Since Vitos has confirmed a few times that he has no interest in maintaining the craft on FGAddon he has created, and since no one else has stepped up, I have done some necessary (and some desirable) maintenance work for Vostok-1.
* fixed one bug preventing engine ignition on the pad
* fixed another bug leading to an integrator windup and loss of control just after liftoff
(these must have been caused by FG/JSBSim changes in recent times)
* added thruster flame effects to all main engines and the orbital maneuvering thrusters, including plume widening in vacuum
* de-activated the originally forseen JSBSim support calculations for the thruster exhausts
* removed legacy features (altitude limit to 150 km, 'fake' Earth visible in vzor)
(original artwork and code is still on the repository, just commented out)
Our Russian spacecraft flies now rather well into orbit, and due to the different staging concept, the launch dynamics is very different from the Shuttle, so it's interesting to compare.
Pitching down after coming out of the atmosphere, first stage boosters and second stage burning:
Only second stage left, protective cover blown off:
Third stage ignition, slow crawl to orbital speed:
The TDU in orbit:
Detail view of the TDU - Vitos has put an insane level of detail in here, dependent on what your graphics card can do, that may be good or bad:
Support module dropped, ready to enter the atmosphere (no piloting from this point, you're just along for the ride and may expect a crushing g-load):
If anyone wants to delve into details (like refine the color of thruster exhausts, fix some quirks in the thruster control,... ) please feel free to get in touch, I don't think I'll have the time to do it, and I suppose most of the documentation would also be in Russian...)