New Orion's Arm Space Elevator

[eburacum45]

You can have it today.
I have reduced the download from 23 megs (zipped) to 3 megs (zipped)(!)

One problem was I had placed four extra elevator cars halfway down the tape, and forgotten about them. They were old models and very high on polys.

There were also several human passengers in the cars which I obtained from a freeware site; they were much too big- so I've made a very basic human shape to replace them.



Here is the new download link
http://www.orionsarm.com/downloads/Orio ... nstalk.zip

Selden suggested that I add an empty object to make it easier to get to the elevator cars, so I have added an object called 'Elevator viewpoint' which can be found in the Solar System Browser.

[ajtribick]

I can get this to run now, and I get a not-totally-unusable frame rate in the Basic render path.

[Dollan]

We can always photoshop in actual people, too, when it comes to screenshots for the OA site....

...John...

[Chuft-Captain]

Steve,

Although much improved, there's a couple of problems still:
1. you still have 190,000 poly's in the tape,
2. in your SSC: for the viewpoint suggested by Selden, you reference a mesh called empty.ssc. I think however, you may have forgotten to include this mesh in the zip file.

Anyway, I took another look at your model, and I've done a complete repair/redesign. (See the README)
Reduced the tape from ~200,000 faces to 6, and completely re-modelled the elevator using a technique which makes it much more scalable for low-spec machines, and very easy to navigate around.

I think this is a big improvement and now it even runs on my laptop with 16MB shared graphics!! (on your machine I expect you'll get 60FPS from this model)

Let me know what you think anyway... DOWNLOAD HERE

(NOTE: for 1.5.x only)

[eburacum45]

Thank you very much. That works exceptionally well; the tape is nice and tape-like too. Since the climbers are now defined separately they can be replaced by the design of your (or anyone else's) choice.

Incidentally I often use an "empty" (actually absent) mesh to define invisible objects; the fact that no mesh is included doesn't seem to affect the operation (on my system at least).

[Chuft-Captain]

Incidentally I often use an "empty" (actually absent) mesh to define invisible objects; the fact that no mesh is included doesn't seem to affect the operation (on my system at least).

This is risky as not including the mesh can in certain circumstances result in a dim barely visible, yet opaque sphere (from some angles anyway) which, depending on it's size and position, may intersect with visible objects and enclose all or parts of them giving the appearance that the model is not there or cut in half. (this happens on my system anyway)
You may be able to see this effect in this model if you temporarily remove the empty.3ds model, then goto Climber01. (at least that's what alerted me to the missing mesh)

Thank you very much. That works exceptionally well; the tape is nice and tape-like too. Since the climbers are now defined separately they can be replaced by the design of your (or anyone else's) choice.

You are welcome.
What frame-rate do you get at this URL:

... oh and please tell me your config (graphics VRAM and RAM) as well.
(I get 4fps - on 1.3Ghz laptop, 16MB shared graphics, and 240MB RAM.)
EDIT: sorry, that's a 1.4.1 URL... I'll get you a 1.5 one soon.


EDIT: Here's the 1.5.1 URL: (click on the pic)...

( 5fps - on 1.5Ghz laptop, 64MB shared graphics, and 248MB RAM.)

[Aliced1989]

Cool!

[Fenerit]

There were also several human passengers in the cars which I obtained from a freeware site; they were much too big- so I've made a very basic human shape to replace them.

Look at this:

http://www.artist-3d.com/free_3d_models ... ount=count
http://www.artist-3d.com/free_3d_models ... ount=count

There are anothers in the mesh category.
Bye