Orbiter Screenshot Thread

[indy91]

My favourite thing to do while testing my DG autopilot.



Not the most impressive screenshot, but I always like to imagine I am sitting there...

 

[Loru]

Great job there Kyle. :thumbup:
Out of Normal mapping and Bump mapping, I have to say I prefer bump mapping. It seems to give a more realistic effect at different light levels and shows the shadows better.

Proper normal map that "shifts" surface in right direction is pretty hard to make. Usually it's done from hi poly very detailed model and then aplied to lower res mesh. Converting desaturated texture is not enough and often produces particular artifacts (element appears "beveled down" on certain angle and "beveled up" on another).

latest example: http://orbithangar.com/addonpics/DGex%20norm.jpg


Bump map is much easier to do, since you operate in single axis only (in and out of polygon plane) .

I experimented with mormal maps for HCLV but settled on bump map which can be created much easier and doesn't produce such artifacts.

 

[Kendo]

Also, I,d just like to point out, the textures don,t have to be the same size.
Obviously, the bigger the bump or normal and main textures the better, but your other textures, emis , spec.
Would be nice to keep the main and bump the same size, but the rest can be smaller if you wish. It saves a little bit of memory I guess.

 

[Interceptor]

My favourite thing to do while testing my DG autopilot.



Not the most impressive screenshot, but I always like to imagine I am sitting there...

OOOh! if it's as good as your LSTS medium,and heavy LUA autopilots were info a real treat:lol:

 

[orb]

Bump map is much easier to do

And it can be easily converted to normal map, and this is how D3D9Client handles them (i.e. by internally converting them to normal maps upon loading).

 

[indy91]

OOOh! if it's as good as your LSTS medium,and heavy LUA autopilots were info a real treat:lol:

I'm just testing out a few things I have learnt from books and uni courses (e.g. about flight mechanics). I've learnt a lot about Orbiter in the last few months and maybe that will be helpful for some undefined project in the future

 

[BruceJohnJennerLawso]

I've learnt a lot about Orbiter in the last few months and maybe that will be helpful for some undefined project in the future

First rule of Add-on Development:

A developer never runs out of projects to work on, even if they try to stop creating more new ones. Its a compulsion, or a disease or something :lol:

The brave adventurers of Upsilon Andromedae I passed the final stage of their journey, returning to the surface of UPSDI after a long & trying reentry



The whole reentry must have taken a half an hour & almost half of the planet. The atmosphere is thicker than Earths, and the orbital velocity is about 8400 m/s, so reentry was very difficult, compounded by using the realistic XR2 config available on Orbithangar here

[ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=4219"]http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=4219[/ame]

which allowed very little margin for things like wing loading.

But anyways, the tricky part is mostly finding a way to get into the atmosphere & drop that first 1000 m/s off without burning up. Once I did that, all I did was cruise along at 60 km or so, keeping my vertical speed at around -20 to -60 m/s & let the speed bleed off. Aerobrake MFD was very useful in monitoring this, so I was able to keep the hull temperature under 1200 C for most of the ride



Once I passed into daylight, I discovered that I was literally on the other side of the planet from my target, so I added an emergency base with a runway to the peninsula I was flying over (yeah I know, sorta cheating, but look how many runways you can find on Earth in an emergency)

Closing in



And a rough landing! I dont know what happened, as my touchdown speed was only 1 or 2 m/s, but I was going 150 m/s, so I blew out my landing gear.



The vessel was otherwise fine, and my crew arrived unharmed. Mission control goes wild!!!



:woohoo:

 

[Kyle]

I've continued to mess around with bump maps, this time on the ISS.

 

[IronRain]

I've continued to mess around with bump maps, this time on the ISS.

Looks really great Kyle!

 

[OrbiterSpore]

So after an hour of re-learning how to get myself in orbit in one piece (and some minutes toying around with some photomanipulation tools), I made my first Orbiter snapshot in... Quite a while.

 

[Dantassii]

Took a break from building my Lunar Station

I decided to take a break from building my Lunar Station and start designing the first major ship that will be constructed at it.

Here are the requirements:

1. Crew: 4
2. Passengers: 36 (2 fully crewed XR5s)
3. Self sufficient Food/O2/Water for 40 people
4. Centrifuge gravity for 40 people
5. Enough Delta V to go anywhere in the Sol system w/out refueling
6. 2 docking ports for XR5s
7. 1 central docking port for docking with Lunar Station
8. PLENTY of cargo capacity outside of the cargo carried by the XR5s

And here's what I've come up with:

1. Crew and Passenger requirements met
2. Self sufficient Food/O2/Water requirement met
3. Gravity requirement met
4. Over 10 Mm/s delta V (I haven't finished it yet, but this is where it's looking to end up)
5. Docking port requirements met
6. When complete, will be capable of carrying 504 XR5 cargo pallets (and each XR5 will carry 36 more) which I feel meets the cargo capacity requirement

I call it the Solar System Transport Vehicle, or SSTV for short.

