Aug 27
Right after I closed Windows Media Player Saturday night, following over two hours of streaming, my wife asked me if it watching that launch had been worth missing a party … I hesitated a moment, then replied that yes it have been worth it. Sure, those darn clounds had not allowed us to follow Ariane 5 in it’s climb to orbit for more than a couple of second following launch (27s to be precise), but even with that, the coverage was interesting and overall it was exciting to watch it the launch of the first ATV. Also an Ariane 5 launch is a rather impressive event … the SRB ignition is, I found, alway mighy impressive … the shock wave from it is enough to knock the camera. Here’s a YouTube video of the (most exciting part) of the launch, in case you missed it:
One thing I do miss, it’s on-board cameras. I think I ahve talked about this in a previous blog, but I can help to wish they had some. A view of the ATV floating away from Ariane upper stage will have been pretty darn sweet …
Aug 27
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) …
Aug 27
Once again, the DIRECT 2.0 folks have come-up with some great visual to help folks (like myself) better understand what this project means in term of evolution from the Space Shuttle to Constellation. This time, it’s not some neafty wallpapers, but a great video taking the current STS stack and modifying it into a Jupiter 120′s stack. Check this out:
Big kudos to extracripsy75 for putting the video on YouTube!
Right after I closed Windows Media Player Saturday night, following over two hours of streaming, my wife asked me if it watching that launch had been worth missing a party … I hesitated a moment, then replied that yes it have been worth it. Sure, those darn clounds had not allowed us to follow Ariane 5 in it’s climb to orbit for more than a couple of second following launch (27s to be precise), but even with that, the coverage was interesting and overall it was exciting to watch it the launch of the first ATV. Also an Ariane 5 launch is a rather impressive event … the SRB ignition is, I found, alway mighy impressive … the shock wave from it is enough to knock the camera. Here’s a YouTube video of the (most exciting part) of the launch, in case you missed it: