More MSVA sketches

 The concept work was supposed to end on Monday, but I was on a roll, so I kept sketching.

General vehicle sketches

I wanted to introduce a technological constraint as a distinctive visual cue for Orbital Elements, like how Star Trek's UFP ships have a recognisable visual language of warp nacelles and saucers. The best candidate for this cue is the Mach-Fontier Inductor, a technology that massively reduces the apparent inertia of a ship, allowing vehicles to travel the solar system at miraculous speeds and fuel efficiency. 

Instead of the MF inductor being a small indistinct component at the heart of the vehicle, it is now a large ring that slightly leads the bulk of the ship, as the dampening field occurs behind the centre of the ring.

Inertial dampening using Mach-Fontier field induction rings (MFFIRs)

After sketching rigid rings, I envision the ring as a giant inflatable structure, tethered to the body of the space vehicle with cables, evoking the form of giant solar sail craft. I think the prototype MF drive was nearly 2km in diameter—vast!! Over the last century, the size of the MF inductor has been greatly reduced, at the cost of increased energy input, mostly delivered by the move to matter-annihilation (anti-matter) drives.

MF inductors have a minimum diameter, so light rigs have proportionately large rings, while rings are less dominant on larger vehicles.                                                                                                                  

Witcher 3

Last night I reinstalled Witcher 3 because it was just rereleased as an enhanced version. It encouraged me to install the latest Nvidia drivers, which I hadn't been using because they had caused Blender to stop working. I installed the drivers and restarted. Blender worked fine. I reinstalled the Atmosphere 2 addon, which caused Blender to crash on first use. Blehh!

Restarted Blender; it all seems to be working. Still not a good feeling seeing Blender crash to the desktop. I will see how it goes; it would be great to have Atmos 2 available to use.

Atmosphere 2 in the house, with its enhanced clouds