Pioneer dev forum

I read somewhere here (can't seem to remember where) about an idea for a small change in the autopilot. (Thank you, whoever you are) The idea is as follows:

The autopilot currently does a burn towards the target, then rotates 180 for the retro burn, then waits for retro burn time, then does retro burn.
Is it possible to change it so that the autopilot would do the burn towards target and then DO NOT rotate 180 at the end of the first burn, but instead rotate 180 at the beginning of the retro burn?
AKA: Do initial target burn, wait for retro burn time, rotate 180, do retro burn.

Currently when using autopilot and flying towards a target, there is a good amount of time in a flight when my ship is facing "backwards" relative to the target. As cockpits etc. are used more, and for various other aesthetic reasons, I think it would be nice to face towards the target most of the time until it is time for the retro burn. Then rotate the ship 180 and retro burn.

I have no idea how this might affect things, and am conscious of some of the difficulties in doing a project like Pioneer. Just and idea more for visuals than anything else.

I really appreciate Pioneer and the Dev team. I'll try to help where I can.

Ok, I've made an attempt at this: https://github.com/pioneerspacesim/pioneer/pull/2846

If you have facilities to build the game from source, then your help testing the change would be appreciated.

John B

I have no idea how to do a build. :) Wish I did. I will look into it, but it seems a little heavy for me. I would love to test though. If someone could pass me a file, I will test. Thanks for the response. I hope this change works out good.

@ jasondude7116 which operating system are you on?

Win 7 64bit

You could install "Visual Studio 2013 Express Edition for Desktop", download all of the zipped repositories from GitHub and then faff around setting it up but since that change has now been committed and merged in your're probably best of just waiting for the next Windows build and downloading it from the website as usual :)

Should be up in a couple of hours.

Not excatly on topic, but my autopilot couldn't land on a planet that was on a very close orbit around a brown dwarf. Is this a bug or a feature? Should I open a Github thingy? I have a save of it.

luovahulluus wrote:Not excatly on topic, but my autopilot couldn't land on a planet that was on a very close orbit around a brown dwarf. Is this a bug or a feature? Should I open a Github thingy? I have a save of it.

Might be a bug. Might be that your ship didn't have high enough thrust to land safely. Opening a github issue would be a good idea.

John B

Thanks. Opened it and another.