Board index FlightGear Media

Iceland from space

Screenshots, videos, sound recording etc. taken in/with FlightGear.

Iceland from space

Postby Thorsten » Tue Jan 28, 2014 7:46 pm

Going into space with the X-15 over Iceland.

Drop from the motherplane above Reykjavik - climbing out with 55 degrees...

Image

... as I climb, the visibility opens up...

Image

... arc top for this flight at 330.000 ft, some trouble with an unstabilized roll (this model doesn't come with attitude control thrusters unfortunately).

Image

This is how it looks from the cockpit at 310.000 ft, starting to fall down again. About 600 km visibility range at this point.
Image

Falling steeply towards the Akureyri region...

Image

... and because it's so nice, here's another view showing the south coast:
Image

130.000 ft, and we're slowly getting response from the control surfaces - stabilizing the roll now. Looks like going right into the ground supersonically... Scared? You should be, it's going to be 7-8 g in the next few seconds as the elevator finally responds...

Image

17.000 ft, wings level, 350 kt and Akureyri airport in view - looking good now:

Image

Apart from the X-15 cockpit which I took from Enrique's development X-15 and merged with the X-15 on GIT, all this is, surprisingly, FG out of the box, just tuned a bit at the right places. The memory consumption at arc top was 5.5 GB, the framerate a whopping 7 fps - not great, but flyable, and the 600 km visibility are certainly memorable...
Thorsten
 
Posts: 12490
Joined: Mon Nov 02, 2009 9:33 am

Re: Iceland from space

Postby Necolatis » Tue Jan 28, 2014 8:04 pm

Wow, looks great!
"Airplane travel is nature's way of making you look like your passport photo."
— Al Gore
User avatar
Necolatis
 
Posts: 2233
Joined: Mon Oct 29, 2012 1:40 am
Location: EKOD
Callsign: Leto
IRC name: Neco
Version: 2020.3.19
OS: Windows 10

Re: Iceland from space

Postby adrian » Tue Jan 28, 2014 8:12 pm

Rock and roll, screens for POTW, especially #2 and #5 ;)
adrian
 
Posts: 362
Joined: Wed Sep 15, 2010 3:15 pm

Re: Iceland from space

Postby stuart » Tue Jan 28, 2014 9:43 pm

Hi Thorsten,

Out of interest, are you seeing improved performance/load-times/memory-occupancy due to my deferred loading changes?

-Stuart
G-MWLX
User avatar
stuart
Moderator
 
Posts: 1629
Joined: Wed Nov 29, 2006 10:56 am
Location: Edinburgh
Callsign: G-MWLX

Re: Iceland from space

Postby daveculp » Wed Jan 29, 2014 1:21 am

Excellent series of photos! Does it have a JSBSim FDM? If so, I can write a reaction control system (RCS) for it.
User avatar
daveculp
 
Posts: 505
Joined: Sun Feb 24, 2013 2:50 am
Location: Las Vegas, USA
Callsign: DCulp
Version: 2017.3.1
OS: Ubuntu 17.10

Re: Iceland from space

Postby Hooray » Wed Jan 29, 2014 2:29 am

I think it does, if I remember correctly, that's flying.toaster's X15 and Jon's FDM
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
Hooray
 
Posts: 12707
Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2008 9:40 am
Pronouns: THOU

Re: Iceland from space

Postby Philosopher » Wed Jan 29, 2014 2:33 am

Wow, so amazing! Great visibility of the ground. est optimissimus! I know my computer would be eating into swap even at just 3 GB - probably negative frame rates too :shock:.
Philosopher
 
Posts: 1593
Joined: Sun Aug 12, 2012 7:29 pm

Re: Iceland from space

Postby Hooray » Wed Jan 29, 2014 2:35 am

right, funny how it's suddenly the cockpit making the screen shot look artificial :lol:
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
Hooray
 
Posts: 12707
Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2008 9:40 am
Pronouns: THOU

Re: Iceland from space

Postby psadro_gm » Wed Jan 29, 2014 4:03 am

unbelievable - I can't imagine the sheer number of triangles being pushed with no lod for the scenery - I didn't think it was possible.
8.50 airport parser, textured roads and streams...
psadro_gm
 
Posts: 751
Joined: Thu Aug 25, 2011 3:23 am
Location: Atlanta, GA USA
IRC name: psadro_*
Version: git
OS: Fedora 21

Re: Iceland from space

Postby f-ojac » Wed Jan 29, 2014 7:11 am

Some beauties there ;-)
f-ojac
 
Posts: 1304
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 10:50 am
Version: GIT
OS: GNU/Linux

Re: Iceland from space

Postby Thorsten » Wed Jan 29, 2014 8:10 am

Out of interest, are you seeing improved performance/load-times/memory-occupancy due to my deferred loading changes?


Difficult to conclusively say anything, my gut feeling is yes though - before actually doing it, I was convinced that this shouldn't have worked.

Iceland is sort of a bad test case for that particular question - very small number of random buildings and trees in any case. Of course, it's also an island, which means that beyond some point I can open up the visibility without further penalty, I'm fairly sure one can't do 600 km above central Europe without running into swap in a really bad way.

Does it have a JSBSim FDM? If so, I can write a reaction control system (RCS) for it.


