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FAQ and manuals
Quickstart
Add-on making
Vessel controls
Stargates
World log
Controls FAQ
Spaceway performance FAQ
Spaceway procedural vessels FAQ
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FAQ - Quickstart
On first run you will find several options windows opened.
In the one on the left you can select a control scheme (Options->Control sets).
There are two available by default - Orbiter-like and Common-kind.
If you choose Orbiter control set, you're likely know what to do, so i'll use default control set as the example.
If you have a joystick, there is an option in the Options menu to enable it.
A window on the right named Joystick would show the current position of the stick, useful to check if it works.
You start the game by resuming (Enter) or loading (L) buttons of startup menu.
Let's start the default scenario - press Enter or click resume.
Once it loads you'll see the situation from the external view.
The camera can be in the cockpit of the selected vessel, or outside of it, looking at it.
Moving the mouse with right button pressed rotates the camera, mouse wheel zooms.
To get into the cockpit, press F1.
In there you can look around the same way you rotate the camera in external view.
Home key returns the camera back to staring ahead.
On the left and right you can see MFDs - utility displays.
They are selected by F5 and F6 keys, left and right one respectively, or by Sel buttons below them.
The buttons on the sides control their functions.
Some of MFDs can be mouse-controlled, for example star map one respond to the same mouse motions as the main camera - rotate with right key down, wheel to zoom.
This is an open sandbox kind of game, so there is no specific goals.
For a quick flight, you can press GO button on the autopilot (right MFD in default scenario), it is pre-programmed to take you into orbit
Controls are described below, so i'll name several important things:
-Rotation is inertial! If it gets out of hand or you'd want to stop it precisely, K key does that.
-Time compression works by T and R keys. The higher the speed, the less is precision, so autopilot usually limits it when active.
-Ctrl+X exits the game, saving the state into current, Ctrl+C saves the game into the separate file without exiting.
-To exit without saving close the window
-There is no fullscreen mode
-To pause, press Ctrl+P
-F11 opens a graphics settings panel
-Some vessels have lights, 1..9 keys toggle them.
-Ask on the forums if you have any problems
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FAQ - Controls
Controls FAQ
-First, there are two modes of vessel controls:
:Realistic Newtonian, with inertia but without aerodynamics
:Arcade mode, with rotations like in star wars
-By default mode is switched by Q key (V in other set)
-Currently every unmodded vessel have 3 engines:
:Main, pushes forward, upper indicator, Num+ controls
:Retro, pushes backwards, middle indicator, Num- controls (linked with main)
:Hover, pushes up, lower indicator, Num0 controls
:All engines are stopped with Num* key, hover only - NumDel key
:For precise thrust controls hold down Ctrl while using engine controls
-Orientation (RCS) thrusters:
:Can be in either rotation or translation mode
:In translation mode they gently push the vessel in given direction
:In rotation mode they give rotation moment without shifting:
:-Num1, Num3 - Yaw rotation, left-right translation
:-Num2, Num8 - Pitch (inverted) rotation, down-up translation
:-Num4, Num6 - Roll rotation
:-Num9, Num6 - Back-forward translation
:-Num5 - kill all rotation (unrealistic so far)
-For interstellar or just rapid motions you can use a hyperdrive (on all unmodded vessels so far):
:Best used in arcade mode
:Acceleration - Shift+Num+, decelleration - Shift+Num-
-View
:F1 key toggles internal (cockpit/spacesuit) and external views
:In external view F2 toggle projection and mode
:Mouse wheel zooms (or moves in ground mode), speed altered by Alt, Ctrl and Shift being held
:Z and X change FOV, Ctrl+X restores default 60 degrees one
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FAQ - Spaceway performance
-Planet texture generation mode:
:GPU mode - fast if fast GPU, average on bad CPU+fast GPU, awful on moderate and below GPU.
:CPU mode - fast on multicore CPUs, dreadful on single-core CPUs.
-Planet texture resolution:
:CPU - always 32x32.
:GPU - user-defineable. 128x128 seems the most lag-less default
-Planet textures ordering:
:Near first mode - good if starting on a planet, bad if viewed from space
:Far first - opposite
-Texture timing and count per slice:
Each timing slice either count textures are generated or generation ceases as soon as the time of slice runs out.
-Performance tweaks:
:Disable shadows, (F11-7 twice), would add a few FPS.
:Disable all nice effects (F11-U), could add a lot of FPS
:Disable Sky background (F11-4), could add a lot of FPS on slow systems
:Disable terrain (F11-5), planets go flat and low-res, but FPS is guaranteed to increase noticeably
-Performance-physics link:
If fast physics option is off, then the physics are FPS independent, meaning the sim is not real-time.
However, if frame takes more than two seconds to render, the physics would start to go chaotic as a failsafe.
With it on, the lower the FPS, the higher the chaos
-Procedural vessels:
:Time to compile depends on complexity, can get quite a while for large ones on slow systems. Avoid having many vessels in such case.
-Autopilots:
:No performance impact noted
-Scripts:
:No performance impact noted
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FAQ - Spaceway procedural vessels
To make a vessel with procedural mesh it's cfg file should have mesh listed as dynamic.
The actual mesh is defined between
:dynmesh:
and
:EOM:
tags, in format that is written out by vessel editor program.
So far the editor program can't write vessel cfgs directly, being a separate entity.
The concept so far is a set of parametrically defined blocks, each of which have some features, some input parameters, and several linking points.
Linking points can be of different types, and only links of the same kind can be joined.
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