Today's work in blender 2.6 notes

Some blender tips that I've picked up on both through other tutorials that I've found useful:

 If you are constructing landscape topology around curved surfaces...let's say you are wanting to make roads, or curved pavement surfaces.  While you could texture paint or attempt to warp translate an existing flat plane grid to the this surface.  Alternately, I've found working the simple geometry of the circle much better in building landscape mesh surfaces around such.  How do you work the circle into desired mesh topology?  First, If your curved surface if you have enough regularity in the surface curvature, work to scale the circle to slightly greater then  two diametric points on the main object structure in terms of radii that you are working on.  The diametric points should intercept the axis on the buildings surface curvature local tangent maximum (i.e, rotate the building objects surface local xy planar maximum to intercept the global x or y axis).  Secondly, I like to go into edit to achieve a fairly decent subdivision of points so that proportional translations, scaling, rotations on the circle of points will neither look linear and maintained an adequate relative to the curved surface, usually I spend no more then a couple of iterations on the mesh circle in terms of subdivisions here.  You'll need to experiment with the proportional editing feature enabled in the 'edit' window.  Then you can start to experiment with different falloff types to see how this approximate to your given curved surface.  I work with Ctrl+Z to undo any changes that I sense don't work.  I would assumed both the mesh building object are set such the diametric points chosen for starters are aligned globally on either the x or y axis corresponding, this is very important that both diametric points are axially in parallel to the global axis, otherwise, translated proportional changes will be skew to parallel in terms of geometry....if need be you can rotate correct later alignments to a desired local axis.  Next, chose diametric points on the circle at 90 degrees relative to the primary diametric points, this should correspond to the perpendicular on the global xy plane.  Here, I work by hitting G and then pressing the corresponding key to the axis for the diametric points that are to be moved.  If you need to move along the X axis, you'd hit 'G' and then 'X'.  For rough translations you can do this visually, paying attention to the numeric coordinate values (shown in the lower left of your window),  I tend to finalize the translated change by punching in some decimal value by hand while simultaneous recording this, as you will apply equal and opposite numeric sign translation on the other side.  Ideally, as you scroll with middle mouse wheel to different proportional falloff radii (after pressing 'G' + 'X' or 'Y') and dragging (you can back out of a change by also pressing right mouse button), you will find on the point you are working an optimum curvature among st the candidates of falloff type. That best approximate surface curvature.  If you working with a non parabolic higher order surface curvature of a similar nature, you may need to perform additional object rotations to work the curve at local tangent points along the primary global x y axis up to inflection points where change of curvature neither follows parabolic or higher order types.  This is so that you can translate/scale diametric points which are in parallel to the given global axis as necessary.  The advantage of doing this translation scale method on points is that changes made are applied with mirror symmetry throughout the series of curvature, and its an entirely visual approach to building topology curvature while working in the basis of a closed edge loop as opposed to attempting this with bezier approximation and then working to close the edge curvature with a given loop and translating this into a mesh object.

Another alternate method is entirely numeric, where you'd need to align points on the circles curve to points to vertices on the curved surface, doing this transformation through python, or apply curve approximation on the curved surface (getting into a bit of differential geometry here maybe).

As you've worked to move your circle into a desired curve approximation, once you have finalized the its shape in terms of approximating a given curvature, you can build the mesh as follows:  simply press 'E' + 'S' + Shift 'Z'.  I suggest working in scales for extruded scaled expansion numerically in increments 1.25 and in extruded scaled regressions of .95 ...technically you can do these iterations steps by hand or in the python console by script as necessary.  You'll repeat as necessary to provide your necessary visual floor covering.  

Once your mesh is built, you should have nice selection topology.  Here I recommend for face or edge loop selection, using Alt + Shift + Right Mouse button click on the desired edge 'normal' (90 degrees) relative to direction of the loop.  
  
Generally for complex mesh surfaces, I've found that using complex UV maps tend to more often to lead to less resolved coherence quickly.  Here I suggest instead I've found quicker texturing by individually selecting the mesh faces, and then using generating the UV unwrap with the 'reset setting'  What this produces for the series of faces is a single 4 coordinate UV square applying to all the tiles, instead of individual UV coordinates projected in two dimensions for each face....this works especially well when you work with a patterned textural uniformity and hadn't needed a highly differentiated surface in so far as textures were concerned.  An excellent trick using the 'reset' method on UV coordinates for a singleton UV set (where a family of vertices is applied to a for coordinate UV value), is to scale in your UV editor the UV coordinates.  Pressing 'S' and then dragging the mouse near to the center of the UV objects center re scales the coordinates to smaller values.  For instance if working on glass texturing where you can choose things like individual glass panels or a regular patterned series of these in a decent enough glass building textures.  The UV coordinates are locally determined and translated globally to the the planar surface of the selected portion of your image texture which is a nice feature of using UV projections for mapping textures onto a surface...or in other words, a glass pane that were selected would be re scaled to the planar size of the face automatically on rendering.

I've found the link very useful for generating my custom forest How to generate a City in Blender

Technically this provides techniques for auto generating with a random seed city buildings on a mesh plane, but can be equally useful for generating other mesh object types.

There are two techniques that I have found useful for terrain generation in textural maps.  One, I've found that texture files often look tile mapped applied over the extended whole of the plane where perspective resolution of the texture need be fit appropriate to scale relative to the backdrop of the foreground building object.  Obviously a low resolution photos of lawns would look inappropriately scaled if needing significant landscape acreage (keep in mind lawn textures may typically be generated at resolutions of a square foot...now imagine applying this texture with default texture settings for rendering over a landscape that should look like 20 acres...it would look in the perspective like huge alien grass to say the least), so I've generally used two approaches to this.  One scaling the landscape mesh (plane) in this case up wide enough to fit a given perspective horizon oriented to the camera angles for rendering as desired, and secondly using mesh subdivisions for an adequate UV coordinate set.  Unfortunately, the technique applied to buildings appears more tile mapped so normally I wouldn't suggest this.  For the unwraps generally where landscapes may be articulated on the z plane in so far as height mapping means one should be able to hit numpad '7' and then use a top down projection based UV unwrap...usually I do this to the bounds, while loading a blank texture file accordingly.  To save time in the effort of constructing the file map, often because the new texture file may be still low enough resolution for a big enough landscape.  I also generally scale my UV coordinates up equally on the xy projected plane.  Here I simply pushing 'S' in the UV editor and then dragging to approximately to a limit of 2 to 3 times the size of your existing blank file map.  What this in effect does is create a large tile mapped surface, instead of being tile mapped at each individual face set.  Here the effect of tile mapped textural looks can be minimized using some visual techniques.  First, it helps to have the texture paint tab selected on your UV map, and secondly, it helps to have this enabled on a 3D window, its the other option aside from 'Object' and 'Edit' with a given mesh selection.  In my case I used a couple lawn textures (medium resolution).  I've found its also very helpful one on your scene editor (upper left corner of your blender window) to disable your building object and any additional landscapes that aren't directly being worked on).  Also I suggest setting your object to render the texture that you are painting. I start generally by roughing in the mesh texture with a very large radius on the brush, using both textures, and then as the texture maps is filed in.  I move the radii of the texturing brush incrementally smaller.  Here, working the surface over where obvious perspective discordance appears visually between say the perspective of the building and the given surface.  As you reduce the size of the brush, this will have the effect of painting in incrementally smaller resolutions the same texture map.  When you have achieved an appropriate resolution of brush size for mapping with a given brush radius and have filled in roughly to the desired resolution a given texture, you can then work to achieve making less the obvious tiling of your landscape surface, by spot texture painting on your 3D texture paint window...using the same radii that you have worked into.  At some point it hadn't need be perfect especially as other mesh objects will fill out the frame of you view.  Mostly you work to what is visually being presented here.

Some additional tips for building the texture paint palette:  These are done in the Texture window.  Selecting the Paint tab to the right of the default main Texture tab that is set.  Adding this is a matter of adding new textures and selecting the 'Image' selection option for texture type, and then loading the desired texture.  Once you have your texture file painted as desired.  You'll need to save this on your UV editor as an image file, and then select again the normally default 'Texture' tab button, and then select image for texture type and make sure this is check marked as assigned to your material for the landscape object.  Make sure that you select 'UV' for image mapping and load your UV coordinates for the mapping otherwise, it won't be generated right when you render.  The same is true for building textures by the way.  

