Reentry - A Space Flight Simulator News

Thanks to @Sundhaug92 aka. Martin Sundhaug for the pic, and to the Reentry Community for the support of making Reentry - An Orbital Simulator happen.

Happy May the 4th to everyone!

The 0.300.EA update has been in development for a few months now. The major addition (and time consumer) this version will bring is the Lunar Module. As you can see from the latest screenshot above, there is a lot of new historical systems for you to learn and enjoy. The Lunar Module is amazing to fly and operate, but also requires a lot of skills.

As with the other three spacecrafts that comes with Reentry - An Orbital Simulator, the Lunar Module will get its own dedicated manual.

This manual will be based on the manual the real astronauts used to learn and operate the Lunar Module.

In addition, based on a lot of feedback, the camera model is being changed into a more FPS-like camera, meaning you will control it relative to itself vs. relative to the panel (as it is now). You will also get a crosshair to work with when the camera movement key is being held. When released, the traditional mouse-interaction resumes. I immediately got more productive in the cockpit this way, and I hope you all will like it too.

When will you get it?
The public release of 0.300.EA is not too far away now. The first release will not be complete of-course, and some systems will be missing or needs more work. However, with the first release, the major systems will be in an operative state and it will come with a set of Academy lessons. As we progress towards 0.400, more content and systems will be added.

The Test Pilots are working hard on testing the logic and learning how to fly this as we speak.

Thanks again for your patience!

I'm pleased to announce that the Lunar Module has rolled out to the Test Pilots team, where we will try to identify and correct the major bugs.

TM-9 (Test Mission 9) is all about testing the integration of the Lunar Module in the Reentry Logic Engine, and its core features.

Lyra Fluid System is a new fluid dynamics engine I'm working on for Reentry. It will make it easier to work with substances used in the ECS and propulsion, such as oxygen, oxidizer, fuels etc. Some of the Lunar Module has started to use this, and as we test this, I will slowly roll this out to the other LM systems, as well as the other spacecrafts in Reentry.

Thanks again for your patience, I know it has been a while since the previous update due to the work needed in the Lunar Module. But this means that you will soon be able to play this yourself, and land on the Moon eventually.

Anyways, here's a few new screenshots of the Lunar Module. Enjoy!

The Lunar Module is now at a stage where it's major systems and functions can operate individually and together as a whole.

As with the other spacecrafts in Reentry, nothing is checklist based (complete checklist X to progress with the mission). This means that each system has an underlying system controlled by the Lunar Module panels, giving you a lot of freedom on how you achieve and react to situations, and handle failures, mistakes and bugs.

However, checklists are still a standard way to operate the spacecraft, and the in-game Mission Pad has checklists resembling the ones used for real.
During the initial part of the mission, the Lunar Module is in a near Cold & Dark configuration. This means that when you wish to power up the Lunar Module, a lot of systems needs to be turned on, from electricity to the oxygen supplies. The checklist used by the crew to perform this is a very lengthy checklist, and has made me rethink how some of the checklists can work.

With this, I now added new checklist features, such as being able to verify and run sections of some checklists, where it makes sense, such as the LM Subsystems Activation checklists. In addition, some tasks such as setting powering the LM through the LM can be performed by other crew members such as the Command Module Pilot (you can switch to the CM and do this yourself too, if you wish).




As a side track, this can be developed into a new and better interaction system where a dedicated menu can exist, where you can give some commands to the crew and mission control in a new and different way.

The Lunar Module will soon be rolled out to the Test Pilots, for initial testing, as I continue implementing the details that happens between the panels and the systems.

The Lunar Module is the 4th spacecraft that gets its spot in Reentry - An Orbital Simulator. As with the other spacecrafts, it's a study-level representation of the real Lunar Module, where a lot of the procedures, systems and features work realistically.

This video will only touch a few of the systems, but hopefully give you a good overview of the look and feel of my implementation of it.

The Lunar Module was used to land two of the three astronauts in an Apollo mission on the lunar surface.

Hope you will enjoy this preview!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9DHLk7B3YU