[HN Gopher] Orbiter Space Flight Simulator is now open source
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Orbiter Space Flight Simulator is now open source
Author : shakow
Score : 289 points
Date : 2021-07-28 11:41 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.orbiter-forum.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.orbiter-forum.com)
| tito wrote:
| Anyone who loves this kind of stuff should check out The Orbital
| Index, a curated weekly newsletter of all things space:
| https://orbitalindex.com
|
| Run by two friends of mine who are avid HNers.
| jaytaylor wrote:
| And they even provide an RSS feed!
|
| https://orbitalindex.com/feed.xml
| [deleted]
| ekster wrote:
| Great news for Deltaglider pilots everywhere.
| dang wrote:
| Looks like one past thread:
|
| _Orbiter Space Flight Simulator 2016 Edition_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12943028 - Nov 2016 (16
| comments)
| criddell wrote:
| Anybody know what's involved in moving from DX7 to DX11?
| Already__Taken wrote:
| Anyone around from the Anarchy Online Engine update shed any
| light? Looks like it was a gigantic task.
| roytries wrote:
| It would be a huge undertaking, especially if the DirectX types
| leaked into the rest of the application. DirectX 7 is from
| 1999, games like Half-Life 1 used it. This is when GPUs were
| mostly fixed-function. While nowadays a GPU is almost as
| versatile as a CPU.
|
| The hardest/largest step would probably be to get it into this
| century, with the latest version of DirectX 9 (2005, Windows XP
| / Xbox 360 era). The step from 9 to 11 is also quite big, but a
| lot of APIs have stayed compatible.
| Arwill wrote:
| A viable solution for DX9 is using DXVK to emulate the old DX
| API under Vulkan, then add your own hooks into DXVK and
| transition to Vulkan in a more relaxed manner.
|
| Now DXVK does not support DX7, but a quick search found
| dgVoodoo2, which does emulate DX7 under DX11. Maybe that or a
| similar library can be used as a stepping stone.
|
| Regarding porting legacy apps to 64bit, the most problems
| i've seen were concerning old libraries (on Windows). That
| usually requires replacing old libraries with new a version,
| and fixing includes. I've seen only a handful of bugs arising
| purely from 32bit vs 64bit differences.
| AstralStorm wrote:
| Unfortunately the swapchain and rendering is vastly
| different from DX9 to DX11, the latter being now more
| similar to Vulkan.
|
| So maybe it could work to port the codebase to DX9 but no
| further really.
| jsmith45 wrote:
| Hm.. I would have thought getting to DirectX9 would be
| easier, as directx9 still had some support for the fixed
| function pipeline.
|
| What I'm sure you were getting at is a proper conversion to
| DX9 making use of the shader based pipeline.
|
| That said, looking at the code I don't think porting to
| proper shader based DirectX would be terribly difficult for
| anybody experienced in setting up directx in a shader based
| pipeline. Nothing looks too fancy.
|
| Of course it could be made more complicated by actually
| making use of shaders to improve over the fixed function
| design, but that is not required for an initial port.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| How necessary is porting it, and for how long will old
| DirectX versions continue to work?
|
| Having no knowledge of the code, I imagine if you have a
| functioning graphics layer, most of the work would happen on
| the underlying physics models and high level drawing/scene
| APIs, not directly interfacing with DX.
| lights0123 wrote:
| There are multiple DX7 to something else translators
| (https://fdossena.com/?p=wined3d/index.frag and
| https://dxgl.org/): I wonder if they're 64-bit compatible if
| that's a higher priority than a modern graphics API.
| AstralStorm wrote:
| Neither is a translator, they're actually emulators -
| implementing the older API using newer calls. That does not
| help in porting either.
| shakow wrote:
| The Orbiter Space Simulator (http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/) has
| been one of the major realistic-ish space simulators of the
| decade.
|
| Development has slowed down in the last years due to the
| obligations of its sole author, so seeing it be open-sourced with
| a free license (MIT) is a great opportunity to rekindle its
| development! It seems that the first priorities would be to
| upgrade the code to 64-bits and transition to a more recent
| version of DirectX.
| zardo wrote:
| It didn't need to be open source for a DX11 graphics client to
| be developed.
|
| https://www.orbiter-forum.com/threads/d3d11client-download-a...
| codetrotter wrote:
| The Bitbucket link in that thread doesn't work
| larodi wrote:
| another open source project is born only after it is basically
| dead or is about to die in its closed-source form.
|
| out of curiosity - which other open source projects do you know,
| that have not started as open source?
| jylam wrote:
| Blender, Firefox and OpenOffice have, from the top of my head.
| outworlder wrote:
| Better than just dying and taking the source with it.
