I have an idea to run by you all, and I encourage your input or comment and
perhaps to spike anyone's interest.
The idea is to create liftable and moveable mp objects, using the current
aerotow feature, primarily for helicopter usage. While I am not knowledgeable
enough to create it, it's been in the back of mind since Curt suggested
demonstrating the Aircrane at a Simulator event by building a virtual tower
some time ago.
My thought would be create a number of simple objects, with the simplest FDM
attached to them. To start these could simply be blocks, although this could
expand to pipes/tower sections/etc. Each would use the 'pick' animation
feature to bind the aerotow property to lock on and unlock the tow cable. This
should get around requiring a second user to "lock" onto the tow aircraft. One
would get within the 60m preset distance of the towable object and then click
on it to attach the cable. Lift it, move it, set it anywhere, and click on it
to un-attach it.
To work in mp appears to be a slightly bigger issue. While it would be ideal
from a mp standpoint to have 5-10 simplistic objects hosted on each mpserver, I
assume that may not be very feasible. The ideal program would include some
minor nasal timers and listeners that would default the object back to the
default spawn location, say after 12 hours since last move. This would ensure
it doesn't get lost or dropped in an un-retreiveable location.
I ran the whole idea by a model builder, and he suggested perhaps having an
object spawn other objects, such as how ordnance is dropped from an aircraft.
Here's his thoughts -
I think your plan could work. I think it would be desirable to have
the objects be pseudo-aircraft like the jeep, etc., with dummy FDMs
and as simplified as possible, then each can have a nasal system
running on it containing custom code to handle special situations like
resets, etc., taking this off any server requirements and placing it
totally on the number of objects on MP. But each object would be a
player-run MP vehicle with all the usual MP resources etc. and its own
FG client I presume. So a better system might have one object that
spawns other objects rather like ordinance, and then monitor/update
them via nasal routines. That way only one MP 'player' need be on for
all the objects, and the nasal running on the master object would
manage all sub-objects and deal with special interactions. I'm not
totally sure this is all possible, but I'll wager it is. Probably one
of the FG gurus can think of a better way.
I don't know if anyone has considered the possibilities of having generic
mp-objects, but without them transmitting data as if an mp-user. If this was
possible, it would not be a stretch for one of the FG community to provide a
server that hosted these semi-static mp-objects.
All of the ideas presented here may not be needed to achieve the base goal, but
I believe there is a value to the Flightgear mp environment if it is
achievable. (Without going into more tangents, I believe this could also open
the door for other Flightgear enhancements)
I would appreciate meaningful comments.
Thanks,
Peter
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