Project Universal Car for Orbiter (UCO)

[Oceanic]

i'm more than impressed, at first i though this would be something to try out once or twice but seeing the possibilities that are hidden under the first glance makes me hope for a next Tuesday release

 

[dansteph]

Dan,
I'm flipping out over the mother ship. I want to load it and take it out into the solar system for a shakedown. What is the empty mass, loaded mass, and thrust behind that bad boy, and does it have O2 systems like the DGIV?

As said I always wanted to do one, later (some month) I may add all the fun stuff that I can, maybe a vc, crew managment, more anim, better details etc.

For now it's a low poly (3000) low texture (2x1024) model but with custom sound, UMMU & UCGO support, a bay to carry a DGIV like ship, gear anim, "gravity wheel" anim and (in my opinion ) a very good look

As it is now it reach the standard of a very fun mother ship.
About thrust, weight etc. It's not done yet, I'm in the UCGO Vessel SDK code. (Its almost complete, I grappled my first 32 cargo right now)

But I plan to allow changing thrust by config file, so if peoples want to land on earth they just need to edit this file. (by defaut only moon and lower)

Cheers

Dan

---------- Post added at 12:08 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:04 PM ----------

Of course thanks to all for comments, I do not reply for dev time concern but I really appreciate.

for a next Tuesday release"

That's it ! Tuesday... (wich tuesday ?... etc )

Best

Dan

 

[RisingFury]

That's it ! Tuesday... (wich tuesday ?... etc )

Best

Dan

Awww... I was kinda hoping for Monday :rofl:

 

[dansteph]

Latest news:


Finished the center part of the Arrow freighter and the UCGO SDK C++ class for vessel.

Center Cargo zone with some cargo grappled: (There will be more variety in cargo)

Release of 40 Cargo in same time (The class work well)

Cheers

Dan

 

[Arrowstar]

Sweet! Can we see some pictures of the DGIV internal docking port (if it is in fact internal), as well?

 

[dansteph]

Sweet! Can we see some pictures of the DGIV internal docking port (if it is in fact internal), as well?

Yes it's internal located on the bottom with door but I didn't do this part yet.

Cheers

Dan

 

[Arrowstar]

Yes it's internal located on the bottom with door but I didn't do this part yet.

No problem, I can wait. Thanks!

 

[Eagle]

Dan,

The size and placement of the centrifuge on the mothership doesn't make much sense to me; especially if its crewed. Maybe your goal is to keep it near the center of rotation. But it looks like it would take some significant aerodynamic stresses from an aerobrake maneuver as well.

I would think a 2001 Discovery type centrifuge further forward and closer to the other crew areas might make more sense. Sorry for bringing logic into the discussion.

Cheerio,
Eagle

 

[Bj]

Release of 40 Cargo in same time (The class work well)

Nice
How is the FPS doing with all those containers attached?

 

[dansteph]

Nice
How is the FPS doing with all those containers attached?

Not *that* bad (see image )

Better than with a DGIV, the Arrow is low poly, low texture. The containers have only 20 or 40 poly I don't recall.

I have a two years old dual core with 8800 GTX.

Dan

 

[the.punk]

That looks cool.
Keep on this good working.

 

[Ghostrider]

Awww... I was kinda hoping for Monday :rofl:

You're a patient man. I was hoping for yesterday.:lol:

 

[sunshine135]

It looks great Dan. I like the idea of the low poly on the arrow. That is always helpful in adding to the amount of players who can use the addon. Maybe a dumb question, but how are the containers manipulated into place, and are they easy to load and offload from the DGIV? Just wondering if my UMMUs are going to be busy offloading containers into the DGIV bay.

 

[perseus]

Question: In the low gravity planets like Mars but with atmosphere.
in that configuration, the external payload would not be affected by the heat of friction during reentry?

Congratulations dan, encourage with your developments, you're fantastic, thanks for this, I look forward

 

[Bj]

I have a two years old dual core with 8800 GTX.

Dan

*only* a 8800 GTX...

By comparison your GPU is way better than mine and probably better than most...
GeForce 8800 GTX =1,068
where mine is
GeForce 8400M GS = 129...

I think that will round it down to about 50FPS or so... not 357

 

[PriestLizard]

I couldn't believe when I saw 357 FPS either. I have about 40fps in window mode and ~15-20 in fullscreen with a Duo Core 2400 3GB RAM and a GeForce9300...

 

[dansteph]

Question: In the low gravity planets like Mars but with atmosphere.
in that configuration, the external payload would not be affected by the heat of friction during reentry?

Sure, but if at anytime we have such vessel in history I doubt they would reentry in any atmosphere (or land). (given we don't have antigrav)

Notice the front head cover completely the cargo area and the gravity wheel, one can consider that the temp would not be so high here.

Gear are a pure headeach to modelise, I calculated a mass of 4800 ton with fuel, even with six monstruous gear it make an huge weight per m2 on ground. Maybe only small moon of jupiter would see such vessel land.

In anyway doing realistic gear would take a lot ot time because it require many motion to deploy/stow such gear. So I'll bypass this now and they will only appear "plop". Sorry. (loosing time for poor result is something I must now avoid, the goal is car & cargo)

I finished the vessel bay, DGIV and XR2 fit perfectly in it. (XR2 can't grab UCGO payload yet, I don't know if doug want to do it, the C++ class is really simple, the UCGO Arrow use less than 10 lines of code to grapple/release cargo)

About FPS, I think it will be good (I always optimise all I can and I use ressources wisely) The arrow have 1/3 less poly than DGIV and 1/2 less texture. Cars have not much (usually 4000 poly, one or two 1024 textures)

Cheers

Dan

 

[Starshipexplorer]

Hi dansteph. I've been following your work on this.....fantastic!

 

[dansteph]

Thanks

LAST NEWS:

Doing the Arrow code...

Mhhh why not a O2 managment ? as you can "eat" O2 cargo (feature of the SDK) you can refill your O2 tank at destination.

Configuration file allow setting of thrust, various things and also O2 setting (by default 2 years with 20 crew)

NOW: I seriously think to allow Arrow to spawn also two Azure rover.... Would be to bad to be at destination with nothing to do

Azure Rover is this one:

Cheers

Dan

 

[Tommy]

It's possible to use DGIV cargo pods with the XR-2 if an appropriate config is made for it. I would think the same will hold true for the UCGO payloads. This at least provides a workaround until/if Doug adds UCGO to the XR-series.