| DarmokJalad1701 wrote:
| This is great news! I have been a fan since around 2006 when I
| was just a teenager.
| ekster wrote:
| Same, playing a lot of this game once gave me a sort of dizzy
| feeling while looking up at the blue sky, like I was looking
| forward/out rather than up. Only happened once, but I will
| never forget it.
| [deleted]
| dr-detroit wrote:
| what the... left-pad!?!?
| aero-glide2 wrote:
| This is great news, hope to contribute, time permitting!
| marcodiego wrote:
| I wonder how hard would be to port it to linux. Maybe dxvk may
| help?
|
| Also, latest version is from 2016, so it looks like software that
| doesn't brings any money is finally open source because there is
| no hope to make any in the future. I'm sorry for them but glad
| they open sourced it. Would love if outcomes like this happened
| more often.
| space_fountain wrote:
| I don't think there was ever any hint of an attempt to bring in
| money. I'm not entirely sure why the author choose to keep it
| closed source, maybe worries about others seeing "bad" code or
| something, but this is simply a case of someone no longer
| having time for their labor of love, not someone failing to
| monetize
| [deleted]
| VLM wrote:
| Most of the discussion was decades ago. I've been playing
| around with Orbiter since it was new (and back then the
| hardware reqs to run were very expensive, not so much today).
| (edited: to emphasize, I've seen a lot and read a lot and
| played a lot, but am not an authoritative member of the
| orbiter community, none of this is private nor it is
| official, and its greatly summarized)
|
| The base game is workable but it really depends on 3rd party
| addons to do your planning and calculations and have
| somewhere to take off from and something to fly and somewhere
| to fly to.
|
| The 3rd party addons were often FOSS licensed and despite
| much noise about the glories of FOSS, never got much public
| help, typically. A 100 dev sized project benefits greatly if
| a 10 dev company releases it under a FOSS license and 500
| people step forward to help. A 2 dev sized project where
| nobody steps up to help the original dev for some decades
| doesn't benefit much from FOSS despite in theory "it could
| have happened".
|
| There was a fear that the game being only playable with 3rd
| party mods, and FOSS being famous for forking, the overall
| project would die if the overworked single individual 3rd
| party devs were smacked with having to work against
| uncountable forked versions the 3rd party devs may have never
| seen or even have hardware to run (like a port to a phone
| maybe). The whole project can only move as fast as the
| slowest dev if its only usable in toto as a flotilla. Its not
| a game with DLC, its more like a API with a huge collection
| of compatible software that'll only remain compatible if
| nothing changes.
|
| If you're familiar with minecraft or rimworld or similar
| heavily modded games, imagine if you took "everything" out of
| those games and put it all into addons such that they were
| essentially unplayable without the addons. Like imagine if
| vanilla MC didn't have mobs or tools or blocks, it just
| rendered steve in an empty 3d world.
|
| So if FOSS didn't supercharge development, it would be
| useless to the overall project because pragmatically nothing
| happened despite the relicensing work, and if it did
| supercharge development, it would kill the project by wiping
| out the 3rd party devs whom are very handwavy the limiting
| factor.
|
| Ironically as "complete" or "finished" software the core
| project doesn't or didn't need devs anyway. The "cool stuff"
| all happened in mods and addons. Want a new MFD? That's an
| addon. Want a new vehicle? That's an addon. Want a new
| system, like the complete model of an electrical system for
| some Mars thing I remember a decade ago? That's an addon.
| Want new planets and solar systems and stations and
| satellites? That's an addon. The base system is kind of a a
| window manager (yes I know its not "a window manager" per C++
| code, but I mean conceptually it herds the cats of addons so
| they don't step on each other and generally cooperate and
| render to the screen). The base system needs significant
| development as the graphics APIs are two decades out of date,
| but for two decades there wasn't much to do that wasn't being
| done in mods anyway.
|
| If everything is an addon its not clear what the base system
| could evolve into anyway. You could add multiplayer and
| commo, but that's best done in an addon. You could add
| mission video recording but that's best done by the video
| card and OS. I guess you could tidy up some addon API issues
| causing mass incompatibility issues so would it be worth it?
|
| Much as the author originally feared, a dozen or two posts
| into the forum FOSS announcement and there's already talk
| about branches and forks and competing strategies for
| conversion to 64 bit that'll kill the 3rd party addons and
| mods that made the game usable, so the FOSS announcement is
| probably more an announcement of the death of the project
| than some kind of rebirth.
| rbanffy wrote:
| It's MIT licensed, so there's nothing stopping someone from
| getting it, making major changes, and releasing it as
| proprietary software for consoles and make a lot of money in
| the process.
|
| This is why I'm always sad when I see a project opening as MIT
| instead of GPL.
| bruce511 wrote:
| Not to be picky, but the GPL would not stop someone "making
| major changes, and releasing it as proprietary software for
| consoles and make a lot of money in the process."
|
| The only difference is that they would be obligated to
| release the source code. Given that the list of folk who can
| compile for consoles is very limited, this would not be an
| existential burden for them.
|
| Indeed, even if they targeted a common development platform,
| like a PC or Mac, they would still be able to offer lots of
| value, and easily sell copies if there was a market for that.
| The vast majority of players would happily pay $49 for a
| compiled version of the game rather than go to the effort of
| compiling themselves.
|
| In other words, the GPL and MIT licenses are orthogonal to
| making money - making money selling compiled GPL programs is
| not hard - assuming the program has some value to someone.
| the_af wrote:
| > the GPL would not stop someone "making major changes, and
| releasing it as proprietary software for consoles and make
| a lot of money in the process.""
|
| It absolutely would stop anyone from releasing it as
| _proprietary_ software. You cannot have GPL 'ed proprietary
| software. You can sell GPL code, you can use it in
| proprietary platforms, but by definition the software
| itself cannot be _proprietary_. If it 's GPL'ed, other
| people can sell it, modify it, distribute it, and use it
| for their own purposes.
| bruce511 wrote:
| >> You cannot have GPL'ed proprietary software.
|
| I get that, hence me saying "they would be obligated to
| release the source code." My point is that has little or
| no effect on the actual sales of the program (since the
| parent post was primarily about money.)
|
| There are reasons to prefer GPL over MIT, and other
| reasons to prefer MIT over GPL, but money isn't one of
| them...
| bluecatswim wrote:
| >(since the parent post was primarily about money)
|
| I don't think so, it was about making money through
| selling it as proprietary software.
| the_af wrote:
| I understood the key word was "proprietary" in the
| comment you refer to, with the side effect of also
| "making lots of money". I might have misunderstood.
| moftz wrote:
| Plus, you can open source the code but leave the textures,
| models, maps, whatever else as proprietary. iD software
| already did this with the source code of Doom, you can read
| it but unless you want to reskin the whole game, it's
| entirely unplayable.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > the GPL would not stop someone "making major changes, and
| releasing it as proprietary software ...
|
| > The only difference is that they would be obligated to
| release the source code.
|
| If they release the source code it's not proprietary
| software anymore - by definition - and GPL achieved its
| goal.
|
| > the GPL and MIT licenses are orthogonal to making money
|
| The GPL allows selling modified (FOSS) versions with
| extended contents e.g. artwork, music.
|
| But it also allows the original author to do so without
| succumbing to the competition from companies that leverage
| their dominant market position.
|
| With MIT freeloaders win.
| baq wrote:
| it doesn't matter that much in case of games, because the
| code is not very useful without assets. famously multiple
| quakes were released as GPL software and it didn't really
| cost id software anything in lost sales. art and levels
| were NOT released as GPL.
|
| i'd say MIT license wouldn't impact the sales outcome at
| all.
| outworlder wrote:
| > The only difference is that they would be obligated to
| release the source code.
|
| Upon request, and it just can't be less accessible than the
| binaries. You can charge for the source - just not more
| than what the binaries cost.
| 41209 wrote:
| >This is why I'm always sad when I see a project opening as
| MIT instead of GPL.
|
| Counterpoint, many companies won't allow GPL software even if
| eventually it'd be open sourced again.
|
| I personally wouldn't mind a for sale version of this game
| updated to run on my phone. Even if it's 15$ or so. Without a
| profit motive the number of people who would bother to
| continue development is much lower.
|
| Your also free to fork it , make the ultimate version and GPL
| it
| RobotCaleb wrote:
| Sure, but on the other hand it's MIT so I'm actually willing
| to look at the source code.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Why wouldn't you be willing to look at GPL source code?
| That'd be writing off all of Linux as just the tip of the
| iceberg.
| blendergeek wrote:
| Why wouldn't you be willing to look at GPL code?
|
| Is it just GPL, or strong copyleft in general?
|
| Do you intend to release modified versions without
| releasing corresponding source code?
|
| Why should an author want to provide you with the source
| code, just so you can deny that privilege to others?
| RobotCaleb wrote:
| In my opinion (opinion, so I could be wrong), MIT and
| friends offer more freedom. I have a strong aversion to
| the concept of copyleft and usually try to avoid it for
| fear of "tainting" anything I touch after. In principle,
| where it makes sense, I rather like the idea of the sort
| of freedom claimed by GPL advocates but in practice I
| prefer to allow people to do whatever they want.
