> OTOH one important question to consider is whether a vehicle FDM in > FlightGear should attempt to model real physics or be more like a > earth-bound UFO. > > Anders
That depends on what developers/users need. I can think about a few different usages with peculiar implementations. I see people like to record video MP flight sessions; having a few separate users controlling a few ground vehicles (like tow tractors) moving around could help in directing the scene. There's even the possibility to let users drive around a scenery while others are flying in the sky (think about a simulation of a flight festival like Oshkosh), amazing show :-) Animating generic AI ground city traffic could be spectacular when flying very low on a populated area. That's a plus for those people wanting to create a high quality video recording of a flight simulation demo. People like to see aircrafts flying above a city skyline and disappearing behind the skyscrapers, the city looks more real when populated with moving vehicles. Don't even forget trains. We have railroads in our scenery meshes, but we do not have trains running around. As you see my point of view is strictly related to ground simulation (I'm not a pilot at all, although I enjoy learning the basics of aircraft flying with FGFS). You will be more interested in other aspects, I'm shure. I would suggest creating a simple but completely controllable and customizable ground vehicle FDM. Basic capabilities can be generally extended in the future without much of an effort. Programming very specific stuff, on the contrary, limits the usage of the code and makes it difficult to use. In many cases, an earth-bound UFO like FDM could be enough. But if you think about high level generic traffic simulation you need something more specific, at least from a cinematic point of view; I don't think a higly detailed real physics simulation is of any help but in rare cases anyway. Roberto -- Psssst! Schon vom neuen GMX MultiMessenger gehört? Der kanns mit allen: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/multimessenger ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by DB2 Express Download DB2 Express C - the FREE version of DB2 express and take control of your XML. No limits. Just data. Click to get it now. http://sourceforge.net/powerbar/db2/ _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