Next for tree generation.   I suggest at least a couple different tree textures.   I use flat planes setting materials transparent while forcing non transparency on transparent background tree textures.  More complicated tree generation would likely require building tree models, which is another matter.  Generally since I am working with non animated frames, for my purposes un necessary, and secondly for building dense forest canopies, you'd likely to working with 360 panoramic projections from a real texture source, or you could work in my case building your own..  High density comes as computational expense for higher resolution renderings.  Fortunately even with high density forest generations, computational expense is reduced doing the following: work with simple plane mesh maps.  Keep this a very low poly, I work with 4 vertices, and 1 Face for each mesh poly tree object.   A few caveats to texture rendering with alpha transparency on material maps.  Make sure to enable 'Transparency' on your objects given material, set the alpha to zero.  Next, make sure you select 'Reset' for the UV unwrap, and make sure on your UV editor window to 'Constrain UV bounds to image' in 'Edit' mode on your '3D' window.  You load the texture in the usual manner as in above for the given plane with image mapping, with UV selected for image mapping and UV object.  Then make sure 'Alpha' alongside 'Color' is checked under 'Influence'.  If you want to see your transparency shown in your 3D rendering viewport, you can pull the + tab or press N and under 'Display' change the 'shading' drop down from 'Multi textures to 'GLSL'. 
The link mentioned above provides additional particle mapping setup instructions but I'd add these additional tidbits:  
1.  For  Z, X, or,Y  translation (local) adjustments for a particle rendered mesh object, means transforming the object on the original object map (non particle instance), and then applying location coordinate transformation..this sets your object's local coordinates to zero while closing the vector transform of the object...to do this in..your 3D viewport select your object, then under the Object menu options 'Apply' > 'Location'.  The reason for this is that apparently any local location vector transforms on the object are not included in the rendering position for the given particle, on the particle mesh map.

2.  Z Rotation of objects on the particle maps can be done with the 'Rotation' map in Particle maps settings properties tab.  Local rotation coordinates are applied in the particle map and don't need to be applied for particle map instancing...oddly enough.  If you apply local rotation coordinates you'll either need to re adjust in the opposite direction and leave unapplied, or make rotation adjustments in the Particle map settings properties.

Finally to beautify, I would choose 'Ambient Occlusion' on and the 'Multiply' selection chosen.

Something new

Picked back up on an old project namely working a bitmap conversion to curve outlining an rendered object.  As in a previous post on the subject matter, I wanted to be able to render a 2 dimensional profile to 3 dimensions here using bitmap renderings...no not for general purposed applications but mostly for things like rendering architectural exterior objects.  Best works I'd guess for 2 dimensional planar profile surfaces, that could be simply extruded once smooth curve approximation mapping has taken place.   To this a bit of supplementation, a previous post mentioned affine and rotating coordinates for simplifying the problem at hand.  In this case for curve approximation, I've chosen the Bezier curve which seems simple enough to work with.  At the moment I haven't provided any sophisticated analysis into curve fitting in as much as leaving it to the user for inputting a relative local maximum on the rotated coordinate plane where the curve is constructed without inflection points...keeping in mind over longer curve segments you could achieve the same sort of curve construction containing inflections by approximating in segments whose endpoints are the inflection points themselves if necessary (or whose segment limits such point and represented instead as a local maximum on the rotated coordinate system), for instance which should in theory lead to the same thing.  I managed to incorporate a local relative max y solution in of two simultaneous equation sets (the other were simply a neighborhood left approach slope equation), and then solved the equation sets through substitution.  The next part of this problem, since I were using a total of 4 control points for a 3rd degree bezier polynomial involved here were computing the 3rd unknown control point by solving two simultaneous sets of linear equations, one being the right neighborhood slope approach value at the 4th control point and the other being the linear slope value from control points 2 and 3 which were held constant on the transformed local y. Basically a two lines point intersection problem where assumed either lines were neither parallel relative one another.  Once control points are inputted, curve approximation takes places on the parametric segment t in the set [0,1]...leaving the user whatever t step increment for points generated along the curve.  I would have left to it blender to do the actual bezier curve constructions, but technically I'd still need to sift through for points generating on the curves and secondly, I'd rather work with mesh objects for extrusions, and I found the experience of programming bezier curves stimulating enough.  

My bezier function looked like this:
Haven't tested it as of yet...

        def kpermofn(self, n, k):
                numer = math.factorial(n)
                dena = math.factorial((n-k))
                denb = math.factorial(k)
                return (numer/(dena*denb))
        def bezier(self, n, P, tstep):
                def bernbasis(t,i,n):
                        niperm = self.kpermofn(n,i)
                        ti = math.pow(t,i)
                        neti = math.pow((1-t),(n-i))
                        return niperm*ti*neti
                Bpoints = []        
                cn = range(0,n)
                t = 0
                while t < (1 + tstep):
                        Bt = 0,0
                        for i in cn:
                              bbcoef = bernbasis(t, i, n)
                              Btx, Bty = Bt
                              Pix, Piy = P[i]
                              Bt = ((bbcoef*Pix) + Btx, (bbcoef*Piy) + Bty)
                        Bpoints.append[Bt]
                        t += tstep
                        if t > 1:
                                break

Computation of control points looks like this

        def findcpts(self, p0s, p3s, relmy):
                #p0s and p3s are defined by a two tuple coordinate pair
                #here one pair represents the linear slope values defined
                #at the neighborhood of point p0 and p3 respectively,
                #and another coordinate value defined by position of the points
                #p0 and p3.
                
                #compute relative p1y, p2y
                #here using affine and rotation of coordinate systems
                #,one can compute the relative position of y from
                #a user input relative relative maximal y assuming
                #no inflection point for a 3rd order bezier poly.
                #In the computation I've restricted the weighting
                #of relative p1y and p2y such that relp1y = relp2y
                #meaning they are equidistant from the zero on the
                #rotated coordinate plane.

                #formulation for maximal y at t=.5 is given by
                #rel y (t =.5) = 3/4(-(p1x - p0x)Sin(theta p0,p3)
                #+(p1y - p0y)cos(theta p0,p3))
                #where theta p0,p3 is the angle described between
                #control points p0 and p3
                #for more information on this derivation see my
                #site at http://lotsofexpression.blogspot.com/2012/08/exploration-of-bezier-curve.html

                #we compute theta p0, p3
                p0neighbor, p0 = p0s 
                p3neighbor, p3 = p3s
                p0x, p0y = p0
                p3x, p3y = p3
                
                hyp = self.distance(p0, p3)
                #compute adj distance
                adj = self.adj(p0,p3)
                relyslope = adj/hyp
                thetap0p3 = math.acos(adj/hyp) #in radians
                #Since there will be two unknowns in the equation
                #above will simultaneously solve using the left slope
                #approach to the neighborhood of p0...this is the
                #linear slope equation defined by p0, p1
                #py1 -py0 /px1 - px0 = p0nleftappr
                #implies py1 = p0nleftappr(px1 -px0) + py0
                #thus in the equation above solving for p1x we have
                #rely = 3/4(-(p1x - p0x) Sin(theta p0,p3) + (p0nleftappr(px1 - px0))
                #*Cos(theta p0,p3)
                # implies rely = 3/4(px1 - p0x)(p0nleftappr * Cos(theta p0,p3) -
                # Sin(theta p0,p3))
                p0nleftappr, p0nrightappr = p0neighbor
                p3nleftappr, p3nrightappr = p3neighbor
                righteval = p0nleftappr * math.cos(thetap0p3) - math.sin(thetap0p3)
                p1x = 4/3 * relmy *math.pow(righteval, -1) + p0x
                p1y = p0nleftappr*(p1x - p0x) + p0y
                #we'll use the intersection of lines formulation for solution
                #on the second control point
                p2x = (relyslope *(p1x) - p1y - p3nrightappr *(p3x) + p3y)/ (relyslope - p3nrightappr)
                p2y = relyslope*(p2x - p1x) + p1y
                cPoints = [(p0,(p1x,p1y),(p2x,p2y),p3]
                return cPoints