| RobotCaleb wrote:
| To answer your questions, no, I don't intend (or tend,
| for that matter) to takes modified versions without
| corresponding source code. It's not about what I do it's
| about what they say I can and can't do.
|
| I don't know why an author should. I'm not spending any
| time agonizing over what they should be doing. I don't
| understand why you threw that second half of the sentence
| in there as if the two are necessarily linked.
| shakow wrote:
| > software that doesn't brings any money
|
| Orbiter never tried to bring in any money. It has always been a
| one-physicist pet project (first version published in 2000),
| closed-source albeit very open to all kind of mods and
| featuring a vibrant community.
| [deleted]
| fexed wrote:
| This is fantastic news! Been using it since 2006, can't wait to
| dive into the code and see what the community will output
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Oh, fond memories of it. It was the first time when I understood
| that when you fly to the Moon, not only you have to cross the
| Moon's orbit, but you have to do it when Moon itself is nearby.
| If you are 1/4 orbital period ahead of it, you are screwed.
|
| It also ruined space movies like "Gravity" for me, because
| pointing the nose to the space station in 50 km and applying
| thrust towards it turns out to be a _sure_ way to NOT get to that
| station!
|
| Edit: fixed the thrust direction
| austinl wrote:
| I had a similar experience when playing Kerbal for the first
| time in high school. I thought that NASA got to the moon by
| simply thrusting in a straight line from Earth in a way that
| would intersect with the moon's orbit and boy was I wrong!
|
| But now I've found that most people I talk to about this --
| that also weren't alive during the space race where this was
| regularly explained on television -- have the same naive idea
| that you can get to the moon by going straight up at it with
| the right timing.
|
| Instead, you learn that you need to enter orbit and burn
| prograde at your apoapsis, burn retrograde at the moon's
| periapsis, etc. -- really fascinating and complex stuff! If the
| curriculum would've allowed it, I feel like I could've spent a
| whole semester playing and learning from KSP -- these kind of
| games are truly the top of "games for learning" genre.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Yes, the key here is to understand that you are not exactly
| flying, but always falling towards something, and you need to
| change the trajectory of your fall to get anywhere.
|
| So space flight is much closer to sky diving than to air
| flight.
| zamadatix wrote:
| That's actually the easiest way to get to the Mun in my
| opinion. No need to plan anything anything just shoot
| straight up. If you don't get an orbital encounter initially
| just keep shooting up until you do, it'll happen many times
| before you reach Kerbin Escape velocity. No need to time
| anything or plan certain maneuvers.
|
| Basically shoot upwards until you get an encounter, speed up
| until it auto slows you down near the Mun, then kill velocity
| to fall in and land.
|
| Grossly and hilariously inefficient, but actually easier to
| perform than the "correct" way (and typically faster in
| player-time).
| afterburner wrote:
| Even just knowing basic physics ruined Gravity for me, let
| alone orbital dynamics.
| sabjut wrote:
| I first discovered this game back in school at around 2010-2011
| and it quickly turned into one of the defining games of my
| childhood. I wish I had some numbers but I am certain that I
| played hundreds of hours playing this game, installing
| countless mods, learning orbital dynamics, spaceflight history,
| and so much more. I flew to mars and back, landed on the moon,
| programmed flight computers (sometime catastrophically wrong),
| docked so many different vehicles in orbit and generally had
| the time of my life in this game. Dan's Orbiterpage and his
| world class mods for the game (including the excellent sound
| mod) really made this game (or sim, whatever you call it)
| shine. I probably also spent days of my life browsing
| orbithangar for the coolest new vehicles.
|
| At some point I discovered Kerbal Space Program and eventually
| got older and had less time for Space Sims altogether, but
| Orbiter (especially the 2010P1 version) will remain closest to
| my heart.
|
| I am really happy to see this game become open source.
| wedesoft wrote:
| I think you meant to say "pointing the nose to the space
| station in 50 km and applying thrust towards it turns out to be
| a sure way to NOT get to that station"
|
| Edited: made mistake as well ;)
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Yeah, my bad english. Used word 'thrust' to describe a burn
| in the opposite direction, totally forgetting that thrust is
| a reactionary force. :-/
| wedesoft wrote:
| Orbiter 2016 is a brilliant game. I am currently trying to do a
| small space simulator in Clojure
| (https://github.com/wedesoft/sfsim25) and I probably should take
| a look at the Orbiter source code.
| AstralStorm wrote:
| It so happens that Orbiter is extremely well factored which
| should make implementing new graphics APIs reasonably easy. (Due
| to having a client-server version.)
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