Re: [Flightgear-devel] today's 3d clouds commit
Ampere K. Hardraade wrote: On May 15, 2005 10:21 am, Melchior FRANZ wrote: PS: TODO for 1.0: - perfect weather (almost) done - per-wheel gound reactions YASim: done; JSBSim: :-( UIUC: bah! - help system (a bit unsophisticated, but) done - a/c switchable at runtime hmm :-/ Let me add to this list. =) - The bottom of the clouds above a city at night should have a faint orange glow. The thicker the clouds, the brighter the glow should be. - Moonlight. - The global ambient should be blue. This should be most noticeable when at dawn and dust when the sun is not visible. As a general thought (speaking of the devil, I actually thought about the cloud lighting effect the other night as I was driving home, even though I can't really using FG due to superseded hardware), but not only the cloud thickness has an effect, but also the cloud base, and the size of the city which is lighting the clouds. Large cities definitely have an obvious effect, and medium towns (medium being population 7000 or more) have a smaller, but noticable effect, as well. Any smaller than this, and they tend not to have either the ground coverage with accompanying lighting, or the heavy industry which would have enough high-powered lighting to leave a footprint. For an obvious example of what I'm referring to, drive through a rural area which has small towns spotted around at a general distance of 5 to 10 miles from each other, with a large city or two at a range of about 20 to 30 miles out. Of course, this applies on a cloudy night...you'll see the difference between the small towns and the cities. JD -- A scientist claims in court that the reason he ran a red light is that, due to his speed, the color was blueshifted till it appeared green. Needless to say, the charges of running the red light were dropped and he lost his license for speeding excessively. ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
[Flightgear-devel] OT: Windows Wallpaper
I suppose it's a little off topic, but it seems like something you guys would know about (since it seems like I saw it here to begin with, anyway) Would any of you know where I can find the image somewhat matching this description: A swimsuit model with big gazongas, with general information relating to several parameters of the arc of a curve (properly fitted to one of the nearly semi-circular aforementioned gazongas). I seem to remember it as being titled something like Engineering Wallpaper, but I can't really find it on the internet anymore (I might not be typing in the right keywords, though). Anyone know anything? Yeah, I know it's a little out there, but so am I, JD -- A scientist claims in court that the reason he ran a red light is that, due to his speed, the color was blueshifted till it appeared green. Needless to say, the charges of running the red light were dropped and he lost his license for speeding excessively. ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] new FGBenchmark package
Martin Spott wrote: Jonathan Richards wrote: I had a cunning plan to burn FGBenchmark onto business card CDs for giveaway at the forthcoming Linux exhibition in London, but 0.0.3 is too big for the media, which only takes 50 MB. I'll have a look at it this week (I'm on holiday the next week so I'm a bit under pressure to complete a couple of things _before_ I leave ;-) Martin. A further thought occurs: What's the smallest possible working flightgear package? I'd love to really play with updated versions of Flightgear, but the huge downloads are not very feasable on a 56k connection (and one phone line with other people wanting to also use it). Immediate thoughts as to how to reduce the size (particularly for the installer version in Win32, next update, if its feasable): data/scenery is has the potential to become quite large. I looked at the Fg 0.9.3 (installer exe, the one I have) installation and this has been improved from earlier base packages, which seemed to include the entire tile from 130n to 140n (or something like that, you get the idea). data/aircraft is pretty big. It was suggested that most of the aircraft be culled out. I agree with this. In my limited experience, I've only used the C-172 (default). But this is because I usually screw up with the command line options. Still, I tend to use one type of plane, even with highly GUI easy-interface sims like MSFS. I say include C172 as a default, but severely cull out most aircraft. It's still pretty big as far as filesize as it is. This could be supplemented in the same way scenery is with a webpage that allows for the download of individual aircraft. Obviously, this might entail some maintainence, but I'm willing to possibly take on the job if someone wants to be patient with me and help me out (I haven't done a whole lot of net programming [i.e. almost none] but this might be a good way to learn) data/textures.high is 25mb. Are these textures used by default anywhere? If they're not, then why have them in there? data/data just has cloud info. Is this just 3d clouds? As a general armchair user of FG, I don't use much of anything beyond the defaults. Maybe this should be removed. If it's ranty, sue me :) JD ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Win32-downloads