Memories

     The new day arose. ___ would see a permeating translucent haze of light in the room almost ethereal as it were like the time when he wondered if he were floating in a cosmic sea that he could not only touch but smell. The rain outside oriented his thoughts about the early eighties or late seventies, he couldn't tell so clearly. His father appeared younger to him as did his mother, even while arranging food in a manner that seemed like then not the day before when it were 2010, and as for the store, the store seemed to hold some key to this past, as if walking into a product time warp, he couldn't help but think of an old Italian eatery whose red white vinyl clothed plaid tabletops sat nearby a lit glass counter containing any number of goods, bare aging brick walls fashioned with old pictures of the town, or maybe he confused this with another place. He had memories of an old stone house building that were converted as a library, and the nearby Presbyterian stone church stood with a nearby plot of green. He used to love traversing the stone walls then during the summer at times with other kids whom were brought along to the generally adult social function. The church basement wood floored gymnasium were sometimes rented for the purpose of social activities, old boy scout photos adorning the walls dating to the early twenties, thirties , and later maybe. Now the church were closed and fenced off. Maybe someone would buy this for renovations, or at least provide upkeep? At least an old antiques place named 'Old Pryde' still existed. The nearby drugstore had changed hand many times. The once artist supply shop, Keith Coldsnow were converted into a mechanics shop. And anything else? 'Why this memory resurfacing now', he thought? Maybe it weren't meant for him exactly except in some strange consolation. Maybe it should seem to resurface something of a feeling, of memories, or maybe it were a conduit of past to present, that his past should see him in the future. Someone must have remembered the Italian place though, although it were exactly in the same space, but in a now adjacent space next to it. The once music vinyl shop Soundgarden disappeared long since ago, in nearby vicinity tattoo parlors stood. Someone decided to reopen the corner restaurant again, although a less seedy more upscale eatery this time around. Clint's comics were long since gone.  Not sure if the old wood floored bar Harlings still existed, ___ hadn't been there in years.  

Orbiter 2010 add ons and other stuff

Out of curiosity, attempting to build some higher level terrain data sets.  Unfortunately not sure if this were too much to ask for...not only do I get strange font loads on my browser on a given programs execution.  :)...

I went to Nasa's World Wind project listed as an open source endeavor (explicitly advertised to the public)...browser pops up nice and neat but server's appear to be offline for data stream downloads.  Orbiter's planetary textures at my mapped level...and I mean crude enough so that terrain were appearing bit mapped at 25k and under, sort of worked informally at higher level render builds.  Downloaded an advertised 250m terrain map (non world wind commercial server that offers this for free), but this generally appears bit mapped at altitudes ranging 25k.  Sadly, there's something like a 2 gig limit on the texture file for merge compilation of the files themselves so I can't even build a whole planet terrain map here for what appears to be rather crummy looking anyways even setting the texture mapping to level 14 as it were shown in the pltex functions data output under the merge option.  Cross checked and recompiled a few times to make sure angle coordinates were correct on the mapping too.

Fortunately saved myself with file type conversions and graphics memory loading issues, using python Imaging libraries running batch conversions from .png to .bmp.

The world wind program by the way, apparently appears to be blocked for streaming data at this point for its program at least for me.  

Network communication via Quantum Entaglement

    So this leads to be a bit of curiosity or speculation.  How far and fast can entangled particles communicate?  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement  Browsing through the link provided it seems communication despite distance is instantaneous or nearly instantaneous.  This leads me to another idea.  What if two worlds separated by light years used a network distribution which allowed for communications relays?  It would seem ideally if the system itself could pass from one relay to the next communication via entanglement in theory faster then light travel of communicated messages could occur?  The biggest problem to this were ensuring that processing of information were neither impeded by traditional circuits which reduced speeds significantly to a point of traveling at or below the speed of light.  It seems a number of questions regarding entanglement would occur here, such as to what distance could entangled particles be arranged?  And how long should such state exist?  If for instance, distances were quite small it would seem any number of problems in configuring relays to such a great extent were occurring.

For instance to create such a state in the link mentioned above, a fiber coupler could be used to create entanglement states.  Could you imagine a fiber optic line traversing light years of space?!  :)  It seems to me that the amount of material would be very large in number...if it were possible, or it would seem the amount of surface would need to be reduced to a form a very flexible high tensile strength cable that could flex and stretch...practically it seems you would leave the relay stationary in your solar system (preferable it would seem on the edge of your solar system...to reduce gravitational load?!), or  that the relay system cable could stretch and flex as it were rotating in a stable orbit.  I wonder what the cable load might look like?!  Generally speaking it would seem outside of deep space beyond our solar system, bearing loads shouldn't be as bad...mostly loads would exist in theory in or near a given solar system body.

Some post followup on this subject matter as linked.  Interestingly noting problems in the super luminal context.  The first is the no cloning theorem, which according to the theorem postulates first that observation of the system collapses the system into a knowable system 'corrupting information in the qubit'.  Alternatively, it is stated indirectly another method is by controlling the Hamiltonian yielding a Unitary operator which acts as the copier (cloner).  The problem that arises here is by virtue of the operator itself chosen either restricting a the copier to be equal or orthogonal in such case for both such state (i.e., original and clone), but that this restricts the nature of the basis chosen and neither generally applies for general quantum states (between clone and copies provided)...meaning there may be many states that can not be cloned (I would assume).  There appears, however, alternate methods skirting around this...one would mention recording and preserving information on the qubit is necessary, for instance, for something like quantum computing.

There is something peculiar about the universe as a whole which seems interesting to me, or at least some readings in the past concerning the state structure of the universe.  One I am not sure if it is misleading or misunderstood wholly but nevertheless something mentioned or at least mentioned as a mystery by cosmologists themselves.  One present inflationary theories and causality and non ftl communication presents difficulty in explaining apparent homogeneity of the universe likewise as a whole...if something like ftl information leaks were in part responsible in some way, quantum field theory might provide some explanations here?  Or at least we may see that entanglement and enough probability for quantum states having arisen and entangled in some ensemble way could lead to more distant communications?!  

The Weave

      'Another intersection to be avoided,' Thread thought.  He had seen the oracles anyways.  Any number of time lapses in the years before, a man with a clear coat, the maze of the boreal white wooded plains.  How many lives before when he lived in the city leaving its world behind believing there were something of a segway and landing into another enigma.  He had moved through his savings and then dealing with another fear.  The feeling that it were wrong to be where he were in life, not like when he had planned to travel, having a lost a free spirit that once existed.  The  feeling that nothing were the same as it once were, and once aspired thoughts that an oracle were somehow revealing itself that mystery yielding a manner of certainties.  He never aspired for the same house, the same family, the same life that he imagined in others.  Only that Thread were leaving impressions behind.  Impressions despite all of him disintegrating in time.  
     'How does one dance in the orbit?'  he had asked himself.  That mystery in its own right, were it by some internal guidance s?  Thread found himself oscillating between the rhythms of this question.  Had the window elapsed, something been off in the relational sense, as if in scrutiny, he would have likened the irrational feeling overwhelming at times, only the timing were so, and then if contrived so much it weren't always right even then.   As if forces in nature were generally more like electro static repulsion and to the contrary other forces attractive in nature hadn't seemed entirely natural here.   And then, he merely skirted by, and the possibilities of intersections seemed lost.
     Threads waking habit dictated by the circumstance that what he were likely to do the day before would exist into the next day, for all unseen pending circumstance in mind, the room were not so much the room and home as it were his thoughts beyond it.  The dawning years before illustrated else in mind where so much a culture seemingly foreign to him in its own right.  Elsewhere and in some other place in time it were entirely different.  For the dawn revealed something of its culture of youth, the interests of others should seem glossary much of the time and without feeling or sense, merely contrived, from a perspective, even if relations themselves should seem attractive, if something of irony hadn't existed at times in him alone to a lesser degree on this point without so much careful realization.  In the way, that at times he disliked planning or oddly found himself moving about choosing with some deliberation neither clear direction for the irrational sense that an expectation should seem to surface even if it should seem the contrary.

