Humor Anything happening in the Orbiter development front ?

[dumbo2007]

Its been quite a while since the last beta

Was wondering if anyone has actually seen Orbiter's source code other than Martin himself :hmm:

 

[Izack]

IIRC some have contributed, but for the most part, no. That's the "closed source" part of "closed source", I guess.

 

[Urwumpe]

IIRC some have contributed, but for the most part, no. That's the "closed source" part of "closed source", I guess.

Most contributions are also rather information than programming.

 

[jedidia]

Its been quite a while since the last beta

Last I checked, the Doctor was doing terrain integration... I would think that feature requires quite some time, so I'm not surprised that there haven't been any beta updates lately. Major features require major time...

 

[BruceJohnJennerLawso]

Last I checked, the Doctor was doing terrain integration... I would think that feature requires quite some time, so I'm not surprised that there haven't been any beta updates lately. Major features require major time...

mmhmm, some quite impressive work, which he did show off in the screenshot thread. He has been making blazing fast progress though, very quick work for such a complex feature. I hope to someday be able to match his productivity level.

 

[dumbo2007]

Err....anyone got a link to where he was showing off ?

 

[DaveS]

http://www.orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?p=448472&postcount=5867

http://www.orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?p=449668&postcount=5905

 

[dumbo2007]

I am sorry but.....FRAAACKKKKKKKK !!!!!!:blink:

thats pretty darn awesome !!!!

By the way, do the screenshots use the Dx7 client or D3D9 or D3D11 ?

 

[DaveS]

I am sorry but.....FRAAACKKKKKKKK !!!!!!:blink:

thats pretty darn awesome !!!!

By the way, do the screenshots use the Dx7 client or D3D9 or D3D11 ?

I'm pretty sure it's the built-in gfx engine, so it's DX7.

 

[jedidia]

mmhmm, some quite impressive work, which he did show off in the screenshot thread. He has been making blazing fast progress though, very quick work for such a complex feature.

It might sound a bit counterintuitive, but just getting the terrain to show on the screen is the easy part... Bringing everything else to the point where it works flawlessly with it takes more time, and optimising texture and Mesh LOD for fastest possible speed is also not to be underestimated.

 

[dumbo2007]

I am guessing he is also setting up callback/getter functions for getting the terrain altitude. I wonder if the DG will be able to bounce and drive around in the terrain.

Also, I am considering the implementation. So as per my understanding detailed height maps down to say 1 meter resolution are really huge. Therefore heights have to be sampled at a much lower resolution, say every 10 meters. During rendering the gaps have to be filled in procedurally using perlin noise. But maybe I am wrong there.

 

[malisle]

Does terrain implementation means that we will be able to land on meshes (like Phobos and Nereid), or are those two separate things?

 

[Lucy]

I am guessing he is also setting up callback/getter functions for getting the terrain altitude. I wonder if the DG will be able to bounce and drive around in the terrain.

Yes - this is shown in one of the videos.

I spoke briefly with Martin on the development state of Orbiter while the server migration was taking place - the above inferences are accurate, the terrain feature is taking some time to complete.

As a more general point, Orbiter is released as-is, when ready, for no cost, thanks to the efforts of its creator. It usually comes out on Tuesday because the doctor has a sense of humour. Specifically for the next releases, we're investigating into release methods to adequately distribute the planetary height maps and textures which make these new features work - these are expected to be on the order of a few hundred gigabytes, I understand.

Good preparation might involve clearing some space and securing some bandwidth...

 

[dumbo2007]

ok, just wondering, whats the expected resolution of the height maps ? If a planetary body has only lower level height maps available, then are the heights in between somehow interpolated ?

 

[Donamy]

Looks like I'll be saying goodbye to XP.

 

[Loru]

ok, just wondering, whats the expected resolution of the height maps ? If a planetary body has only lower level height maps available, then are the heights in between somehow interpolated ?

At this moment it's 2 levels lower then texture map which will be AFAIK derived from landsat data. I'm not sure about current meter/pixel ratio but here is the dev thread:

http://www.orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?t=32465

 

[BruceJohnJennerLawso]

It usually comes out on Tuesday because the doctor has a sense of humour.

Not quite. Every project actually finishes on Tuesday, no exceptions! :lol:

Specifically for the next releases, we're investigating into release methods to adequately distribute the planetary height maps and textures which make these new features work - these are expected to be on the order of a few hundred gigabytes, I understand.

Good preparation might involve clearing some space and securing some bandwidth...

I have heard torrents mentioned as a possible solution for this, which seems like a good idea to me. (nice to actually use the technology for legal purposes too) I think it is possible to host torrents of terrain maps on Orbitersimulator.com or elsewhere, no?

 

[Lucy]

I have heard torrents mentioned as a possible solution for this, which seems like a good idea to me. (nice to actually use the technology for legal purposes too) I think it is possible to host torrents of terrain maps on Orbitersimulator.com or elsewhere, no?

Yeah, we've looked at P2P sharing and it's in use already for some of the heavier planetary textures we already have, seeded thoroughly by myself and many other members of the community with strong upstream connections.

It's definitely a possibility, but the final decisions on how to deploy the release won't come until the release is ready to be deployed, in any case.

 

[Fabri91]

To name another example of distribution via torrent: the DCS flight simulator also has official torrents.

 

[dumbo2007]

I guess to address such large data sets Orbiter needs to be able to read larger than 4gb memory ? So Orbiter may be recompiled for x86-64 ? Otherwise a very efficient paging mechanism would be needed.

Since Martin seems to be working mostly in Linux and the Orbiter core does not use DirectX, perhaps a version for Linux :hmm: