On Sat, 2010-02-27 at 07:56 -0500, David Megginson wrote: > On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 10:21 PM, Ron Jensen <[email protected]> wrote: > > >> I still support the idea common shared directories idea for such things as > >> instruments > > > This is a nice, happy thought. But in the real world it hasn't worked > > out so well. Since we model such a huge variety of aircraft, and > > different FDMs and systems provide different outputs, our common > > instrument folders would need to be huge to cover all the different > > kinds of instruments, plus variations and modifications to fit each > > individual aircraft's structure. It makes more sense to me to house > > each instrument with its aircraft. > > In real life, very, very few instruments are customized for each plane > (the airspeed indicator, with its speed markings, is the obvious > example). Most are manufactured by independent companies and are > TSO'd, so that they can be used in hundreds of different aircraft > models. Ditto for most avionics, aside from some glass panels, etc.
> A Sigma-Tek attitude gyro, for example, looks and works pretty-much > the same as a primary instrument for a Cessna 150 or as a backup > instrument on a 747 -- the differences (such as different voltage for > the backlighting) are pretty trivial. I'd hate to see 100 copies of > the same Sigma-Tek attitude gyro in the base package. Those trivial differences are enough to make the instrument not work properly in an aircraft, though. I've spent a lot of time installing 5V light bulbs in avionics equipment that came rigged for 28V lighting. In FlightGear we have a problem in the common instruments-3d that many instruments use funky properties for their panel lighting (/sim/model//material/instruments/factor or /controls/lighting/instruments-norm) instead of a more sensical /systems/electrical/output/instruments- and then the is the argument about that being a -norm or a -volts. So to avoid duplicating instruments we'd be forced to create and maintain 3 or 4 properties to drive different instruments. I'll sacrifice disk-space for frame-rate, thank you. Last time I changed an (my) instrument in Instruments-3D there were howls of anguish. DCulp has packaged his common instruments in his "DavePack" aircraft, and that works pretty well, but I still believe the aircraft maintainer should have the right to keep his instruments with his aircraft, even if there is some duplication. Thanks, Ron ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Download Intel® Parallel Studio Eval Try the new software tools for yourself. Speed compiling, find bugs proactively, and fine-tune applications for parallel performance. See why Intel Parallel Studio got high marks during beta. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-sw-dev _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
