On 5 Mar 2013, at 11:28, Stuart Buchanan <stuar...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I think this is a fine idea. At present working out the available > parking positions for and airport from outside the sim is a bit of a > pain. (In fact I usually start with MP off, then use the Select > Airport dialog to position at a parking position, and then turn MP on) Indeed, which is what I'd like to streamline, as well as avoiding novice users <cough> doing the default bad behaviour. > I assume by "semi-random" you mean to choose parking positions fairly > close to the approach end of the active runway? Probably, that's the area that will need work. We don't have parking occupancy data over MP, but it could be guessed by looking for AIModels whose location is within 4 (?) metres of the parking location, and skipping that one. > Making a similar change to the airport selector would be a good idea > as well, though obviously we'd only disable the option if parking > positions exist for the airport. Sure. > On a related note, I've been wondering whether we should start the sim > with the engines running when starting from a runway. Being on the > runway with the engine off isn't particularly realistic. If we were > feeling particularly keen also having the altimeter set and the radios > tuned to the tower frequency might be nice. Ah, that's a much more contentious one. The problem, from my point of view, is that our -set.xml files only encode one aircraft state (usually cold-and-dark). To encode (accurately) engines-running or in-flight as the start state, needs some kind of profile system where properties can have different values, and XML / Nasal can be initialised differently. That would make nice in-air starts possible (gear already up, throttles at sane position), as well as offering 'cold, dark and parked' or 'on the active and ready to go' as options. (And end all the per-aircraft 'auto-start' menu options - since they'd become standardised). That's the UX idea, I have pretty much zero idea how the code might work, especially getting state-ful systems such as GPWS, autopilot PID filters or the like to work with it. I think at least one FDM also has issues with in-air starts at the moment. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Everyone hates slow websites. So do we. Make your web apps faster with AppDynamics Download AppDynamics Lite for free today: http://p.sf.net/sfu/appdyn_d2d_feb _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
