HyperDart - A new spaceplane

[vonneuman]

I seems that it is the addon developers with their own websites are the ones that get all the attention. Danstep and the guys behind the XRs have their own sites and everyone thinks of their stuff. But if someone puts something on orbithanger people don't know it exists.

 

[Ark]

Whatever happened to that lander from way back in the thread?

Also, the OP really needs to be updated with all the links, so you don't have to go digging through 17 pages of thread for the download and two patches.

 

[CigDriver]

Whatever happened to that lander from way back in the thread?

Also, the OP really needs to be updated with all the links, so you don't have to go digging through 17 pages of thread for the download and two patches.

The lander is actually still in there, but I haven't been doing anything with it lately. As the HyperDart got more realistic the complete lack of any realism to the lander bugged me. I also couldn't get it fly for #@$%^!, so I pretty much just left it alone.

Good idea about this OP. I'll update that with the next release I do. I'll also do a full package so there isn't patches to find and so on.

 

[Tommy]

I found the patched Hyperdart fairly easy to re-enter, at least compared to the original. It's not much harder than a DGIV or XR, and I hope you don't change it

 

[vonneuman]

Hows about this for a lifting-body design?

http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k207/Notebook_04/BACEAG4396.jpg

Design from British Aircraft Company, circa mid 60s. Mach 4 booster, 150' long, 130' wingspan, AUW 500,000lb.
EAG4413 manned spaceplane is the payload, 198,000lb.

Have to change the markings of course.

N.

Ok question, can you tell us the name of this aircraft?

 

[Ark]

The lander is actually still in there, but I haven't been doing anything with it lately. As the HyperDart got more realistic the complete lack of any realism to the lander bugged me. I also couldn't get it fly for #@$%^!, so I pretty much just left it alone.

Good idea about this OP. I'll update that with the next release I do. I'll also do a full package so there isn't patches to find and so on.

I kind of liked the idea of a tiny, miniature escape pod thing. Like a minimalistic escape option for a space station. Realistic or not, it would be neat to see it released, even on it's own.

 

[CigDriver]

Ok, latest version:
http://www.animatedexistence.com/orbiter/HyperDart/HyperDart_PB4.zip

Give it a try, you need UMMU, UCGO, and Universal RMS.

Mission 4 - ISS Intercept has a load of 4 oxygen cargos. The other scenarios do not have UCGO in them yet, but you can add them in the .scn file. Currently you can not add them while the dart is on the ground attached to the XL-70. I'll have to see if there is a way around that.

I did take her up to the ISS and dropped off the cargo, sadly I botched the reentry and passed KSC at about 90Km and M20, lol. Trying to get her down in time I burned up and died The heating is much more forgiving than it used to be though, I rarely got into the top 2/3rds of the heat scale on that reentry.

I also bumped up the ISP in preperation for the higher orbits for the inflatable station will need. You can pretty easily get into a circular orbit around 300Km on main engines alone now. That gives you lots of OMS fuel for plane changes or higher orbits.

Enjoy!

 

[mc_]

Ok, let's check it))

Just one question: how to detach it from XL-70?

 

[Ark]

Ok, latest version:
http://www.animatedexistence.com/orbiter/HyperDart/HyperDart_PB4.zip

Give it a try, you need UMMU, UCGO, and Universal RMS.

Mission 4 - ISS Intercept has a load of 4 oxygen cargos. The other scenarios do not have UCGO in them yet, but you can add them in the .scn file. Currently you can not add them while the dart is on the ground attached to the XL-70. I'll have to see if there is a way around that.

I did take her up to the ISS and dropped off the cargo, sadly I botched the reentry and passed KSC at about 90Km and M20, lol. Trying to get her down in time I burned up and died The heating is much more forgiving than it used to be though, I rarely got into the top 2/3rds of the heat scale on that reentry.

