General Question Orbiter 2010 stability?

[Gray_Lensman]

Are there any known stability issues with the 2010 edition?

Reason I ask is that I've been practicing my docking skills with the basic Checklist scenario Mission 1 DG to ISS. 50% of the time, when I get pretty darn close (<50 Meters) to the ISS with everything lined up a CVEL <10, all of a sudden I get an uncontrollable spin rotation that can't be stopped with the Kill Rotation button nor manually. Other times same approach/same conditions the approach is flawless all the way to the final dock.

 

[Eli13]

You do know you can use the scenario editor to kill all angular velocity, right?

 

[Gray_Lensman]

You do know you can use the scenario editor to kill all angular velocity, right?

True but it ruins the immersiveness to have to resort to artificial means to kill sudden random angular velocity that should not have been there in the first place. My question is whether or not there is stability issues with Orbiter 2010 not workarounds. Is anyone else encountering these sudden random rotation situations? I've uninstalled and reinstalled twice to rule out file corruption.

 

[Wishbone]

What addons/autopilots have you got active? Are you doing a joystick or keyboard-controlled approach?

 

[dbeachy1]

Are you testing in a clean installation? It sounds like a buggy add-on is trashing memory or something. I have never seen sudden random angular velocity just pop out of nowhere.

 

[ghostrunner01]

You might had of accidentally hit the throttle for one of the engines. I just did the scenario and it worked fine. Check to make sure you don't hit the throttle when you got to open the nosecone. I've done it before.

 

[Tommy]

I've seen this happen when time acceleration is used, if you forget you are at 10x time and use rcs it can send you spinning.

 

[Gray_Lensman]

What addons/autopilots have you got active? Are you doing a joystick or keyboard-controlled approach?

Are you testing in a clean installation? It sounds like a buggy add-on is trashing memory or something. I have never seen sudden random angular velocity just pop out of nowhere.

Only addons were higher resolution textures and the Orbiter Sound 3.5.

You might had of accidentally hit the throttle for one of the engines. I just did the scenario and it worked fine. Check to make sure you don't hit the throttle when you got to open the nosecone. I've done it before.

Nosecone had already been opened right after I matched ISS speed and prior to closing for docking and I use the mouse on the graphic lever when opening the nosecone anyhow. I use the <NumPad> <6> and <NumPad> <9> keys for translational acceleration/deceleration. However the <NumPad> <+> key on my keyboard is not immediately next to either of those keys.

I've seen this happen when time acceleration is used, if you forget you are at 10x time and use rcs it can send you spinning.

I do not use time acceleration when docking especially when within 50 meters of the ISS.

Thanks for all the responses, everyone... I'm going to try this a few more times and see if I can duplicate it again since it's happened more than once. I've had several picture perfect dockings so I'm almost positive that it's not any sort of accidental keypress. Even if it was, it should have been easily countered by Kill rotation. There was no residual rotational vectors left since I was that close already to the ISS. This was a dramatic rotational increase that would have taken more than just one accidental momentary keypress.

 

[Eli13]

The only time this has ever done this to me is with autopilots on during time acceleration.

 

[PeterRoss]

Could it possibly be that we're talking here about ISS rotation, not DG's?

 

[N_Molson]

When using the stock Atlantis shuttle, it happens to me to have a "jammed thruster", that fires continuously at 25% of its power. This can be removed by editing the scenario (THLEVEL x). But that's strange.

 

[Wishbone]

I recall I added "CUT" button to (shameless plug) Precession MFD status page for this very reason, to kill all thrusters upon reload or in any other weird circumstances.

---------- Post added at 02:30 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:53 AM ----------

UPDATE: Looks like I have been able to replicate the bug, not in a pristine environment, though. Was testing the new build of Precession MFD, docking to the ISS in a DeltaGlider from a hyperbolic trajectory; during final approach to the dock with Attitude RCS holding angular alignment autopilot had a delay due to textures being loaded (discussed elsewhere in the forum), and after the delay had the DG tumbling wildly.

 

[Eli13]

I haven't been able to replicate the bug, and i did the scenario with no extra MFDs.
All i used was the stock DG and orbiter sound. Everything went just fine, I'm not sure what caused it.

 

[Wishbone]

My guess it is related to two trigger conditions: a) large time step (due to mesh or texture loading) and b) angular accelerations. There is something weird in the angular propagator, methinks.