Starship Pilot

The Future Simulated:

Starship Pilot

Free* software download located at the bottom of this page.

Subj: STAR: V2.02 Starship Pilot
Date: October 2, 1995
From: BillWiesel

File: STARSHIP.ZIP (157500 bytes)
DL time (28800 baud): < 1 minute
Download count: 7657

AUTHOR: William Wiesel
EQUIPMENT: IBM PC, 350K, hard disk desirable
NEEDS: An unziping utility

Keywords: Wiesel, Space, Sim, Simulation, Simulator, Star, Craft,
Spacecraft, 3D
Type: Shareware

A fully 3D simulation of spaceflight, written by an astronomer and
astronautical engineer. Dock with space stations, land on new worlds,
explore alien ruins, all in our own solar system realistically depicted from
the latest spacecraft data.

To run enter SP

Documentation: readme.txt, manual.txt

Although speculating about the past is always enjoyable, sometimes it is fun to ponder the future as well. Most folks of a scientific bent assume that someday the human race will conquer space and colonize the other worlds of our solar system. It is even possible that one day humanity will overcome the technological and theoretical limitations involved and expand to other star systems. I sometimes wonder what life would be like in this possible future- an era where space travel will be an everyday reality for the common person.

In 1996 I stumbled across the listing posted above in an on-line software library and found a very intriguing portayal of what humanity's role in space will be in the not-so-distant future. William Wiesel's Starship Pilot presents a unique opportunity to experience the act of piloting a spaceship in an undisclosed number of decades (centuries?) in the future. The program accurately reproduces the immense scale of star systems and the challenges involved in steering a ship through them.

Indeed, Starship Pilot is not a game. There are no missions to complete and no points to accrue. The program is a simulator of what it would be like to pilot a private "star yacht" and visit various ports of call and points of interest scattered through space.

As a search of the internet found only a single mention of Starship Pilot on a game review site (on the Universal Videogame List), I have decided to dedicate a page here to recognize this remarkable yet little known program.

The screenshots above show Mars from orbit and a space station in a hollowed-out asteroid. Yes, you can dock with the asteroid, and there are five points of interest worth landing on Mars to see (plus two space stations in orbit)- you can also land anywhere on the surface of Mars or any other solid planet, for that matter. In the full version of the program there are a dozen star systems, several dozen planets and moons (very few of which are inhabited, though), and countless space stations/docks, ships and derelicts for you to visit.

That is the beauty of Starship Pilot- you can go anywhere within the simulation that you want at any time. In Starship Pilot you fly through space and visit different locations in a total 3D environment. As you approach a planet it grows larger; if you pivot your ship up, down, left or right the perspective changes accordingly. The EGA graphics consist entirely of rather simple polygons, but even so they are creatively rendered. Besides, after you have spent any length of time navigating through the depths of space with only the distant stars to watch, even a polygon is a welcome sign of intelligent life. On a similar note, the only "sound effects" are simple but effective tones generated by the PC speaker.

How accurate is Starship Pilot? Well, compare the simulation's rendering of Tranquility Base with a NASA photograph taken from the same angle in 1969. Notice how closely the positions of the Lunar Module, seismic-measuring device and American flag correspond between the two images.

The simulation's author, William Wiesel, designed no fewer than eleven star systems in addition to our own, all of which are layed out according to physical laws. Some are near duplicates of the Solar System, others contain two or three suns. The stars you get to see up close range from a hot class F type through the familiar class G to small, cold class M stars, with the occasional class K supergiant thrown in. Following the pattern we would expect, most of these systems have small, rocky planets in the inner orbits and massive gas giants farther out, each orbited by its own collection of moons. In some of the systems there is one rocky planet which is located at just the right distance from the star it orbits and has enough mass to retain an atmosphere. On these Wiesel gave his imagination free rein in constructing welcoming space colonies and mysterious alien ruins.

The ship in the simulation is an "Antares 5000SX staryacht" capable of a hefty 50 G's of acceleration and is equipped with a time-stasis feature that allows you to speed up the passage of time so that travel takes minutes instead of days/months. The Antares 5000SX can be named whatever you like and homeported at any landing pad or space dock. Your space ship is capable of "tail sitting" landings on planetary surfaces, mid-space dockings and can even jump between 12 separate star systems thanks to a number of "jump gates" located in deep space. To access a jump gate (which works on the actual scientific theory that "wormholes" may exist which allow travel through folded space-time) you have to pass through the gate at light speed, instantaneously your ship will pop out in the other system light years away, only she will be headed in the opposite direction and decelerating. Although the engine is incredibly efficient, every once in a while you will still need to dock for fuel... otherwise you may find yourself in a bad way. Deep space is no place be without the ability to generate thrust!

"Astrogation" is accomplished via a simple yet comprehensive keyboard-only interface. Mastering the art of manuvering the craft is tricky with the realistic gravity fields and orbits to contend with. Fortunately the simulation includes a variety of useful displays which are very helpful in plotting a course and setting up an orbit of your own, and the program adequately encompasses both the finicky action of moving meter-by-meter to dock in space as well as the more robust manuever of accelerating to light speed across a hundred-billion or more kilometers of empty space.

A nifty feature built into the simulation is that it takes the date and time from your CPU clock when it is first executed, so as you travel using time-stasis you can see how many months and days have elapsed since you began your voyage. Even with the "jump gates" and an engine generating an incredible 50 Gs of thrust it is amazing how much time and space has to be traversed to get around.

Although the sounds and graphics and lack of Y2K compatibilty (experienced on Windows 95/98/XP platforms) date the program, my only real complaint about it is the inability to leave the ship and see more of the fascinating locations that can be viewed through the ship's viewscreen. As it is, it still boggles my mind that even the full version of StarPilot is less than 200KB in size. Even in 1994 most "entertainment" programs would take up at least one entire 1.44MB floppy (if not five or ten!), How William Wiesel managed to squeeze such remarkable detail into such small files is a wonder of the universe in its own right.

DOWNLOAD AREA

Starship Pilot is an MS DOS program. It will run in Windows 95/98/XP, however this commentator's experience is that StarPilot is not Y2K compliant. To avoid a "memory error" message you may need to set your system clock to 1999 or earlier before running StarPilot. It may be possible to avoid the Y2K bug entirely (and generally improve the progam's performance on modern Windows computers) by running it on a DOS emulator such as DosBox. You may also want to use a time/date manipulating utility such as TAD to allow you to explore Starship Pilot at different dates (using TAD in conjunction with DosBox allows for dates to be set from January 1, 1980 to December 31, 2155- without altering your CPU clock!).

This software is supplied as is, without warranty of any kind. Download/run it at your own risk. To open the ZIP archives you will need an unzipping utility such as FilZip.

Click on the links below to download:*

Starship Pilot V2.02: starship.zip (153KB)

Starship Pilot V2.06: starship_full.zip (198KB)

Also, check out the StarPilot Extras page for downloadable utilities.

*Note: Only the shareware/freeware version (2.02) was originally a free download. This version only includes three star systems. The full version (2.06) cost $29.95 by mail order in 1995 and included 12 star systems. The full version is presented here for download under the assumption that it constitutes "abandonware" as a search of the net does not indicate that the software's author, William Wiesel, currently maintains these or any other versions of the program for public consumption. Both versions presented here have a mailing address in the README.TXT file for contacting the author's company (Aphelion Software) and I would suggest that anyone who finds the program worthwhile attempt to send in the requested payment. If the program's author or anyone holding the title to the program would rather I did not have the software or screenshots posted here, please e-mail me and I will remove them immediately.

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