    Only the sense of opportunity would revisit him, where the boundary of forces would near so much closer in proximity to a set of likelihoods.  Pathways were changing and by now he felt that he should be deciding things and strangely enough, Thread would find himself taking steps backwards in to the fold, and this in thought presented something of a wisdom, were long sense before the course of trajectory should seem now in the form of a given destination.  Too much fearing the sense of abandon to much else, and that it seems were something practical if not wringing life at times of its mysteriousness.  As to the worlds away, this could have been merely expressed in the course of meters.  Only hours before, before the glowing screen, having believed to understood something else of his locality.  As to the advance of decades, he imagined something more remote having grown in the nature of certainties, or at least an oracle revealing.  As to now less indifference growing in a way to greater in differences, what should exist now would be forgotten and left with other lasting retrospective impressions.  Old cultural cults then fading.  Thread spent an couple hours today simulating a flight to Saturn.

The Earth to Venus takeoff blog Orbiter 2010 Beta

For the non direct HTO intercept challenge the negative Delta Velocity presents some challenges that I've experienced thus far.  It seems one low earth orbits for take off present altitude control issues.  One I'd mention that a negative delta is an added velocity to already an already negative orbital rotation.  I'd mention negative rotation in the sense being non positive relative Earth's orbital rotation (meaning your ship is moving in the opposite direction of Earth's rotation).  First if you haven't experienced low altitude negative orbital rotation, you may find that the effects of angular momentum as I did in a couple test case examples on Mars. The effect of this is the craft at low angular velocities spinning in my case in a nearly geostationary fashion (when attempting re entry), or at least this could be seen as rotation around a geostationary point.  Thus, in my case, successful cases of delta v were applied at much higher earth orbits  > 5 million km.  Still running at 5 M km I did experience as in one test case crash and burn in the case of lower -delta v improperly maintaining altitude even while maintaining periapsis altitude well above Earth's altitude.  Secondly even while burning at proper TrL (this is the position for ejection point) for you delta V burn.  I found that the possible change to periapsis will effect the shape of your elliptic trajectory.  Ideally your periapsis point should be positioned as close to TrL as possible...thus the challenge of balance both altitude loss changing from positive to negative retrograde motion and then maintaining periapsis at the position of TrL ejection.  Some additional food for thought on the aspect of interplanetary elliptic are as follows, keep in mind that while your TAS may read a given velocity for a celestial object set to default Earth, this is including Earth's relative angular motion.  For interplanetary journeys to the inner solar system, your elliptic should be smaller then Earth's angular rotation, this means that you are subtracting instantaneous velocity at ejection from your craft's already existing Angular rotation at Earth's angular rotation around the sun.  Aside from the Transfer MFD which shows the necessary for inner solar system journey, I also recommend setting your Orbit MFD referencing the Sun, and then selecting your target 'Venus'.  Once engaged in the ejection at some point your elliptic ejection will be graphically shown visually similar to the graphic shown for the Transfer ejection graphic.  Keep in mind, because you are still rotating around the Earth, this trajectory calculation on the Orbit MFD may change owing to any flyby relative to Earth...I recommend running your simulator at 1000 times greater until you've reached say 100 M km or greater from Earth where ideally your trajectory should be represented in more stable orientation.  I've also encountered another problem with HTO calculations for Transfers where at the given Ejection date my planet's estimated position having jump changed from its intended calculation.  Sort of unfortunate since this could make more problematic future planning.  My work around is simply having the craft in proper orbit and aligned on plane and simply setting the ejection date slightly elapsed to verify position, fortunately it seems by adjusting DV I could find an intercept at some position.

When you run the burn its important to keep in mind that Earth is rotating around the sun at 108,000 km /h relative the Sun, even though your delta v shown in the opposite direction relative Earth's rotation and seemingly in the opposite direction when departing at ejection point, your craft is still moving in counter clockwise positive angular motion relative the sun. Basically your craft moves on an inner elliptic relative Earth's past the sun, gaining instantaneous velocity as it nears the sun and the slingshot's toward Venus on the opposite side of the elliptic (relative start).  Venus instantaneous average angular velocity is approximately 20,030 km/h  and while technically Venus is one of the only planet's whose orbital motion in clockwise in the Solar system relative all other planets.  Technically the linear speed differential between the two planets is in the order of roughly 128,000 km/h  here, or in other words, if physics of orbital motion weren't applied here to our advantage, we might have otherwise a lot of braking energy applied getting from one planet to the other!

Some fun unlimited fuel challenges are matching the orbital elliptic of Venus's by running burns on Apoapsis and Periapsis to achieve a similar orbit to Venus's.  You can do this by procedure using the Orbit MFD settings mentioned above.  If you wanted to do this on the quick, you can use your Lua Console to set your MJD date to near both burn points, otherwise, you'll be in for much longer real time waits even at higher given sim rate options.  Function control for this is oapi.set_simmjd(MJD) where MJD is your input time format in Julian date format.

Will likely set a much higher altitude at 10M km from Earth for negative ejection burn here.  This should provide more efficiency and altitude stability on the negative delta v ejection burn.  As a reminder the ejection burn I believe means running a negative velocity (relative to an existing positive retrograde motion) whose orbital velocity is equal and opposite at such altitude (and then adjusting for altitude loss) and then applying delta v.  This means the total ejection I believe if altitude is maintained stable at 2 x (existing TAS...burning off retrograde motion to turn to negative retrograde motion which will flip on your TAS indicator) plus your negative DV.  Altitude loss will typically add some to your necessary formulation since higher instantaneous velocities are typified at lower altitudes, and thus change change the nature of your elliptic.  Another possible solution that I've considered studying here in the unlimited fuel case (likely not as great a solution since you are working on more fuel burns), is creating an inner solar system elliptic, then burning at perihelion (periapsis  relative the sun) so that your elliptic is less then Venus.  Running the Transfer MFD and searching intercepts and running running a prograde burn at the right ejection point on the inner elliptic (relative Venus's).

Update:

Ran a successful mission with some caveats.  First, I highly recommend a high altitude Earth orbit in my case 10.5M km.  While in terms of periodicity of the higher oribt means more sim time waiting there are a couple of aspects that I liked for this ejection setup: less altitude loss, and less fuel spent/burn time spent in reaching negative delta v ejection. The first round elliptic appeared to be fruitless for tracking and subsequent orbits would take longer time lengths for in terms of a lengthier periodicity.  Instead I modified my approach track doing the following.  I burned retrograde at perihelion to run a smaller radial elliptic relative Venus's orbital elliptic.  From this point, my craft's periodicity on the elliptic being different would translate into more optimal intersections relative the Venus's elliptic path...my shuttle were generally moving with differences in angular velocity because of a greater then 0 eccentricity of my Sun relative orbital track and being non matched to Venus's sun relative orbital eccentricity.  This were a little bit of a go round the merri go round track.  Basically to achieve this I used the the Transfer MFD at several places performing a combination of prograde and retrograde burns.  The burns themselves were surprising short (a modest less then 2 k burn in most cases).  The bigger burn were the perihelion retrograde burn (more likely no more then a 10 k burn on earth for ejection) to an inner elliptic path relative Venus's.  While I did perform some initial manual course correction burns on the final approach (very modest relative Venus speeds a little above 2k TAS).  I like this approach the best since it seemed there were greater opportunities for fuel economy use while providing many opportunities for the approach even if something went wrong.  The biggest burn generally were the Earth based ejection point overall.  I liked this especially so because my approach track relative Venus started at a very modest 2.2 k venus relative TAS.  And the fuel spent for orbital capture on the periapsis retrograde burn ended at 7k TAS Venus relative.  My overall sim time on this trip started 52192 and ended 52624  or 432 elapsed modified Julian days.

In figure: 1.  Here ship's intecept shown solid gray line is matched to the dashed
yellow line representing where Venus will also be on ship intercept.
2.While the actual time has elapsed for launch we are generally in line to our launch position
3.  TrL  represents the angle on the rotation plane for launch.

