In modeling any of the elements of the ship the intent is not so much for pure realism, rather what makes for an interesting interactive environment. One of the key goals of the project is entertainment. I found when working to see if I could integrate with the Sim Orbiter program that dealing with all of the elements in a true simulation is very difficult. (Try doing a launch and dock with the International Space station sometime, it requires a lot of work to get there successfully).

On Tuesday we tested the SRConsole application for receiving data by using a small HTTP test program I wrote which simply sends a string using the HTTP client component. Using data generated by the Model program, we were able to successfully deliver the data and the components updated properly. So this means that the issues when running directly between the model and console are sourced in the model application. I made a change in the port numbers so that I could run both programs on the same machine and was able to load both programs in individual debugging sessions.

One of the things that makes an environment seem realistic is the sound that goes along with it. Since there are at least 5 machines in the room there is no reason not to take advantage of the sound cards on them.

I figured I would talk a bit about the plugin architecture. Delphi has been using a plugin architecture for its IDE since Delphi 1 first came out. Delphi has a very strong component framework called the VCL. Any class derived from TComponent can be registered and have it show up on the IDE toolbar to be used within programs. They provided a package type of project that is used to compile the components into package libraries. Essentially a package is a DLL with functions that allow the package to register the contents with the program loading the library.

Backgound on the Spaceroom Tools and Architecture