OT: Anyone play Orbiter?

[paulca]

Do we have any Orbiter Sim players out there?

I remember in Elite 2 Frontier orbiting planets when the only pads where occupied and if you accelerated time while hover over the planet you would either run out of fuel or smash into the planet. The only way to wait was to put the ship into orbit and accelerate time. Actually the prefered approach was to blow the other ships clean off the pad, run away from the cops or shoot them all down, pay the fine and land.

I was rather annoyed that orbits always degraded, even when I looked up the correct altitude and speed for Earth orbit the orbit only remained stable for about 1 day. I found an article that had an interview with Braben where he pointed out that the orbital mechanics were programmed using integer mathematics so would degrade quickly.

It was this that made me hunt down Orbiter Sim. It's a pretty awesome game, especially with the add-ons for Delta Glider IV. If ED could get anywhere close to the aerobraking for atmosphered planetary landings it would be awesome, but... I doubt it. Far too involved for ED's flight dynamics.

 

[musteh]

I've never tried it and I'm surprised I hadn't heard of this until you mentioned it, it looks right up my street!

Thanks a lot for bringing it up I'll give it a spin this weekend.

 

[Sir.Tj]

Moved to correct forum.

 

[Vonner]

I played this heavily for a few months maybe about 10 years ago, even printed out the manual for the Orbit plotting MFD (can't remember it's actual name). Did successful Hoffman orbit transfers to Mars and Jupiter and docked with the ISS! It's great, if very in-depth.

 

[paulca]

I've never tried it and I'm surprised I hadn't heard of this until you mentioned it, it looks right up my street!

Thanks a lot for bringing it up I'll give it a spin this weekend.

Make sure and download the BIG zip file with all the L10+ textures Also, follow the tutorials in the manual for all basic orbital manoeuvres... orbital manoeuvres are not intuitive

 

[paulca]

I played this heavily for a few months maybe about 10 years ago, even printed out the manual for the Orbit plotting MFD (can't remember it's actual name). Did successful Hoffman orbit transfers to Mars and Jupiter and docked with the ISS! It's great, if very in-depth.

It's pretty awesome and gets better when you put a few add-ons in. Particularly the Delta Glider IV and the XR-5 and XR-6 ships. They have re-entries attitude hold autopilots. Aerobraking re-entry is one of the best parts of the game. To leave ISS, de-orbit burn and then dump all your remaining fuel... manage to aerobrake, perform some ranging S'es and glide into land at Cape Canaveral is such a kick when you nail it and don't burn up.

Using TransX (an orbital plotter as you refer to it), I was able to complete the Voyager II mission all the way out to Neptune with slingshots at Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus. Takes an entire evenings play, about 4 hours, but worth it. There is no way you are coming back to Earth though!

I was also able to plot the Messenger and Cassini missions using just the NASA flight plan and their burn dates.... just the dates mind, not the locations Cassini is something like, Earth->Earth->Venus->Venus->Earth->Jupiter->Saturn. Messenger much the same but Earth->Mercury instead of Jupiter.

When I said that orbital manoeuvers are not intuitive, consider that it takes a lot more fuel to get to Mercury than to Jupiter. In fact it can be more efficient to go to Mercury via Jupiter than direct.

 

[badwolf77]

Used to play it a lot about 10 years ago. Wrote a few addons for it too as it had a great API.

These days I'm more into KSP

-BW

 

[Xendoshi]

I do, he is also working on a brand new version of it.
Thanks to orbiter I have had no problems entering stations with flight assist off

Only thing I wish this Elite had was sling shots, get you to that other star that's 150k ls away a little faster.

 

[Jukelo]

I used to play it a lot, it's very much what pushed me to educate myself about orbital mechanics, and then more generally to deepen my scientific background (the literary studies I majored in obviously never went there into much detail).
These days however KSP satisfies my needs for more or less realistic space travel on top of adding some nice gameplay to it. If I had more time I would still play Orbiter with some of the awesome mods out there that add pretty detailed ships with complex avionics.

 

[Jenner]

Used to play it quite a bit. Loved learning the mechanics and executing a mission to land on the Moon, etc. It's awesome when you get some good mods, like the SCRAM engine spacecraft here:
http://www.alteaaerospace.com/

Loved it more than Kerbal, actually, but haven't played in a long time.

 

[Bambi]

Too bad you had so much fuel in frontier that orbits were pretty much useless, just constant thrust in a straight line.

 

[paulca]

Too bad you had so much fuel in frontier that orbits were pretty much useless, just constant thrust in a straight line.

Having played Orbiter, Kerbal and Elite2 Frontier the one thing about ED that winds me up no end if I let it is...

What were they thinking when they capped normal cruise to x m/s. It makes absolutely ZERO sense. Why would you do that? Why would you throttle down when you could just continue to accelerate? I assume it's for game play or something or maybe so that change of direction can happen quickly omitting the need for a confusing velocity vector, I'm also sure it's been discussed to death and is maybe a contentious issue so I'll leave it there.

 

[Bambi]

Having played Orbiter, Kerbal and Elite2 Frontier the one thing about ED that winds me up no end if I let it is...

What were they thinking when they capped normal cruise to x m/s. It makes absolutely ZERO sense. Why would you do that? Why would you throttle down when you could just continue to accelerate? I assume it's for game play or something or maybe so that change of direction can happen quickly omitting the need for a confusing velocity vector, I'm also sure it's been discussed to death and is maybe a contentious issue so I'll leave it there.

So that you aren't flying around so quickly that fighting becomes impossible.

 

[paulca]

Awesome.
[video=youtube;I__jYojbMYQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I__jYojbMYQ[/video]

 

[Ignition]

I played orbiter it was awesome. I like all the games which I need to learn how to fly or operate very complex things. I like reading manuals and begin with the basics, and then add more complexity.

I played and play also http://pioneerspacesim.net/ and at first I thought Elite D was going to have the same physics.
I love to orbit planets and fly very very low and so fast to maintain altitude.

 

[Siobhan]

I do play it from time to time but it makes my brain implode. I'm more a KSP kinda girl. My partner loves Orbiter though.

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Having played Orbiter, Kerbal and Elite2 Frontier the one thing about ED that winds me up no end if I let it is...

What were they thinking when they capped normal cruise to x m/s. It makes absolutely ZERO sense. Why would you do that? Why would you throttle down when you could just continue to accelerate? I assume it's for game play or something or maybe so that change of direction can happen quickly omitting the need for a confusing velocity vector, I'm also sure it's been discussed to death and is maybe a contentious issue so I'll leave it there.

So that you aren't flying around so quickly that fighting becomes impossible.

I remember an Archimedes game called Black Angel which had real physics for this. Combat was basically like jousting... only there'd only be one run, since by the time you slowed down, turned and re-accelerated, there was no way you'd catch the other ship unless they too, did likewise. PvPers would hate it.

 

[paulca]

I remember an Archimedes game called Black Angel which had real physics for this. Combat was basically like jousting... only there'd only be one run, since by the time you slowed down, turned and re-accelerated, there was no way you'd catch the other ship unless they too, did likewise. PvPers would hate it.

This is the way it was in Elite Frontier. Jousting sorta sums it up, although the high speed charging at each other was just a consequence of the controls and the relative velocity thing. Having a "Relative to target" mode would quickly address that. I recall that atmospheric combat was lots of fun in "engines off" mode.

I think when space combat actually happens it won't be much like ED and it won't be much like air combat either. Consider what you could do with an asteroid and a small rocket motor.