Update Updated XR Vessels for Orbiter 2016 Released

[dbeachy1]

It's Tuesday, all! Updated versions of the XR vessels for the new Orbiter 2016 have been released. You can get them on my Web page.

Happy flying!

 

[Anroalh12]

Can we use them with Orbiter 2010 P1?

 

[dbeachy1]

No, these versions were built against Orbiter 2016 and make some Orbiter 2016-specific calls, such as the new gear stiffness API calls and hull touchdown points -- if you try to run them in Orbiter 2010 P1, they will crash.

 

[boogabooga]

Does that mean that XR downloads for Orbiter 2010 will no longer be available?

 

[dbeachy1]

That's correct, I don't host old XR vessel versions.

 

[Keatah]

Wayback Machine still has the 2010 versions:
https://web.archive.org/web/20160313105120/http://alteaaerospace.com/index-3.html

 

[PeterRoss]

I've found quite strange behaviour with XR-2 and XR-1 vessels. If you're trying to yaw even just a little during the takeoff run, even at the very beginning of it, you're sending your XR into an insane drift, making it look like you're drifting on ice or something. XR-5 is much heavier, I guess it's why it drifts much less crazy. Nothing like this with genuine DG.

 

[rodion_herrera]

Bug report:

It seems that if you turn off APU, and then turn it on quickly, hydraulics (control surfaces) don't work/respond. Then if you turn it off again, and then turn it back on, then wait for around 5 to 10 seconds, then hydraulics work.

 

[dbeachy1]

Bug report:

It seems that if you turn off APU, and then turn it on quickly, hydraulics (control surfaces) don't work/respond. Then if you turn it off again, and then turn it back on, then wait for around 5 to 10 seconds, then hydraulics work.

Powering up the APU always takes 2.5 seconds (not 10 -- details are on page 42 of the XR Flight Operations Manual.), and from testing here, it is working as designed: the hydraulics work right when the APU is back online (you can test this easily with the wheel brakes). Remember that powering off the APU automatically sets the AF Control Surfaces to Off, so you will need to turn them back on as well when the APU comes back online.

If you can reproduce a scenario where it takes 10 seconds for the APU to come back online, please post detailed steps with a scenario and I'll see if I can reproduce it here.

 

[boogabooga]

I've found quite strange behaviour with XR-2 and XR-1 vessels. If you're trying to yaw even just a little during the takeoff run, even at the very beginning of it, you're sending your XR into an insane drift, making it look like you're drifting on ice or something. XR-5 is much heavier, I guess it's why it drifts much less crazy. Nothing like this with genuine DG.

Try to turn off atmospheric wind effects.

 

[PeterRoss]

Try to turn off atmospheric wind effects.

Alas, it's not helping. XR2 is still drifting along the runway like a cow on ice. As little as 20 m/s of groundspeed is well enough to send the vessel into side drift by yawing.
What is happening exactly:
1) I turn the main engines on for a couple of seconds so the vessel starts moving.
2) then I produce some rotation around vertical axis. RCS is off, it's all about air control surfaces and nosewheel I guess. At this point vessel is starting to rotate sideways, increasing the angle between the movement vector and nose vector with almost constant rate. It keeps rotating even though I let controls free.
3) then I try to compensate rotation by producing opposite rotation. Rudders are visibly starting to move, but physically nothing happens until the moment rudders are in opposite maximum state: only then the opposite rotation is applied. But it is as uncontrollable as the one in step 2.

I can't correctly control rotation around vertical axis while on ground. Still, everything looks fine in the air.

Am I the only one who met such a problem?

 

[streb2001]

Is the runway flat? I get this problem when taking off from Liverpool in Orbiter 2016 and I think it is caused by the terrain not being level.

 

[PeterRoss]

Is the runway flat? I get this problem when taking off from Liverpool in Orbiter 2016 and I think it is caused by the terrain not being level.

In my case it is Cape Canaveral, flatest of the flats (I hope so at least).

 

[migviola11]

Thank you so much dbeachy1! I really love playing orbiter with XR vessels. :thumbup:

 

[dbeachy1]

Alas, it's not helping. XR2 is still drifting along the runway like a cow on ice. As little as 20 m/s of groundspeed is well enough to send the vessel into side drift by yawing.

I've looked into this, and this should be fixed in the next XR patch release: what I've done is tweak the nosewheel steering assist to lower the max airspeed of the assistance from 90 m/s to 15 m/s.

