Great! I want it! I like ships that are hard to steer. I'd even like a beta, would you mind giving me the opportunity to d/l it?

I fly Orbiter a lot so I'm more used to 20th/21st century stuff than 33rd century.

A ship without any retro thrust will cause the autopilot to crash the game. At least give it infinitesimal values.

Also, remember to give it a really big fuel tank, with relatively small hull mass, and rapid fuel use, if you want it to act like a real rocket. (-:

has no autopilot mounting 😀 can't say if it crashes, but anyway the autopilot (and computer controlled flight mode) can't handle a vertical rocket.

i will work on the hull mass it's somewhat high now, but it does also depend on if the fuel is calculated as mass or not (i'm not to clear if it's, it would be reasonable imo).

btw, talking 'bout fuel

i have to say that geraldine's right when she suggested to have hydrogene for the "impulse drive" to, the scoop get's useless if you need some fuel in a "outer" system. i don't mind how realistic, but i mind to travel on in a unsettled large system.

I have a fondness for Heinlein/Destination Moon/50s/style tail sitters. I'm not sure if I want to fly one, however. Gotta check out your Stardust one of these days. 😀

We're going to have a separate mechanism for getting more water. Already, you can mine it sometimes.

You can save fuel by not using the autopilot all the time.

Why not rotate your tail-sitter with the undercarriage animation? Then it will sit on the tail when landed, but will point forwards when in flight.

the idea is known, i used it once on the stardust.

but there are some problems and one is new.

1st, i can't only change the alignment with "get_anmimation_position('WHEEL_STATE')", it works of course, but the ship will turn then from vertical to horizontal alignment.

2nd, if i do so the ship wont launch, because ~1g isn't enough to lift off and i don't like to set up_thrust and forward_thrust to 10g, that's neither realistic.

on the other hand i don't like to set the maneuvering thrusters higher as 1g.

though i would have to find a way to change the thruster setup, but that didn't works.

[attachment=1097:Bildschirmfoto 2012-03-12 um 13.51.10.png]

doesn't matters, here's the ship and you can decide in that short script wether you like a "tailsitter" or a horizontally aligned "ship".

by default it's a tailsitter and must be controlled manually, no computer controlled neither autopilot will work proper (besides a sidewards crawling rocket looks stupid)

this is a experimental ship, do what you like with it, not the best looking one neither it's a useful one.

[attachment=0]atomic1_1.zip[/attachment]

actually the ship has perhaps higher thrust values as intented, because i replaced most of the hull mass with the fuel tank capacity.

A true rocket. (-:

to all modelers;

please don't use 24bit depth for glow maps, it's useless and a framerate killer (neither use any glowing material if a glowmap is used that results in a additional performance hit).

glowmaps should be 8bit greyscale any more bitdepth is a waiste.

glowmaps have NO COLORS, they only identify how much of a texture will glow in which intensity.

thus a 8bit greyscale fits best.

try to experiment with that and compare the framerate in the modelviewer (vertical sync. must be turned off else it's always 60fps).

i noticed that because i liked to seperate the texture from vlastans buildings at lowest lod.

first issue was that all comes black when the texture should disappear (model stays black even with no textures at all!).

i checked the files and noticed that the glowmap is 24bit depth, i set it to 8bit greyscale and the problem vanished, also it seems i gained some performance.

i will link the model later here, it will sure help to run marcels "your hometown mod".

additionally it will sink all buildings 15 meters in the ground, so the basements vanishes and imo it looks much better this way.

but decide yourself.

since these buildings are mainly grey, the texture could be detached much earlier, try to set the lod_pixels higher if you like so.

https://github.com/pioneerspacesim/pioneer/issues/1065

yes, i've seen it 😉 , thanks, i guess it's a good idea and yes the panther will need such, except you can accept that up_thrust is high enough to lift the panther. the thrusters can be rotated with the submodel that's no problem.

i'm up to installing git, actually cloning the repo to my mac (takes a little while....)

ok, here are the size comparison screenshots

first the actual size of the ships (alpha20) with a proper scaled pilot (eagle model scale 0.45 > pilot scale 2.22, ip_shuttle model scale 1.8 > pilot scale 0.55)

[attachment=1106:Bildschirmfoto 2012-03-12 um 23.01.31.png]

can you see the pilot? did i liked to make a "Lockheed SR-71"?

