On Tue, 11 Jan 2005 14:09:42 +0100 Robicd wrote: > > And now it comes to the developer team: some hints would be very > appreciated. I'd like to use a Windows OS because I'm sooo used to it > (please forgive me :-) but I read that most of the tools are Unix based.
Not really. For making textures, the GIMP is cross-platform, and I think many Windows apps (e.g. Photoshop) can output textures in the SGI bitmap format that FlightGear uses. For making models, the apps that are popular on Linux (Blender, AC3D) are cross-platform, and other apps that are available to Windows users but not to Linux users (e.g. 3DSMax) will work as well. > I'd love to know that it's not a complete waste of time insisting in > using this OS, so ... Who is still maintaing world sceneries? Should I > contact someone in order to coordinate the efforts? It depends on what you're really asking here. Curtis Olson builds and maintains the official terrain, and keeps the "official" ground scenery that's distributed with that terrain. At present, that ground scenery consists of randomly-used structures on certain terrain types (e.g. the trees in forests, the generic buildings used in urban areas, etc.), as well as the unique structures mostly developed by Frederic Bouvier in the default scenery area (the San Francisco Bay area). I don't know what the policy is for accepting additional ground structures for some specific area and adding them to the downloadable scenery for that area, or indeed whether such a policy exists one way or the other. Hopefully Curt or Erik or David or someone else more knowledgeable than I am will comment on this. If OTOH you're not asking about official inclusion into FlightGear, but rather about efforts by users and developers to create ground scenery and share it amongst each other (like MSFS folks do on sites like avsim.com and flightsim.com), there is no central forum for doing that at this point. The creation of such a site gets discussed here fairly often. I've actually spent a couple of days working on adapting a web application platform for this purpose. But it boils down to either having a machine with storage space and bandwidth for it, or hosting. That hasn't come yet. So at this point, probably the appropriate thing to do is to post in flightgear-users or here, saying stuff like "I'm working on scenery for _____; here are links to some preliminary screenshots . . .what do you think?" > Is there some more > documentation for building objects around the scenery (I mean something > more about file formats, software tool kits, geographical references > etc...)? Here's a staring link that may be useful: http://www.seedwiki.com/page.cfm?doc=Modeler%20And%20Scenery%20Builder%20Documentation&wikiid=2418&wpid=123390 (describes the sequence of events used in making ground scenery) It's a bit out of date in some ways -- the status of the documentation for scenery developers is not great at this point. But that's the whole point of it being a wiki: all of us together can improve it. Ask more questions if you have them. > Well, I hope someone will give me a chance. No need for anyone to give you a chance. Just jump right in and start making stuff. Then show it to others; they'll offer suggestions, and who knows? > p.s. there are a bunch of very interesting and detailed MS-FS scenery > sets around (many of them are free); could it be a good starting point > for adding details to the local (around the city of Palermo) F.G. > scenery? Maybe it's not that difficult to convert to the F.G. format. Well, there are two issues. The first is that the .bgl format used for MSFS is pretty hard to break down into models. People have done it with earlier versions, and I have no doubt it could be done again (especially since I've seen documents on the web providing reasonably good reverse-engineering of the .bgl file structure), but I don't know of an app that does it with the current .bgl file format at this pont. The second, more important issue is that of licensing. While one could certainly use such scenery oneself, or (in the case of the freeware stuff) distribute it to other interestedFlightGear users independent of FlightGear, it almost always couldn't be distributed *with* FlightGear, even if free. The problem is that nearly all freeware comes with a license that is incompatible with the one that FlightGear uses (the GPL). The GPL doesn't place restrictions on what people do with the software once they've obtained it. In particular, if they wanna sell or re-sell it, they can. Nearly all "freeware" comes with a restriction preventing any "commercial use." That's incompatible with the GPL. So that prevents MSFS ground scenery, even the freeware stuff, from being distributed with FlightGear after conversion to FlightGear's formats. But it doesn't prevent someone from converting it to FlightGear's formats and redistributing it to other FlightGear users, under the same license as the original and independently of the "official" FlightGear distribution . . .sorta like how sites like avsim.com or flightsim.com work. I think this would be pretty cool; but again, it requires extracting models and animation info from the .bgl files. And, like mentioned earlier, it requires the distribution site, of course. -c -- Chris Metzler [EMAIL PROTECTED] (remove "snip-me." to email) "As a child I understood how to give; I have forgotten this grace since I have become civilized." - Chief Luther Standing Bear
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