2 Installation
This section lists the computer hardware requirements for running Orbiter, and contains
download and installation instructions.
2.1 Hardware requirements
The standard ORBITER distribution requires the following minimum hardware features:
· 600 MHz PC or better (Pentium, Athlon, etc.)
· 256 MB RAM or more
· Windows 95/98/Me/2000/XP
· DirectX 7.0 or higher
· DirectX compatible 3D graphics accelerator card with at least 16MB of video RAM (32MB
or more recommended) and DXT texture compression support
· Approximately 100MB of free disk space for the minimum installation (additional highresolution
textures and addons will require more space).
· DirectX compatible joystick (optional)
Installing high-resolution texture packs or addons may have an impact on performance and
could require significantly higher computing specs.
Since ORBITER keeps evolving these specs tend to become obsolete over time. If you
don’t get a reasonable frame rate (approx. ³ 20fps) using the default Orbiter.cfg on a machine
which meets the specs then please drop me a note and I will correct the requirement
list upward.
2.2 Download
The ORBITER distribution can be obtained from one of several Orbiter mirror sites on the
internet. You can find links to these mirrors at the Download page of the ORBITER site,
http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/. Orbiter is distributed in several packages (.zip files). The Base
package contains the basic Orbiter system and is the only required package. All other
packages are optional extensions to the basic system.
All package names contain a 6-digit time stamp (YYMMDD) which allows to identify the modification
date of the package. For example, orbiter060504_base.zip contains the base package
built on May 4, 2006. Note that not all current packages may have the same time stamp. In
particular, high-resolution planetary texture packages are rarely updated and may have an
older time stamp. Check the download pages for the latest versions of all packages.
2.3 Installation
· Create a new folder for the ORBITER installation, e.g. \Program Files\Orbiter.
· If a previous version of ORBITER is already installed on your computer, you should not
install the new version into the same folder, because this could lead to file conflicts. You
may want to keep your old installation until you have made sure that the latest version
works without problems. Multiple ORBITER installations can exist on the same computer.
· Download the Base package from an ORBITER download site into your new ORBITER
folder and unzip it with WinZip or an equivalent utility. Important: Take care to preserve
the directory structure of the package (for example, in WinZip this requires to activate the
“Use Folder Names” option).
· After unzipping the package, make sure your ORBITER folder contains the executable
(Orbiter.exe) and, among other files, the Config, Meshes, Scenarios and Textures subfolders.
· Run Orbiter.exe. This will bring up the ORBITER “Launchpad” dialog, where you can select
video options and simulation parameters.
· You are now ready to start ORBITER. Select a scenario from the Launchpad dialog, and
click the “ORBITER” button!
編集者：
Design of Spacefrontier(2009-11-29 02:19:54)