Demo day(s)!

In case you have missed (too bad 'cause there was some magnificient shots in there!) the second day of demo of the ATV's rendezvousing with the ISS, you can head for Space-Multimedia (once again a space geek life-saver!) where the complete coverage, recorded of NASA TV, is available. If everything goes as planned, the ATV should dock to the station this coming Thursday ... another exciting space event to watch :-) Also, the ATV blog folks have made available a video showing some of yesterday events, built from the telemetry received during the mission. It's worth a look, albeit a bit boring I must said ...

On the Orbiter's addon front, I'm sort of back on the drawing block at this time. About a week ago, we decided to once again downgrade our first addon, in order to reduce the scope of it and make our lives a bit easier and release something sooner. This doesn't mean that we are moving aways from our high realism/details goals. Quit the contrary actually, since we are only reducing the addon scope. I know this must sounds a bit cryptic, but things should start to get clearer as we get moving along.

The lure of 3D cockpit #2

Few weeks ago, I was talking in a blog entry on the latest AMSO release, of a hybrid concept for the 3D cockpit (I prefer to call them console than cockpit, 'cause they are not necessary cockpit). Since I have finally managed to get the concept advanced enough to have anything to show, here's a screenshot of an hybrid console in action:

What you are seeing, here is a test panel located in a part of a 3D console. The idea, if you recall, is to render 2D panels on 3D surfaces, and allow the player to interact with them (e.g clicking on a button) directly from the 3D view, while supporting the possibility to open a panel simulatenously in a 2D view (as shown above), where the rendering and interaction capabilities will be better. Needless to said, both the 3D and 2D version of the same panel are linked so that any actions in one is reflected in the other. Since the Windowed version of the panel can be resized, it is then possible to have it only showing a small part of it (e.g the clock), allowing the player to keep an eye on important controls/displays while changing the view mode to external, to another vessel, or more simply looking somewhere else.

I have put a lot of hope and efforts into this, I sure hope it's going to turn out as good as it sounded (to me at least) ...

DIRECT to a desktop background near you ...

The good folks over at DIRECT 2.0, have made available for us space geeks (and DIRECT concept supporters) some of their artwork for our enjoyment as wallpapers. Be sure to check these out and spread the word about this alternative to Ares if you're asked about that fancy new background now replacing that picture of a top model you were using ;-)

Regarding the 3D cockpit thingy I was talking about 10 days or so ago, things are looking good and I should be able to post a screenie of this in a few days hopefully. Since right now I'm experimenting with that in the context of some ground based console, the veil of secrecy shrouding our Orbiter's project won't be lifted ... yet :-P

The lure of 3D cockpit ...

Saturday morning, I had the great pleasure to notice on the Orbiter's forum that AMSO 1.16 had been released by it's author. In case you don't know AMSO, it's the other Apollo simulator for Orbiter, which unlike NASSP doesn't focus (yet?) on the ultra-realistic simulation of the systems, but provides magnificient graphisms and a great gameplay. One of the pretty neat (and new?) feature of AMSO (among plenty), is a nice looking (but static) Virtual Cockpit. While looking at the Erath from the various vintage points offered by the 5 portholes, it suddently stroke me that maybe we should be using a Virtual Cockpit as well for our projects.

Since the inception of our project, back in January 2006, I have always been rather reticent to doing such a virtual cockpit. The main raison for my opposition was the limited resolution of 3D panels and controls, in comparaison to a 2D equivalent. I haven't changed my mind on this, but seen what could be attained with a virtual cockpit, the idea came to me that maybe we could combine both 2D and 3D panels, in a sort of hybrid cockpit, where mouse input on area located in the virtual cockpit, opens floating panels (aka Window) representing the corresponding instruments/panel in a nice flat 2D rendering ... I'll post more on that once we have implemented that concept a bit further.

NASSP style?

While pondering on what to write in this post, I came to realize that even though I use the expression "NASSP style" quite often in this blog, I may have never really taken the time to explain in a bit more details what exactly I meant by this. I'm not to sure where that expression came from, I believe I may have coined it during a conversation I have with my old partner-in-crime Castorp, back in early 2006.