What is happening exactly:
1) I turn the main engines on for a couple of seconds so the vessel starts moving.
2) then I produce some rotation around vertical axis. RCS is off, it's all about air control surfaces and nosewheel I guess. At this point vessel is starting to rotate sideways, increasing the angle between the movement vector and nose vector with almost constant rate. It keeps rotating even though I let controls free.
3) then I try to compensate rotation by producing opposite rotation. Rudders are visibly starting to move, but physically nothing happens until the moment rudders are in opposite maximum state: only then the opposite rotation is applied. But it is as uncontrollable as the one in step 2.

I can't correctly control rotation around vertical axis while on ground. Still, everything looks fine in the air.

Am I the only one who met such a problem?

Regarding this:

Rudders are visibly starting to move, but physically nothing happens until the moment rudders are in opposite maximum state:

I have not seen that. Note that when using the keyboard, however, it takes a few seconds for the rudders to return to neutral / move to opposite lock (unlike a joystick axis, which moves them instantly). Also, your ship's velocity vector does not change the instant your nose is pointed left or right of the vector (this is all handled by the Orbiter core), so that is also part of the lag you are seeing.

 

[Linguofreak]

What archive manager are you using to package the XR releases for distribution? Whatever it is, it's creating the zips with "\" as a directory separator, which causes everything to unzip into the top-level Orbiter directory for those of us running on Linux under Wine, as "\" is a valid character in Unix filenames.

This behavior is not compliant with the ZIP specification, which says the following about filenames:

4.4.17 file name: (Variable)

4.4.17.1 The name of the file, with optional relative path.
The path stored MUST not contain a drive or
device letter, or a leading slash. All slashes
MUST be forward slashes '/' as opposed to
backwards slashes '\' for compatibility with Amiga
and UNIX file systems etc. If input came from standard
input, there is no file name field.

Could you consider using a different archive manager to package your addons? Given that this is the first time I've encountered this issue with zips created on a Windows system, I believe that most any other archive manager for Windows should create specification-conformant, portable zip files.

I will try to move everything down into the proper directories in the next few hours and verify that the XR Vessels do work under Wine, so that you don't need to go through the trouble of repackaging if they don't.

 

[PeterRoss]

I have not seen that. Note that when using the keyboard, however, it takes a few seconds for the rudders to return to neutral / move to opposite lock (unlike a joystick axis, which moves them instantly). Also, your ship's velocity vector does not change the instant your nose is pointed left or right of the vector (this is all handled by the Orbiter core), so that is also part of the lag you are seeing.

The point is, while rudders are coming back to neutral position and moving further to the opposite lock, the rotation should gradually decrease, but as far as I noticed it only starts to decrease and change its direction when the opposite lock is achieved, and it happens so fast you can't stop vessel from rotating around the vertical axis until you reach the wheelstop.

Anyway, the problem may be solved by the patch you've mentioned. At least I hope so. I really love your vessels, XR fleet is my absolute favorite :thumbup:

 

[Linguofreak]

I will try to move everything down into the proper directories in the next few hours and verify that the XR Vessels do work under Wine, so that you don't need to go through the trouble of repackaging if they don't.

The XR-Series seems to work well under Wine.

 

[dbeachy1]

Could you consider using a different archive manager to package your addons? Given that this is the first time I've encountered this issue with zips created on a Windows system, I believe that most any other archive manager for Windows should create specification-conformant, portable zip files.

I'll look into that for the next patch release.

EDIT:

I will try to move everything down into the proper directories in the next few hours and verify that the XR Vessels do work under Wine, so that you don't need to go through the trouble of repackaging if they don't.

As an easier workaround, rather than moving all those files manually you could instead extract them to a temporary folder on Windows and then re-zip up the tree using a zip package manager of your choice. :thumbup:

 

[JonnyBGoode]

I've found quite strange behaviour with XR-2 and XR-1 vessels. If you're trying to yaw even just a little during the takeoff run, even at the very beginning of it, you're sending your XR into an insane drift, making it look like you're drifting on ice or something. XR-5 is much heavier, I guess it's why it drifts much less crazy. Nothing like this with genuine DG.

I'm wondering if this is related to the thing where if you try to hover in a craft on Earth, it starts rotating wildly and drifting off the pad.


Question for the dev team: I know you're saying this mod is updated for 2016, but it also says it is dependent on UMMU, and as far as I know, that mod is not updated for 2016. So how stable is it?