Hi Ralf, Ralf Gerlich wrote:
> As it seems, the X-Plane authors are not keen to go away from the > apt.dat format, so if FlightGear would go away from bidirectional > compatibility with apt.dat, this would result in a clear split of the > databases and in ceasing the up to now fruitful exchange of data between > FlightGear and X-Plane. Keep this in mind when assessing the advantages > of a new, totally different format. I'm not 100% what you mean by this...we are supporting older apt.dat formats in x-plane ... we have to - in X-plane apt.dat can be embedded in custom scenery packas, so users can add old-format data to the sim in-field. So X-Plane will continue to read and show old-format data but without any new features. > ...and that's why that is to change in the new apt.dat-format. They have > both polygonal pavement sections, but also polyline sections, by which > rows of lights, markings, etc., can be placed accurately. Accurately and arbitrarily! And this is one of our design choices. Given a choice between "come up with a logical model that explains every possible combination of pavement and taxiway line markings" and "let the user put the paint where it is in real life" we ended up at the second, after trying some schemes for the first and just spiraling totally out of control. We considered 'total realism' to be the goal, e.g. it would be unacceptable to have the "wrong" pavement markings (by real life standings) because the algorithm to generate them couldn't be expressed by our logic model. Of course, such an expressive logic model would be valuable for a number of things, so it might make sense to develop one for FG...in the case of X-Plane it didn't fit with our development roadmap. > However, given proper tools - which is what TaxiDraw is going for - we > can make the tool support the user, by, e.g., automatically placing > lines of borderlights around any new pavement polygon and allow the user > to edit them or remove them as they wish. The 850 format also supports the tagging of the bezier edges with light codes, so to some extent the procedure of wrapping lights around pavement is made a little bit simpler, or at least the data file a little smaller. *Cheers* Ben -- Scenery Home Page: http://scenery.x-plane.com/ Scenery blog: http://xplanescenery.blogspot.com/ Plugin SDK: http://www.xsquawkbox.net/xpsdk/ Scenery mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Developer mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
