Artlav
Aperiodic traveller
Sometimes you look back and realize it's been a while.
It's been a while since i really did anything with, for, or in Orbiter.
I used it a time or two to explain orbital mechanics, and that's about it.
I kept thinking about doing this or that, or porting some new or interesting Spaceway idea back to Orbiter or OGLAClient.
Year after year, to no effect.
So why is today any different then?
OGLA engine, the graphics engine used in both Spaceway and OGLAClient, is quite a Frankenstein's monster.
It was based on Orbiter data structures, with another layer of abstraction added above them to make them more like pascal-friendly structures of Spaceway, and then a lot of Spaceway-only growth around that.
It still supports features i dreamed up 7 years ago, like streaming the scene over network, or saving it to a file.
It still supports Orbiter data formats for planetary textures, which have changed in the latter betas to something rather new.
The formats that are fundamentally incompatible with how i do things in Spaceway and Orulex, down to the choice of planet texture mapping projection.
It still supports the stuff from Orulex of 8 years ago, the hacks and definitions to make the terrain Orbiter-friendly and Meshland-compatible.
All that ended today.
In one swoop i removed all the legacy stuff, dropped the intermediate layers of abstraction and functions that weren't called in years, checks for files in the directories that no longer exist, handlers and converters for the now-alien formats.
The pros is that Spaceway can now do full 75 FPS in Oculus Rift at max graphic settings, instead of 10-15.
The cons is that there is no way back to Orbiter any more.
Old skin was shed, with all it's fat and clutter.
In a sense, it feels like a final break.
Decoupling from Orbiter, never to return.
With large swathes of code now open to change and refactoring, the gap will only be getting wider.
This is the code that is entangled in many other projects that were never finished - Orbiter Shipyard, Station Shipyard, SC3 converter, Meshland, UAP, maybe others i no longer remember.
All of that is now officially dead.
It's an end of an era for me.
Orbiter defined my interests in many ways, it was the Jupiter that slingshot me to a trajectory i might never have taken without it.
And now i'm at the escape velocity, heading only stars know where.
Whether it's to the new frontiers, or to get lost in space - only time will tell.
In any case, thanks to everyone who rode along, and everyone who had (or tried to have) fun with what i made.
This is by no means a farewell, i'm still around to talk, show off, and maybe even fix and help every now and then.
But Orbiter is no longer a serious creativity target for me, so it is a farewell for any expectations to be had.
It's been a while since i really did anything with, for, or in Orbiter.
I used it a time or two to explain orbital mechanics, and that's about it.
I kept thinking about doing this or that, or porting some new or interesting Spaceway idea back to Orbiter or OGLAClient.
Year after year, to no effect.
So why is today any different then?
OGLA engine, the graphics engine used in both Spaceway and OGLAClient, is quite a Frankenstein's monster.
It was based on Orbiter data structures, with another layer of abstraction added above them to make them more like pascal-friendly structures of Spaceway, and then a lot of Spaceway-only growth around that.
It still supports features i dreamed up 7 years ago, like streaming the scene over network, or saving it to a file.
It still supports Orbiter data formats for planetary textures, which have changed in the latter betas to something rather new.
The formats that are fundamentally incompatible with how i do things in Spaceway and Orulex, down to the choice of planet texture mapping projection.
It still supports the stuff from Orulex of 8 years ago, the hacks and definitions to make the terrain Orbiter-friendly and Meshland-compatible.
All that ended today.
In one swoop i removed all the legacy stuff, dropped the intermediate layers of abstraction and functions that weren't called in years, checks for files in the directories that no longer exist, handlers and converters for the now-alien formats.
The pros is that Spaceway can now do full 75 FPS in Oculus Rift at max graphic settings, instead of 10-15.
The cons is that there is no way back to Orbiter any more.
Old skin was shed, with all it's fat and clutter.
In a sense, it feels like a final break.
Decoupling from Orbiter, never to return.
With large swathes of code now open to change and refactoring, the gap will only be getting wider.
This is the code that is entangled in many other projects that were never finished - Orbiter Shipyard, Station Shipyard, SC3 converter, Meshland, UAP, maybe others i no longer remember.
All of that is now officially dead.
It's an end of an era for me.
Orbiter defined my interests in many ways, it was the Jupiter that slingshot me to a trajectory i might never have taken without it.
And now i'm at the escape velocity, heading only stars know where.
Whether it's to the new frontiers, or to get lost in space - only time will tell.
In any case, thanks to everyone who rode along, and everyone who had (or tried to have) fun with what i made.
This is by no means a farewell, i'm still around to talk, show off, and maybe even fix and help every now and then.
But Orbiter is no longer a serious creativity target for me, so it is a farewell for any expectations to be had.