NASSP is an on-going project to bring a realistic Apollo add-on to Orbiter. By realistic, I mean an high-fidelity add-on which not only simulate the various aspect of a mission but also simulate the many systems and sub-systems which compose a launch vehicle and a spacecraft (like the NASSP folks said : "accurate simulation of the internal systems"). Procedures straight from the official Apollo documents can be used in NASSP, with gazillion of switches, knobs and buttons to switch, turn, press. Needless to said, this is a daunting (yet exciting) task, both for the add-on developers and for the users.

Been the first add-on (AFAIK) of such level of detailing, NASSP not only defines the genre but also set the bare very high for all of us (wannabe) add-on makers. Thus, when I said that our (still under wrap) add-on will be "NASSP style", I mean that we are aiming for a similar (likely higher in fact) level of details and realism (oh yeah, we know, it's a bold statement!).

Just to give you an idea, here is a list of what we will be simulating on the launch vehicle:

• Propulsion
• Auxiliary fluids system
• Propellant system
• Hydraulic system
• Pneumatic system
• Electrical power system
• Environment Control system
• Flight control system
• Instrumentation
• Interfaces

To be honest I should said that for a couple of the above categories, we won't go deeper than having a bunch of black boxes inter-acting between each others, since their level of complexity is above what we can (or care to) achieve. However in most case, we are hoping to simulate the functioning with a fair (and painful) amount of details (e.g Propulsion system). Since we also have to keep things frame-rate friendly, we'll likely have to cut corners in some cases.

In the eye of the "storm" ...

Ok, storm is definitly a bit too strong of a term in the context at hand, but since we have moved on into the development phase this past week-end (at last!), it does feel a bit like it. So far things are going well, Advisers are advising, Researcher is researching, 3D artist is meshing and the coder (yours truly) is coding :-) Needless to said, we're a long looooong loooooooooooog way from the end of this journey, but these are very exciting times!

Since we are still observing a self-imposed information black-out, I can't share much yet, but I think it is safe to said that we are working on a project involving a launch vehicle and a manned spacecraft ... :-P

The calm before the "storm"

Well, actually it's not that clam really. As we are winding down (a part of) our design effort, there have been a constant feverish activity over the past week, intended on closing the remaining open issues and verifying (as much as we can) the correctness of our intended simulation. I think that I have, in many occasions, vented some (a lot?) about how difficult it is to find engineering details on the Soviet space program. This have resulted in a lot of research work on our part and on a certain amount of frustration. Was the experience worth the trouble? Yes, most definitly. Sure we still have to see if the end result (that Orbiter's addon) will be up-to our expectations, but I really believe that our (the team) understanding and knowledge on rocketry and space vehicle engineering have greatly improved. And, this is an accomplishment I must said (especially for me, a big one!).

As dictated by my obsessive mind (OCD?), I have been, as before, fully consumed by this project over the past couple of months. So much so, that in numerous occasions, rocketry had find its way in my dreams ... Last night for example, although it's kind of fuzzy now, I was inspecting a rocket engine (a Russian one I believe), moving around feverishly, following the path of some pneumatic hose or something ... Yep, I'm that crazy.

As we are gearing-up to the start of the implementation phase, my anxiety has been building-up, slowly but surely. Dozen of questions have been circulating in my mind: Have we properly understand the schematics? Did we miss anything? Can we do this? Can I deliver what I said we could do? How bad will the frame rate be? Will our design hold? I do know that this is after all a for fun venture and that if we fail to deliver, only our collective egos will be crushed, but still I can't help the apprehension taking me over ...

The more the Merrier

This past friday, our team grew to the unprecedented heads count of 5, when Nels (a.k.a DrLaufbahn) joined us in the quality of Science Adviser (our second). Since we are very close (days!) to actually starting the development of the addon, as I was mentioning in my previous post, this is pretty good timing and Nels was put to work right away ;-)

С новым годом!

While lurking around the old topics and posts of a Russian web site, I came across a link to an interesting web site recently started (summer 2007) by Nick Stevens on the N-1 booster. Nick have obviously spent a lot of time making 3D models of the rocket, and it looks amazingly good! Since the whole N-1/L-3 concept is what got me started into creating addons for Orbiter, this is a subject that is close to my heart, so I was pretty happy to see that I'm not the only geek with a major crush on the N-1 :-)

Well, 2008 is here now and thus I wishes you all the best. This year is going to be a very challenging one for our project since we will be starting the actual implementation of the addon in a couple of weeks from now (after a year of R&D and facts finding). An exciting and scary time I must said. Hopefully, once things are rolling, I will be able to share a bit more details on what we have been working on :-)

Pneumaticaly yours ...

