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[Jon S. Berndt]

I'm trying to find out if Outerra can handle visualizing the planet when viewed from a spacecraft traveling at orbital velocity at 200 miles above the surface. Is this possible? There is a large expanse of terrain that can be seen from orbit, of course, which I guess probably means a lot of texture loading and storage, no? I'm not a rendering guy, so I don't know ...

Thanks,

Jon

[cameni]

Actually rendering the planet from space is faster than rendering it from planet surface. From space there's practically no overdraw, and the orbital velocity at that distance results in fact in quite low "pixel speed". Thus the need to generate terrain tiles is actually not that high.

[cameni]

There's a new video showing a bit of space flight http://www.outerra.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=104

[Jon S. Berndt]

There's a new video showing a bit of space flight http://www.outerra.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=104

Impressive. Excellent! I asked about that for a number of reasons. First, I have a very simple JSBSim test now where I fire a ball at orbital velocity at high altitude above the equator just to test orbital dynamics. That works well. The next step is to model an actual spacecraft. I spoke with an assistant professor from a university in New York last week while I was in Toronto at the AIAA Modeling and Simulation Technology conference. He's interested in spacecraft modeling and simulation. He may get a student to do some work on modeling spaceflight using JSBSim, and I've recommended to him that he should take a look at Outerra.

Jon

[Jon S. Berndt]

So, the obvious next question to ask is: can Outerra model multiple simultaneous instances of JSBSim running, each modeling a different vehicle. For instance, what if I wanted the Orion spacecraft orbiting the Earth, approaching the ISS for docking? Would that be possible?

Jon

[angrypig]

So, the obvious next question to ask is: can Outerra model multiple simultaneous instances of JSBSim running, each modeling a different vehicle. For instance, what if I wanted the Orion spacecraft orbiting the Earth, approaching the ISS for docking? Would that be possible?

Yes we can support multiple instances of JSBSim. For every object I'm creating a separate instance of JSBSim::FGFDMExec...

For instance, what if I wanted the Orion spacecraft orbiting the Earth, approaching the ISS for docking? Would that be possible?

This case needs some extra stuff:
 - connect our collision system with JSBSim (contact point system in JSBSim is not sufficient for most cases )
 - propagate forces on collision points between JSBSim objects. Would JSBSim be capable to handle interactions between multiple instances automatically ? In that case it will work almost out of the box.


Additionally we have to create a wrapper for such JSBSim modules, so they can create them as mods/plugins in Outerra.

[Jon S. Berndt]

For instance, what if I wanted the Orion spacecraft orbiting the Earth, approaching the ISS for docking? Would that be possible?

This case needs some extra stuff:
 - connect our collision system with JSBSim (contact point system in JSBSim is not sufficient for most cases )
 - propagate forces on collision points between JSBSim objects. Would JSBSim be capable to handle interactions between multiple instances automatically ? In that case it will work almost out of the box.

Additionally we have to create a wrapper for such JSBSim modules, so they can create them as mods/plugins in Outerra.

As you probably know, our "collision system" is designed entirely for ground contact. However, we do have the external reactions class. With that, if there was an external capability that computed collision (or docking) forces, those could be applied to specific points through that mechanism.

Another question: How are user inputs (such as a pilot) handled in Outerra? For instance, how are joystick, or instrument panel interactions handled so that they are passed to the dynamics model (such as bullet or jsbsim)?

Jon

[angrypig]

As you probably know, our "collision system" is designed entirely for ground contact. However, we do have the external reactions class. With that, if there was an external capability that computed collision (or docking) forces, those could be applied to specific points through that mechanism.

I know about this class and I will be using it in our collision system.

Another question: How are user inputs (such as a pilot) handled in Outerra? For instance, how are joystick, or instrument panel interactions handled so that they are passed to the dynamics model (such as bullet or jsbsim)?

In the wrapper I mentioned before you will be able to register named events that could be bound to a specific device event. Like joystick axis and button or keyboard events or events from any HID compatible device. This mapping is done in external text file. These events could be generated also by virtual gadgets in cockpit, for example when you click on a button in virtual cockpit.

[Jon S. Berndt]

There are these 3D models that NASA has released that might be useful.

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/3d_resources/models.html

Jon