JD Fenech writes:

 > Major note: I've been trying to follow FG development for somewhat
 > over a year, and still haven't been able to really figure out how FDMs
 > are handled (are they internal to the software, or are they externally
 > loaded).

The FDMs are the aerodynamic engines (special-use physics engines).
Unlike most simulators, FlightGear contains several different
aerodynamic engines: JSBSim (the default), YASim, LaRCsim, UIUC (based
on LaRCsim), and a few other special-use ones.

The three major FDMs are runtime-configurable using external files so
that they can simulate the physics of many different aircraft types:

- JSBSim uses XML files scattered throughout $FG_ROOT/Aircraft/
- YASim uses XML files stored under $FG_ROOT/Aircraft-yasim/
- UIUC uses INI-like files stored under $FG_ROOT/Aircraft-uiuc/

Before you say anything, yes, I agree that this is wrong.  We either
want something like

  $FG_ROOT/Aircraft/fdms/jsbsim/c172r.xml
  $FG_ROOT/Aircraft/fdms/yasim/c172r.xml
  $FG_ROOT/Aircraft/fdms/uiuc/c172r.dat

or something like

  $FG_ROOT/Aircraft/c172r/aero/jsbsim.xml
  $FG_ROOT/Aircraft/c172r/aero/yasim.xml
  $FG_ROOT/Aircraft/c172r/aero/uiuc.xml

depending on whether we want to group the aero files together with
others using the same FDM or together with others for the same
aircraft type.  We could even replace 'aero' with 'physics' to make it
clear to new users what's going on, since physics engines are starting
to be heavily used in the 3D gaming world.

 > "The modern definition of 'racist' is someone who is winning an
 > argument with a liberal."
 >
 >  --Peter Brimelow

What's the modern definition of 'liberal'?


All the best,


David

-- 
David Megginson, [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://www.megginson.com/

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