Deep Space Update
28 Sep 2022Tiffany Yür
Mm.. Oo-Kay, I guess... One has to wonder the efficiency of the Pilot's Federation signalling, but I don't know how long time the update to ship systems had been loading on the background. Anyway, I was rather surprised, here 9800 Lys from Sol, to recieve a message on display after dinner when powering up the ship. "Do you want to update to the general ship user interface 4.0.? You CAN undo this if you don't like it. Reboot with update,
yes (update to GSUI 4.0)
no (continue with GSUI 3.8)
Y/N
Now, I have quite a hefty pile of planetary and star data stored in the computers so this required some serious consideration. I don't want to lose it if the update requires too much of the data storage. After fishing whatever information I could find on the deep space network of Inara and couple other channels, I was pretty certain most of the update to GSUI would be updates to the settlement locations, some have relocated since last contact, new ones have been built etc... But then, several other changes would be made as well. These involve the Navigation Interface, changes to the Pilot's Federation Fashion Catalogue Holo-Me (it is expanded a bit) and even the colors of the shaders of the cockpit windows (changing the colors of what you see in space) and the floating navigational markers on it.
Calculating that I should have enough free storage for the exploration data for the rest of the journey to civilization (~5-8 KLy), I decided I can take a break in the mapping and flying. So, the AspX is a bit old tech, i5, but it's of the 7th generation, a pretty robust machine having added storage for data ; the main window screen has seen better days, and is of very old standard. You literally can see the pixellation on the window, as well as discoloration on a couple places. Nearby stars are more than a pixel wide so it is usable. What I can't see though, is when the orbit lines are in front or in back of the star/planet, so regularly I just coast past the target body. Should really rely more on numbers.
Power down. Only air regeneration on.
Hit 'yes'. Computer down.
Updating.......
.......
.......
...... 2 hours...... ...... ....... Beep Beep!
3,5 hours total. Ok, on an orbit on a habitable zone but probably 400 lys away from the next ship.
At first I was pretty shocked when the ship interior lights turned blindingly red. Tried a (preprogrammed) jump. The colors of the Display are totally off and I can barely make out the readings.
"Testing... Testing..." what the quirksikfjkw are you testing, machine? "... testing done. System needs to boot again. Let us do everything for you." Computer powered down and the blinding red lights turned off and then back on.
"Are the graphics settings good? Yes/No." 'No!' , I screamed, and to my surprise there was a menu for the graphics settings. I had to go them through twice to get readable displays, both times rebooting to the main menu you see first when you power up.
The ship feels a bit different but I guess I'll get used to it. And the update indeed saved the old GSUI.
Things you do if you want the Galnet News Service.
CMDR Kyyttö Yür-Smith.