[Nuke]

There are cockpits in some (if not most) ships, and enabling them requires a bit of messing around with tables, as described here. Though personally I don't concider them too awesome just yet.

Cockpits still kind of suck, but they're doable.

The mods you absolutely must play are Silent Threat Reborn, Derelict, Blue Planet, and Transcend. Windmills and The Procyon Insurgency are also great.

you lie!

[The E]

Yeah, great stuff, nuke. Can you release it, or will you just taunt people with it?

[Nuke]

the plan was to release it (as well as atmospherics) at a point when it was stable or near completion. however development time is a lot longer than i predicted, so i might put up beta versions to show off the existing features, and to accelerate lua development (both inside and outside of the fs engine). on the other hand the cockpit scripts are way more stable than atmospherics. id probibly do what aardwolf did for the fsrts mod and put it up on an svn server somewhere. il look into that.

[Klaustrophobia]

You're a nuclear engineer, Klaus?

That's quite neat. I'm a former aerospace engineering student pursuing civil engineering right now. 

I'm still in school, but just about done.  I'm finishing up the core nuclear stuff this semester, and next fall I'll be doing cleanup on the gen-ed stuff and adding in a minor in general physics.  What school are you at?  I'm at NC State.

As for the campaigns, first I'm gonna play FS2 through again with FSO.  So far it has been amazing.  Though I'm having to re-learn how to fly.  I no longer have my old Cyborg 3D stick.  I got an x45 for Lock-On, and it's a bit of a bear to fly FS2 with. 

[General Battuta]

You have 3.6.10 Final and the latest MVPs?

[Thaeris]

You're a nuclear engineer, Klaus?

That's quite neat. I'm a former aerospace engineering student pursuing civil engineering right now. 

I'm still in school, but just about done.  I'm finishing up the core nuclear stuff this semester, and next fall I'll be doing cleanup on the gen-ed stuff and adding in a minor in general physics.  What school are you at?  I'm at NC State.

As for the campaigns, first I'm gonna play FS2 through again with FSO.  So far it has been amazing.  Though I'm having to re-learn how to fly.  I no longer have my old Cyborg 3D stick.  I got an x45 for Lock-On, and it's a bit of a bear to fly FS2 with. 

I was formerly a student and Cadet of the USAF at Embry-Riddle of Prescott, AZ. After a medical disqualification/heinous semester, I transferred to a CC in my home state (IN). This is just to get a few lower-level courses out of the way. I'll then transfer to Purdue to finish in civil engineering.  

What are you looking at doing with nuclear engineering, by the way?

[Klaustrophobia]

You have 3.6.10 Final and the latest MVPs?

yep, i did one of the full offline installers. 

What I'm going to do, I haven't fully figured out yet.  I haven't been able to secure any summer internships so far, which is REALLY not helping.  I'm considering going into the Navy as a nuclear officer aboard a carrier.  That's a really hard life choice right there though.  I don't think I would have a problem with navy life, but the 5 year commitment is giving me doubts.  I kindof feel like I'll be loosing 5 years of my "normal" life right out of college.  Other than that, I'll probably end up at either a power utility or as a civilian contractor working on naval systems. 

[Klaustrophobia]

btw, is there somewhere some list of all the major features?  I found changelogs and such, but some things I don't know what they actually mean.  Glide, for example.  I see it referenced a lot of places, but don't know what it actually is.  I remember the "glide on" or something controll in FS2 retail, but as far as I could ever figure, it didn't do anything.

[Thaeris]

Glide pertains to a feature designed originally for "The Babylon Project" (a total conversion of the FSO engine to the Babylon 5 universe) and then used in other mods and TCs (total conversions) that typically use semi-newtonian physics. Basically, once glide is activated, the ship will fly on its last flight vector while pointing in what ever direction you point it. This is not used in standard FSO.

"Glide" as far as retail FS goes probably pertained to the graphics card you were using.

[The E]

Protip: You can edit your posts here. Looks better than double posting.

As for glide, it's a semi-newtonian flight mode that some mods (Like The Babylon Project or Diaspora) use to better simulate the combat found in their respective universes (Babylon 5 and nBSG, respectively). It is not enabled for any FreeSpace ships, and not found in FS2 retail exes.
What you saw in retail was a feature called slide, which are a set of controls that let you slide around a bit. Watch Dragons or Maras closely, they will sometimes perform such maneuvers. Note that those are the only ships in FS2 which can perform it.

[Klaustrophobia]

That's what I figured it was, but never seemed to make it work.  I DID notice it on the dragons of FS1, but never really picked up on it in FS2.  I figured it to be an AI-only feature that didn't work for player controll, and was explained away by putting into the dragon mission breifing that the lateral thrusters didn't work.  Does the slide actually work on the terran mara in fs2?

[The E]

Yep. But since those controls are, AFAIK, not bound to anything by default, it's easy to miss. And it's not very awesome by itself, just a little thruster that lets you move at about 5 m/sec in a given direction.

[Klaustrophobia]

i imagine if you got good at combining it with normal flight you could pull off some really nasty maneuvers or some really impressive close-in flying.  Shame there isn't a terran fighter that does it.  But now I have to go figure out how to map those controlls for the one mission you fly a mara

[Nuke]

i use the feature quite abit because really it doesnt make sense for any spacecraft to not have 6dof control. now make it possible to have a vertical and horizontal thrust axis (ive actually pulled this off with scripting and some hacks).

[jr2]

I got an x45 for Lock-On, and it's a bit of a bear to fly FS2 with. 

I have an x45 too, and it can't touch the accuracy of a mouse... so I don't use it.  Which is really a shame cause I hate the drag-pickup-drag when dogfighting.

[Klaustrophobia]

no joystick can touch the accuracy of a mouse.  but i just can't bring myself to play any game where i'm flying something without a joystick.  it just doesn't feel right.  as i've seen mentioned before, i sometimes use the mouse for sniping at turrets or far distant enemies on a steady course.  other than that, i'm stuck overshooting and correcting until i knock off the rust and get used to the x45.  i get a bit of arm fatigue from this beast of a stick.  on that note, off to start a feature suggestion thread.

btw, I noticed the faint blue crosshair that is sometimes present lagging behind as I turn following the arc of the primary shots.  Is that supposed to provide some kind of useful cue, or is it pretty much just cosmetic? 

[Zacam]

It means you need to download the 3610_Patch.vp and put it in your mediavps dir.

[Klaustrophobia]

i did that to fix the 4th mission crash problem, i guess i just didn't notice it was gone.  it didn't seem to be constant when it was there.  why was it taken out?  it looked cool, if nothing else.

[The E]

It's a script that is supposed to show you your true flight path. But it's not a function that has much use in retail FS2 (it's much more suited to mods or TCs that implement semi-newtonian flight physics), so it was taken out again.

[Nuke]

i owned an x45 at one point, i remember one of the springs broke, so i opened the stick, removed both springs, and replaced them with rubber bands, have to say it was an improvement.