Currently FlightGear knows about ${FG_ROOT} to find its Base Package
and ${FG_SCENERY} to find additional Scenery, two values which could
also be set via the command line "--fg-root=" and "--fg-scenery="
At least the command line lets the user point also at "additional
properties" via "--config=" and to additional aircraft with
"--aircraft-dir=" .... according to the output of
# ~> fgfs --help --verbose
(I didn't check this myself).
I'm now proposing to introduce yet another variable and/or flag to let
the user point at additional "Models".
Actually (obviously) it's the shared scenery models I have in mind here
and I'd like to allow the users of pre-packaged FlightGear
distributions to install not only additional terrain, airport metadata
and static 3D models but also the corresponding shared 3D models at a
place outside and independent from the Base Package - if they like.
>From my point of view this serves (at least, if not even more than) two
goals:
1.) The Base Package is shipping just a small piece of the World
Scenery and also just a fraction of our shared models collection is
being referenced from there (41 out of a total of approx. 500
shared models today). So, separating the 'remaining' shared 3D
models, which are referenced from other places in the world, out
into a separate location would allow to reduce the size of the Base
Package by some dozend MByte uncompressed (all shared models
together are occupying 84 MByte on your disk).
2.) Changes, additions and/or updates to our shared 3D models
collection happen all over the year, not just at FlightGear Base
Package release time. Usually we point our users to the
downloadable "SharedModels.tgz" package to keep up with the
progress. Installing that one into a separate location would be in
any case a really nice option to have (note, I'm just talking about
providing another option, not a requirement), PLUS:
We're already in the position to feed incremental updates to the
(above mentioned) terrain, airport metadata and static 3D models to
the users of TerraSync via the "TerraScenery" SVN repository (and
it looks like we're soon going to start doing so), therefore it
would be just a corollary to apply the same or at least a similar
procedure to the shared 3D models.
Needless to say that I'd like to see such an option being included into
the upcoming release .... ;-)
Comments, opinions ?
Martin.
--
Unix _IS_ user friendly - it's just selective about who its friends are !
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