I download the Win32 package watch the list. I'm using Win32 mostly because I can never get hardware acceleration working in linux, and my linux box is off-line in my parent's basement waiting till I move to my own place. Anyone have any academic type jobs for me that pay enough to pay bills? :) JD Martin Spott wrote: Hello, I just glanced over the logfiles of my ftp-server and I realized, that people obviously are downloading the Win32 'fgsetup'-package like hell (at least compared to _my_ measures). Over 8.700 downloads since November. I find this really amazing. Where are all these people? I don't have the impression that they show up on any of the FlightGear mailing list - do they ? Martin. ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] [OT] Ventura publisher (really old)
I might be willing to see what I can do. I've been on a extracting things from other things kick lately, like pulling midi files out of proprietary archive files. How much harder can this be? If they're not too big/too many files, sent them my way, I'll take a shot in my spare time. JD Curtis L. Olson wrote: Ok, I'm abusing my powers here to ask a really [OT] question. If anyone objects, you definitely wouldn't be out of line. But it's easier to ask forgiveness than permission, right? :-) I have some really old, as in ancient ventura publishing files that I'd be interesting at cracking open and at least extracting out the important stuff in order to convert to some more modern tool. I'm seeing extensions like .WP and .WS which is probably text in word perfect and word star formats. I'm also seeing extentions like .CAP .CHP .CIF .VGR .CHP .STY .GEM and .PLT Does this ring a bell for anyone? It's probably 10 year old stuff at least? netbpm supposedly has a GEM converter, but these gem files are older than what the gemtopnm util supports. Ughhh! I should probably just rm * the whole lot, have a minute of silence, and get on with my life, but I thought I'd ask first Thanks, Curt. ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Oh dear....
This is pretty sad. It's times like this when I start to consider relocating to Canadia to find a job and live there, much as I bash on it (jokingly, of course; it really wouldn't do to be bashing our 51st state). David Megginson wrote: Jon Stockill wrote: US developers/users need to be careful - you'll be marked as terrorists. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/28/34776.html The sad part is not the anti-aviation hysteria, bad as it is, but the idea of a government that encourages citizens to spy on each other and report routine things (what they buy, what they eat, who they date, etc.). It looks like the Stalinists might not have lost the Cold War after all. All the best, David ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel -- A scientist claims in court that the reason he ran a red light is that, due to his speed, the color was blueshifted till it appeared green. Needless to say, the charges of running the red light were dropped and he lost his license for speeding excessively. ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Re: the horizon
I'll justify my diagram just a bit more, maybe for a clarification. True, the sun has a diameter much larger than earth. My reasoning for the sizes shown was that even if the sun is much larger, the earth appears to be much bigger by virtue of being much closer. My diagram makes some bad assumptions, such as if the center of the sun is below the horizon, then you don't see any of the sun. This assumption is okay for most times of the night, when you can't see the sun from most airplane-reachable altitudes. My argument could very well break down if one were to start dealing with space. It also doesn't work terribly well if you want to realistically simulate being able to partially view the sun. A possible solve to that is to draw the sun first, then draw an undetailed surface (possibly curving it to follow the earth). This surface hides the sun where it isn't visible, then just lay down the detailed surface over that. Again, I'm not exactly an expert at simulations, so take this stuff with a grain of salt. I also assumed that the sun, in FG's case, is modeled as a plain circle or sphere on the sky dome, and not as a 870,000 mile diameter sphere at 93,000,000 miles distance. Thus, it seems reasonable to me to possibly show the sun as being smaller than earth. As for eclipses, I imagine you'd see them, even if they were beyond the horizon. =P JD Jonathan Richards wrote: On Thursday 27 Nov 2003 5:23 am, JD Fenech wrote: Not too shabby, but it probably has holes. I do know that the last time I checked, FG will display the sun at midnight, especially if you fly up high enough, even if the earth is actually in the way, as in directly in the way. The diagram looks wrong to me. Although the sun is 93 million miles away, it is *much* larger than the Earth, so the Earth's shadow is a cone tapering *away* from the Sun. I'm not sure if this damages JD's argument about detecting Sun visibility for sensible aircraft altitudes (the atmosphere is a very thin skin around the planet) but if the sim were ever extended to spacecraft, we'd want to get the geometry exactly right. Maybe I'll fire up FG for August 1999 and see if it does solar eclipses :¬) Jonathan ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel -- A scientist claims in court that the reason he ran a red light is that, due to his speed, the color was blueshifted till it appeared green. Needless to say, the charges of running the red light were dropped and he lost his license for speeding excessively. ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Re: the horizon
This really doesn't seem like such a difficult subject to me.
