Quote:
Originally Posted by Robsoie
-- Orbiter
Free software, but the most realistic space simulation i ever saw.
I just discovered it a year ago, but since then i spent lot of my nights taking off from KCS in Cape Canaveral, flying around with various kind of ships, going in Orbit, catching a space station and docking to it, then trying to re-entry and land safely in Cape.
When i saw the difficulty of this that sounded so simple in theory but thanks to the realism of the simulation was complex, i had a more profound respect to every of the people that do this for real.
Difficult at first, but don't despair in front of the apparent complexity, once reading some of the very very good tutorials you can get the hang of it and quickly enough do those impossible flights and be the astronaut you always dreamed about when you were a kid.
My first travel to the Moon was really memorable. but my first successfull space station ISS catching and docking gave me a feeling of achievement i never ever felt in any kind of games on my PC.
Recently after finally figuring out some addon MFD, i managed to reach Mars (thanks to the time acceleration as the thing in real time would have took really very long  )
You can get Orbiter on its main website, check Orbit Hangar for thousand of addons and explore the Orbiter forum for tutorial and help.
I can't thank enough Dr Martin Schweiger, Orbiter author, that basically allowed me to be the nearest i will ever be to achieve this old childhood dream of going to space.
Orbiter is nearly the real deal. |
As i mentionned Orbiter in the 2nd page of this thread, in november it will be the 9th anniversary of this fabulous free simulator.
And talking about anniversary, the one that started my addiction to space : this month it is the 25th anniversary of Elite from Braben and Bell , that appeared on BBC micro in 1984.
here is Braben company Elite website :
http://elite.frontier.co.uk/
and here is Bell personnal website :
http://www.iancgbell.clara.net/
Can't believe it is already 25 years, though i played it only 2 years later when it was finally converted for my old amstrad.
The 2 sequels from Braben (with a bit of Bell for the 2nd game and without Bell for the 3rd game) were using some very good newtonian physics (and awfull combat) that i played way too much time, i guess it is what lead me to great joy when discovering Orbiter.
As i saw it mentionned elsewhere, there is a free remake of this first Elite named Oolite that features lot of community expansions and addons :
http://www.oolite.org/
I just tried it briefly, it is rather faithfull and looks a very lot much better than the original, i have not yet tested the expansion, but reading a bit, there seems to be some very interesting things.