I agree that trimming down the base package (for the release) is probably a good idea. I'm beginning to wonder if the "base" package isn't starting to overshoot it's target these days. What I mean to say with this is that a few years ago we had a pretty big discussion about whether or not to separate the one big monolitithic download that fgfs was at the time into more manageble chunks, and eventually came up with separating the code from the essential data. This is the situation we have right now, but but slowly, more and more aircraft have slipped into the base package, which is growing again in size pretty quickly, and what's in the base package these days is more than just "essential"
So wouldn't it be logical to only include a few aircraft types into the base package and offer the others for separate download, just like we do for the world-wide scenery? This separation wouldn't create an additional dependency, as much as offer a lot of additional functionality. Anyways, let me finish by saying that I'm perfectly happy this the situation as we have it right now, having cable internet and access to cvs. I'm just speculating about future developments. Cheers, Durk On Wednesday 17 March 2004 04:50, Curtis L. Olson wrote: > In the next couple weeks I'd like to start moving seriously towards our > next release. There are probably many things that could stand to be > tweaked and polished but two related items jump out at me tonight. > > 1. I'm growing less enthused with our aircraft alias naming system. I > don't mind that we have the capability, but it becomes annoying to have > 8 names for the same aircraft, even 2 names for the same aircraft. What > would people say to nuking all the alias entries for the upcoming > release? Now that we have the "fgrun" launcher, name length or > complexity is not really an issue. Even for us hard core unix folks who > refuse to give up the command line, we can learn to copy/paste to avoid > unnecessary typing. I think getting rid of the aliases would make > aircraft browsing and selection a lot less mystifying to new comers. > We've got 20 (!) varients of the C172. Maybe for this release it would > be nice to just have one or two??? > > 2. We have a *lot* of aircraft in the base package. Some of these are > really nice, some of these are not even close to basic functionality. > Most are probalby best considered "works in progress." (Now this is > perfectly fine, and is what CVS is for.) However, for the next release > I would like to just include a subset of the available aircraft, picking > and choosing the best or most interesting ones. > > I think it's worth including the heavies (737, A320, 747) even though > their cockpits aren't finished. > > We definitely want the light civilian aircraft just as the Cub (which is > one of the few aircraft that are legitimately finished) :-) as well as a > C172 (C182?) and maybe include the C310 here, even though ours has navy > markings? And definitely the pa28-161. It would be nice to get a 3d > mixture control on the default C172 some day. > > There are some vintage aircraft we should include such as the Wright > Flyer and ComperSwift and maybe the dc3 although I have no idea what's > going on with the cockpit there. > > The P51 and the Hunter should definitely be included, those are ones > that also could be considered "finished". > > Lee has built a nice fleet of various aircraft which are worth including > such as the AN-225 (huge russian transport), a b-52, a seahawk, a tsr2 > and a yf23. All of these fly well, have beautiful external 3d models, > are very well animated including the gear and suspention, but all lack > 3d cockpits and instead have a functional, but non-realistic 2d cockpit. > > The a4 is nice, although I don't know how complete the cockpit is??? > The J22 and F16 both show promise. We should also include the X15, but > that takes some startup parameters to get flying. > > And the Ornithopter should definitely be included. And we should toss > the ufo in as well. I'll list the remaining aircraft below. These I've > had less experience with or non-optimal results when I have tried them. > > What is the status of the helicopters? They've seemed very crude when > I've looked at them. I don't mean to be anti-helicopter, but if we are > trying to cull some of the less nice stuff out of the official release, > I'm not sure in their current form they would make the cut. > > OV10-jsbsim North American OV-10A Bronco > T37-jsbsim Cessna T-37 > T38-jsbsim Northrop T-38 > airwaveXtreme150-v1-nl-uiuc Airwave Xtreme 150 hang glider (UIUC) > as350-yasim Ecureuil AS 350 Helicopter > asw20-v1-nl-uiuc ASW-20 sailplane (UIUC) > beech99-v1-uiuc Beech 99 (UIUC) > bell206-yasim Bell 206 JetRanger Helicopter > bo105-yasim Eurocopter Bo105 > ch47-yasim CH-47 Chinook Helicopter > f104-jsbsim Lockheed F-104 Starfighter > f15-jsbsim McDonell Douglas F-15 Eagle > fkdr1-v1-nl-uiuc > fokker100-jsbsim Fokker 100 > fokker50-jsbsim Fokker 50 > harrier-yasim British Aerospace Harrier (YASim) > marchetti-v1-uiuc Siai Marchetti S.211 (UIUC) > paraglider-jsbsim paraglider > sgs233-jsbsim Schweizer 2-33 > shuttle-jsbsim Space Shuttle > sopwithCamel-v1-nl-uiuc > t6texan2-jsbsim T-6A Texan II > x24b-jsbsim USAF/NACA X-24B reentry testbed > > Am I being too generous here? Should we draw the line a little > tighter? Am I being too strict? Am I way off on my evaluation of what > should go in or out? > > As time permits I plan to start doing some preliminary release work, > going through my check lists, making sure version numbers and > refererences are up to date, gleaning through the commit logs to come up > with a list of changes, etc. etc. > > Regards, > > Curt. _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
