Project Space Shuttle Vessel

Kyle

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Have you ever looked at imagery of Atlantis at the Visitor Complex? You can look up at the bellow of the Orbiter from the angle you're thinking of. Same with views of the Shuttle during the flip maneuver it performed at the ISS.
 

GLS

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Have you ever looked at imagery of Atlantis at the Visitor Complex? You can look up at the bellow of the Orbiter from the angle you're thinking of. Same with views of the Shuttle during the flip maneuver it performed at the ISS.
It would have to be an image exactly perpendicular to the bottom and far away to reduce field-of-view distortion. Imagine you want to photograph a tall building, and have it look rectangular in the photo, without the "funneling effect" as you look up and/or down.
Anyway, that's old history as I'm progressing with the "tile-by-tile" solution: the acreage tiles are pretty much done, as are the edges of the aft compartment, aft edge of the wing and RCC bottom carrier tiles. I'm currently working the edges of the MLG and ET umbilical doors.
In the meantime I also did some code to de-saturate from "changing pixel colors" and corrected the wiring between the MPM and MMCs in one of the branches. This didn't change the functionality by itself, but it will allow in the future to display the values of the MPM microswitches in SPEC... (forgot which one) and also adding the SPDS.
 

GLS

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moreHRSI.PNG
Still working the bottom: MLG doors and the ET umbilical doors are mostly done, The elevons and BF look to worn out when compared with the rest, so will also need to get the "tile treatment", but not now. CL latch area is next, and then touch up the CL tiles all the way up to the NLG, which is the last hole in this part... well, there's also the ADPs, but they are on the sides.

As this is super-boring, I've sneaked to the code side and added the logic to bring the new payload latch signals to the SM GPC, and all that is now displayed in SPEC 97. I'm having some ideas of bringing all that into the trunk so it gets released now, but it's probably better to polish things a bit more and also wait for the PLBD mech upgrade (in another branch), so the user actually can do something with the SM GPC (open and close the PLBDs) instead of just looking at (mostly) empty displays.

Also did a bit more work in the manual, and it's looking more and more ready for the release.
 

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Is there something like AutoFCS plugin module available to be used for de-orbit/reentry/landing? Looking forward to your release. Great work!
 

GLS

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Is there something like AutoFCS plugin module available to be used for de-orbit/reentry/landing? Looking forward to your release. Great work!
Nothing external is needed for landings.
For entry and landing, while I was in SSU I re-wrote the guidance and flight control (no navigation yet) and improved the aero, and I've since made some corrections for SSV, so with the exception of some "gray areas", AFAIK it flies +/- like the real thing did. But more work is still needed.
For deorbits... currently there is nothing. I have some ideas to find landing opportunities in real-time, but again, time is needed.
 

GLS

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Current project motto: "Slow progress is still progress!"
lotsandlotsandlotsoftiles.PNG
Still several small areas to work, but the only large one remaining is the forward end. I now have to slice that "corner" between the bottom and the side to map it separately (I was going to include the wing chine, but the current bottom projection doesn't look bad in there, so I'm leaving it as is).
The cure for "graphics depression" is of course "code", so I've moved some more GPC I/O to the MDMs, as part of the long-haul effort to separate the GPC software from the subsystems and Orbiter API. Also updated the branches with the latest trunk changes and corrected a few small issues.


I'm also looking at maybe putting the project in github in anticipation making the sources public for release, but I'm not sure it will work size-wise... github: We recommend repositories remain small, ideally less than 1 GB, and less than 5 GB is strongly recommended., and the current 1622 revisions are close to 10GB in size... ?
Changing the texture sources, which like the textures themselves are binary files, produces large diff files... and this is in SVN, which isn't as bad as git with binary files. Still, I really hope most of the texture work is behind, so maybe it would work if I don't put the history up and then keep texture development away the server. Anyway, there's no rush.
 

GLS

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Excellent work GLS (y)
and believe me I know exactly how painful and frustrating it is to draw hi-res single tiles photorealistic textures for the Orbiter (you may remember my SSU HI-RES textures project)
 
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GLS

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Excellent work GLS (y)
and believe me I know exactly how painful and frustrating it is to draw hi-res single tiles photorealistic textures for the Orbiter (you may remember my SSU HI-RES textures project)
Thanks!
This isn't "hi-res" at all, it's just "res". :whistle: Eventually something bigger will have to be done, but that's way out in the future.
 

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Finally finished the bottom! :hailprobe:
nomoreHRSI.PNG
With the exception of a few areas in the aft of the wings that need some detail work, the main body is good enough for release! There are still tons of brightness and contrast levels to play with, but I'll only improve later, at a time when I'm bored with code.

The final part of this "black hole of time" is the mapping of the OMS pods.
I've been trying every way I can think of to unwrap the shape of the OMS pod, and nothing seems good... some are better for the front area, but don't work further aft, others are very good for the main surface but are not compatible with anything at the front. ?‍♂️ The best way I found so far is to cut it longitudinally in half, and project each half from an angle that maximizes the "head-on" view of the surfaces, in order to avoid distortions... but I'm still not happy.

On the code front, I disposed of some more bugs, did some more improvements and kept moving GPC I/O to the MDMs.
 

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The progress of this add-on is so slow (first post of this thread is dated May 2020) that I have given up the notion of realism of add-ons. Instead, I've focused on the playability and availability of the add-on I'm looking for. So I don't want to say anything about SSV as I'm already satisfied with alternatives.
 

GLS

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Update time! :hailprobe:

Still no solution to the OMS pod curved surface uv mapping problem™, so I moved ahead with the rest.
rcs_launch.PNG
Had to make a very ugly cut to separate the RCS pod from the rest, but I didn't really have much choice. Right now, only the flat surfaces on the sides and the forward seal are missing (and the main surface). It's not the best of works, but it will have to do for now.
I also finished the nomenclature for the OMS pod texture, and it should all be ready for other textures in the future (for now, I'll almost certainly will only have the last version).

On the code, only a few 0s and 1s were changed.


And as promised sometime ago, the SSV logo:
logo400.png
Quite simple, but I think it serves its purpose.
 

GLS

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Can you release it now?
I'm not going to release SSV until I'm happy with it, which is finishing the texture mapping of the underside and mapping the OMS pods.
Later this week I should have the OMS pod advanced enough for another "visual update".
I'm fairly confident SSV will be the first of the HLV launches this Summer.
 
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