If one were to use a crude approximation of a flat plane drawn out to
intersect the ray from the eye to the sun, it would work, but...
If you want to be really clever, use a spherical or spheroidal
approximation to determine where the ray (vector) from the sun to the
eye intersects the earth (if it intersects). At this point, all you
really have to do is detect whether the ray from a few key points of the
sun (bottom, top, center) to the eye intersect the arc of the Earth.
Similarly, you can probably just use the spheroidal formulae's (which
I've noticed a bit of lately) calculations to do a possible trick. If
you calculate the tangent line from the sun's center to the Earth's
limbs, the absolute angle between either of these tangents (they'll be
equal) and the line between the centers of the earth and the sun will
represent the largest possible angle which the sun cannot be seen by
anything (since an angle smaller than this critical angle is behind the
earth). Obviously, if the eye is somewhere directly between the earth
and the sun, this calculation needs not be done. I have a nice little
picture with the diagram of what I'm referring to, but I don't know if
an attachment will work.
If it does, it's just a gif image. In the image, Theta is the angle
from the centerline of the sun to the Earth's limb. Alpha is the angle
from the sun's centerline to the viewer (a little airplane). The
centerline passes through the center of both the sun and earth.
Pseudocode:
{ If the absolute value of alpha is less than the absolute value of
theta, then check and see if the eye is between the earth's center and
sun's center (not directly on the centerline, just somewhere near it,
more or less check to see if the eyepoint is between the
earth-center-X-coord and the sun-center-X-coord). If it's within this
range, then the sun is visible if the user looks at it
} else {
if alpha is greater than theta, then the sun should be visible if the
user looks at it.
}
End pseudocode.
Not too shabby, but it probably has holes. I do know that the last time
I checked, FG will display the sun at midnight, especially if you fly up
high enough, even if the earth is actually in the way, as in directly in
the way.
JD
Danie Heath wrote:
If I can give my opinion, 1 mile visibility sometimes looks like 20 mile
visibility when your only a mere 3000 ft up in the sky ... It's a really
a difficult subject this
-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Brandon
Craig Rhodes
Sent: 26 November 2003 08:53 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [Flightgear-devel] Re: the horizon
As I continue to ponder my horizon ideas, I am driven to ask: is the
FlightGear visibility code perhaps too naive? In real life, if you are
ten miles up looking down on landscape with fifteen-mile visibility, do
you really only see a little five-mile-radius patch?
(And: is this what the current visibility model does, or have I just
pushed it too hard and misunderestimated its sophistication?)
--
A scientist claims in court that the reason he ran a red light is that,
due to his speed, the color was blueshifted till it appeared green.
Needless to say, the charges of running the red light were dropped and
he lost his license for speeding excessively.