The circled gray lines represents the the perihelion point where retrograde
is performed (both in time to reach), and in terms of point of position
graphically.                                                                                                    

Noting the Transfer MFD on the right up on the display, aiding
for retrograde and prograde burns.  At this point setting, our
source to the glider, and using Venus as a Target.

Step by Step:

1.  Starting on the ground at Earth.  Pull up your Transfer MFD (Press SEL next to MNU just below the MFD console).  Set Ref to 'Sun' (once pressing the REF button a little menu appears, you can press Enter as Sun is default), Source to 'Earth' (when the menu appears for selection press your arrow keys up or down to select your given planet), and TGT to 'Venus'.  Press HTO to engage the intersections search.  Next Adjust your by pressing holding your DV- button until the dashed green line intersects the inner yellow ellipse representing Venus's orbit.  Here you can rotate positive or negative the Ejection window by pressing the EJ- or EJ+ buttons and holding this. You will need to align the gray line with the dashed yellow line.  If no intersection appear at the given launch DV you can make adjustments to your DV- or DV+ as needed while maintaining the intersection at least two points the dashed green yellow ellipse with the solid yellow line.  If no ejection DV appears to suffice for intercept at this ejection position, then you will need to adjust your Ejection position pressing the EJ+ or EJ- buttons.  If the the launch date is in the the first three quadrants < 270 degrees from your present position.  I recommend using the Lua consolej and using oapi.set_simmjd(MJD) to change your Earth relative position so that you are slightly elapsed on the launch window.  While its not 365 MJD exactly per year for Earth's orbital rotation, this provides you a rough estimator for setting MJD dates...simple add days to your existing MJD date.  I do this in integer formats which works fine.  Once having found a suitable intersection.  I've also found setting the Ejection time slightly elapsed basically Earth's position is just slightly greater then (< 180 degrees for earth's position ) or slightly less then (> 180 degrees for Earth's position).  Then adjust your DV either adding or subtracting DV as indicated above while maintaining intersection of your dashed green line with the solid yellow line (at two points).  The reason for this is that actual predicted position of the planet relative time elapsed for your craft's motion seems to be more accurate doing this.
Once a suitable ejection time is found and you are at or slightly elapsed to launch time, you can now launch.

2.  Go ahead and set on the alternate window your Orbit MFD set the REF to 'Earth', and set TGT to 'Venus'.   Press PRJ on your Orbit MFD until this shows Frm ECL Prj SHP.  Make sure your PeA (periapsis) and ApA (apoapsis) values are in km as opposed to radians, you can easily see this by the k for km designation or M for radians designations.  Its easy for me to see relations of altitude in km unless you understand the relation of radians to altitude, you can change to radians or km respectively by pressing the DST button on the Orbit MFD console.  Its important to note when you climb the PeA value later.  So keep this in mind.

3.  Press the HUD button on your Orbit MFD console.  This ensures your TAS (Green Hud indicators are set for Earth relative readings).

4.  Presuming you understand basic flight maneuvering.  Make sure your Surface HUD is engaged.  If you are on a standing launch pad, use the hover button, increasing this positive until you have flight lift.  Next, once at 1k in altitude engage throttle full for speed. Disengage your Hoover speed, and lift your gear.  Increase your altitude pitching the nose up generally at around 60 degrees, generally speaking anywhere between 40 and 60 degrees seems fine, the climb is slow at lower pitches.  Once you climb to above 50 km you will begin to notice change in your crafts aerodynamic lift.  At 75km altitude I recommend engaging your Orbit HUD using the button in the upper left of your console.  At this point if handling become difficult you can stabilize your craft using the Kill Rotation button.

5.  We will be achieving a high Earth orbit altitude here at 10M km, so the climb will take some time here.  I recommend that you craft is stably maintained oriented such that your craft is climbing away from Earth, you can note this by your Orbit MFD s PeA value as this inclines further and further until showing 10 M km, you will likely need to disengage your engines, but first you will want to make note of your crafts speed.  You will need to be flying at around 4k on your TAS for stable orbit, mostly you want to make sure your craft is moving in positive motion reasonably at least within 2 or 3 k TAS prior to reaching PeA.  You can fast forward your simulator using the Speed simulator functions, I recommend stepping this up no more then a 1000 times, generally though here I don't recommend this initially using this above 100 times especially on the first PeA ascent.

6.  Press the Prograde button (upper right of your ship's console).  This should be lit engaged.

7.  Make note of your ApA and PeA values.

8.  Once ApA and ApT have elapsed to zero. You will need to fire your engine thrusters until Ecc is nearly close to zero (don't worry if its slightly off).   If you need to increase your ship's overall altitude you can fire in Prograde position your thrusters once your ship is positioned to ApA  and PeA separately.  You will want to make note of the Ecc value on your Orbit MFD when running a burn.  If you want to decrease altitude you do the same as except making sure that your ship is in Retrograde position (pressing the Retrograde button and making sure  this is lit).

Now's a good time to do a quick save, so that you can always restart your scenario if you like.

Let's align the ship to Venus's orbital plane.

9.  Press SEL (just below the MFD console) on your existing Orbit MFD.
10.  Select the Align Planes MFD.
11.  Once your ship on the rotation plane is at or near AN your ship will need will need to be in the   Orbit-Normal (-) position, while being in the opposite position (Orbit-Normal (+)) when on or near the DN position .  You can speed your simulator up by 10 or 100 times you can see what position is moving towards here.  Once determining the position that you are headed towards.  Set your ship into the given Orbit normal position as necessary well in advance.
12.  Follow the instructions on the Align Planes MFD when it says "Kill Thrust" make sure to kill your thrust. Your Rinc value should decline as you burn, and this should close to zero (don't worry if its not exactly zero).

13.  Press SEL just below your Align Planes MFD, and select the Orbit MFD again.  By default this should have your Earth orbit settings.

14.  This point on your Transfer MFD, I will assume your DTe has elapsed.  Earth's position Shown solid green should appear at or near the dashed green window ejection.  Procedurally you can use the Lua Console for time acceleration...keep in mind 100k time translates into approximately 1 day of time...

15. Position your ship in Retrograde.  Initially when you fire I recommend your celestial bodies view is engaged.  Visually I make note of this since HUD oribtal readouts will change as you burn on ejection.  Generally I work to fire the ship maintaining orientation at the constellation group that I originally fired in orientation pointing towards.

16.  Make note of TrL  values on your Transfer MFD.  This will be the point at which you fire engines to engage ejection.  On your close approach to the TrL value, you will want to make note of your TAS value (this is your Earth orbit relative speed).  You will need to add this value to the negative DV shown on your transfer MFD.  Your actual TrL position is given on your Orbit MFD.  Once your TrL elapses fire engines.

17.  Hit the Kill rotation button on your ship, and maintain orientation on the constellation group that you are at.  It doesn't need to be perfect, but you can hit as necessary the Kill Rotation button to maintain your crafts altitude.  There are two parts to the ejection: zeroing out your velocity, and increase your ship's velocity that you computed in step 16 (this is negative orbital plus delta v ejection).  I've added a slight amount of orbital velocity for slight loses in altitude (although I didn't formal compute the precise negative orbital value needed here)...my addition were in the range of 20 on TAS.  My altitude restabilized at around 9.6M km, so don't worry if you have lost some altitude.

18.  Once reaching the desired ejection velocity.  Kill thrust.  We'll set up your Orbit MFD for a new reference.

19.  Change REF to 'Sun', change TGT to 'Venus'.  Here you will note at this point the relation of your Orbit MFD of your ship's trajectory being roughly similar to the projected orbital trajectory shown in your Transfer MFD.  Don't worry if the shape is rough here, it will change and stabilize over time as you move upon distance gained moving away from Earth.  At 250 M km out (from Earth), this should begin to assume generally the shape and form shown in your Transfer MFD, but no worries even if you are off, other things can be done.

20.  Since there is a lot of simulation time involved in this.  I personally like to run simulation ahead in steps of 25, 50, 100 days to see how close projections are availed here.  At some point if it appears the position of the planet for whatever reasons is unlikely to be at the the projected position (or remotely near it).  I've set up a new approach procedure.  If it appears that your trajectory is way off on the intercept to Venus's position move to the alternate approach track shown below.

