Rocksim vs. Open Rocket

Shop deals on ebay
madcow rocketry
Wildman Rocketry
Onebadhawk
The Rocketry Forum

Help Support The Rocketry Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Rocksim can do fins on a boat tail and I believe staged flights but that’s about all it can do more than OpenRocket. Rocksim is not worth the ridiculous price tag they charge for it.
 
It is easy to do a manual override for CD in Rocksim. Can that also be done in OpenRocket?
 
For 98% of the functionality, OR gets my vote. It's easy enough to use and after data from a first flight I can get sim outputs that are within 5% of real world performance.

RS may do a few more things that, for many of us aren't in our normal swim lane, but your rockets won't go any higher just because your wallet is lighter! :)
 
You can have a boat tail in OR; it's just attaching fins to one that requires workarounds that can deaccurize the Sim.
 
Next version of OR will support fins-on-transitions, but unfortunately the release is still likely a long way off. :( I have hopes (maybe not well-founded in facts) of a public beta sometime sooner, but who knows at this point.

If anyone knows Java and wants to help out, the project could sure use it.
 
Thanks for the CD override plugin link. I have both programs, but most TARC teams that I work with only use OR.
 
I use both, depending on the flight profile.

RS is good for flights below transonic, but not reliably accurate for anything above that range. A convenient feature of RS is the visual representation of the launch, which from my experience is pretty accurate predicting stability issues off the pad or in non-optimal windy conditions. OR also models stability, and has several graph options to review. However, it takes a bit of interpretation.

BTW you can do a boat tail in OR. Attached is a file for my 54mm Rainmaker. This uses a 54mm-38mm boat tail. I have several other models as well in OR that use a boat tail, the largest being a 4" to 54mm boat tail, which is the Aeropack retainer.
 

Attachments

  • RainMaker 54.ork
    2.5 MB · Views: 17
Arsenal78 said:
Yes and no. OpenRocket does not have manual CD override by default, however with OpenRocket being free and open source, someone did make a plugin for OpenRocket to manually change the CD.

Post #18 is the plugin
https://www.rocketryforum.com/threads/changing-cd-in-openrocket.139708/
Click to expand...

Whatever plugins exist are not widely known nor easily found. They are not easily coded either, even for computer scientists. Despite the utopia of free and Open Source, OpenRocket still lacks the extra features of Rocksim that most people like.

I pay attention to the atmospheric models. OR has something messed up with the launch site elevation, temperature, and pressure. Oddly, it won't plot air density in the simulation. RS is spot on for atmospheric data.

Frankly, both products are dead in the water. The Rocksim developer isn't doing anything and won't relinquish the source code. The Open Rocket community hasn't release a new version in 4.5 years. I am kinda waiting for the next big thing in simulation.
 
Buckeye said:
Whatever plugins exist are not widely known nor easily found. They are not easily coded either, even for computer scientists. Despite the utopia of free and Open Source, OpenRocket still lacks the extra features of Rocksim that most people like.

I pay attention to the atmospheric models. OR has something messed up with the launch site elevation, temperature, and pressure. Oddly, it won't plot air density in the simulation. RS is spot on for atmospheric data.

Frankly, both products are dead in the water. The Rocksim developer isn't doing anything and won't relinquish the source code. The Open Rocket community hasn't release a new version in 4.5 years. I am kinda waiting for the next big thing in simulation.
Click to expand...
OR is by no means dead in the water, although I can understand why you would think that. Unfortunately it really needs more developers. Recently one of the primary developers needed to withdraw due to work commitments.

It's moving forward, but sloooowly.
 
I planned on helping on OR development and I have already successfully downloaded the latest development code and rebuilt it. The problem is there is no forum or chat board to discuss what needs to be done and how things are organized, so it is very difficult to locate anything. All I could do is email a few of the former devs and hope they respond, so far only 1 has responded at all and he has been only limited help.
 
I am a pretty experienced Java developer. I have looked at the OR code and some of it is fairly difficult to understand. Some documentation might help.
 
Well if you find any please share it! What I found was useless. Have you gotten the latest code. If you need help to build let me know. That is one thing I managed to do.
 
Have either of you joined the dev mailing list and asked any questions there? That would be a good place to start. I'll make sure you get a response.

I'm mainly focusing on testing so I can't help much with code issues.
 
Did not even know there was a dev mailing list.
 
Bat-mite said:
RS has tube fins and ring fins. And gets updated more often.
Click to expand...
"Gets updated more often". I have been using RS since 2013 and I can't recall the last time RS was updated, I think once. I have been using OR since about 2014 and it's been updated 6 times since then.

Check OR's Wiki release notes. As a compassion try to even find the version history published online for RS.
 
While Rocksim might have a few more bells and whistles, it's moreso aimed toward competition and record breakers. The normal flier could probably care less about atmospheric conditions and all that stuff. OpenRocket is perfect for the casual flier that wants a good enough altitude prediction. Rocksim isn't worth the $123 when OpenRocket can do 95% of the stuff. Both haven't been updated in years so that's a bigger reason to not pay for Rocksim (why pay for a dead program?). I can understand OpenRocket being slow to update since it's community based but I'd like a little more activity on updates if I were to pay over $100 for a software.
 
mpitfield said:
"Gets updated more often". I have been using RS since 2013 and I can't recall the last time RS was updated, I think once. I have been using OR since about 2014 and it's been updated 6 times since then.

Check OR's Wiki release notes. As a compassion try to even find the version history published online for RS.
Click to expand...
OR 15.03 has been out for almost 4.5 years. In that same time period, RS has released 9.3, 9.4 and 9.5.
 
There is no doubt that the 4.5 years since the last OR release is Too Long. My impression is that the feature set for the new release (mainly, the addition of pods and a few other things) really caused some big changes to the code, and caused a lot of breakage. Coupled with the fact there there is a too-small crew working on it in their spare time, and you have the current situation.

Certainly, support of pods is a very important addition, and in the long run it will have been worth it. But my sincere hope is that once the current release goes out (which it will, eventually), the project can focus on smaller, more frequent releases. At least, that's what I will be advocating for.
 
Bottom line: if you aren't using pods, tube fins or ring fins, OR is free and works great! You need RS for the aforementioned, and if you like the little animation of your launch simulation.
 
OR does do tube fins, although they are labeled "experimental" and I can't vouch for accuracy.

Lack of tail ring support is frustrating especially for me. :) (not even in the upcoming release).
 
Jeff Curtis said:
I've been using Open Rocket, but am wondering what benefits I would get from having Rocksim.
Click to expand...

Apogee offers dozens of articles, how-tos, and technical info on using RockSim in the (free) Peak of Flight Newsletter. These are all reviewed for technical accuracy, neatly organized, and go into in-depth detail. Help with OpenRocket requires mad searching of this forum or maybe YouTube.
 

Similar threads

Mustang67
Consulting work for Open Rocket or Rocksim expertise
Replies
15
Views
439
OzHybrid
OzHybrid
Scott Nokes
Big bertha
Replies
1
Views
157
MarsLander
MarsLander
Scott Nokes
Open rocket over rides
Replies
4
Views
354
aerostadt
aerostadt
B
Surface finish in open rocket?
Replies
2
Views
562
neil_w
neil_w
B
Rocksim 10 and short fat rockets like Big Daddy
Replies
25
Views
890
jmasterj
jmasterj

Latest posts

Back
Top