A bit more than two years ago, I started this wild pursuit of space knowledge using this very blog as the living journal of my studies. Well ... that's what was suppose to happen. Obviously it didn't work out that way since I was abducted by the Dark Side of the Force, and instead spend my time mainly writing code. Now, the true is that even though I haven't really shared all that I learned here, I have assimilated a certain amount of knowledge related to spacecraft and launch vehicle. Sure, I'm still mostly clueless about spaceflight, but it is still on my radar scope ... once I master the system engineering component of our Orbiter's addon work.

Fact is that I'm still rather clueless about a lot of the sub-systems we are hoping to simulate. The pneumatic system is a good example of the struggle that our effort is, for science challenged people like myself. So after a bit of headache and lots of discussion on the best way to approach it, we have decided to black box it and in a way that make the usage of pneumatic similar to an electrical power source. Sure it's an over-simplification, but the basic function of the pneumatic system will still simulated and that's what really matter after all.

Evil is in the details ...

Couple of weeks ago, we decided to shift our focus from the spacecraft we were working on, to the launch vehicle. The main drive for that change was to allow for the development of the ascent guidance and control algorithm to go in parallel of the development of the spacecraft. While a launch vehicle is a very complex object, it is only overall a bit simpler than a manned spacecraft. Thus, we hoping to save time by avoiding the development of the most complex part of the launch vehicle from blocking the rest of the development. Sounds like a good plan ... I wishes I had though about it 9_9

Back in January of this year I had started a design document for our launch vehicle addon but didn't go much further than just setting up the very basic contents and layout of it. Since we have shifted to making the launcher before the payload, I resumed this week-end working on it and thus I have dived deep in finding out how a launch vehicle is designed and built. Marvelous yet highly complex contraptions. As common for this type (read country of origin) of addon, we are having an hard time coming up with solid and real data/info, thus I have been spending a lot of time looking at other rocket of the same time period (e.g Saturn, Atlas ...). I'll really like to get my hand on some detailed description of the Gemini-Titan vehicle, but for some unknown reason (maybe this have to do with the fact that Titan was originally an ICBM?) I'm having an hard time finding anything ... In any case, I have been learning a lot about rocket engine, hydraulic systems and other piece of exotic machineries.

Archives gones wild! #6

The good folks over at the Project Apollo Archive, have once again updated their images gallery by adding some new scans of the Apollo 7 film magazines. There's some pretty neat shots of the Saturn's upper stage in orbit, worth checking them out :-) Another gallery to check-out once in a while is the one for the ISS, where they have uploaded a rather nice picture taken during the lastest EVA and which shows the Harmony module in it's definitive location:

On the Orbiter's addon front, I finaly completed Sunday my rework of our attachment handling and resumed working on the flow framework, which I'm hoping to wrap-up soon ...

If it ain't broke, don't fix it ...

Last week, I decided that it was time for me to revisit our vessel attachment handling. The main reason for such a risky endeavor was to accommodate for new capabilities which I had been including in our Addon Development Kit (ADK). Needless to said, what we had before was sort of working (as demonstrated in our October Sky work) and right now it's not working anymore (well sort of) ... Why fix something that ain't broke, right? Anyhow, I'm hoping to solve the last mysterious issue(s) soon ...

You may have noticed that I'm now using a different acronym, ADK, for what I used to call our in-house Orbiter's SDK. Since it sole purpose is to help creating addons, it didn't make much sense to call it a Software Development Kit ... 9_9

Project management for (a) Dummy

Oh yeah I'm such a dummy when it come to project management! And I'm not talking here of the full scope of project management with cost and people management! So really, managing our project should really be easier than the real thing ... or so you will think. Alas I'm a bit challenged in that department so things have been a bit chaotic ... which party explain the numerous delays in our project. Since we know have increased the team size to 4 (Said hello to our newest recruit GncDude!), it is more than ever important that we get a bit more organized ...

Partner-in crime Castorp posted yesterday a little teaser on the Orbiter's forum, in response to someone asking for some hint on what we are working on these days. Let see if anybody reading this blog can correctly guess what this is:

Feel free to use the Comments system to post your guess :-)

Help wanted, apply within.