The alternate procedure

You can use the Lua console to move forwards or backwards in time as indicated using the oapi function mentioned above.  Move to within approximately no more then several hundred k seconds, and then you can manually adjust on the decimal MJD with function to reduce time to near or less then 100k from relative to PeT.  Within 100k I run sim time using the menu speed controls.

21. Do a retrograde burn PeT, PeA shown on your Orbit MFD.  The burn need not occur to the extent of modifying your trajectory to zero Ecc, but fitting this trajectory to fit on or inside Venus's orbital path.

22.  Reconfigure your Transfer MFD Source, by Pressing SRC then typing 'GL-01' if you using the glider or your craft's code handle and pressing enter.

23.  You will use the same procedure as in Step 1 above except you will need a positive delta v burn.  If you don't see good alignments here.  I recommend cycling time forward say by increments of 25 days and rechecking as actual planet to ship positions will provide new transfer possibilities.  At some point you will find a good transfer opportunity.

Once you are within 5 or 6 G distances on your Orbit MFD for a given Alt.  You can follow the Venus approach.

The Venus approach (within 5 or 6 G):

24.  Set up your Orbit MFD with Ref set to 'Venus'. Press PRJ on your Orbit MFD until this shows Frm ECL Prj SHP.  Press the HUD button on your Orbit MFD.  This should show your ships relative TAS velocity relative to Venus now.  Make note of this since importantly this will aid in the determination of your burn for corrections.

Also on your HUD  make not of the Green Circle Positive position.  Since you are in rotation around the sun, there may be significant deviation of this value instantaneous velocity relative to the prograde ship's position.  You may need to swivel the your view around by right mouse button hold and rotating your mouse to find the Green Circle positive and Venus respectively.  If you lose, you green HUD readings as I did , you restore these simply by going to the Orbiter Menu, selecting Camera and choosing the Target tab, and then selecting 'Focus Cockpit'.  Optimally for course corrections, I'd suggest your ship be at a relative velocity on the TAS reading no more then several K.  Since it faster and easier to make changes.  If you need to reduce your velocity.  I recommend a retrograde burn to reduce your velocity so that TAS is reading within several K.

25.  The art of manual correction simply put can be done in several ways.  In principle the simplest with the Orbit HUD engaged is correction in vector addictions or subtractions fashion.  If you need to correct relative  Z positive you'd simply aim and orient your ship, with an increased Z while watching your Orbit MFD (the most efficient burn correction nears to a positive 90 ship orientation, but usually anything at above 60 degrees will proficiently build course correction.  You burn thrusters while paying attention to your Ecc and PeA values which should decline.  You can do this until you notice that have reached an optimum or you would only add to these values with furthered correction burns.  On the relative XY plane you can change your craft's orientation so that you are approximately 90 degrees relative to your planet in the opposite direction of your craft's Green Circle Positive Velocity HUD indicator.  Once within reasonable correction amount, you should ideally be within 200M km for PeA and Ecc should be a double digit integer amount or less.  If you course TAS heading reads above 20 k, I recommend a retrograde burn to reduce speed reasonablly.  As you develop more experience with manual course corrections, you can likely do this more efficiently without adding so much to your ship's relative velocity.

Running ahead in simulation time in increments of 1G, repeat Step 25 as necessary, reducing both PeA and Ecc...PeA should begin to approach something like 500k or reasonably to several million km, with eccentricity approaching nearer and nearer to zero...this will likely remain above 1 until your final retrograde burn for orbital capture.

Once you have established the above conditions, and your TAS is reasonably maintained, to no more then 20K, you can can prepare for the Orbital Capture.

Orbital Capture

26.  Position the Ship in retrograde.
27.  Once PeT is at zero.  Fire thrusters, until Ecc approaches is near zero (or within by a couple digits to the right of the decimal point).  If you are still off you can make corrections as shown in Step 8.

Congratulations made it to Venus! 

Oribter 2010 beta example scenario, Mission to Mars, and Mars flight handling discussion

Sort of inspirational post on the subject matter of Orbiter 2010 beta.
I couldn't immediately find a glider scenario starting on Mars.  I will hope someday in the future terrain simulators are even better on this point, but for now I leave it to my imagination in so far as realistic looking ground level terrain topography.  Basically I created a scenario modifying the Cape Canaveral SCN file using the following.  Save this as Mars Launch.SCN, or whatever you choose to name it.  Then pull up your Orbiter Launchpad and go.  Its much easier to start from the ground by the way on planets that feasibly have surface terrain, and where lift isn't problematic because of gravitational conditions.  Simply adding the desired planets name in the script placements below.  If you wanted to set up an orbiting start around a given celestial body, you'd need 3 tuple coordinates for the following, RPOS, RVEL, and AROT.  These are Relative Position, Relative Velocity, and Angle of Rotation respectively.
An example earth based rotation would be as follows for example.

  RPOS -1939370.68 176.20 -5993558.24
  RVEL 6666.863 2.877 -2135.915
  AROT -176.52 -83.95 -89.26

Keep in mind these examples I don't believe immediately translated readily from planet to planet.  In the obvious sense, if you relative velocity at the given relative position were applied to Mars, you'd likely find you ecliptic orbit getting out of hand quickly owing to differences in gravitation here.  If you weren't into the hard math in determining exactly orbital configurations another method, is simply creating the scenario, say from launch and then recording this to a data SCN file, where saved it could be used in application to another scenario of the same type.  Fortunately the hard math of this problem hadn't need deal with orbits of the eccentric not equal to zero, portion, but you'd find yourself likely working through polar coordinates and then translating this into relative cartesian for RPOS and RVEL.  While AROT would be computed using something like a three tuple Euler rotation coordinates (representing the ecliptic plane)...I'd check on this to be sure though.

Also there is a useful script function if you implement your Lua console for modifying simulation dates.  This is nice because it simulates all conditions leading to the given input simulation date.

The function for changing date is Julian date format or MJD,
I used thie for nice jumps of approximately 100G  travel distance, say going from Earth to Mars, which translated at my velocity to approximately 30 days travel time...I used with 'unlimted fuel' setting a high ejection velocity cutting much potential travel time relative to the slower more realistic likelihood of travel times expected otherwise.  I also took advantage of Mars relative close proximity to Earth in this case reducing travel times, fastforwarding MJD to a more optimal launch window.  The script function is:

oapi.set_simmjd(MJDvalue)

If you were the less patient type as I am...I frequently run sim accelerations and using the lua console function above to speed things up to work on the nitty gritty stuff.

