Space & Ground Station Modeling

[FluffyFreak]

There are a few people who have taken a look at modeling stations for use in space and on the ground now so I just wanted to get some feedback about the process of configuring the docking.

A bit of backstory: I rewrote the docking system last year so that 3D modelers would not have to do as much scripting in Lua to define how ships progress through the docking stages. At the same time I also increased the number of docking bays you could use from 4 to 240, added support for limiting the size of ships that can use certain bays and allowed you to group bays into ports that all share the same entering/exiting waypoints.

It's been a while now and whilst we've had some new bits and pieces it hasn't really taken off like I had hoped.

So here we are, let me know what is the most awkward part to do and (very importantly) how could it be made easier for you?
You can list as many as you like.

I can't guarantee that there will be quick and simple fixes for anything, but at the moment I don't even know what people are finding difficult :)
Let me know and I'll see what we can do to fix them.

[Nyankosensei]

To me the most difficul is to place empty for approach stage, i don't know if i'm doing something wrong but when i export the model all empty are rotated of 90° like axes have a different name from blender to pioneer.

[walterar]

I want you to teach me to use Blender only to adjust the conflictive landing meshes.
Before, was enough with Gedit. :(( :)

[Hiro Pavonis]

voorei ask if the grid of the buildings around the station area can be changed by the board in a radial pattern.
so you can make a 3d ring around airstrips,
buildings and arrange them around the checkerboard lines.
a sort dfi "snowflake".

[FluffyFreak]

This thread is just about creating the 3D models and setting up things like the empty nodes for approach, docking and undocking etc.

The city buildings around ground stations are completely separate.

[FluffyFreak]

@Nyankosensei,
I don't use Blender so you might need someone else to answer that sadly :/
I know that in 3dsMAX I have a lot of issues with orientation, actually I think there's a bug to do with landing on ground stations regarding orientation too. It really is a pain to get right.
Also the orientation between the docking/undocking and the approach nodes is different - I think I documented this, but then again I thought I also updated the wiki with that documentation and yet when I looked it wasn't there :(

So orientation needs fixing.

What about the actual way that it's authored, would it be better using a different system? Perhaps splines? Or animations somehow?

Also when it comes to docking ships there's no way to queue at the moment, does anyone have any good ideas for how we might handle that?
As people modelling these stations what/how would people like to control where ships gathered before trying to dock?

[Nyankosensei]

For me the actual system is good, not to difficult to do and a large range for tuning

P.S.

For fixing axes is need to redo all approach on existing stations and to me is a pain ..........

[Nyankosensei]

Also when it comes to docking ships there's no way to queue at the moment, does anyone have any good ideas for how we might handle that?
As people modelling these stations what/how would people like to control where ships gathered before trying to dock?

If you watch some airport chart there is alwais an holding pattern, probably we can do the same, define an holding point for pad and define a number for ship on departing - approaching the station , when you approach an airpot Air traffic control give you a number for approaching ex= " N-6450 you are number 2 on approach runway 12L" and when is your time for approach "N-6450 clear to land runway 12L"

[walterar]

@Nyankosensei There are some problems with ships stuck in your new station. I thought these problems had disappeared, but no.





Here's a collection of collision meshes landing. In all there were problems.





Well, not all.

[bszlrd]

@walterar: Are you sure the collision of those crafts are correct? I've checked, and none of the stock ships clip trough the pad. Even that cute little walker craft Nyankosensei made stands there correctly, and that one has animated collision mesh.They float above it by about 10cm or so though.