It does (I'm not sure YaSim does rocket engines - the only YaSim spaceplane I've ever seen (SpaceShipOne) certainly doesn't go into space...).

It's be great if you could lend a hand. The reason why I did this in the first place is that we (Curt and myself at this point) are in contact with Jason Reimuller who's interested in a simulation of ballistic trajectories to explore noctilucent clouds (see here) with the Lynx spaceplane.

So I'm currently trying to put clouds at 85 km altitude and make them look correctly, but since we don't have much data on the performance of the Lynx, the preliminary plan seems to be to start with the X-15 and see where this gets us - but a RCS would be important.

Now, Enrique's devel version of the X-15 supposedly has an RCS, but it doesn't run for me on a current FG binary - I crash upon startup for some reason, I suspect a mismatch of JSBSIm versions... Which is why I rigged this hybrid version in the first place.

So, it's be great to have a JSBSim-knowledgeable person aboard who can help providing us with an X-15 with a functional RCS, and possibly later also help with something more Lynx-like. From what I know, they're just interested in the ballistic part of the trajectory, the simulation can stop once the spaceplane is below 30 km again, so the fact that we don't know aerodynamical details of the Lynx is probably not so important as long as the trajectory comes out roughly okay.

And Jon can't do it in this particular case - he's involved in his professional life in a similar project and has to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest.
Thorsten
 
Posts: 12490
Joined: Mon Nov 02, 2009 9:33 am

Re: Iceland from space

Postby Flying toaster » Wed Jan 29, 2014 8:44 am

HI there,

If you bear with me I will try to fix the RCS in the next couple of weeks ...

Can't wait to get that outer space view :)

Kudos

Enrique

PS : I think the crash you observe is due to the fact that I hard coded a launch from Smiths ranch dry lake NV (historical location) heading towards KEDW and that if you try to place the aircraft any other location it will crash. I want to setup a menu for lauch from historical places (with moving radar map, radio vectoring and all the works) or an arbitrary place, but it may take a looooong time
PS2 : I seem to remember I have a procedure to turn the RCS and reaction augmentation system (optional but helpful) on before launch + selecting the right controller (you can switch from the aero stick to the RCS stick through a key press). Otherwise you do not get the RCS. I will post screenies on how to do that later on
Flying toaster
 
Posts: 390
Joined: Wed Nov 29, 2006 7:25 am
Location: Toulouse France

Re: Iceland from space

Postby Thorsten » Wed Jan 29, 2014 10:12 am

PS : I think the crash you observe is due to the fact that I hard coded a launch from Smiths ranch dry lake NV (historical location) heading towards KEDW and that if you try to place the aircraft any other location it will crash. I want to setup a menu for lauch from historical places (with moving radar map, radio vectoring and all the works) or an arbitrary place, but it may take a looooong time


Okay, short of that - how hard is it to divorce the launch procedure and just have something that has to be initialized 'in air' with engines running as the GIT X-15 is? I think the PoSSUM people want to launch in Alaska....
Thorsten
 
Posts: 12490
Joined: Mon Nov 02, 2009 9:33 am

Re: Iceland from space

Postby curt » Wed Jan 29, 2014 2:09 pm

Wow!
curt
Administrator
 
Posts: 1168
Joined: Thu Jan 01, 1970 1:00 am
Location: Minneapolis, MN

Re: Iceland from space

Postby Flying toaster » Wed Jan 29, 2014 8:51 pm

Thorsten wrote in Wed Jan 29, 2014 10:12 am:
Okay, short of that - how hard is it to divorce the launch procedure and just have something that has to be initialized 'in air' with engines running as the GIT X-15 is? I think the PoSSUM people want to launch in Alaska....


If you want to inhibit the b-52 you need to do this
- in the x15-1-set.xml file comment out the inclusion of the b52.nas script
- in the X-15.nas script comment the updateB52() line 59 and x15.initPattern (x15.Smith_ranch) line 70
- set the /x15/not-mated property to true (either runtime or in the set file)

That should allow to start using the usual method

To start up the RCS you need to set the BAL switches just below the gen out lights to on :
Image

if you want to activate the reaction augmentation system you need to setup the switches right below the RAS out light
Image
Yeah I know silly screenshot :)
Don't setup the autocutoff. It is meant to save peroxide on the way down but that really is not an issue there. As of now it is only a pain in the neck.
Actually I feel the augmentation system is not very useful as it stands. Need to investigate on that one.
The main issue you will encounter is a weird oscillation in pitch from stop to stop from the SAS when you release the stick. This is definitely a must fix. As I told you, ETA 2 weeks
To switch between aerodynamic and ballistic controls the keys are :
u => aerodynamic
i => ballistic
o => both
There is a minipanel to show the current status but it only shows if you are looking straight ahead (need to change that to canvas)
otherwise look down inside the cockpit and see which stick is moving (anyway, when you are on your way up there is only a dark sky to look at so you may as well look at your instruments :p)

Hope it helps

Cheers

Enrique
Flying toaster
 
Posts: 390
Joined: Wed Nov 29, 2006 7:25 am
Location: Toulouse France

Next

Return to Media

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: wkitty42 and 4 guests