If you plan the journey to Mars as I did initially starting from the ground.  For interplanetary transfers,  you'll need to make sure to set Reference to 'Sun', Source to 'Earth', and Target to 'Mars'.   Selecting HTO, make sure firstly to give yourself a big enough ejection burn setting DV+ or DV- high enough for the escape intercept...I run a burn at 11k above my existing orbiting velocity starting TAS initially at 18k.   Secondly, you'd want to make sure your projected intercept the gray line coincides the projected position of the planet at intercept.  The planet's projected track is represented by the dashed yellow line, so you need to overlap the gray line with the dashed yellow line using the EJ + or EJ - buttons.  Also you'll want to keep in mind the elapsed time to lauch DTe.  Google provides nice conversion computation tools if you hadn't wanted to hand calculate.  Keep in mind 2,630,000 seconds translates into 1 month.  On the typical starting date, DTe may run high depending on your scenarios MJD and relative planetary alignments.  Obviously, you should leave enough spare time to launch to both get into orbit, and have your glider aligned on the Mar's ecliptic plane relative the sun.  Much of this can be accomplished easily within the course of hours of equivalent sim time.  As a note I'd also mention that DTe does represent the time for the ejection burn, but you also need to make sure that you are accurately in line on the burn itself.  Thus in orbit you may not be exactly aligned for the burn for your given relative position orbiting Earth for the burn.  There is a small color coded line (of the same color as your reference celestial body that you are orbiting...for Earth 'green'), that you will need to pay attention to before performing the burn.  DTe letting lapse is fine for the course of time until having reached your position launch window isn't generally a problem in my opinion...especially given the minor burns for course correction that would generally be likely especially as you are more distant from your given destination.  Visually you can read your launch position as follows:  Once visually your relative position (small line rotating around your celestial reference source line) is in parallel to your dashed launch line (for Earth to Mars the big dashed green line), you preform the burn.  Unfortunately, since your source is set to Earth and not your ship, you will need to do the math computing the amount of ejection velocity, just add your DV to your existing TAS read.  Once the burn is complete optimally you may be in luck to see that the celestial body that you are travelling to is in line (as in this case Mars) is somewhere within your glider's frame of view.  At ejection, your crafts is moving tangential to projected travel path, generally you should be able to see that your relative position (e.g. from Earth to Mars, this would be your relative position to Earth at ejection point is tangentially aligned to your projected travel path) is initially nearly tangential (parallel) to the projected dashed line travel path.  If you see that your relative position from the source celestial body, appears to deviate within fairly short order from this projected path at the ejection point, you may want to perform right away a correction burn to bring your glider in line to this.  This will optimally spare significant course deviation and correction burns later on.   Next, I recommend setting up your Orbit MFD and setting Mars as your source, and make sure your ship is selected for elliptic comparisons.  If you run your Simulator at 100 or 1000 times, you should see a noticeable decline in Periapsis values.  Here indicating that you are roughly moving in the same direction towards in some manner your intended travel destination.  I also recommend if you run the simulator at 1000 times to normal that you avoid keeping your ship's prograde setting on (as this can cause for some odd reasons numeric instabilities in terms of your ship's rotational stability).  Its better to use Kill Rotation at normal sim speeds, and then let the ship drift at higher simulation speeds, and the toggle back to normal speed, repeat the prograde function to bring the ship back in line for the visuals, and then kill Rotation and repeat the process.  Also using the script function below in 5 or 10 day increments I've found helpful, since this exceeds well above 1000 times normal sim time.  Optimally if you hadn't wanted to maximize in terms of course corrections.  These need to be done with the ship rotated normal (perpendicular or 90 degrees) to pro grade motion.  While you can do course corrections for the visually, I've also found using the Orbit MFD a great tool, as you can examine the Periapsis values decline as you near closer to your destination.  Generally speaking, the problem of the approach is like a resolutions problem, if you were 50G outside of your destination, Periapsis may show in some fractional order of this but not highly resolved...in my case something like ten G or somewhere in the proximity), and then nearing closer with a correction burn I'd find this getting closer and closer to the given target.  I've generally found that this fractional proportionality isn't such that at 50G you could expect (at least for myself) to be something like 500k or 10k for periapsis, even if you appear to have your course visually aligned on the planetary body itself.  Thus generally once a maximum stability appears numerically on your Orbit MFD on the correction burn, you've likely generally maximized for your given relative position.  Generally I speed I speed up sim time here, and repeat the process getting nearer, usually working in 5 to 10 day increments.  The nice thing is that Orbit MFD unlike the strictly visual approach I believe accounts for relative planetary motions, so Periapsis values should remain stable over time if you flight motion is ideally in line...that is your elliptic is moving on the same plane and in the same way as the Celestial body itself on the elliptic...in the past, I've fought counter intuitively  in principle neither paying attention to course trajectories so much attempting to chase down planets which should seem like taking two steps backwards relative a step forward because of odd course trajectories.  Repeating this process, eventually you should be declining both in terms of periapsis values and orbital eccentricity.  Once established within reasonable distance of your planet on the order of 500k for periapsis, you should prep for the retrograde burn.  If you are 20k or less on your TAS for flight speed, ideally you can accomplish this at periapsis.  If your ship's velocity is higher then this, you will likely need to drop down at some point prior to reaching periapsis to slow your ship down, ideally within velocity ranging at no more then 20k.  The retrograde burn should be done to minimize orbital eccentricity close to zero.  In orbit, you can see how your relative orbit is relative to say Olympus base toggling to your map.  Here, you flight path ideally will intersect on ecliptic plane that ranges from equatorial to mid latitude regions.  If you need to correct your orbit, do so I believe reducing your Rinc value.  Preparing for Martian entry, is a matter of your ship's path moving within reasonable proximity to the base.  Your ship's projected distance bubble on the map provides excellent visual reference for when to accomplish the retrograde burn for re entry.  Once the bubble coincides visually with the base, you are likely in good range.  You will notice as you perform the burn your orbital path suddenly terminating with a square icon, this is your projected re entry point.  Ideally you'd want to accomplish re entry such to have this point coincide as close as possible to the base itself, while maintaining reasonable angle of attack (i.e., you don't want to skim the surface of Mars like a pebble on a pond, otherwise, you'll just skid on the atmosphere...likewise you don't want to drop like a rock...40 degree angle could be a good rough approximation...) although I've used this more from the visual standpoint at glance using the Orbital MFD measuring the angle of projected path relative planetary orbital altitude minimum).      

Generally speaking Mars is a fraction of the gravity found on Earth, and Martian atmosphere is noticeable different in so far as aerodynamics (being less dense at ground level, and similarly at higher altitudes). On you decent hold the craft level on the surface horizon.  I used a similar angle of attack similar to that of Earth's (40 degrees)...running TAS at 1600.  Velocity picked up to over 2000, and atmospheric frictional bleeds are not as noticeable relative to Earth's, coupled with poorer Earth relative aerodynamic handling.  Optimally it help having your entry lined up here.   Generally I've found enough aerodynamic stability running TAS at around 1k, and ranging 10 to 16k.  The more optimal method that I've found involved using a rotational pendulum swing of the craft (with Level Horizon and Hold Altitude engaged), and the using a combination of retrograde burns (relative to positive translation motion) to burn velocity, and similarly using this method to change the glider's direction.   If you are a noob to Martian flight , I recommend that traditional flight mechanics seemed much to poor in terms of handling otherwise, especially given the more rarefied atmosphere at the altitudes that I mentioned, and flying lower seemed either to slow or risky in terms of reasonable flight handling where I typically encountered more substantial gains and loses in altitude (for instance 10 k in altitude within 20 to 30 seconds...keeping in mind that Martian atmosphere typically runs at a high window of 22km...as opposed to Earth's 50 km where flight mechanics are more noticeable both in terms of wing lift and drag).   I'd recommend using the level horizon function, Hold Altitude, and keeping Kill Rotation on hand as needed.  Generally speaking if you land at Olympus Base, at 50 k < out I recommend stabilizing the craft outside of traditional flight lift physics...meaning use the Hold altitude function.  This forgoes the need for maintaining retrograde (or positive translation) motion of your craft for wing lift.  Secondly there aren't any bases on Mars having landing strips like that found on Earth.  Generally speaking your landing spot is a small launch pad.  Dialing in your NAV from frequencies.  You'd use your VOR/VTOL, and is in the case of station docking operate the craft using linear thrust.  Because linear thrust translation translates into approximately 1 m/s differentials, in terms of acceleration and de acceleration, its important to consider your relative velocity relative to the position to your launchpad.  I ran ultra slow, at a 20 m/s pace 20 km out, and then gradually dropped my relative velocity as needed in keeping to the rate at which I could feasible de accelerate the craft.  My final landing velocity were between 0 and -1 m/s.
Here's the Mars launch SCN file below.


BEGIN_DESC
Launch the delta-glider from Venus and see how it handles under extreme dynamic pressures.


