In the interests of keeping my eye out for any new space games, I conduct occasional searches, and interestingly enough, just came across this: **Flight Of Nova**, apparently a "hard science" spacecraft simulation due to arrive in early 2021.

Looks interesting!!!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1069190/Flight_Of_Nova/

Features promised are:

* Realistic gravitation and orbital physics
* Atmospheric density based on earth data
* Aerodynamic drag corresponding to vessel shape
* Drag / air friction energy calculations
* Real-time accurate orbital data
* Orbital stations and docking system
* Planet surface outposts
* Real-time control over crafts
* Full-scale body diameter 12’700 km
* Search and transport missions
* Quick flight challenges

The Steam page says:

Flight Of Nova is a flight simulation in which you take control of spacecrafts near a planet called NVA-31. As pilot, you train to fly on several types of crafts based on realistic aerodynamic and orbital physic during transport and search mission scenarios.

Missions involves being able to put vessels into orbit, rendezvous with stations, or survive atmosphere reentry to land in one piece at surface outposts.
The planet Nova is about 12'700 km diameter and is at full-scale in the game.

Flight Of Nova features two game-play modes:
In Scenarios, start at a specific location, altitude and velocity to complete a one goal mission.
In Rogue mode, explore the vast game area from orbital stations to outposts as you gain skills and access more spacecrafts in order to figure out why you were sent on that lost world.

Something to keep an eye out for!!

 

 

Edited July 6, 20205 yr by HiFlyer

Meh... 

Why would one fire thrusters the way they are shown in the longer video clip? 

47 minutes ago, n4gix said:

Meh... 

Why would one fire thrusters the way they are shown in the longer video clip? 

I would say there are too many unknowns at this time to have a good idea exactly whats going on and why........

Which bit of the longer video Fr.Bill?

Apologies if you've figured out most of this anyway..

From playing ORBITER - it looks to me like the craft has vectoring nozzles so the pilot could do a vertical lift off, then he went all gung-ho and hot-dogged the transition to forward flight, nearly stuffing the craft into the floor.   He then went for escape velocity, but didn't put too much into circularising his orbit - note the white ellipse in the top left; the blue ellipse is the planet.

Once he got almost to apogee , and out of the area of dynamic and static pressure (no atmosphere!) he then turned the craft prograde and fired up the thrusters with a bit of nose down component so the he didn't end up with a massively eccentric orbit - again note the white ellipse growing almost circular.

The pilot then tried to get fancy changing the plane of his orbit to roughly match that of the object highlighted in the white square on the "HUD" whilst simultaneously trying to jet closer to it - note the distance ticking down..

He should have got more fancy lower down and tried to align orbital planes whilst boosting up to orbit - easier and uses less fuel, if you can do the math (I can't) or have a display which helps (I used that in ORBITER ! )

 

I was more referring to the use of opposing vectoring nozzles such as at the front, where both the "up" and "down" vectoring nozzles were fired simultaneously, hence cancelling any reaction completely.

Example from 2:25 to 2:28 fore/starboard pitch vectoring nozzles

Ahh... I wonder if it's possible that we are seeing a quick, split second application in the opposing thrusters? Pilot briefly applies a pitch down input then very quickly reduces that input by a brief tap on the opposite thrusters just to slow the rotation down? Maybe any losses in the recording of the video account for that? I'm clutching at straws here LOL, because I cannot see why the craft would react in such a manner given the thruster activation either.. 

It is entirely possible that the 'animated thrust effects' just weren't fast enough to show the pair firing in close sequence...

.....or there is a bug in the visual display of the thruster firings.