inline: Earth Sun Airplane.gif___
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Re: [Flightgear-devel] Airport vehicle (driving) sim
Stupid idea: Has anyone thought to make a simple FDM for ground vechicles? I admit it might get boring quickly, but in a multiplay situation, it might be intresting to allow someone to simply watch takeoffs from the ground, with a mobile camera. It's half-assed, and since I can barely get FG to compile on my own, it's probably not worth implementing. Curtis L. Olson wrote: David Megginson writes: If they ever need a volunteer to taxi around a virtual plane, getting in the drivers' way, let me know. They actually had a pretty neat scripting system. You could click a starting point, ending point, and a midpoint. The system would figure a reasonably optimal route throught the taxiway network. Planes would yield to each other and even to vehicles if the vehicle forced the issue. There were magic spots on the end of the runway that if you took the path to those, then the airplane would continue with a take off, fly around for 10 minutes and come back and land. It wasn't perfect, but from a ground vehicle perspective it looked really convincing. Regards, Curt. -- A scientist claims in court that the reason he ran a red light is that, due to his speed, the color was blueshifted till it appeared green. Needless to say, the charges of running the red light were dropped and he lost his license for speeding excessively. ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
[Flightgear-devel] Compile issues
Ok, I'm having a bit of trouble getting the release version of flightgear to compile under cygwin. I'm hardly an expert at getting major projects to compile, so I'm not quite sure what the problem even is. I've pasted the error at the bottom, so if anyone has any thoughts on it, maybe you can help. Also, where can I find an absolutely updated document which lists all of the configure options, as well as the currently required packages to compile the Release and CVS versions of FG (Do I need metakit or not? Zlib? You get what I mean). Error message follows, Thanks, JD $ make Making all in tests make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/flightgear-0.9.3/tests' g++ -g -O2 -o test-up.exe test-up.o -lsgmath -lsgdebug -lplibsg -lplibul /usr/lib/gcc-lib/i686-pc-cygwin/3.3.1/../../../../i686-pc-cygwin/bin/ld: cannot find -lsgmath collect2: ld returned 1 exit status make[1]: *** [test-up.exe] Error 1 make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/flightgear-0.9.3/tests' make: *** [all-recursive] Error 1$ make Making all in tests make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/flightgear-0.9.3/tests' g++ -g -O2 -o test-up.exe test-up.o -lsgmath -lsgdebug -lplibsg -lplibul /usr/lib/gcc-lib/i686-pc-cygwin/3.3.1/../../../../i686-pc-cygwin/bin/ld: cannot find -lsgmath collect2: ld returned 1 exit status make[1]: *** [test-up.exe] Error 1 make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/flightgear-0.9.3/tests' make: *** [all-recursive] Error 1 -- A scientist claims in court that the reason he ran a red light is that, due to his speed, the color was blueshifted till it appeared green. Needless to say, the charges of running the red light were dropped and he lost his license for speeding excessively. ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Compile issues
Thanks, That got it. JD John Barrett wrote: I'm also runnng cygwin and hit that one -- you need latest CVS versions of plib and simgear for starters -- try that then build fg -- I recommend --prefix=/usr on both plib and simgear builds -- cygwin doesnt have /usr/local/lib in the ld search path :) - Original Message - From: JD Fenech [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, November 10, 2003 9:05 PM Subject: [Flightgear-devel] Compile issues Ok, I'm having a bit of trouble getting the release version of flightgear to compile under cygwin. I'm hardly an expert at getting major projects to compile, so I'm not quite sure what the problem even is. I've pasted the error at the bottom, so if anyone has any thoughts on it, maybe you can help. Also, where can I find an absolutely updated document which lists all of the configure options, as well as the currently required packages to compile the Release and CVS versions of FG (Do I need metakit or not? Zlib? You get what I mean). Error message follows, Thanks, JD $ make Making all in tests make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/flightgear-0.9.3/tests' g++ -g -O2 -o test-up.exe test-up.o -lsgmath -lsgdebug -lplibsg -lplibul /usr/lib/gcc-lib/i686-pc-cygwin/3.3.1/../../../../i686-pc-cygwin/bin/ld: cannot find -lsgmath collect2: ld returned 1 exit status make[1]: *** [test-up.exe] Error 1 make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/flightgear-0.9.3/tests' make: *** [all-recursive] Error 1$ make Making all in tests make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/flightgear-0.9.3/tests' g++ -g -O2 -o test-up.exe test-up.o -lsgmath -lsgdebug -lplibsg -lplibul /usr/lib/gcc-lib/i686-pc-cygwin/3.3.1/../../../../i686-pc-cygwin/bin/ld: cannot find -lsgmath collect2: ld returned 1 exit status make[1]: *** [test-up.exe] Error 1 make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/flightgear-0.9.3/tests' make: *** [all-recursive] Error 1 -- A scientist claims in court that the reason he ran a red light is that, due to his speed, the color was blueshifted till it appeared green. Needless to say, the charges of running the red light were dropped and he lost his license for speeding excessively. ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel -- A scientist claims in court that the reason he ran a red light is that, due to his speed, the color was blueshifted till it appeared green. Needless to say, the charges of running the red light were dropped and he lost his license for speeding excessively. ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] heads up - aircraft reorg
