Completed Pioneer Models

[s2odan]

Nice work dude!

[Marcel]

Thanks again for everyone's kind words and helpful suggestions. Here's an idea for the vents. I'm not entirely happy with it. It doesn't look like it could suck up all those nasty gasses, but as an architectural detail... maybe. I don't want to put grills in places that people and droids would walk, meaning around the elevators (elevators, mind you ). I might try rectangular grill slots in that first lower area beyond the railings. (which are there for the safety of those using the elevators) Maybe the whole level could be a vent.[attachment=1046:pad_vents01.jpg][attachment=1047:pad_vents02.jpg][attachment=1048:pad_vents03.jpg]

[Marcel]

How about these vents? Notice the grill-work around the pad? Does it look like it sucks enough?[attachment=1049:pad_vents05.jpg]I'm thinking I'm about done with this except for the sequential landing lights, which I'll come back to later. Here's a rough version of the latest design. If there are no more comments I'll clean up the code and try to upload it to GitHub (gulp)![attachment=1050:spacestations 13b.zip]

[WaveMotion]

Marcel wrote:
How about these vents? Notice the grill-work around the pad?
I think it looks great. Hope to see this in the game soon!

[Marcel]

Thanks WaveMotion! I'm thinking I want to tweak the interior lighting in the nice/hoop stations a little bit before I upload. That is, if I can get the hell out of LA! Anyway, give spacestations13b a try if you want! :DIt won't affect your a17-a18 saved games, except to add some details.

[Geraldine]

Looking very nice Marcel! Great attention to detail there. I am going to give 13b a try

[Marcel]

Here's my final version (for now). The station interior lighting has been improved, at least I think so, see my current avatar. That pad's not included, I'm doing that just for fun because I'm planning to texture the Flowerfairy so I'm making a work table for it so it isn't just floating in the middle of the hanger. I've also placed a sub floor beneath the ground station pad and the mushroom station elevator to disguise the clipping that caused the area below them to show when the ship appears a bit below ground level during landing and launching. I'm still a bit confused about doing a pull request in GitHub, and I've lost my broadband connection anyway so I'm going to add it to the issue tracker in the hope that robn will put it into alpha 20. It pains me a bit to see the naked version of the station in people's videos (which currently takes me about 10 times as long to download as to watch).[attachment=1061:spacestations 13c.zip]

[robn]

Pull request opened as issue #983. Please check the comments about what needs to happen to get these into shape. First thing is to make a separate collision mesh. Thanks!

[Marcel]

Thanks robn, and Luomu too! With your feedback we'll get this thing done right yet!

[Potsmoke66]

a very simple "Atomic Rocket" it's still under construction, exspecially because i liked to make a vertical lifting rocket, but it's only possible then to fly that thing manually.be warned the specs are "fair", which means, max.10g thrust (empty), no retro thrusters and 1g side/lateral thrust.control is very hard due to the fact that roll and yaw are exchanged when a ship is "wrong" oriented.i will work a bit further on the script, because i guess i can manage it to make it work proper.[attachment=1096:Bildschirmfoto 2012-03-09 um 03.42.11.png](alpha19 screenshot)btw, i haven't made it to dock it to a spacestation manually, that's periculous when you can't "break" without turning the ship around. additionally the steering is very slow due to the inertia of the rocket and the weak thrusters.

[Azimech]

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.

[Brianetta]

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. (-:

[Potsmoke66]

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

[Marcel]

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.

[Brianetta]

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.

[Potsmoke66]

Quote:
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.

atomic1_1.zip

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

[Brianetta]

potsmoke66 wrote:
... i replaced most of the hull mass with the fuel tank capacity.
A true rocket. (-:

[Potsmoke66]

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.

[Brianetta]

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

[Potsmoke66]

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....)