I'd like to let everyone know that I just finished a project assigning each aircraft model/cockpit a number between 0 and 10 indicating the visual level of quality of the cockpit. The results can be found in the forum here:
http://www.flightgear.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=10080 Why did I do this? ================== My prime reason is that this is information I would like to have as a Flightgear user. Faced with 400+ aircraft, I was often annoyed to download one and see that it was basically unfinished in spite of the official status indicator. Eventually I gave up and stuck with the few aircraft I knew well - which means that I completely missed some truly great aircraft. To give an example, I think the Pipers (pa-22-160, pa24-250-CIII,...) are really great models with lots of attention on the proper handling of the on-board systems - and I only found them just now (and am enjoying them since). I did not do the list to en- or discourage developers. If an aircraft is still under development, and it scores low in visual detail, there is no shame in that - a low score means nothing but 'needs more developement'. More explanations and disclaimers in the forum. What do the numbers mean? ========================= Roughly, anything below 5 means that it isn't really finished and that I think they should be alpha status. 7 and 8 are really nice cockpits, and 9 an 10 usually create a spontaneous 'wow!'. What does the list represent? ============================= On face value, the list represents my partially subjective, partially objective judgement of the visual quality of a cockpit. After having made it however, there appears to be more to it. There is usually a correlation between the level of detail of the modelling of systems and procedures and the level of visual detail in the cockpit - realistic procedures require more gauges and buttons, and immediately the cockpit increases in detail. About the weakest correlation in this respect is the Concorde, which is very detailed in procedures and in modelling systems, but scores only a 5 in visual detail. Usually, the correlation is way better. There is also a (weaker) correlation between visual quality of the cockpit and the FDM - planes with great cockpits tend to have at least a better than average FDM. I think that's because developers who spend long time researching cockpit photographs usually don't ignore the FDM. The list is unfair in the sense that there are planes with really great and well-tuned FDMs which don't score too high on the visual detail. The problem is that it is impossible to make a similar list for the FDM quality for all 400+ aircraft in a finite amount of time. But I think all in all the list does tend to draw attention to the aircraft Flightgear can be really proud of. What do I want to do with it? ============================= Basically nothing - it's up to the community what to do with the numbers and thumbnails. Options which have at one point or the other mentioned and discussed in the forum range from doing nothing nothing via creating a Wiki page using the numbers or introducing options on the download website and in fgrun to sort aircraft acccording to the rating all the way to structuring the FGData on GIT according to status. I clearly can forsee useful applications, but I consider my work done at this point, and it's not up to me to decide if e.g. any sorting scheme for aircraft downloads is useful or not. * Thorsten ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Increase Visibility of Your 3D Game App & Earn a Chance To Win $500! Tap into the largest installed PC base & get more eyes on your game by optimizing for Intel(R) Graphics Technology. Get started today with the Intel(R) Software Partner Program. Five $500 cash prizes are up for grabs. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intelisp-dev2dev _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
