On 4/21/06, Paul Surgeon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Friday 21 April 2006 06:06, Jonathan Hepburn wrote: > > I have an interested query. How well does FG model gliding? I wouldn't > > expect (although I am more than prepared to be pleasantly surprised) > > that thermals would be well, or at all, modelled, > > There is a very crude AI thermal setup where we can place static thermals > around the place to use for lift. > I personally haven't tested it so I'm not sure how well it works but the > non-dynamic nature of them takes most of the fun out of hunting for them.
... Which is sort of why I expected them to not exist at all. But the simple model is a good start. > > but how well does the physics of air movement model ridge lift? > > That is not modeled at all yet. It interests me that Dave stated that ridge lift is so much harder to model algorithmically. Shows you how little I actually know about the physics of the matter. > The way I see it is you have two options : > > 1. You could add the neccessary code to FlightGear to simulate thermals, ridge > lift and non-horizontal air movement but it'll be a lot of work. This would > be a nice contribution to FlightGear if you have the neccessary coding skills > and lots of patience and stickability. > One of the major advantages is that you would have world wide scenery > coverage. You see, there I go again sticking my nose in where I have no ability to follow. I can't code at all, but have an insatiable curiosity for the deed that sees me using CVS versions of my favourite games far more than is safe. So no, I'm in no position to contribute, much as I would love to. Plus, working full time in the Health/Community Services sector means that I'm not likely to be able to any time soon! > OR > > 2. You could use a commercial soaring simulator like SilentWings > (http://silentwings.no) which is fairly polished in terms of weather modeling > and multiplayer and has all the neccessary features for creating and flying > tasks, AI pilots in single player mode or multiplayer pilots, freeflight or > competition flying. I had stumbled upon SilentWings in the past, while looking around at flight sims and ending up with FG. Being chronically broke at the moment, and in desperate need of either more RAM or a new video card, means that I'm unlikely to be able to get it, and I would want to be able to invest a lot of time if I did - unlikely at the moment. The beauty of having something as wide-ranging and inclusive as FG is that it's _there_ if I feel like a hop around my back yard in a Camel or gliding over the Toowoomba escarpment. > There is also Condor which is quite popular but it only runs on Windows XP. > SilentWings is written on Linux and ported to Windows and soon Mac OS X. > Scenery for both these sims is limited but both have scenery tools so that you > can create the scenery yourself. (The Condor scenery area is about the size > of someone's backyard last time I checked.) > If you get SilentWings and there's no scenery coverage for the area you want > to fly in let me know and I'll create a small scenery area for you using SRTM3 > and Landsat 7 ETM+ data. I do a fair bit of scenery work for the company - > 600 000 km2 of Alps scenery. Lyon to Vienna, Frankfurt to Venice, with more > scenery on the way (down to Rome for the 2006 Coppa Internazionale del > Mediterraneo" held at Rieti in August). Scenery building is one area that I flatter myself I could do, given a learning curve. I've had training in technical design tools, and played around with graphics toys, so if I had a worthwhile map to go on, and existing tiles, I may be able to have a decent stab at it. This is purely theoretical ATM, though. I would also be far more likely to improve the FG scenery around where I (used to) live first. Cheers, J ------------------------------------------------------- Using Tomcat but need to do more? Need to support web services, security? Get stuff done quickly with pre-integrated technology to make your job easier Download IBM WebSphere Application Server v.1.0.1 based on Apache Geronimo http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid0709&bid&3057&dat1642 _______________________________________________ Flightgear-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-users
