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Space Shuttle

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Re: Space Shuttle

Postby GinGin » Fri Oct 20, 2017 9:19 pm

Image



Works very well the ISS scenario, started 20 degrees east of KSC to take account of one orbit of ground track drifting ( roughly 1000 NM for 50 ° inclinaison)
Heading 138 to have a descending node and do the entry overhead the USA instead of central America, very nice, right in the spot


Stunning glowing effect

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Also, MLS activated earlier this time, before the 270° HAC and SV was perfect ( more time for the error to shrink maybe ?)

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What a delighfull feeling after starting in orbit 1h30 earlier to see such accuracy in the SV and the good work of Filter, everything like in the book
AMAZING

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And the VAB in the back

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Re: Space Shuttle

Postby Hooray » Sat Oct 21, 2017 9:06 am

@GinGin: Regarding your excellent wiki contributions, I don't know if you are aware of it or not, but we're also using the wiki to publish a monthly newsletter that is entirely community-driven, too. In other words, we encourage contributors to add news related to their FlightGear related projects to the newsletter, so that others are made aware of such work. And given the quality of the articles covering your adventures with the shuttle, I believe that it would be a good idea if you would copy a short paragraph from your tutorials to the newsletter, linking back to the full article - possibly in conjunction with a few screenshots and/or videos. The link to the upcoming newsletter can always be found at: http://wiki.flightgear.org/index.php?ti ... newsletter



To illustrate what I mean, I have done exactly that here: http://wiki.flightgear.org/FlightGear_N ... umentation

And thanks again for taking the time to document all this and getting involved in the wiki, much appreciated !!
Please don't send support requests by PM, instead post your questions on the forum so that all users can contribute and benefit
Thanks & all the best,
Hooray
Help write next month's newsletter !
pui2canvas | MapStructure | Canvas Development | Programming resources
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Re: Space Shuttle

Postby Thorsten » Sun Oct 22, 2017 9:41 am

I suspect the MCC deorbit targeting can now be used if you ask some 5 to 15 minutes ahead of the de-orbit burn for parameters. I've tried two different high inclination orbits into Vandenberg and one low inclination orbit into KSC (from ISS altitude) , and just entering the McC burn solution gave me an entry interface that the AP could solve - usually not perfect but doable.

I wouldn't push it by asking for it even earlier, the accuracy deteriorates progressively.

For a reason I have yet to determine, REI is drastically overestimated on DEORBIT MNVR.
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Re: Space Shuttle

Postby Thorsten » Tue Oct 24, 2017 5:40 pm

I've now pushed everything I want to include for the next milestone (no, not all things discussed are fixed or implemented, but there'll be a milestone after that).

My first test today of course failed (I've discovered a new way to be killed during entry when roll trim is badly off, don't ask...) - but I believe all in all it should be working well.

If you're on the devel version, please go through whatever scenario is supported and tell me whether it works as expected.

The new edition of the Flight Manual is in preparation, but that'll still be a bit.
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Re: Space Shuttle

Postby JS17 » Wed Oct 25, 2017 7:16 am

This looks awesome!! I can't wait until it's finished downloading so I can have a dabble! Is it hard to control for a beginner?
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Re: Space Shuttle

Postby Thorsten » Wed Oct 25, 2017 9:53 am

The AP nominally flies the Shuttle for most mission phases, so in terms of piloting skills it's not hard unless you deliberately fly manually. But you have to learn how to operate the AP and the Shuttle's systems, and that might take a while - I'm guessing it's with some margin the most realistic craft in FG, and you'll probably take a few hours of familiarization just to figure out where all the switches are (there's a couple of hundred working ones).
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Re: Space Shuttle

Postby GinGin » Wed Oct 25, 2017 11:45 am

Thanks Hooray, I will update the newsletter, very good idea.

A mix of roll and yaw trim? :)
Very nice for the milestone , a lot of,changes in a couple of months, amazing work .

JS17: indeed , it's a complex spaceship , but hopefully, you have nice documentations to help you.
Don't hesitate to ask question here :)
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Re: Space Shuttle

Postby Lydiot » Wed Oct 25, 2017 3:45 pm

Thorsten,

I watched a video in this thread and I heard that female robotic voice calling out some stuff while there was a "com-radio" type "noise" along with it, but the voice was clean. If you want I can process it all so it all sounds 'equal' and over-the-radio.