I know this is slightly off topic, but what is the possibility of having a one aircraft, one file type configuration. The idea is basically to put all of the requisite files for a particular aircraft into some kind of archive file, such as a tarball, and then drop the archives into one directory. Of course, each archive would need some kind of .info file in it to tell fg what the aircraft name is, etc. Optimally, a command line option would override any faults set in the archive. Matevz Jekovec wrote: Jorge Van Hemelryck wrote: On Sat, 20 Sep 2003 11:29:48 +0200 Matevz Jekovec [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: For modern military aircrafts, I would make the following hierarchy: - Fighter (most of F-xx, Rafale, MiG-s, Sukhoi-s) - Attack (A-10, Harrier, Tornado, Mirage 2000, my J-22, Su-25) - Bomber (F-117, B-1, B-2, B-52, Iljusin-s) - Transport-Support (Hercules, Galaxy, KC-10, KC-135, Antonov-s) - EWS (EC-3? AWACS, Prowler) - Recon (light, fast, reconaissance aircrafts) - Trainee (light military aircrafts developed specially for teaching) hum... The Mirage 2000C is definitely a fighter, whereas the Mirage 2000D would be a fighter-bomber (is that what you call attack aircraft?), as it does have air-to-air capacity. The Mirage F1C was a fighter (no longer in service in France), the F1CT is an attack aircraft, and the F1CR a reconnaissance aircraft. All of them can act as fighters as well. And the Rafale was designed to be a multirole aircraft as well. Maybe you could make some distinctions among MiG and Sukhoi aircraft... For instance, the Su-27 was mainly a fighter, until more recent versions gained air-to-ground capacity, whereas the Su-25 is just an attack aircraft. I'm not really criticizing, but I'm saying it's going to be more and more difficult to sort all these modern aircraft in categories. Yes, of course. I was just giving examples of generaly, which aircrafts to put it to folders (why they are there). I think overall it's not hard to categorize aircrafts, but I is no doubtly a must, cause the available aircrafts number is drasticly growing. My J-22 A is a version which is most widely spread - Fighter-Bomber role aircraft (therefore let's say J-22 is an attack aircraft), although variant B is a double seater (trainee or a better close air support) and an R variant for recon. Anyway, every aircaft does a description of it, usually commented in xml wrapper files (what type, how old, development, who uses it, history, armement etc.), which should some day be showed in game too (I had in mind a technical library accessible from the game menu, which will show a 3D model of an aircraft, a tree structure data, a description, radar symbols etc.) ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel -- A scientist claims in court that the reason he ran a red light is that, due to his speed, the color was blueshifted till it appeared green. Needless to say, the charges of running the red light were dropped and he lost his license for speeding excessively. ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
[Flightgear-devel] [OT] Graduate Schools
I know it isn't quite development related, but you guys seem like the best folks to ask this question... I'm a fifth-year senior, CompSci major with physics and math minors... I have an interest in cosmology/astronomy/simulation/etc. I'm looking for a good grad school where I can put these aptitudes to work, except my GREs weren't exactly stellar (they were average). Since a lot of you are in the academic areas, you probably have a far better idea than me of where would be good to look at. I only have one major stipulation and that's basically that I don't want to go any further west than I am now (especially not California!) Perferably in the South. Thanks, JD -- The modern definition of 'racist' is someone who is winning an argument with a liberal. --Peter Brimelow ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Possible source for usable code
If you really want LHX, I can send you my copy. It's so old I doubt anyone sells it anymore. I think that might have been the first flight sim I played too. Curiouser and curiouser. Arnt Karlsen wrote: On Thu, 16 Jan 2003 19:31:53 -0600, Mike Bonar [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote in message [EMAIL PROTECTED]: On Thursday 16 January 2003 09:41, Curtis L. Olson wrote: Arnt Karlsen writes: On Thu, 16 Jan 2003 09:16:36 -0600, Curtis L. Olson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote in message [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Mike Bonar writes: Has anyone seen this site before? Might be some usable code there. http://websimulations.com/products.htm Yes, this is Riley Rainey's stuff. He wrote ACM for Unix which was/is a pretty fun combat game that works in native X11 (i.e. doesn't need opengl.) The graphics are simplistic and crude, but the action is a lot of fun. It would be interesting to look at integrating the DIS stuff with FlightGear. ..ah. :-) (OpenGL has been my showstopper for too long.) Much of it's beauty is in it's simplicity. It's definitely good for an hour or two of entertainment. You know, I still have a copy of LHX. It fits on a 1.44MB floppy, and ..url? it still runs! That was my first flight sim (*sighf*), and I've been hooked ever since. Mike -- ..med vennlig hilsen = with Kind Regards from Arnt... ;-) ...with a number of polar bear hunters in his ancestry... Scenarios always come in sets of three: best case, worst case, and just in case. ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel -- The modern definition of 'racist' is someone who is winning an argument with a liberal. --Peter Brimelow ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Now OT] [Flightgear-devel] status of open bugs at sourceforge.net/projects/flightgear ?