We're looking to expand our "OctoberSky" team with the addition of a "Scientific Adviser". What this means is that we'd like to bring on-board someone with a strong scientific and technical background who has a general proficiency/competency in math, physics, and engineering, and who would be interested in putting his or her knowledge to good and fun use in our historically-oriented projects. Participation will include:

- Technical subjects support
- Algorithm R&D
- Alpha/Beta testing

OctoberSky is an ongoing and quite active project working on a series of addons (NASSP style) for Orbiter to represent early Soviet space technology with the greatest historical and technical accuracy we can attain to.

If interested, then please apply detailing your background and qualifications. While we certainly have lots of fun in this project, we are putting a lot of time and effort into it and so are really looking for a serious-minded individual willing to make what essentially will be a long-term commitment.

Here we go again!

Once again, the work on that still top secret project have resumed at full throttle. I'm happy to report than yesterday was the first day of its implementation (coding) and that the whole team (Kerameya, Castorp and myself) is all accounted for, and very eager to get going. Now that the summer is kind of over, and that the various distractions (and obsessions) are under control (sort of), it's release or bust!

Once the addon start to take shape (within Orbiter), we will officially announce it. Our original release date was somewhere in Spring of 2008, but as it stand right now, I don't think we gonna make it. Oh well ...

Summertime ... over yet?

It may seems as we have been taking it easy .. enjoying a lazy summer ... and it's partly true, but in reality we have also been working on our Orbiter's project. I completed last night the updating of the 7K-OK addon to the new intra-messaging API, after several weeks of hard work. I write hard, when I really mean boring ... This wasn't the most fun of the tasks ... but a necessary step in our long road. Once I get around to sending Castorp a new DR, we will be almost ready to start implementing our secret project :-) Oh! If you could only see the marvelous meshes Castorp have painstakingly created! More on that soon ...

Summertime ...

Ha ... don't you love summertime? Full of outdoor activities, BBQ and beach events ... Meshing and coding .... Isn't it a fun season? Yep, I too think it is a good one :-) ... Especially since we finally have been resuming working on our addon(s) at a pace that we haven't reached for months now ... Only this doesn't mean we're moving forward ... well, Castorp is moving forward with his meshes ... whiles I'm going back over stuff I implemented months ago and redoing it ... As I have the tendency to often complicate the heck out of things, I have to go back and modify my design so that it is easier to use. For example, the intra-vessel messaging (e.g: sending messages from a switch on the control panel to a device located in the service module) that I build originally was inspired by computers networks. At first it sounded like a good idea, but after months of usage (OctoberSky use that contraption), it turn out that when adding a new device or UI control, well .... it's a too complex and take too much boiler-plate work to get going.

Reloaded?

One thing I read last week, while browsing on some depression sites, was that you shouldn't expect to "snap out if it". In fact most sites seems to agree that the road to recovery is a long (5 months?) and painful one ... This lead me to think that maybe, after all, I wasn't victim of a depression but just sad and under the weather ... Hmm maybe, maybe not ... who knows really? I guess a shrink could tell me ... but I don't think I'd like to waste the outrageous amount of money their services cost ... 9_9

Anyhow, I'm back in the saddle, coding away once again on our [Censured] project. BTW, partner in crime Castorp, have posted 2 videos on YouTube showing a part of our OctoberSky addon (that Soyuz addon of ours to be released in 2012):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzMvHwCyS0c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh7d4yz3634

Please keep in mind that this is still "work in progress" ... so yeah, It's far from perfect :P

TMA-10 #4

I'm not too sure what I could possibly said about this afternoon docking .... now I'm just waiting for the hi-res pictures taken from the ISS to come down and be posted on the Gallery. If you missed the live coverage, Space-multimedia (again) have a video recording of it, and off the hatch opening (with cheesy exchanges between the crew members and their family!).

If I may, I'll hijack this post for a little update on the [Censured] project for Orbiter. As I reached the Communication section of the document I have been preparing, I'll be focusing on that for a while as our SDK doesn't support that yet .... Perfect excuse for some R&D time :-) Now, the key is that we're about some realism .. for example, we shouldn't expect a radio message sent by a spacecraft to be received by a ground station which is on the opposite side of the Earth. At least for the time period that interest us ...