I wasn't able to jump in yesterday, but I've been following the aircraft selection disscussion closely. Below is a first attempt at compiling a new list based on the various suggestion made by everybody, and weighted by me based on my general impression of consensus.
737-300 -> 787 I think Jon Berndt suggested keeping the 737, but a few people suggested replacing it by the 787, which seems to be our most complete jetliner. I like to follow that suggestion. A-10 As far as I can see, nobody suggested replacing this aircraft. So I guess we keep it. bf109 -> A6M2 (Zero) Suggested by Melchior, for ease of operations use. I think this is a good point. The release will be the first FlightGear hands-on experience for many people and we want to make sure that that first experience is as positive as possible by providing aircraft that have reasonably easy handling characteristics. Not including the bf109 for that reason is by no means a quality judgment of the aircraft itself. bo105 c172 c172p Everybody seems to agree we keep these ones. c310 -> SenecaII c310u3a -> Beaver I haven't been able to check whether the c310 and c310u3a are really two separate aircraft, or just two different directories with shared components. Anyhow, we unanimously agree that the c310 should be replaced by the Seneca. The suggested replacement above seems to satisfy a few additional requests to have the Beaver included as well. Citation-Bravo -> B1900D This seems a reasonable replacement, in particular since the author of the Citation has indicated preferring that is is not part of the base aircraft selection. One minor concern is the ease-of-use issue. IIRC, the B1900D is fired up in "cold" configuration, and has quite a complicated start-up procedure (things may have changed since I last checked). Complex procedures like these may intimidate first time users. f16 -> Lightning Melchior reported that the f16 is broken. I haven't been able to test recently, but seem to recall similar problems about a year ago. Jon Berndt reported finding a possible cause, so chances are the reported problems might get fixed in time. Still, I would like to replace the F16 for other reasons: We need at least an AAR ready aircraft in the base package, and a carrier ready aircraft (these are two very prominent new AI features in this release that we want to showcase). So, how about replacing the f16 with the Ligntning (for AAR scenarios)? j3cub A few people have a suggested dropping the cub, but given its various qualities, I'd like to keep it. Hunter -> SeaHawk As a few people suggested, we probably need a carrier ready aircraft, and the seahawk is advertised by the wiki carrier HOWTO as the easiest to master (and I can confirm that its doable. :-) ). p51d -> (????) We already have one other WWII fighter. Do we really want to have two, or do we want to have some other category of aircraft represented? pa28-161 -> pa24-250 A few people have suggested replacing the pa28-161 with the pa24-250. I haven't tried any of those recently, but would be open to the suggestion. Rascal -> Bochian (or another glider) Many people have suggested dropping the Rascal, for being too specific, and suggested we add a glider. T38 -> Concorde (????) Even though the T38 is probably a category of its own, my general impression is that the broader class this aircraft belongs to (let's say: small high-powered jet powered and highy manouvreable) is a bit overrepresented (with the A10, [f16/lightning], and [Hunter/SeaHawk] being present. Gerard Robin suggested adding the concorde, and there are some aspects of this proposal I like, asit is an altogether different category. However, when trying the condorde yesterday, I saw some performance issues (need to check again), and also found the 3D cockpit instruments to be a bit cartoonesque. This is probably a good candidate for future inclusion, but not quite there yet. ufo Keep as a general exploration tool. Its fun as such. I think everybody agrees. :-) wrightFlyer1903 -> Osprey/ DragonFly/maybe another historic aircraft. Most people suggested dropping the wright flyer. A few people suggested adding an ultralight. it would be nice to have a historic aircraft (as in a really old one). During the version number discussion, somebody suggested doing "named" releases. We could do this implicitly, by changing our choice of historic aircraft from release to release. So 0.9.10 would have been release "wright" in retrospect, and 0.9.11/V1.0 could become release "bleriot". :-) Okay, the update has become quite long, but I wanted to make sure to capture all my comments in one mail. I'd like to emphasize once more that dropping an aircraft from the list should *not* be considered a negative quality judgment. There are many additional factors that weight in, which include completeness, variety across categories, and first-time use attractiveness (i.e. it's easy, ready to fly, etc etc). There is still room for improvement. Suggestions are welcome. :-) Cheers, Durk ------------------------------------------------------------------------- SF.Net email is sponsored by: The Future of Linux Business White Paper from Novell. From the desktop to the data center, Linux is going mainstream. Let it simplify your IT future. http://altfarm.mediaplex.com/ad/ck/8857-50307-18918-4 _______________________________________________ Flightgear-users mailing list Flightgear-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-users