Warning: You must disable the complex flight model for this scenario, otherwise your engines will not work under the enormous atmospheric pressure at the
Venus surface.
END_DESC

BEGIN_ENVIRONMENT
  System Sol
  Date MJD 51982.9068993519
END_ENVIRONMENT

BEGIN_FOCUS
  Ship GL-01
END_FOCUS

BEGIN_CAMERA
  TARGET GL-01
  MODE Cockpit
  FOV 60.00
END_CAMERA

BEGIN_HUD
  TYPE Surface
END_HUD

BEGIN_MFD Left
  TYPE Surface
END_MFD

BEGIN_MFD Right
  TYPE Orbit
  PROJ Ship
  REF Mars
END_MFD

BEGIN_SHIPS
ISS:ProjectAlpha_ISS
  STATUS Orbiting Earth
  ELEMENTS 6734919.2 0.00090 74.51300 169.03400 328.32497 560.71341 51982.906
  AROT 30.00 0.00 50.00
END
Mir
  STATUS Orbiting Earth
  ELEMENTS 6670999.7 0.00060 3.50000 360.00000 0.03290 132.19809 51982.906
  AROT 5.00 10.00 15.00
END
Luna-OB1:Wheel
  STATUS Orbiting Moon
  ELEMENTS 2237990.3 0.00001 89.99950 0.00059 317.37509 574.48880 51982.906
  AROT 0.00 0.00 88.25
  VROT 0 0 10
END
GL-01:DeltaGlider
  STATUS Landed Mars
  POS 15 -7
  HEADING 80
  PRPLEVEL 0:0.200 1:1.000
  NAVFREQ 402 94 0 0
  XPDR 0
  NOSECONE 0 0.0000
  GEAR 1 1.0000
  AIRLOCK 0 0.0000

END
END_SHIPS

Direction

    Interestingly finding myself engaged in a bit of self criticism for some of the music that I've been working on.  Compelled for a few reasons, but mostly it comes to mind that in recent times, I've spent a little time focusing on other things in writing, and then I've delved for a number of months working on music stuffs, and at a glance, it seems at times there is hardly a conscious segway between the two, or at least at times more momentary writing between the two landscapes seem completely disparate, or at least this seems more deliberative on my part.
     Firstly it seems the approach are different, at least in terms of formalism, there is a difference in fluency here between the two.  If you find yourself difficult at expressing yourself in terms of words, then it seems the way that you'd express yourself should seem the nature of one's expression would could seem limited?   I hadn't written any fictional works by the way in a while, or I've a sense of not knowing what exactly I should write if I did it.  If I started, generally, it seems like on the premise of something simple, and then I am not sure where the writings itself would lead by convention.  Then if you asked me to write several hundred pages about horses or horse racing, I might flee from the subject quickly.  Should we know how to write about these things even if we hadn't related?  I know this is a much delved into subject matter in any event for fiction, and the artfulness in writing were finding a signature in writing about this.  Maybe not exactly about horses, about the characters, about something...people may not have originally related, and then you end up with the Black Stallion, a whole story about the land from where the horse came from, and then the writer delves into historical fiction, wild horses on the steppes or something like this, but I feel guilty at this point, I'd need to research more, need to find out more information about the nature of the landscape, travel there..
     I am fascinated now working in music now, not because I consider myself so much of an expert, or that I am sure of what I set about attempting to do here clearly.
     Striking to me that how music in some ways differs from other art mediums in our present age.  I find myself dwelling on this criticism I heard echoed recently regarding an NPR segment on a recent jazz artist working on a compilation of tunes in varying disciplines.  In many ways I find myself in a similar position, albeit working from a different perspective.  Namely, spending a lot of time studying sound in general.  Trying to reproduce in some ways on the basis of style, but using an old hand of mine in creating sound packages themselves.  Here and there, I use already created samples, but I reproduce much also on my own in terms of sound synthesis, neither working necessarily from rotely created short segments (a couple of tunes were more predominantly this way), but a number weren't.  Its not exactly as easy as it sounds either, or at least seems that way to me.  A lot of sounds, seem in some way coarse to me at first, but then finding myself working to shape them into something different.  I found myself asking myself on this critical convention here, at least by way of the convention that seems inevitable...it seems like its there from the standpoint of the abiding package.  In the way that we are expressing ourselves...so much that it seems that we would produce according to the convention that we are driven.  Then it occurred to me, how diverse is the landscape of music in terms of convention from composition to composition.  Overall, one weren't prevented from compiling works, and then if this were presented in the format of 'music for film', we would be more inclined to accept the diverse landscape that were entailed.  We might not think as critically of the artist attempting any number of disciplines here, but should I be so concerned if Classical opera singers delved into popular music crossovers?  It seems a double standard in a way, and who exactly criticizes these days.  At times, I've turned to listen to self published works.  Of course, like myself, it seems production sensibilities could be varied at times here, and I wonder exactly how much standard exists in terms of judging works for the sheer sake of this alone?  I hear the words, "Where is it soul?"  And that seems a difficulty in its own right.  Not sure that I feel comfortable in saying this, other then on the point of self criticism.   It seems more easy in saying and not relating so much on a point of criticism.   There must be an art even to something of landscape, wandering, and abstraction?!
     Months now in passing, I've tired of reading technical books much, or attempting some self  study, and then I've managed to feel good in a way, not because I were professional, or engaged in something overly critical by what I've done, or more so it seems like a good humor that I've had.   Leads me to the day that I hadn't known in expecting. 

No Chance

    Waking up to this a lot.  

        Zero.  

           And the level of compassion or empathy?!  

             In a way, no one wants to hear it, or as in the re invention of society itself:  there were victims, 

                  now there are not any.

                     No one is interested.

                        You have nothing to hide, and everything is of suspicion.  

                    

                          The evidence that you have concealed something of it, comes by way incidentally 

                    

                            that someone now watching you just got on third shift, just got hired, has no idea 

 

                             who you were, and anyways, new leadership just came in a week ago.  

A shit job

    Seems odd saying this, or maybe it isn't so odd really but pointedly given so much before and following, you find yourself asking this question: 'What purpose does this really serve?'  

    After nearly six months you get a phone call for what apparently either reflected a really shitty revolving door of a workplace, or that your application were cherry picked for the explicit purpose of a hire for some reason...but you hold out hope on some alternate reason:  goodwill charity, you hadn't accumulated professional references over any time, and then you think there's hardly any need for exploitation here.    

    Things seem odd about the work anyways, no one is ever there not merely a few in starting...but merely that management later makes the emphasis of clearly communicating anything but seems to know little about the operations side of things, but it seems to leave something of suspicion in mind, sure its cute hearing Thievery Corporations Mirror Conspiracy or any number of subtle drops of something, you were hear to fucking frost donuts after all, I mean how feasibly shitty could a job be? 

   A man by the name of Paul, announces, 'He hates his life.'  in the same space of hours, while he  nearly seems to be passing out at the kitchen stove.  He jokes about needing 'speed'.  At some other point, he gets doughnut frosting all over his finger, and announces that you, 'lick his finger.'  Meanwhile, as usual if you weren't tired of all the references to mega wash up hip hops having attempted to draw something of ire, after all Pandora's big brother would turn indie folk into Frank Ocean, and your sexuality were being put on trial...sort of scratching one's head, apparently this sort of pro activity might have been part of Snowden's revelations somewhere, but it never filtered through to American media. 

The upshot were that the final lame meeting assembled were enough in a way.  Surely for the head dough guy complaining about the nature of one's work, he'd in one breath talk about neither getting enough sleep and in another breath mention his excitement for going to a baseball game, the next night he arrived at work scarcely functioning throughout the night, at least insomnia or sleep walking his way through dough, but then apparently I did things too slow...scarcely any kitchen leadership to train were expressed.  Sadly one hadn't thought one were merely working for hypocritical fuck ups, but something more.  This job was a dead end, and then I were thinking to the tune of not even getting paid for work.  I called in my quit notice with an 'effective immediately'.  The manager without skipping a beat talked as though I were another customer.  I asked if she'd like some feedback as to why I were leaving.  She said 'no'.  The conversation ended there.   I quit three weeks ago, I still have no pay check for the labor..  In retrospect, glad I left that job.  Sadly for a possible script it were one of the few places ever responding back...in a way I imagined something like approvals process and the like were needing completion up until that time, seems in the way of conspiracies, being hired overnight weren't an easy rubber stamp?  All for four weekends of work...  

Years ago, when I were in to this communal farming funk, I almost took a job, maybe I should have, but I had some reservation, only if it hadn't seemed like things were in the convenience of scripting and staging altogether.  All too convenient that another prospect turned me down on the basis of in experience and suddenly it neither matters, and that this sort of response were months in the making down the road.