R
Roger Johansson
I was looking for some nice flight simulator to play with.
Tried some freeware sites and found 4-5 flight simulators, but none of
them were good. Several of them changed the settings in my computer so I
had to change things back to normal again.
Then I found Orbiter, a flight simulator which is actually a space ship
simulator.
http://www.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/~martins/orbit/orbit.html
It is very good, with impressive graphics and is working very well.
The install is non-intrusive, just create a folder named Orbiter on a
partition with space for 120-200MB and unpac into it.
Download the Base package and Textures package into your new ORBITER
folder and unzip with WinZip or equivalent utility.
To de-install ORBITER:
Remove the Orbiter directory with all contents and subdirectories.
ORBITER does not modify the registry or any system resources.
This program needs a fairly modern computer, I don't think it would work
well in a slow computer with little memory.
It may seem like you need to know a lot about space travel,
aerodynamics, etc to use this program, but you can actually play with it
without much studying.
Use the unlimited fuel setting and blast off with both vertikal take off
thrusters and main engines and you are up in the air in a few seconds.
Keep firing the engines a few minutes and you are far out in space.
I did that once and when I turned around I found I was a few hundred
kilometers from the Mars surface. Impressive graphics view. Wow!
The program has real ships like the space shuttel and several fantasy
ships.
It has real starting places like Cape Canaveral and fantasy places like
the Habana space port in Cuba.
I found it very nice to play with, even if it takes some time to find
the controls and to learn to use the technical features.
I used these space ships as airplanes, flying at altitudes below 20km,
and it works, but the top speed is not so high because of the friction
of the air.
If you want to go faster move up to above the atmosphere and go a lot
faster.
When you go down again through the atmosphere the space ship is glowing
from heat and you might wonder if it is going to burn up. But these
ships can take it, they survive anything I have pushed them through so
far. If you crash into the earth surface you kind of bounce up into the
air again. Failsafe design
To start it choose one of the default scenarios.
The first thing you need to know is Ctrl+Plus on the numerical pad, hold
down for ten seconds to get the main engines up to full speed.
F1 to switch between internal and external view.
Ctrl-arrow keys to change viewpoint in the external view.
A big pdf manual which is a pleasure to skim through because of all the
nice graphical illustrations. Orbiter.pdf in the doc folder.
I do not have a joystick and it works fairly well without one, but I
suspect this would be even nicer with a joystick.
PS. I am looking for other good flight simulators, tell me about good
freeware ones.
I tried the Flightgear simulator from http://www.flightgear.org/ which
somebody told us about here, but it was too buggy in my win98 system.
Maybe it works better in winxp or linux.
Tried some freeware sites and found 4-5 flight simulators, but none of
them were good. Several of them changed the settings in my computer so I
had to change things back to normal again.
Then I found Orbiter, a flight simulator which is actually a space ship
simulator.
http://www.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/~martins/orbit/orbit.html
It is very good, with impressive graphics and is working very well.
The install is non-intrusive, just create a folder named Orbiter on a
partition with space for 120-200MB and unpac into it.
Download the Base package and Textures package into your new ORBITER
folder and unzip with WinZip or equivalent utility.
To de-install ORBITER:
Remove the Orbiter directory with all contents and subdirectories.
ORBITER does not modify the registry or any system resources.
This program needs a fairly modern computer, I don't think it would work
well in a slow computer with little memory.
It may seem like you need to know a lot about space travel,
aerodynamics, etc to use this program, but you can actually play with it
without much studying.
Use the unlimited fuel setting and blast off with both vertikal take off
thrusters and main engines and you are up in the air in a few seconds.
Keep firing the engines a few minutes and you are far out in space.
I did that once and when I turned around I found I was a few hundred
kilometers from the Mars surface. Impressive graphics view. Wow!
The program has real ships like the space shuttel and several fantasy
ships.
It has real starting places like Cape Canaveral and fantasy places like
the Habana space port in Cuba.
I found it very nice to play with, even if it takes some time to find
the controls and to learn to use the technical features.
I used these space ships as airplanes, flying at altitudes below 20km,
and it works, but the top speed is not so high because of the friction
of the air.
If you want to go faster move up to above the atmosphere and go a lot
faster.
When you go down again through the atmosphere the space ship is glowing
from heat and you might wonder if it is going to burn up. But these
ships can take it, they survive anything I have pushed them through so
far. If you crash into the earth surface you kind of bounce up into the
air again. Failsafe design
To start it choose one of the default scenarios.
The first thing you need to know is Ctrl+Plus on the numerical pad, hold
down for ten seconds to get the main engines up to full speed.
F1 to switch between internal and external view.
Ctrl-arrow keys to change viewpoint in the external view.
A big pdf manual which is a pleasure to skim through because of all the
nice graphical illustrations. Orbiter.pdf in the doc folder.
I do not have a joystick and it works fairly well without one, but I
suspect this would be even nicer with a joystick.
PS. I am looking for other good flight simulators, tell me about good
freeware ones.
I tried the Flightgear simulator from http://www.flightgear.org/ which
somebody told us about here, but it was too buggy in my win98 system.
Maybe it works better in winxp or linux.