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Re: Space Shuttle

Postby legoboyvdlp » Sun Sep 18, 2016 12:32 pm

Richard wrote in Sat Sep 10, 2016 8:49 pm:This is indeed a giant leap.


For all sim-kind :)
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Re: Space Shuttle

Postby wlbragg » Wed Sep 21, 2016 10:13 pm

The recent addition of the aft and overhead panels contained the cabin and panel lighting hardware (knobs). We are starting to wire it all together. Not only the cabin lights but the panel lights are now fully adjustable based on the shuttle schematics.
All the current light maps will need to be re-baked after we get the all the overhead and aft panels and hardware in place.

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Re: Space Shuttle

Postby amalahama » Thu Sep 29, 2016 7:16 am

It looks fantastic! FG Space Shuttle is only getting better and better, I can't wait to see all those switches alive. I've seen in the repository that Thorsten is adding environmental support to the shuttle as well.

I'm curious if there are space flight improvements in the oven for future FG releases. Although it's not bad currently, there is room for improvement. To be able to use time compression on orbit and a real scale Earth (with an easier way to install hi-res textures) would be really nice additions.

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Re: Space Shuttle

Postby qwsaaswq » Mon Oct 03, 2016 2:22 pm

Hey so I was wondering anyone could tell me how difficult it might be for one to create an AI Scenario demo for the Space Shuttle like the the ones here, http://wiki.flightgear.org/AI_Scenarios. In that while I'm in a different aircraft, flightgear could run "SpaceShuttle-launch" all on its own soon as this demo is loaded.

Thanks!
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Re: Space Shuttle

Postby Hooray » Wed Oct 05, 2016 8:44 pm

We talked about that previosuly, and I think Thorsten himself made some suggestions relating to this - for the time being, most of the AI code isn't well prepared/suitable for spacecraft - but it should be possible to extend the system accordingly, or even just use Nasal-driven AI models (scripted)

In general however, the AI component in FG is severly limited and a number of core developer and other long-term contributors have discussed that it doesn't support using an actual FDM - thus, for the time being, you cannot simply hand it an actual JSBSim config and make it launch the shuttle while you are watching the whole thing from another FDM-controlled aircraft running in the same fgfs instance.

There's a collection of related discussions, and quotes, from various people who have asked similar questions - but the answer really is that the AI component cannot simply be told to run an actual FDM to control a scenario: http://wiki.flightgear.org/Status_of_AI_in_FlightGear

Back in the day, this was a controversial discussion, and some of the key people back then, disagreed with this development decision (e.g. David Megginson), but you will even today see comments suggesting that this would be a valid simplifcation (e.g. see Curt's responses to the recurring "FDM-driven-AI traffic" debate, who keeps mentioning how X-Plane is burning resources like this ...) - thus, YMMV - ultimatley, it all boils down to what you have in mind obviously - but sooner or later, you cannot come up with plausible AI traffic unless you also support actual FDM instances.

It is however worth keeping in mind that multi-instance FDMs are a fairly recent development in FG/JSBSim and YASim terms, and that ~ 10+ years ago, those were quite some challenges - in the meantime, JSBSim development in that area has simply taken over in terms of capabilities provided by FlightGear, so that FlightGear has meanwhile become the bottleneck - in other areas, the opposite is the case - e.g. the autopilot/PID machinery is much more sophisticated than what JSBSim provides.
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Re: Space Shuttle

Postby Thorsten » Sun Oct 09, 2016 9:21 am

In that while I'm in a different aircraft, flightgear could run "SpaceShuttle-launch" all on its own soon as this demo is loaded.


It'd be a royal overkill to run the full sim to see launch visuals (and you'd have to program guidance first, start APUs etc.) - basically you'd run 99.9% of the simulation unneeded.

I suspect it'd be relatively easy to record the position and orientation relative to the pad during a launch at fixed intervals and use that as a table to interpolate for a Nasal script to move the exterior 3d model.

Then you'd copy over some selected animations (flames and smoke mostly) and use the Nasal script to switch them on at launch.

Basically you'd gut the simulation and use only the 0.1% you need along a pre-defined trajectory. It's not difficult if you understand enough Nasal to appreciate how the AI tanker works, but it's not a quick copy/paste job either.
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Re: Space Shuttle

Postby Hooray » Sun Oct 09, 2016 10:18 am

you could probably use the flight recorder (instant replay), flight path history or the CSV logging mechanisms to dump the corresponding properties to a file and use that to come up with a data source to be used for a 3D model controlled via scripted AI traffic (tanker.nas/fox2.nas) - for that to work, you would want to do a full launch and then serialize all relevant properties (variables) to a file and then use a Nasal script to interpolate between the samples you have taken.

I don't know if there is an actuall flight recorder config already (I think wlbragg once mentioned using such a setup ?), but if there is, you can basically refer to the properties listed there to come up with the config for an adapted version of tanker.nas instantiating the 3D model of the shuttle (taking LOD into account), and a few relevant external animations to make it look good enough
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Re: Space Shuttle

Postby amalahama » Thu Oct 20, 2016 7:31 pm

Ok, long since last time I flew the shuttle, so I updated FG to 2016.3.1 and Space Shuttle up to last version in the repository and now it takes dlike 15 minutes to open the scenario... it's not happening with other a/c.

