Regarding the discussion for time acceleration in multiplayer, Mandella nailed it on the head.
I suppose I am one of the dreamers, having little coding skills, but as an end user might I make a suggestion?
I think developers are focusing too much on a "massive" multiplayer, like WOW in Spaaaace!!! Instead, I would be very happy with a limited multiplayer hosting no more than four simmers. (Like Left 4 Dead in Spaaace!!!, but with less zombies. Okay no zombies. But you see where I'm going here...)
I'd like to be able to jump into a prepared scenario with just a couple of other space enthusiasts and play for a while. Time acceleration, if needed, would be handled by a dialog box that everyone has to agree on, and anybody can halt.
I can even see this as having application to solo play, as I could run two ships simultaneously without having to tab back and forth between, or run a remote control.
I never tried it, but it sounds like the Orbiter Racing League was working on something like this? Or am I misunderstanding the direction that was going?
Time needs to be serverside. This will keep everyone in the same time and synced.
If someone for example just finished a burn and would like to time accelerate to the next point he would put in a request to time accelerate (probably some serverside set fixed amount or maybe the player can choose in the request dialog box). For example he would hit the time accel request key and the box would say something like the following..
Request Time Accel
1 - 10X
2 - 100X
3 - 1000X
4 - 10000X
He would then hit the desired accel request speed.
This can be a request that everyone has to agree on or a voting system incase you want to avoid issues with idle players who are not responding. If the server uses the request system then the request is sent to the other players in the server in which all have to approved. This can be a dialog box that pops up on everyone's screen as soon as the player sends the request. For example it would say something like...
Player1 has requested to time accelerate at 100X. Do you approve?
1 Yes
2 No
Let's say they all approved the request, then the server would time accelerate. If at any point during the time acceleration, one of the players feels that he needs to stop the accel for any reason, he can do so without the need to request or vote. All he would have to do is hit a key that would stop the acceleration. This would be great if for example now player2 would like to do a burn ,dock, or rentry etc. After he finishes his task then player1, who was time accelerating and was halted, can now request again to time accelerate. I think this would work very well. Thoughts?
Also with regards to teamspeak, i don't see the need to integrate it into orbiter. I think a chat for now would be sufficient. voice can take up quite a bit of bandwidth. There are plenty of programs out there (roger wilco, team speak, skype, and others) that can be run as secondary programs when multiplayer. I think the first step is to have a non time accel fully stable multiplayer platform with online chat. Once the basic multiplayer is stable I would prioritize the time accel features for effective and fun orbiter multiplayer. Other neat features that I think can be integrated into orbiter multiplayer would be the ability for someone else to pilot your ship. FSX currently has this feature in which you can request (again with dialog box) to take control of someone's aircraft. This would make it quite entertaining to work together with someone else on a mission or even training. We could even have EVA crew controlled by different players. This could work where one player releases the EVA crew into space from the ship. Then the other players can request to take control of them.