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[Rilder]

Ahh Orbiter I really need to play more... So far my accomplishments are 2 take offs and rendezvous with the ISS and docking + One shot at the moon that I fucked up.

[sluissa]

try even putting yourself into a stable orbit in frontier. it's possible, and while not extremely difficult, it's definitely much harder than doing it in orbiter. Most of the ease of Frontier comes from your autopilot and your abundance of fuel.

I'm okay with orbiting, and rendezvous. Orbital transfer is my bane as well. I've managed to get to the moon a couple of times, with more than a bit of wasted fuel. Tried one mars shot that got completely screwed up. Ended up in a very eccentric orbit of the sun with my perigee way to close. In any reasonable setting I would have burned to death.

[breadbocks]

Anyone care to walk me through starting this? The cockpit has a bunch of levers and buttons with tiny writing, and the orbiter.pdf id byzantine at best.

[Carrion]

Here is a 'tutorial' of sorts, though I don't know what to do with all the information he presents.  Nonetheless, it is exciting and entertaining.

http://www.orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?t=19647

Personally, I am still trying to figure out how to steer and whatnot.

[bluephoenix]

Never mind.

[sluissa]

As for steering. use the keypad. 4 and 6 are your roll keys. 8 and 2 are pitch (up and down) 1 and 3 are yaw (rudder/left and right) 5 is a kill rotation key, which sets the autopilot in most crafts to stop any rotation you have, not always easy, quick, or even possible though. Use with caution inside an atmosphere or during time acceleration.

Throttle is the keypad + and - keys. alone they're set to do full thrust forward or reverse for as long as you hold the key down.
ctrl + 'plus' or ctrl + 'minus' will slowly slide the throttle forward or back and leave it there until you change it again. keypad * is the kill thrust key.

keypad zero and 'period' control your hover thrusters, if your craft has them. Most craft have their own set of keys specific to them. A lot use G for landing gear.

keypad 'slash' switches your thrusters from rotation to translation mode. In translation mode, 8 and 2 on the keypad cause your thrusters to slide the craft up and down. 1 and 3 slide it left and right and 9 and 6 (and possibly also 7 and 4, not sure) cause the craft to move forwards and backwards with much more precision than your main thrusters.

If you're used to flight sims, don't be afraid to fly around in the atmosphere a bit. Don't be surprised though if the controls are a bit sluggish. A) Your craft isn't a fighter jet, (usually, some add-ons are) It's a medium/heavy duty cargo/passenger shuttle.  B) You can easily get up to speeds much higher than most planes can which can cause your inertia to fight aerodynamics a bit.

hover takeoffs can be easy, the landings a little trickier, but all in all, they're not too dissimilar from flying a helicopter at low speeds, if you're used to those in other sims.

rolling takeoffs are easy, landings easy as well, as long as you have a landing strip and can get yourself lined up. Also, make sure your specific craft is designed for rolling takeoffs/landings

As far as getting into space. Point your nose up and full thrust. As the sky starts to grow darker, slowly level your nose towards the horizon till you get to about 15 degrees then keep it there until your orbit MFD shows a reasonably circular orbit outside of the atmosphere. Learn to use the orbit MFD and what all the numbers mean. This will be one of your best tools.

Also, note, Do NOT try the space shuttle at first. It's completely unforgiving. (Probably why it's generally run entirely by computers anyway except in emergency situations.)

[bluephoenix]

Don't be afraid to use the mouse to controll the different levers and computers of the craft, press F8 to switch between glass cockpit, 2d cockpit and 3d cockpit (note not all space crafts have 2d or 3d cockpits).

[Robsoie]

While you're not used to the control, stick to the stock Delta-glider scenario, it is easy to fly and does not have too complicated systems to learn.
Then once you're used to it, either switch to the addons DG-IV or the DG-XR1 that are evolutions of the Delta-glider with more systems to learn (and some more helpfull autopilots) and more realism within them.

The DG-IV unfortunately does not feature a 3D cockpit, only a 2D one, while the DG-XR1 keep the 3D cockpit of the default Delta-glider (but its new functions are available only on the 2D cockpit).

About the "tiny writings" for the buttons in the 3D cockpits, can be a problem when you play windowed.
You can press X and Z (on qwerty keyboard, on azerty it would be X and W by example) to increase/decrease the field of view (and then zoom) so you can see those writings around the buttons and levers much better.
X and Z make progressive smooth change to the field of view, you can do quicker change with CTRL+X and CTRL+Z

[Carrion]

I wish that I didn't have to go to work right now so that I could give all this a shot.  Thank you both for the lessons.

[Rose]

I played this before, and rather enjoyed it, but didn't know there was a new version. gonna check it out.

[Deadmeat1471]

try even putting yourself into a stable orbit in frontier. it's possible, and while not extremely difficult, it's definitely much harder than doing it in orbiter. Most of the ease of Frontier comes from your autopilot and your abundance of fuel.

I'm okay with orbiting, and rendezvous. Orbital transfer is my bane as well. I've managed to get to the moon a couple of times, with more than a bit of wasted fuel. Tried one mars shot that got completely screwed up. Ended up in a very eccentric orbit of the sun with my perigee way to close. In any reasonable setting I would have burned to death.

You dont need to. Auto pilot, end.

[sluissa]

try even putting yourself into a stable orbit in frontier. it's possible, and while not extremely difficult, it's definitely much harder than doing it in orbiter. Most of the ease of Frontier comes from your autopilot and your abundance of fuel.

I'm okay with orbiting, and rendezvous. Orbital transfer is my bane as well. I've managed to get to the moon a couple of times, with more than a bit of wasted fuel. Tried one mars shot that got completely screwed up. Ended up in a very eccentric orbit of the sun with my perigee way to close. In any reasonable setting I would have burned to death.

You dont need to. Auto pilot, end.

I don't NEED to do it in Orbiter either. It's all a matter of want. Really, they give you a fully newtonian universe to play with and you stay on autopilot the entire time? This is why we can't have nice things. (ie why very few games even try to be realistic with their physics.)

Sorry, off topic.

Thanks to the people who mentioned the XR series. I hadn't given them a fair look in the past. That's changing now.

[Carrion]

To install new textures, do you only need to copy the files to the appropriate texture folder, or is there something more?

I've been taking off from Cape Canaveral in the Delta Glider and looping around to practice rolling landings.  Been nice so far, just want something a little prettier to look at.

[bluephoenix]

Yeah, you just have to put them in the right folder, allmost all add-ons have the folder structure set up so you only have to extract the folder(s) into the main orbiter folder.

[Robsoie]

If you want to "prettify" the shape of the planets surface you may want to give a try to Orulex that will transform the flat surfaces into mountains and canyon according to the provided heightmaps.
http://www.orbiterwiki.org/wiki/Orulex

The same genius coder that created it made an optional collision detection system too for such terrain :
http://www.orbiterwiki.org/wiki/Meshland

May not be very good for smooth framerate on your system if it's not powerfull enough.
Here's a video of it :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlJCaqCdw7Q