Is it normal? Or is there something wrong with my config? Most of the time is spent in the "loading subsystems" screen.

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Re: Space Shuttle

Postby wlbragg » Thu Oct 20, 2016 7:39 pm

Could you post your computer specs?

It could take a considerable amount of time to load the shuttle on a lower end system.

I haven't taken the time to actually time it, but my core-duo-E8400/nVidia-640 takes at least a few minutes to load.
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Re: Space Shuttle

Postby amalahama » Thu Oct 20, 2016 10:06 pm

It's not low end: i5 4690K, with 16GB RAM and GTX 970. I installed FG in the HDD though, not in the SSD, but it was loading fine before. I'm using Windows 10.

P.S-> Great! Now I removed flightgear temporary folder from user's files and now neither CRT or HUD are working :(
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Re: Space Shuttle

Postby wlbragg » Thu Oct 20, 2016 10:31 pm

That seems too long a load time with those specs.

I removed flightgear temporary folder from user's files and now neither CRT or HUD are working

Ouch, I take it you deleted the folder and not simply renamed it?

You may have to reinstall depending on the launcher you use.
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Re: Space Shuttle

Postby Thorsten » Fri Oct 21, 2016 7:19 am

Ok, long since last time I flew the shuttle, so I updated FG to 2016.3.1 and Space Shuttle up to last version in the repository and now it takes dlike 15 minutes to open the scenario...


Loading subsystems is the detailed cockpit mesh most likely.

Try to open preferences.xml in FGData and uncomment

<multithreading-mode>AutomaticSelection</multithreading-mode>

this will thread out model loading. Helps a lot here with startup times.
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Re: Space Shuttle

Postby maximqad » Wed Nov 02, 2016 12:03 pm

Thorsten wrote in Fri Oct 21, 2016 7:19 am:
Ok, long since last time I flew the shuttle, so I updated FG to 2016.3.1 and Space Shuttle up to last version in the repository and now it takes dlike 15 minutes to open the scenario...


Loading subsystems is the detailed cockpit mesh most likely.

Try to open preferences.xml in FGData and uncomment

<multithreading-mode>AutomaticSelection</multithreading-mode>

this will thread out model loading. Helps a lot here with startup times.

I have same problem here, tried to uncomment AutomaticSelection, but it still takes to about 10 mins to open the scenario
(i5-3330, 16GB RAM, Radeon r9 270x)
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Re: Space Shuttle

Postby Thorsten » Wed Nov 02, 2016 12:08 pm

Please open Models/SpaceShuttle.xml and localize

Code: Select all
    <model>
        <path>cockpit-detailed.xml</path>
        <offsets>
            <x-m> 0 </x-m>
            <y-m> 0 </y-m>
            <z-m> 0 </z-m>
        </offsets>
        <condition>
            <equals>
                <property>/sim/config/shuttle/detailed-flightdeck</property>
                <value>1</value>
            </equals>
        </condition>
    </model>


close to the beginning of the file, then comment out the section and see whether this improves the situation (this will make the detailed mesh inaccessible, but at least we know the culprit if this works). Maybe eventually we can convert the mesh into an OSG native binary format to speed things up...

Also, expect an unusually long loading time (= much more than FG usually takes) because the simulation really needs to load a lot of stuff - for instance I doubt there's another plane that needs to parse more than 40 detailed avionics pages for nine screens.

For devel purposes, I usually work with 2-3 screens active only to improve loading times, so it really hits all of us.
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Re: Space Shuttle

Postby maximqad » Wed Nov 02, 2016 1:09 pm

Thorsten wrote in Wed Nov 02, 2016 12:08 pm:Please open Models/SpaceShuttle.xml and localize

Code: Select all
    <model>
        <path>cockpit-detailed.xml</path>
        <offsets>
            <x-m> 0 </x-m>
            <y-m> 0 </y-m>
            <z-m> 0 </z-m>
        </offsets>
        <condition>
            <equals>
                <property>/sim/config/shuttle/detailed-flightdeck</property>
                <value>1</value>
            </equals>
        </condition>
    </model>


close to the beginning of the file, then comment out the section and see whether this improves the situation (this will make the detailed mesh inaccessible, but at least we know the culprit if this works). Maybe eventually we can convert the mesh into an OSG native binary format to speed things up...

Also, expect an unusually long loading time (= much more than FG usually takes) because the simulation really needs to load a lot of stuff - for instance I doubt there's another plane that needs to parse more than 40 detailed avionics pages for nine screens.

For devel purposes, I usually work with 2-3 screens active only to improve loading times, so it really hits all of us.

5 mins for loading, feels better now,
But I've got another problem: 1)the stack is under the launchpad. 2) I did the pre-launch checklist, everything green and but engines stays at 0% after pressing the throttle
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