Release Notes

In Progress Features

  • Adding star tracker configuration visualization

  • Adding coarse sun sensor configuration visualization

  • Add ability to place the location of the standard camera relative to spacecraft

  • Visualizing the standard camera within the 3D window

  • Better automatic simulation data usage monitoring

  • general GUI enhancements

  • dynamic texture rendering

  • articulating CAD models

  • fuel tank visualization

  • better support for visualizing multiple spacecraft

  • add labels to spacecraft and sensor visualization

Version 0.9.0

  • added an option to Standard Camera GUI panel and vizMessage to supply a custom camera position

  • eliminated camera jitter in body view when pointing at a nearby spacecraft

  • improved reaction wheel panels and HUD to better support multiple spacecraft by tracking the max speed and torque for each spacecraft’s reaction wheels

  • added fields to the vizMessage reaction wheel sub message to allow user to set the max torque and max speed

  • fixed broken link between Main scene manager and direct comm controller to restore direct comm liveStream as illustrated in scenarioBasicOrbitStream

  • improved support for Unity’s physical camera properties, focal length and sensor size, when setting up Custom Cameras

Version 0.8.1

  • trigger colliders now resize to fit the spacecraft mesh being used (improves the user experience when double-clicking to change camera targets)

  • fixed a bug that prevented multiple custom models being loaded back-to-back

  • rebased on Unity2019.2.16f1

Version 0.8.0

  • The camera view panel screen shot button now stores the PNG image in the user’s home folder

  • Changed how standard cameras work. The user can invoke readily 2 standard cameras and specify for which spacecraft these are attached. This scales much better with lots of spacecraft where before we attached 3 standard cameras to each spacecraft by default

  • made it possible to launch vizard in Black Lion live streaming mode from command line

  • Added option under File menu to compress simulation data

  • usability improvements to custom CAD model inventory and tuning GUI panels

Version 0.7.0

  • added ability to load in a custom CAD obj file to replace the default spacecraft model

  • added the ability to replace any simulation object with a custom object or a default shape like sphere, cone, cylinder, etc.

  • added vizMessage user settings support for custom models to allow automatic import at runtime

Version 0.6.0

  • scriptable vizMessage user settings allow users to customize the start-up configuration of vizard. Users can now toggle spacecraft and planet coordinate systems, orbit lines, actuator Heads Up Displays, actuator panels.

  • users can specify a custom skybox by providing a file path to the desired texture, one of the default skybox textures, or a plain black background with the skybox user setting

  • Spacecraft camera vizMessages can be configured to user specified headings or targets and panels can be automatically visible on start-up.

  • configuration messages specifying multiple pointing vectors and/or Keep Out or Keep In cones can be added to generate these items automatically during Vizard initialization

Version 0.5.0

  • added a lightweight opNav mode that can livestream camera images to the Basilisk simulation over the Direct Comm connection on demand

  • improved main camera panning

  • added support for reaction wheel spin sub message

  • scriptable user setting message for Ambient Brightness

Version 0.4.0

  • New option to set the ambient brightness

  • New Camera menu option to select the target object

  • General code fixes and improvements

  • Added option to toggle off/on orbit illustration

  • Added keyboard support to quit the application

Version 0.3.0

  • Initial public release of the new Unity based Basilisk visualization tool.

  • This tool is able to illustrate spacecraft translational position, trajectory, orientation and primary celestial bodies.

  • Currently this public Vizard copy support saving Basilisk simulation data to file to be then viewed in Vizard.

  • In development feature is being able to live stream Basilisk simulation data to Vizard directly

  • The Visualization can show a spacecraft centric view (default), a planet centric view (enabled by double clicking on planet or zooming out even further), and a heliocentric view (by zoom out even further)

  • Spacecraft and planet axes can be toggled on or off

  • Screen size can by dynamically changed

  • The menu bar at the top is dynamic in that it only shows device options if such devices are actually modeled and sent as messages to Vizard.

  • Heads-up visualization of the thrusters is possible

  • Device state panels can be enables for Reaction Wheels or Thrusters

  • Separate camera views can be invoked to get perspectives from the spacecraft along particular body-fixed directions

  • Direction vectors can be added from the spacecraft to other object to always illustrate the heading to the sun, the Earth, etc.

  • Keep-out and keep-in zones can be set within Vizard to visualize if a celestial object is visible within a body-fixed cone. This enables checking if a solar panel axis is within some degrees of the sun, or checking that a sensor axis is outside a cone relative to the sun.