If you think that will enhance the experience just let me know where the assets can be found and I'll get that done.
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Re: Space Shuttle

Postby Thorsten » Wed Oct 25, 2017 5:48 pm

It would be nice to have someone tinker with the sounds who actually has a bit more experience.

Having said that, all spoken voices you hear are not recordings but callouts over FGs text-to-speech function - in fact, originally they were only written on-screen, now they appear also as spoken text. I'm not sure we even have the ability to distort them with noise. :?: In any case, I just generate the text string and pass it to the system.
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Re: Space Shuttle

Postby Lydiot » Wed Oct 25, 2017 6:22 pm

I see.

So really the two options are a) me taking those converted sounds and making them sound like they're coming over a headset or speaker, which also means you having to change more things in your model, or b) somehow incorporate code that filters the text-to-speech function's output.

Unfortunately I can't code so I won't be able to create an algorithm to filter the sound appropriately.

Anyway, it was just a thought. If you can think of anything you need on the "back-end" of things just let met know. You can PM if you want.
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Re: Space Shuttle

Postby Thorsten » Thu Oct 26, 2017 6:23 am

Conceptually the way callouts are handled is changed very easily, because they all go via a callout manager.

Actually... we know when we send something to the TTS system. It would be possible to send channel open and channel close flags along with this and just play some 'normal' static while TTS runs.

The thing I don't know is whether clear voice + background static is sufficient to give something credible (I'm also not sure how much static there really is, because the whole com stream is digitally encoded, so most of it would be playback artifacts I guess). Need to check some real Shuttle footage.
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Re: Space Shuttle

Postby Lydiot » Thu Oct 26, 2017 8:09 pm

Thorsten wrote in Thu Oct 26, 2017 6:23 am:The thing I don't know is whether clear voice + background static is sufficient to give something credible (I'm also not sure how much static there really is, because the whole com stream is digitally encoded, so most of it would be playback artifacts I guess). Need to check some real Shuttle footage.


Well that's what I reacted to when watching the video. If the static is induced in/by the transmission system then the voice too would be affected by whatever that system does to a signal. Typically, a very clear voice is rarely accompanied by that much noise, and I'd expect to hear a filtered and likely somewhat distorted voice along with that noise. Either that or the noise is way too loud.

I think the difference lies in whether or not one wants to simulate the experience of hearing something clearly as if someone is sitting nearby in the same room speaking, or the experience of wearing a less than perfect headset getting a signal from a less than perfect system.
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Re: Space Shuttle

Postby Thorsten » Fri Oct 27, 2017 5:57 am

Okay, after studying this for a bit:

What we'd like to have is exemplified by

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcvTHQxBcLw

(after 28 seconds or so there's a voice exchange). There's little static, but the voices sound flat and perhaps a bit metallic.

I'm not sure what exactly was in the Shuttle vid you have seen - I have no simulation of static in, it used to be that the aircraft com instruments produced some when a transmitting station was overflown (frequency match but distance too far), but this should be gone now as the Shuttle doesn't use a standard aircraft com stack.

Only the minority of voice callouts done by the system are intended to simulate 'real' communication with mission control, many are advisory messages, limit warnings or failure notices. There is filtering done, so we know for every message what it is.

It would be cool to get a list of real messages and record them with the right distortion - but unfortunately some of them need to be assembled dynamically (like when you get burn parameters transmitted).

There's still a sizable chunk of standard messages and callouts which could be pre-recorded.

I guess in summary, I'd very much like to have improvements in the sound, especially in the group of real voice com, but I don't really know how to get there all the way.
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Re: Space Shuttle

Postby Lydiot » Fri Oct 27, 2017 6:40 am

So if I got what you said earlier, right now speech is dynamic in that sentences are assembled through text and converted to audio. Is that about right? So really either then filter that output (I'm talking about an audio filter, just so we're clear), or pre-record words or phrases which can then be manipulated and triggered by the system as needed.

Btw: I should mention that this isn't a huge deal for me, just something that caught my ear.

Anyway, if you want to re-do it on your end so that the system triggers audio files rather than text-to-audio conversion then I can certainly take any number of audio files and process them any way you would like. Getting the sound in that YouTube video should be no problem, or more or less processed.
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Re: Space Shuttle

Postby Thorsten » Fri Oct 27, 2017 5:34 pm

Let me compile a list of real Shuttle phraseology - if we do a recording job, let's do it properly. I would like to improve the sound immersion very much, let's see how this goes.
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