Space Shuttle Mission 2007By Andrew Herd
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ow and again a change is as good as a rest and a space shuttle simulator is about as much of a change as you can get from Flight Simulator - notice that I say 'a space shuttle simulator' because SSM2007 is not a Microsoft Flight Simulator addon, but a stand-alone sim in its own right, and from what I have seen to date, a good one. The preview is courtesy of the developers, Exciting Simulations, who is marketing the package and the latest version of the simulator that I used was version 0.9, which means that things will have changed by the time the finished product hits the streets - but if you are interested in space flight, it will be worth waiting for. |
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The beta download was just under 120 megs, although your mileage may vary on the release version size. Installation required entry of two keys which were emailed to me. They clearly aren't taking any chances with piracy. I did the review on a 2.66 Ghz Core2Duo with 4 Gb of RAM, and a 768 Mb GeForce 8800GTX running Windows Vista and it went fine with no major bugs apparent - however, I didn't fly every single one of the missions from end to end, largely because life is too short. Believe me, you could spend forever with this program. The installation of the beta created a fairly bare program group and installed an 89 page manual that was more than adequate to use the simulation, although it explains very little about the way the shuttle works.
According to the manual, the developers decided that the simulation should provide as close an experience to reality as possible within the limitation imposed by currently available PC software and hardware and judging by the beta, they have definitely succeeded in that aim. Operating the shuttle is a highly technical exercise and if you think that the Level-D 767 has a complicated panel, wait until you see this - even allowing for the fact that Exciting Simulations have simplified some of the procedures, I can't recall ever seeing such a complex sim, ever. I guess when you think that this is a craft which has to operate as a rocket, an impulse-jet controlled spacecraft and a supersonic glider, it isn't surprising that it has such a multitude of systems, but the impressive thing about the sim is that Exciting Simulations have come up with a method of hand-holding that isn't too obtrusive, yet still makes the operation of the shuttle a challenge. This is despite the fact that you only have to deal with the more modern multifunction display equipped version of the craft, rather than the older analog panel shuttles. What you get is shown in the screenshot below left - showing one of a series of automated checklists that pop up throughout the mission.
What do you get to do, then? Well, there is the launch, which is largely automated, but about as exciting a thing as it is possible to simulate; then you can capture and deploy satellites; dock with the international space station; perform extra-vehicular activities; service the Hubble telescope; re-enter the atmosphere; and fly the approach and landing. Although large parts of the missions are flown under the control of the on-board computers, SSM2007 is far from an arcade-style sim, as you will rapidly find out the first time you have to program the shuttle to do anything, but the rest of the time you can enjoy the view, thanks to satellite imagery licensed for the program from TerraMetrics Inc - the company that provides the ooh and ahh for Google Earth. The best news is that SSM has been under development for a while now and there are plans to expand the scope of the simulation in the future, so stay tuned.
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Once SSM2007 has loaded, you have the choice of a variety of missions which simulate real space shuttle flights - at which point I can hear someone at the back muttering, 'But surely they take days to complete?' which is true, only this is a sim and not only do you have a fast forward button, you can also 'jump into' a mission at half a dozen different stages and even save it, so that you can back up a level if you make a boo-boo, like colliding with the Hubble instead of docking with it.
At the heart of the shuttle are five identical General Purpose Computers (GPCs), built by IBM and running a bespoke operating system. The OS has three major functions: Guidance, Navigation and Control (GNC); Systems Management (SM); and Payload (PL), which is unsupported in flight and isn't part of the sim. Each of these major functions is further subdivided into mission-phase orientated blocks known as Operational Sequences (OPS) which are controlled via a bunch of displays collectively known as the OPS Specialist Function (SPEC) allowing the crew to interact with the GPCs and to monitor progess using Display Modes, known as DISPs. If you find this stuff challenging, please leave now, because you are not psychologically fit to crew a space shuttle (-:
At any stage during a mission, you can monitor your progress by visiting the Mission Control Center, a sim display mode that shows what is going on and where you are - this is at an early stage of development right now, but gives a good overview of the situation. From there, pressing F1 takes you to a spot-plane view of the shuttle, which I used to get many of the screenshots; F3 takes you to a 3D virtual cockpit (above right), which lets you look, but not touch, given that all the displays work, but none of the switches do; F4 rotates you through the various crew seats, which vary depending on which mission phase the shuttle is currently in; and F2 takes you to the most recently accessed 2D panel, an example of which is shown below left. When you are in virtual cockpit mode, you can zoom and pan using the mouse and any time you right click, you will drop into panel selection mode, which lets you use the 2D panels, which are (more or less) fully operational. There are dozens of different 2D panels with which you will need to become familiar and none of them, believe me, have any free space; where there is real estate, there is a control of some description. That includes the ceiling - there is no gravity up there, remember?
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Reading the manual provided with the beta left me a little breathless, because it didn't take a lot of math to figure out that I was missing 99% of the information I needed to operate the ship, and furthermore, given that the cockpit is designed for multiple crew member operation, and that Exciting Simulations have coded a great deal of the systems, my learning process wasn't going to be described so much by a curve as a cliff. But this is where the clever part of the simulation comes in - you don't have to hold twenty zillion key press sequences in your head and spread a 1200 page NASA manual all over the house, because a message window appears at just about every stage and tells you what you need to do, which panels you will have to visit and even highlights the switches you need to press. This process stops just short of actually taking you to the panel and presenting it with the control centered on the screen, so you still have to do a certain amount of detective work, although the panel selector at top left makes it a hell of a lot easier to find your way around. It is a this point that the strengths and weaknesses of the sim simultaneously become apparent, in that although you can hardly go wrong if you follow the on-screen instructions, after fifteen minutes or so of flipping switches and engaging different OPS modes, you begin to wonder what all this stuff is doing, beyond occupy your time. The answers, I guess, lie somewhere deep in the 1200 pages of that elusive NASA operations manual and reason that this phase of the sim is both a strength and a weakness is that while 'completer/finisher' personalities are going to love the precision of it all, turn and burn simmers will groan at the idea of having to wade through another fifteen panel sets and six DISPs, while running the ever-present risk of getting something wrong and having to start that phase of the mission over. The trouble (if it is a trouble) is that there isn't an easy way of avoiding interacting with the panels in order to do the fun bits, like docking and EVAs and re-entry, but then again, it isn't as if the developers promise anything of the sort in the manual, so one can hardly complain. The one opportunity to do some real seat of the pants flying is in the approach phase, when you actually get to fly the bird without any (well, any worth speaking of) electronic interference, a task which requires a certain amount of judgement, given that you are piloting the fastest glider on the planet - in the upper atmosphere, the shuttle pulls something like 18,000 knots.
Graphically, SSM2007 is a treat, although this is largely because of the beauty of the views you get, although if your PC is capable of running in the highest resolution, the earth can look absolutely breathtaking - for what it is worth, the review system always returned over 30 fps at the highest quality setting, so the sim is no resource hog. The view of earth from space is one of the things that keeps dragging astronauts back up there and it is a tribute to SSM2007 that it is easy to get distracted from the task at hand by the view, so be prepared to hit the pause button now and again and drink it all in. The 3D virtual cockpit is impressive on first sight, but largely eye-candy, given that its only useful function is to allow you to pan around and select the 2D panels, which are the heart of the simulation, given that they are your only way of controlling the shuttle, other than a joystick, which only has an application in a couple of mission phases. The team have clearly spent a great deal of work into the 2D panels, which stay sharp right up to 1600 x 1200 on a twenty inch screen and look extremely realistic, although the viewpoint is unnervingly close and you have to pan around a great deal in order to find all the controls you need to operate.
Verdict? OK, it is only a preview, I wasn't looking at finished code, but SSM2007 is very neat and the release deserves to attract a major fan base. Space Shuttle Mission is not an arcade-style sim and so the turn and burn brigade need to look elsewhere, but if procedural sims are your thing, or you want the most realistic simulation of the space shuttle released to date, you have found what you are looking for.
Andrew Herd
andy@flightsim.com
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