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Originally Posted by Lieste
I've found their customer service to be extremely offhand to prospective customers.
It isn't possible to register on the forums (even in read only mode) unless you have already purchased the 'game'. As anything even remotely technical gets swept off the front public boards into the member's only area as soon as it is posted I have no idea of how well they treat their paying customer's, what limitations with the currently available demo (some of which are show stoppers for me) are going to be addressed in the product lifetime.
Problems I have, some trivial, some showstoppers:
Significant freezes during the lift off section.
Orbital insertion is usually not at all accurate.
Orbital mechanics are wacky - if an insertion goes wrong and the 'mach' is ~16 the mission can be flown to completion. This is just silly, as the minimum orbital velocity for a low earth orbit is in the region of 24,000 ft/s (ie 'mach' 24).
The inertial frame is continually reset, so you can't just fly the numbers on the ball. (probably because the graphics for the ball are weird and only go up to ~+/- 120 in azimuth.)
The roll/yaw/pitch axes get horribly confused if you aren't facing 'towards' the current 'correct' heading.
The HUD isn't collimated to the outside world, in a 6dof cockpit.
The 2d and 3d HUD have different scales and information.
The flightpath information provided in the HUD doesn't reflect the real world guidance cues for the landing. It is possible (even easy) to land, but you have to deliberately 'cheat' the approach.
Drag in the approach phase is too low, I guess this is to make landings 'easier' but it just makes it impossible to fly the nominal approach path within RL limits.
If you pause the mission during the takeoff, then the SRB seperate after a fixed amount of 'real time' and not after the correct burn time in simulated time... I've had SRB seperation at ~200ft.
The 'development' appears to only be about adding 'new and exciting' missions, and tinkering with internal lights and other 'switchology', and doesn't appear to address any of the 'simulation of flight' stuff.
Which isn't to say it isn't fun (in a strangely compulsive sort of way), but I can't get excited enough about where it might be going to actually pay to find out if they have or have not fixed any of the above stuff...
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Hey Lieste,
I don't know when you last tried SSM (I wasn't aware there was even a demo
), but I haven't experienced any of what you've listed. There is some times a barely noticeable pause around Max Q during ascent, which can be annoying. As I've already noted, I do find the EVA's pretty "gamey" and frustrating though. I tried recreating your early SRB sep with a pause and wasn't able to. Would you mind explaining how the orbital insertion isn't accurate? As for the approaches and landings, I just try and keep the diamond centered in the box and things seem to work out
. I've never flown a space shuttle before, but from watching youtube videos of the landing and approach sequence things seem to be believable enough to me. I had a hell of a time at first (always landing with too high a sink rate or short of the runway), so it feels pretty heavy and draggy to me. I'd be happy (and interested myself) to test a few specifics out for you.
As for their customer service, the only interaction I've had with them is sending the forum admin an email asking for an exception on a non freebie (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail etc) and the forum admin replying that the non freebie email only applies to non customers. Their forum regulation is rather rigid, but I don't find it terrible.
As for further development, why would expanding the historical mission set and choosing interesting missions not be a priority? They add about a new historical mission every month. I find the flight/orbital dynamics convincing enough, but perhaps I just don't know better. The last service pack added:
- New Mission – STS-98
- New SPEC 96 GPC SM mode for RMS LIM management
- Virtual Cockpit enhancements
- Performance tuning
- Adjustments across all mission
PD