Although the ship isn't completed, I made a 'practice run' from the Lunar Station to Earth Orbit and brought up an XR5 from Kennedy to dock with it just to give some idea of its size.

Did I mention that in its current semi-finished state I get 3.9 G's of thrust out of those 5 engines in the back?

Those are radiators, not solar arrays. The ship is 100% nuke powered.

Once the Lunar Station is at IRRCC, my plan is to construct 1 of these ships, dock a couple of loaded XR5s to it, and then depart for Europa. The cargo I brought along will be used to build a space station in orbit around Europa. It will be something a little smaller than the Lunar Station, but the same sort of idea. Then I'll fly this ship back to the Lunar Station, reload it, and fly it out to Titan and build a space station there. I think 576 XR5 cargo pallets should contain enough stuff to build a decent sized refueling station at Europa and Titan.

After that, maybe I'll load it up again and build a station out at Pluto....

Dantassii
HUMONGOUS IMS shipbuilder

 

[PeterRoss]

Did I mention that in its current semi-finished state I get 3.9 G's of thrust out of those 5 engines in the back?

Oh, these engines you're using! I was wondering how did you achieve such a dV, but this explains everything. To your information, Nexiss and me used these engines for interstelar travels (with Orbiter Galaxy addon). These engines should be well suitable for solar system exploration of course :lol:

 

[Dantassii]

Oh, these engines you're using! I was wondering how did you achieve such a dV, but this explains everything. To your information, Nexiss and me used these engines for interstelar travels (with Orbiter Galaxy addon). These engines should be well suitable for solar system exploration of course :lol:

I was quite interested in their efficiency.

 

[Aeadar]

Phobos & Mars, using the 'Narrow Angle"camera;

 

[Keatah]

Never get tired of strolling though this thread..

 

[BruceJohnJennerLawso]

Never get tired of strolling though this thread..

Its like a scrapbook of the shared flights of the Orbiter Community. I love reading through it too :thumbup:

The next chapter in the story of Apollo 8, Trans-Earth Injection.

The SPS fires up

"Please be informed that there is a Santa Claus"

The brave voyagers, now on their way home

 

[asbjos]

...
The SPS fires up

...

What Moon texture are you using, BruceJohnJennerLawso? Very high resolution, but it seems darker than the Moon L11 texture here: http://orbitersimulator.com/orbiter-2010-downloads/.

 

[Mojave]

What Moon texture are you using, BruceJohnJennerLawso? Very high resolution, but it seems darker than the Moon L11 texture here: http://orbitersimulator.com/orbiter-2010-downloads/.

I believe they're the ones used in the newest OGLA client. There was a video in that thread if I remember correctly. The video's description had a link to the high resolution planet textures.

 

[BruceJohnJennerLawso]

What Moon texture are you using, BruceJohnJennerLawso? Very high resolution, but it seems darker than the Moon L11 texture here: http://orbitersimulator.com/orbiter-2010-downloads/.

I believe they're the ones used in the newest OGLA client. There was a video in that thread if I remember correctly. The video's description had a link to the high resolution planet textures.

Yes, they are the high res OGLA ones. I downloaded them because I liked the high res Orulex maps, but the textures aren't a personal favourite, they have a ton of seams & lines, especially on the near side.

I forked my Orbiter Apollo install off from my main one with the Orulex setup, can anyone recommend a better texture for use without terrain? It may not matter anyways, since I'm planning on installing the moon3D for my next flights.

It's interesting though, I must admit my thoughts on texturing have come around to the KSP way of things. Instead of creating uber-high res photographic maps, planets would ideally be done as terrain meshes with a modest sized texture applied at a high resolution & modified for Albedo. This is basically Orulex, but I think that the static planet mesh method would be better than the procedural generated one for various performance reasons.

Of course this is all just a personal pipe dream, but I think it would be nice to see Orbiter move along these lines. You can photograph a crater in the highest resolution known to mankind, but if its not 3d, the shadow won't fall properly in Orbiter anyways...

BTW, I would like to give a huge shout out to the AMSO team. I am rarely so impressed by work done in Orbiter as I am by this.

 

[OrbiterSpore]

Went from Phobos to Mars using the PB-01. Been a while since I've flown this far without crashing.