you can walk through that ship, it's such oversized

it get's even worse in the next one

[attachment=1107:Bildschirmfoto 2012-03-12 um 23.02.34.png]

i guess anybody can see that this is wrong, no?

if you think now: "hey, the pilot didn't appears that small in my pioneer".

the reason is simple, the ships have been scaled up, but the pilot hasn't scaled down by the same factor, that's all, so you got a pilot in the eagle and the shuttle which is in fact 4meters tall.

the crazy thing is (but it's a logical fact) as more you scale the ship up the smaller the pilot will get in relation to it.

for the "eagle" it's 0.26 to be exactly the same size as in FE2, 0.3 is fine because the pilot get's a little extra space for it's legs to stretch. 0.4 i can accept as a maximum (i tried) it still looks large but reasonable, but i would like 0.3.

for the "ip shuttle" it's 1.0 because i calculated the scale before i scripted the model, it's already quite large imo.

scale in FE2 isn't bad, before i ever tried to check the model export of FFED3D i oriented myself on following:

- i "parked" a eagle in front of a small suburban building (that with the four dots as windows)

- i assumed a floor height of 3meters and got a building height of 9meters as result, i estimated the "eagle" as ~20meters.

i have done this many years ago before FFED3D when i made the courier by scratch for a NFS4 mod (i had to know how large the ship would be).

not bad if you finally compare the "wheel stations docking port" (height 50m) to the building (~9m).

i have made once myself a mistake and took this as width of the docking port, but i was wrong and it's also not logical, the height is of interest to know.

the buildings floors are a good scale template in FE2.

btw, my courier model hasn't a proper scale and that's why it's scaled 1.3 now, the reason was in the beginning i intented to make the ship smaller and even name it different rather "courier", but later i din't liked the idea and resized it to what i have made for FFED3D (1.3).

perhaps, interesting to know FE2/FFE scale is 1:10 or exactly 1:10.02, this was estimated by the wheel stations docking port height = 50m.

exported to blender and scaled up until 50m was 50m.

and now how they should look, imo

scale 0.3 not bad, ok if you like it bigger, but 0.4 is a reasonable maximum

[attachment=1108:Bildschirmfoto 2012-03-12 um 23.43.46.png]

i guess a scale of 0.35 will result in a proper sized ship, if you don't like it as small as it's in FE2.

and "yes it looks like 17m width".

scale 1.0, still it's a very big van almost a truck.

[attachment=1109:Bildschirmfoto 2012-03-12 um 23.45.26.png]

could be already a bit smaller when you look at the mass of the ship.

i hope that explains my problem well and i'm not longer the only one who argues, "scale's wrong".

yes i'm aware that FE2's scale is inconsistent, but never double or half.

some ships in FE2 are completely out of scale, i.e. Constrictor, Viper, Hawk, if you lay one mesh on top of the other and compare them you can see that very quick, most fit but some are out of scale (i assume the lesser models will be the wrong scaled ones).

but like i said i had once the idea to make all FE2 ships exactly sized as the originals (mass to, so you can refere to something).

because imo, that would give a good guideline if you create a own one, especially for larger ships which aren't so easy to estimate by the eye.

[/hr]

but usually i forgot that i'm only a modeler and have no influence on the final appearing of my models

[/hr]

or we can forget all that and we have ships of totally inconsitant scale in the end (compare natrix, far to large for 40tonnes).

if we haven't something like the FE2 ships that have a reliable scale this will happen more often.

unfortunately many wil refere to anything else rather then me, but do as you like fellows, my scaling is proper.

construction workers usually have a "good eye", we estimate volume and mass by it, daily.

finally,

sizing the eagle up a bit is fine as long as the pilot didn't looks like a "antman".

sizing the Constrictor down is a must because a 120tonne ship can't be bigger as a 150tonne ship (ASP, while the ASP looks fine compared to the rest).

I actually quite like the bigger Eagle. I agree that your shuttle should be smaller still.

yes, i can live with a scale of 0.4 for the eagle, even when i feel it's oversized (0.45, even when it's only 0.05 more makes some difference).

but you have to guess that the size of the ships as they appear will influence all further models that will be made.

though simply if we have a oversized Eagle all the rest wil be oversized and in the end we will have first a inconsistant scale and second a general scale of 2:1 instead 1:1.

i'm allowed to introduce

sparks cobra mk3

and yes, that's a LRC in the background 😀

edit: changed model to use existing submodels, sorry

[attachment=1123:cobra3d.zip]

therefore a small fix for the missiles, i guess they didn't work proper else ❓

[attachment=1124:missilefix(untextured).zip]

*untextured, the misseles are untextured, but i guess that doesn't matters

[attachment=1125:Bildschirmfoto 2012-03-21 um 22.23.12.png]

Finally! A proper Cobra! 😀 Hopefully It'll be added for the ELITE start position. I think the 0.3 Eagle looks right, but that Shuttle should be shrunk some more. How does it look in scale 0.3?

