David Megginson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: > I don't think that the base package is the right place, though, and > the FlightGear CVS repository certainly isn't. Any suggestions? > Perhaps we need a new base-source CVS repository (we could put the > original MDL files there as well).
It does get a little sticky. We have some files that are original AC3D creations and some that are not. To the casual observer, they appear identical otherwise. It wouldn't make sense to add in the MDL files that the c310 U3-A, A-4 BlueAngels, and Wright Flyer were based on. In all three cases there was a significant amount of work in the initial conversion, and then a great deal of modification made using AC3D (the Wright Flyer was about 95% redone). Those changes will never be migrated back to the MDL file, unless someone else wants to do it. And in all three cases I never discussed redistributing the MDL files for those models, so we might have to obtain further permission to distribute them in their original form. If Blender becomes the "tool of choice", as it probably should, for developing FlightGear Models then it makes sense to have those files in the CVS directory with the ac files that are derived from them. The CVS is a development repository after all. This doesn't prevent releasing a runtime base package that doesn't include all the "sources" for a smaller download, but such a release should clearly indicate that these are not the "sources" to be used for submitting changes back to the project. In the future, if we convert an MDL file to AC3D then we should decide what to do with those on a case by case basis. We may want to consider the conversion a replacement or we may not. It hardly makes sense to consider them "sources" since there is no easy way to convert them. I've done it (as has Wolfram) and what comes out of plib is not a normal ac3d file. It can require a tremendous amount of work. The Wright Flyer was a 2GB file (yes, gigabytes!) on my disk when I first saved it to AC3D format from PPE. This, I presume, is due to a major difference in the way MDL data is organized and the fact that plib attempts to maintain texturing in the output ac3d formatted file. Best, Jim _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
