Tony Peden wrote: > Andy Ross wrote: > > You give the scenery the position of the gear min/max comprssion > > points, and it tells you where the tip really is. > > That is, IMO, precisely the job of the gear model. Only the gear > model can and should "know" the path that the wheel follows as it > compresses. I'll certainly agree that right now it's not necessary to > model anything more than compression along a straight line, but we > know that's not real in alot of cases and should allow for it in the > design of the FG-FDM interface.
I don't necessarily disagree, but I'm at a loss for how you get this effect by assuming that gear compression is always along a line normal to the ground plane? If anything, this would argue for an interface more like mine, where the FDM can "probe" the scenery for intersection points rather than blindly trust an "elevation" number for each gear and assume a flat ground plane under the gear. > A significant benefit will be had immediately -- the aircraft will > follow the terrain while taxiing and the 3D model will look better. If you mean the aircraft will be tilted on non-level ground, then you can get that effect already by inspecting the normal vector. When I say "flat", I don't mean "level". Take a look at the YASim code (which supports, but does not use, a terrain normal vector) for an example. I'm not quite sure what you mean by the 3D model. Assuming vertical gear compression is no closer to rendered reality than what we are doing now. You'll get a tilt, but not a physically correct one. Andy -- Andrew J. Ross NextBus Information Systems Senior Software Engineer Emeryville, CA [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.nextbus.com "Men go crazy in conflagrations. They only get better one by one." - Sting (misquoted) _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
