General Question Spacecraft vs Vessels location question

[mercsim]

I have been playing with various docked configuration of some favorite ships and I keep coming back to this issue. Maybe someone could help clarify.

When using the Scenerio Editor, it looks like it only displays ships located in the Config/Vessels folder. Some of my ships use Vinka stuff and get put in Config/Spacecraft or just Config. I have tried moving them to the Vessels folder so they show in the editor. Some seem to go. Then there are a few with extensions .ini in the Spacecraft folder that don't have any corresponding .cfg files (except Vikas spacecraft.cfg). If I try to move these, it crashes to some black hole

Any insight? Of course I looked in the manuals but all I really find is "All vessel configuration files are by default located in ORBITER‟s Config subdirectory".

Scott

 

[DaveS]

Just make a copy of Spacecraft3.cfg in the Config\Vessels subfolder and then call the appropriate ini file by entering the name of it (minus the ini file extension) in the vessel name field.

 

[mercsim]

Well that was lightning fast! Thanks Dave. That seems to put the ship I called out there but some of the animations don't work. (its the X-37B). If I start the session with the X-37B and bring, say a PMA adapter, in with the editor, it seems to work.

I guess I'm still a bit confused how the three locations interact with each other and why there are three: Config, Config/Spacecraft, Config/Vessels.

I'm sure I'm heading down a bottomless rabbit hole but I thought I would build a docked collection of some of my favorites. I have scenarios for all of them on orbit and on approach to landing. Currently I have X-20, HL-20, X-37B, Shuttle (of course), DreamChaser. Its more of an exercise in learning than anything. I always thought the best way to learn something new is to set a goal and go there!

 

[Hlynkacg]

I'm not sure just how far down the rabbit whole you want to go but here are the basics.

Most of the vessels in orbiter are in the form of .dll files written in c/c++. the file in Config/Vessels tells Orbiter where to find the dll for a given vessel and to load that dll as a vessel rather than a planet, mfd, or display driver. Vinka's "Spacecraft.dll" is a vessel dll that loads it's properties from a text file stored in "Config/Spacecraft" rather than having them programed in. Thus allowing people who otherwise don't know how to code to create custom vessels.

Your problem comes from the fact that this multi-step loading process (loading Spacecraft.dll, reading the text file, and then applying it to the vessel) does not get along with Orbiter's built-in scenario editor.

 

[mercsim]

Thank you! I'm getting it.

 

[BEEP]

I myself choose to create a .cfg file for the vessel in the config\vessels folder that calls the spacecraft module (4 now)

For example:

;B-52_8

ClassName = B-52_8
Module = Spacecraft4
EditorModule = B-52_8
ImageBmp =
Help=

This enables the vessels to appear with the proper name in the editor. However the name of the vessel should still be the same for its class or the name for the spacecraft .INI file.


Beep