On Friday 04 Nov 2005 13:29, Josh Babcock wrote: [snipped a lot of stuff 'coz I only wanted to comment on one aspect...][
> As it is now, I think there may be a reluctance to step on > people's toes, so instead of finishing off an existing plane, > people go out and start a new one which may or may not get > completed. > > Josh This is a good point. It's very unlikely that I will ever produce a 'completed' or 'finished' aircraft. This is because I don't particularly want to fly aircraft, or pretend to fly them in a simulator. All I'm really interested in are the characteristics and esthetics of different aircraft designs and therefore I'm not very highly motivated to produce 'complete' aircraft specifically for other people to use. I'm not doing it for them but just for me, to satisfy my curiosity about something. Many of the aspects of a 'complete' aircraft require knowledge and understanding that I don't have, but furthermore, I don't really have any desire to gain that knowledge - it's stuff I'm not very interested in. However, while I don't feel any duty or responsibility to anyone, I'm totally happy to contribute anything I do to the FG project because the idea of someone else taking something I've done and improving it strongly appeals to me. It's nice to be able to give stuff away to people who can use it for something. A couple of the aircraft I've done have been improved by other people, such as Vivian's work on the Sea Hawk and your (Josh's) work on the Canberra and to me, that makes the time and effort I originally put into the aircraft even more worthwhile because it extends their value beyond my own selfish reasons for doing them in the first place. I think that the only thing that would make me unhappy is if someone wanted to do something that I knew to be incorrect. It's difficult to think of a good example but for instance, if a particular aircraft's wing is known to be set at n deg incidence and someone wanted to change it to an incorrect value to cure a problem somewhere else in the flight model config I'd find that hard to accept. Having said that, once something I've contributed something to FG it's not my property any more, so if I disagreed with the consensus it would be hard luck on me. As to whether someone else consults the original builder of a FG aircraft before working on it - well, it would certainly be polite and considerate, and may save wasted time as they may also be working on it, but it would probably also be wise as well because it's impossible to make an aircraft without doing an awful lot of research, which the originator would have to have already done. LeeE _______________________________________________ Flightgear-users mailing list [email protected] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-users 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