Whenever I think "proper Cobra" I picture something like this:

(original link)

Otherwise, the same sort of thing in blue, because I also played the Arc version. I barely recognised the one that Gernot posted. It's dark and busy, two things which detract from the simplicity of the Elite ships.

If it must be made so much more complex, why not go all the way? It could be re-shaped like on the cover of The Dark Wheel. I'm not saying I like that, either. (-:

marcel,

scale 1 is ok for the shuttle it represents the original size and i think it fits (a lot of empty space in the cockpit i know, it's rather simple made and the hull has no thickness, perhaps worth to make it a little better).

brianetta,

first it's only a conversion of a existing FFED3D model made by "Sparks", i guess he looks at this as somekind of oldie, he made it 10 years ago, he said. http://sparks116.blogspot.com/

i know this ships has some fans, black or not 😉 (and it's already brighter as the original plus a lot of specularity)

but yes, the one on the cover of The Dark Wheel is close to what i would imagine.

That Cobra model by Sparks is special because it has that "wow" factor. I don't think that it should be the regular Cobra model, but one which is seen rarely. Since it has the Jolly Roger on it, perhaps it should be flown mainly by pirates, whilst traders and other civilians have a more normal looking Cobra 3.

chances are 50/50 to get either a blue or a black one 😉

anyways, i updated the model a little bit, i was fearing i missed something and was wondering why no ones argues that it won't work.

but it seems it was fine.

nonetheless, the thrusters likewise the "billboard lights" get oversized when a model is scaled (doesn't matter with scale = or when a model is called). the billboard you can fix with sizing them extra small, but the (new) thruster glow you can't scale down without scaling the thrusters flame down.

so i had to rework the model a bit to make all appear as ment.

additionally i have made cockpit and "greebles" LOD sensitive, perhaps they vanish a bit early, i run pioneer in lo-res.

now i really made a mistake 😆

i forgot to scale the collision mesh up by 10, the ship will be very hard to hit 😉

that will fix it, sorry

[attachment=1134:cobra3d.lua.zip]

replaces only the script

Tip; if you want to use the Sparksmoke Cobra, you may want to disable the old one in data\models\mods\cobra.lua because they have the same descriptions in the shipyard.

Also, I thought I should mention that I can't see the cockpit interior. It shows up as an opaque glowing white area on my machine. Another shader problem?

The Dark Wheel Cobra looks nice, but it doesn't have the angularity that I think a Cobra should have. It would look cool in the game, but perhaps it should be given a different name.

Here's a link to George Hooper's Elite site that has some nice fan art of the Cobra with cutaway views and such.

http://ffeartpage.com/ships.htm

The wow factor works for me. The ship looks really badass. Since the Cobra was probably inspired by the Millennium Falcon the greebles don't bother me a bit, but then again, there's something to be said for simplicity.[attachment=1137:cobramk3004.jpg]

That's what I always wanted Frontier to look like. Pioneer is getting there! 😀

[attachment=1138:Bildschirmfoto 2012-03-25 um 12.43.jpg]

looks like this?

i will see if i find what's the reason for it.

fixed it and made some additional enhancements, the engines turn off now when docked and i added a cargo/fuel scoop.

the reason is the "tricked light". i used for some ships to lighten up the cockpit, to sad it didn't works in the mac build, i'm pretty sure the windows build still shows it right. it's not possible to replace that extra light with anything else, local light is "only" local and material glow in the window results in opacity. only the "glow" from the billboard function has left that issue/opportunity, until you terminated the setting with a call of any model.

[attachment=1139:Bildschirmfoto 2012-03-25 um 14.52.jpg]

screenshot made with GL shaders off.

here's the updated, cleaned up ship

cobra3d_alpha20_4.zip

edit: it didn't works no more in general, well i didn't begged to keep it. 🙄

That worked for me! I also like the engines and lights off when landed, and it almost touches the pad. 😉