I also bumped up the ISP in preperation for the higher orbits for the inflatable station will need. You can pretty easily get into a circular orbit around 300Km on main engines alone now. That gives you lots of OMS fuel for plane changes or higher orbits.

Enjoy!

Good deal! Glad to see a little bit more ISP, in addition to the UCGO compatibility. You've really grown this thing into a world-class addon.

 

[astrosammy]

Beautiful vessel! I just have one big problem: In the HyperDart VC my framerate drops to 6 FPS, making it impossible to do anything. In the XL-70 I get a nice framerate of 60 FPS. I tried it with a clean Orbiter installation, still the same. Here are my PC specs:

Acer Aspire E380; Win 7 Professional (64 Bit); AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4600+; 2048MB RAM; ATI Radeon X1650 Series

 

[CigDriver]

Your computer seems up to spec, it must be something in my design. The main difference between the two VCs is the UMMU/UCGO panel. I bet that is causing the problem. I'll look into it, perhaps my code is causing the problem (first time I put text on a bitmap, maybe I'm not releasing something that is causing problems) or maybe the texture is just too big. I can try making it half as big and see if that helps, but I will not be able to get to it until the weekend at the earliest.

 

[Urwumpe]

CigDriver: Did you make the texture dynamic? We have such problems on SSU in a regular interval, if you don't make the texture dynamic, Orbiter needs to decompress and recompress the texture for each painting action you do.

 

[CigDriver]

I have the "D" flag on the texture...at least I did, I'll have to double check. Is that what you are referring to?

edit - yes, the "D" flag is on both dynamic textures.

 

[Bergotronic]

WOW! I have never seemed to notice this addon before. I will be trying this out ASAP!!

 

[halcyon]

The airbrake on the HD doesn't seem to work anymore after the latest patch.
Just me?

 

[CigDriver]

The airbrake on the HD doesn't seem to work anymore after the latest patch.
Just me?

Yes, I forgot, I changed the keys from "B" and "V" to "F" and "V". I ran into some conflict with the "B" key(I think it was a UCGO key that I didn't want to change since I figured many would cut and paste Dan's code like I was). Of course after I changed it I realized that "F" does the info display in the orbiter core...I'll change it back to "B"

I checked the framerate on my system and it does drop from 130 to 30 between the XL VC and Dart VC. So, there is definitely an issue there. I'll try to rework my code to be more efficient and resize the bitmaps used.

 

[Evil_Onyx]

This looks to be a great project so far, unfortunately i have the same problem as astrosammy
I drop down to 6fps in VC and 60-80 outside, i have similar setup with the same CPU

 

[CigDriver]

Another snow day and I had some time to mess with this FPS issue. I changed the bitmap used by the UMMU/UCGO display to half its original size and rewrote all the code for the display. I used to have a function for each line, but I did some research and figured out how to do the same thing in one function using a for loop (this learning stuff is both fun and frustrating!). The functionality is exactly the same, but I saw a 50% increase in FPS in the HyperDart's VC! The tests I ran were using the "Mission 4 -ISS Intercept" scenario. I loaded it up and checked the FPS in the XL VC and then switched to the HyperDart VC. With the old code I saw 86 and 30 FPS, after the new code I'm seeing 87 and 45.

Hopefully the gains will be similar or better for the people having issues. That 50% might not be enough to help the 6FPS folks though I'll have to look through the other VC code and see if i can clean it up any. if not, I might have to rebuild the HyperDart's VC to use less textures. From what Dan has posted all my textures are real killer for FPS...learning...grrrr!

get the new beta at:
http://www.animatedexistence.com/orbiter/HyperDart/HyperDart_PB5.zip

Let me know what (if any) improvements you are seeing.

 

[astrosammy]

I have 15 FPS, that's not perfect, but makes it flyable. :thumbup:

 

[CigDriver]

Great news! I'll look and see what else I can streamline this weekend, maybe we can get a few more FPS out of my disastrous code yet!