Steve Knoblock schrieb:
My first impression of FlightGear on Windows was soured by the first aircraft I
choose. It
was the Cessna with full IFR panel. The panel was upside down and very
strange. It didn't make a good first impression and left me confused.
If I had not been persistent I might have gave up on it right there.
I remember this very clear, I was the same when I tried V0.9.8!
Moreover, I could not figure out why there were so many Cessna's and
what the differences were. An aircraft should be operational, not in a
state of development if it is to be included in the official
distribution. Aircraft in development can be downloaded individually.
Aircraft should not be incomplete, missing panels, incomplete
instruments, etc. I realize this is not easy given the open source and
experimental nature of Flight Gear development.
There was a review/test of FlightGear in "linux user, November 2005", a
very popular German linux magazin. Although they gave FlightGear 4 full
pages, scenery on their cover CD and a lot of very usable hints aimed to
flightsim beginners they complained about missing panels, missing
instruments, missing Transponder (and a lot of other things like "bad"
flightmodel ((due to missing stall characteristics)), missing structural
damage, missing red and white-blackout, missing higher-level ATC,
missing colleason detection ((they might have proved it with the ...
objects)).
Their last recommendation was not what we would like to see and we
could say "simply ignore it" but a *lot* of linux user are reading this
magazin and potentially flightsim interested people get the wrong
impression by this review. :-(
This means for me - an official release is always some PR for the
FlightGear project and the chance to get some people interested, might
be even starting some "user" development (small projects) or to loose
them before they have had the chance to see what FlightGear can offer today!
And after my opinion there is a need for people who do some work outside
the "core" development - make some more nice generic models for FG that
can be used for scenery design, improve airports, make repaints, even do
3D aircraft modelling.
This was the typical "work sharing" what I experienced when I was active
for another flightsim (FLY! II). And even core developers may like it to
fly a nice little scenery a pure user was able to create. To be honest,
also some *easy* tools are lacking now to enable pure users to do such
work without too much knowledge about the internal FlightGear stuff.
Just a dream for the future :-)
I agree with the idea of removing the UFO in favor of a more useful
and complete aircraft.
..
I think it's important to keep the most widely used general aviation
craft, like Cessna and Piper
..
Most users will want a light single engine general aviation aircraft
they are familiar with. The Cessna fills this niche and is the most
popular. I suggest one "classic" and one modern Cessna single.
Of course the "linux user magazine" used the Cessna *172* to make the
first testflights and (very clever!) they recommended the *ufo* to get
familiar with the main functions of FlightGear when the reader had no
knowledge of flightsims before taking off with the Cessna (what they
described step for step in a really professional manner).
So, after having said all this, my opinion is only to add very complete
(3D, panel, flightmodel) aircraft to the new release.
Interested people can download, it is very easy.
Regards
Georg
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