Project SRB recovery ships and scenery.

[80mileshigh]

I've been working on this for three years and this add-on may have served us better three years ago - but better late than never!


This add-on will feature high detail models of the SRB recovery ships Liberty Star and Freedom Star, and scenery of the Hangar AF area at Cape Canaveral where the recovery ships dock and the SRBs are processed.


Ship modelling in Gmax is about 95% complete:

Here's the Hangar AF area - the alpha masks will need to be redone as they are matched to Kukanotas' hi-res tiles for Orbiter 2006.

I've also made a post-recovery SRB mesh so it will be possible to simulate full SRB recovery with the shuttle fleet. I do it like this: watch the SRBs come down, sail to the splashdown point, wait for the shuttle fleet's landed SRB mesh to delete then invoke the post recovery mesh, attach it and return to port.


Hopefully done by STS-133 but no promises!

 

[Pyromaniac605]

:blink: They look great, can't wait to actually do something with those spent SRBs rather than just leave them there.

Darren

 

[garyw]

Very nice, indeed. Messing with ships in Orbiter certainly adds an extra dimension to the whole experience. I've managed to get a couple of ships working via UGCO magic and it does expand the playability options greatly!

 

[Jamesep3]

cool. This is a good looking project far superior to mine:lol:

 

[80mileshigh]

Progress update:

Modelling is as complete as it's going to get. A little mesh optimisation and then texturing will begin:

 

[RisingFury]

That is very impressive! Doesn't even look like Orbiter anymore!

 

[4throck]

Impressive modeling! The textures are quite realistic. :thumbup:
Will you put a VC on the boats ? Will you be able to "land" (by defining a landing pad) at the hangar ? Perhaps dock with it ?

 

[80mileshigh]

Will you put a VC on the boats ?

Originally I intended to model a VC, but ultimately decided against it to get this out while the Shuttle is still flying in real life. One day, if I have too much time on my hands, I might come back to it

Will you be able to "land" (by defining a landing pad) at the hangar ? Perhaps dock with it ?

Great idea! I hadn't thought of it. As far as I know vessels can't dock in a landed state, but I can certainly define a pad so that you refuel when you pull up to the wharf.

 

[80mileshigh]

Mapping is largely done:

 

[Notebook]

Very nice.

N.

 

[garyw]

Very pretty. all it needs are a couple of UMMU's with fishing rods :lol:

Is this rigid usable as well? Looks like you are hoisting it from the ship in one of the screenshots.

 

[Mojave]

Wow this is nice, Great job. :thumbup:

 

[80mileshigh]

Is this rigid usable as well? Looks like you are hoisting it from the ship in one of the screenshots.

The rigid is a static part of the mesh. It would be easy enough to make it an independent vessel, but unless the mesh was cut at the waterline it might look a bit odd, and even then it might not look quite right.

It's just one of the limitations of making ships in a space sim.

 

[garyw]

Ah, fair point. Lovely looking vessels and looks like a lot of fun.

 

[80mileshigh]

Ok, meshing and texturing is done:

It seems starting this thread gave me some impetus to getting it over with, after progressing in fits and starts since '07.

I'm going to leave it for a few days then start working on the in-game side of things. Heading for a pre STS-133 release.

 

[Stevodoran]

will it lag?? But it looks brilliant

 

[80mileshigh]

Correction: two texture maps used in scenery.

will it lag??

Mileage will vary.

I've tried to optimise the meshes as best I can to reduce the frame hit:

The scenery is comprised of two meshes each with a single mesh group and a single texture map. The ships have a polycount of about 55k and a small number of mesh groups and also share a single texture map.

Until recently I was building this on a 5 year old computer; an early model AMD dual core with an Nvidia 6800 ultra and 2gig ram. I was getting about 40 fps with one ship and 15-20 with two.

Now I'm using an AMD 1090t with a GTX470 and 4 gig ram. I get about 35 fps with both ships and very high fps with one (Orbiter generally maintains about 85fps for me on this system).

So basically, older computers may take a hit in scenarios using both ships, but will hopefully handle scenarios using only one.


... I'm actually experiencing an intermittent hardware fault on this new system and may have to take it back to the shop. If I do, I'll switch development to my eeepc. That should give a good benchmark for lower end systems.

 

[Blacklight]

Can the ships tell the difference between water and land in Orbiter ? Will land prevent them from moving or can you crash into the land ?

 

[80mileshigh]

Can the ships tell the difference between water and land in Orbiter ? Will land prevent them from moving or can you crash into the land ?

No, you could sail them down Runway 33 if you really wanted to, though I think that would negate the immersion I'm hoping to provide.

Hypothetically, you could make an invisible mesh coastal wall and stop watercraft with a mesh detection module, but that would be an awful lot of effort for something unrelated to the point of the sim.

 

[80mileshigh]

Beta release at Orbit Hangar:

[ame="http://www.orbithangar.com/searchid.php?ID=4928"]SRB Recovery Ships 0.9[/ame]

There seems to be a conflict with the surface tile list in the Shuttle Fleet's KSC.cfg. I haven't had time to fully investigate this but for the time being deleting the surface tile list from that cfg solves the conflict and doesn't appear to alter anything else.

Also, UCargoDeck doesn't recognise its settings after restarting a scenario. Is this a known conflict with Spacecraft 3.dll? Version 1.0 is planned to feature a custom dll which will hopefully resolve this problem.