.0 is also still available at Jarmo's.
As far as LandMFD, this is truly a masterpiece by the late "LazyD" though it is really for no-atmosphere bodies like the Moon. It does work in Mars' thin atmosphere, but it's a bit marginal. You can get LandMFD on Andy's Virtual Spaceflight site
here.
I was looking through the files that come with LandMFD, and it appears to have a .cfg file for most bases, which I assume tells the MFD how to land at each place. But there is no Olympus.cfg in the version I got (following the link in GPiS). This might explain why I get the hover-powered outside loops when I try to use it there--the MFD doens't know what to do at Olympus.
We are considering whether to do a new edition of GPIS. Orbiter is still the 2006 version, but there are many changes in add-ons, web sites, etc. as well as the Mars chapter. It's a lot of work but we will look into it.
Well, I'd vote for doing it. Honestly, GPiS has taught me more than everything else combined, and I'm sure most people would say the same. If GPiS becomes painfully obsolete, what will the noobs of Orbiter 2008 do? IMHO, it's a question of keeping the community going. The noobs of today are tomorrow's add-on makers and sustaining spirits. The giants of the present always disappear eventually, due to real life issues. If nothing's around to show noobs the ropes, there will be no giants in the future.