Technically, Y'alls is more of a possesive form of Y'all. At least that's how I use it. Y'all can use it yall's own way. And yes, that paticular usage is techically wrong too, considering that its usually used to refer to an physical object, such as an airplane :) Nyeh. Y'all have fun. Jon Berndt wrote: My favorite is the I'm with stupid tee shirt, but with the arrow pointing up (or is it down?) snicker By the way, Jon, what do guys at Nasa say when something is relatively easy? We say: OK, what did we miss? [BTW, I am not employed by NASA, but by a major aerospace corporation who supports them] Assuming all y'alls (plural form of y'all) are pretty good at your jobs, It's not exactly rocket science just doesn't have that same ring to it. y'all *is* plural. All y'all is used sometimes, but y'all is sufficient in the above circumstance, according to Webster. :-) Informally, when asked what I do (when among friends), I sometimes respond with a grin that I am a rocket scientist (which is my wife's cue to roll her eyes). In less informal circumstances I'd never do it. I saw somebody introduce herself as a Rocket Scientist once in a defensive driving class near Johnson Space Center. Considering several in the class could have referred to themselves the same way, it sort of lost its impact - even made me cringe. jb -- The modern definition of 'racist' is someone who is winning an argument with a liberal. --Peter Brimelow ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Website updates
This is just a thought, and since I'm definitely no expert at the internals, please feel free to bash the idea. This seems like a possibly reasonable way to add other elements to the scenery, such as buildings, towers, bridges, roads, etc. I'm just a college kid, haven't actually worked on anything major, haven't done massive amounts of research Flightgear or otherwise, and have been interested in Flightgear for a few years. The following has probably been tried, and discarded, but bear with me. Why not use a secondary scenery file, something that works a bit like an overlay. Example, a building, in this case, lets make it a cube (nice and regular :) Set the bottommost point (a centerpoint, if you will) in the center of the x-y plane. The z setting of this point will be at ground level (if it's halfway up the building, the part of the building below the point should be buried). A vector in the building data to point north (or other standard direction, like down or up) to make sure the building gets shown in the right orientation. Now for the magic (or something): Take the ground level of the scenery at the centerpoint of the object, and make that the altitude of the z coordinate of the object. Unless there were an inordinate/complicated amount of scenery, that might be a solution. It's similar to the dynamic scenery, except the locations of objects are predefined. Roads could be done in a slightly different way, such as a network of lines (I'm probably just proposing what's already been done). The endpoints are given as lat/lon. Since roads almost always follow the terrain (except for over/underpasses, tunnels, and other cuts through the terrain, the same map the ground level to the z coordinate idea should work for roads. Realistically, I don't see why a secondary package can't take a pregenerated ground scenery file, extract the required information with some overlay source information, and create an overlay file with all of the required information in some sensible format (after all, roads are just two points connected by a line). This overlay could even be optional, in case someone wishes to use a pristine scenery set. JD Alex Perry wrote: James A. Treacy writes: This brings up something I've been wondering for a while. It appears we can add roads and rivers. Why, then, isn't this the default? David replies: Unfortunately, to get roads, railroads, and rivers, we have to give up some quality in the terrain mesh. You don't notice much in flat terrain, but sometimes the mountains come out looking funny. Can we do it on a tile-by-tile basis ? If the range of altitude from minimum to maximum (in one tile) is less than 200 ft then do roads because the terrain will look essentially flat from any sensible altitude. ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] [OT] concave mirrors
