Steve Hosgood wrote: > If there's an interest in improving FG's handling of water, might it be > good to take in the idea that maybe one day the FG engine could be used > for sailing ship simulation too? After all, FG's already got the 3D > graphics engine, world scenery and a weather engine. Add in a sailing > ship simulator "FDM", and a proper concept of water (tides, currents, > depths, waves, 50-ft sea monsters etc) and you'd have it. > > Last year, I discovered Peter Davis's Tallship simulator "surprise.exe" > and made a partial port to linux. > > Davis's website (for the original windoze program) is: > http://home.wxs.nl/~pdavis > My RPMs of the linux port are here: > ftp://tallyho.bc.nu/pub/steve/surprise/surprise-20030924-2.i386.rpm > <ftp://tallyho.bc.nu/pub/steve/surprise/surprise-20030924-2.i386.rpm> > > My port is nowhere near complete in terms of options and eye-candy, but > it does run. Mine only simulates the three-masted frigate (the original > does that plus a two-masted brig). Mine doesn't have the "map" display > nor any concept of land. The original modelled some "islands" to provide > some entertainment trying to navigate. Mine doesn't yet show the > "thrusts" diagram which tells you what forces are being provided by > which sails. Mine doesn't yet have configurable weather, the original does. > > Porting it required me to tease out the "FDM" for Davis's ship simulator > - it had been somewhat intertwined with the calls to the windoze API > needed for his GUI. My version uses his "FDM" but with the GUI > implemented with "Glade", the GTK+ GUI writer. > > I was actually using the project to teach myself Glade. Funnily enough, > Peter Davis taught himself Visual Basic (and later Visual C) in order to > write his ship-sim in the first place. His inexperience with computer > programming does show in the code (along with its rather BASIC-like > layout due to its heritage), but it does at least work. > > I've seen various people post queries about ship simulators on this list > before, all to no avail. > > See here for a (commercial) 3D model of an 18th century frigate: > http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/240860/Action/FullPreview > > FG can't use this (obviously) but the FG project's got quite a few > excellent 3D modeller experts in need of a challenge :-) > If you get the "The Making of Hornblower" book that went with the UK's > "Carlton TV" dramatisation of Forrester's books, then on the inner cover > flysheets and the centre-spread there's a reproduction of a set of > technical drawings for the "Grand Turk" (the ship used in the TV series, > and used in the BBC's "Longitude" TV programme). > > To answer one obvious comment before it happens: yes, Peter Davis's > source code (and my existing work on a linux port) are all GPL! I asked > Davis last year if he would consider some sort of formal licence for his > work, and he GPL-ed it last August. > > Steve >
Wow! All very good, and a great technical challenge. But, maybe a branch called "FloatGear" would be in order? ;-) ....then there are land vehicles -- for transportation, sport, and defense...."DriveGear"? It would be cool to have the Nimitz (and others) respond to sea state, and the visual eye candy of the water to look appropriate to the sea state condition. These thoughts all seem daunting, but seeing what this community has accomplished thus far, it could very well happen. If you get down to modeling a 14' boat on a lake, I'd like a fishing simulation too. ;-) Cheers, Jim _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