Make sure the mirror really isn't a parabolic one. 40 mirrors are pretty big to be anywhere near perfectly spherical. Also, the reflected image will form on your retina, so where you put your eye has plenty of importance. Also, the optics of your eye might have an effect :) *grins* What a physics geek. JD Julian Foad wrote: The focal point is where rays will be focussed to/from a parallel beam of light - like the rays from an object at infinite distance. The theory is normally quoted in these terms, as it avoids having to consider two distances at once (the distance to the object and the distance to the image or observer). Thus: / Parallel rays from a distant object / | | + Are all focussed to here | (the focal point, by definition) \ \ ... but in real life, the object will be nearer than infinity ... / /Non-parallel rays from nearby object (O) | | + I O | \Are focussed to an inverted real image somewhere else (I) \ ... and as the object moves closer to the mirror, the image of it moves further away, and crosses over the object position (at the point where, looking into the mirror, you find the image of your eye disappearing into a singularity) and continues to move further away until ... / / | Rays from an object at the focal point (O) | O | \ \ Are focussed to infinity ... you get back to an easy-theory situation. The geometry of the intermediate positions is probably something like: (1 / distance_to_object) + (1 / distance_to_image) = (1 / focal_length) ... at least qualitatively. I don't know whether that is correct quantitatively. I hope this was the clue to the obvious that you needed. - Julian Curtis L. Olson wrote: Ok, this is *way* off topic, but I'm hoping the people here are a bit smarter than my stupid coworkers (I guess stupid _self_ is implied.) :-) The following web site explains the basic behavior of a concave mirror and pretty much agrees with everything I remember from physics: http://www.physicsclassroom.com/Class/refln/U13L3a.html If the object distance is beyond the focal point, the reflected image will be inverted. If the object is at the focal point, the reflected image will hit a singularity. If the object distance is less than the focal length, the object will be magnified and right-side up. Now, I have a concave mirror with a 40 radius of curvature. This means it has a 20 focal length. My problem is that I'm not observing behavior that matches the theory. My initial speculation is that the position of my eye is an important factor that isn't addressed by the simple theory, but from the simple theory, I don't see how that could be possible. Here are some things I'm observing: if my eye is closer to the mirror than the focal distance, I see myself and the entire room right side up. Even though objects in the distance (i.e. the other side of the room) are further than the focal point, they are still right-side up. If I move my eye point away from the mirror and watch myself, I seem to hit the singularity at 40 which is the center of curvature, not the focal point. Yes, I've verified that the radius is indeed 40 and is most definitely not 80. If my eye point is further than 40 I can move an object (such as a pen in and out and it hit's the singularity at 40 and inverts beyond that.) If I move my eye away from the mirror and watch an object on the otherside of the room, it hits the singularity and inverts at 20. This sort of agrees with the above theory except it's a distant object that never moves, only my viewpoint is moving. ?!? I've been trying to reconcile this all in my head and have put myself into a state of complete befuddlement ... Can anyone tell me what stupid thing I am missing? Curt. -- Curtis Olson IVLab / HumanFIRST Program FlightGear Project Twin Cities[EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Minnesota http://www.menet.umn.edu/~curt http://www.flightgear.org ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel -- The modern definition of 'racist' is someone who is winning an argument with a liberal. --Peter Brimelow ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] [OT] We are the champions
Huh? JD -- The modern definition of 'racist' is someone who is winning an argument with a liberal. --Peter Brimelow Marcio Shimoda wrote: BRAZIL 2002 World Cup Champion And we are 2nd (GERMANY) Ok, CU in Germany 2006 []'s Marcio Shimoda ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
