Re: [Flightgear-devel] The use of models from other formats
FGD ML wrote: Hi All, Just got directed to your list today. Hope I'm posting this right as that is a first for me too. Sorry if I goofed too. Welcome! I'm one of a bunch of content makers, I recently had a conversation with Stuart, and felt it worth exploring this a bit further with you all to see if it has much of a future as an idea. Basically we have been working with other sims for quite a few years, and I think between us we have tried pretty much everything by now. We work from Lightwave, and can't realistically afford to change from that. But then again neither would we really want to as it works the best for us and what we do. It's simple, uncluttered, concise, agile and robust. Pleased to see that the new OSG supports a format or two we can in theory work with. I ran some tests today and while the format of .lwo is obviously being noticed in the bowels of the thing, it does not show the model as a visual result. So that is a problem that maybe needs some further investigation. I have zero experience with Lightwave, but if it's similar to the other big modeling packages, including Blender, then I would assume that its native file format is not suitable to be used directly in a game or real-time simulation. The set of possible modeling operations is just too rich for OSG to support, and the file format is designed for editing, not fast loading and display. What art path are you using now with the simulations that apparently aren't MSFS? It would be most useful to inquire in the Lightwave community what people do for export to games. OSG supports DirectX .x files, Flight format, Collada, even plain .obj for geometry and textures; those all seem like better candidates for loading into Flightgear than .lwo. An important concern is exporting animations that are stored in your Lightwave models. It's true that Flightgear does all model animations via XML files that are separate from the model files, but that's an artifact of the tools that Flightgear modelers have used to date. While it is convenient to have a human-readable format for animations, OSG does support animations directly in its scene graph and can construct them from loaded files. If you can export the pivots and sequences of your animations into one of the above file formats, then the remaining work is connecting Flightgear runtime properties with the controlling animation variables in the model. There would be some XML for you to write (I think), and we would need to support hooking into an OSG animation directly. One problem we can't do much about is that both AC3D and Blender have issues beyond our control on the platform we use. AC3D can't run on Windows build 6001 SP1 and above as far as we can tell, and this will be set to get a lot worse with the advent of 7000 and up later this year. At any rate it has an app crash as soon as it starts to run. Fixes are inconsistent to that's not a solid proposition by then. Blender has other issue related to what it wants in the way of python versions and what is actually available for x64 quad based machines. I don't know what to say about AC3D, but Blender has such a large community that I doubt you need to be suffering in isolation this way. Surely this is a known problem with a workaround? Having discovered all this we now need to find out about lightwave use in flightgear directly. It's going to be work either way, and since it seems able to use the stuff directly I can't see any point having 3rd party stuff with issues in the way, especially since they also bloat the files by a factor of 3 in many cases. 500K .lwo file becomes 1,500K .ac file and loses all it's image maps into a not very good looking bargain. There will be some bloat as you go from the modeler format to a real-time format. 300% is not outrageous. ... I mention this because there is no other way of getting a whole plane from lightwave. Although I am not sure if collada might prove ok in that respect and the latest version of lightwave has that as an export possibility, but we've never had cause to try it to date. Lastly, I see form other posts in this context that there is great mention of MSFS, but can I please say that we were not from there, we have been making lately for sims very much closer in style to FG than that. They are minority sims though it must be said, but we feel their time may also be up shortly. Hence us looking over FG for the last 6 months or so to see if we could make it work. It's looking awfully close to being possible based on what we found out about FG so far. We'd like to make stuff but we don't yet seem to have a fully working route of choice. We just don't seem able to give it away. Which is a little unusual! As I said above, can you tell us about your present art path, and maybe what simulations you're targeting today? Tim
Re: [Flightgear-devel] The use of models from other formats
Tim Moore wrote: I don't know what to say about AC3D, but Blender has such a large community that I doubt you need to be suffering in isolation this way. Surely this is a known problem with a workaround? Before people spend too much time on that if you have a small sample model that you could upload somewhere I'd be happy to try and work through the conversion process in blender to determine what's required to get acceptable results - once you're happy it *can* be converted properly we can worry about how to achieve that on your platform. Jon -- Create and Deploy Rich Internet Apps outside the browser with Adobe(R)AIR(TM) software. With Adobe AIR, Ajax developers can use existing skills and code to build responsive, highly engaging applications that combine the power of local resources and data with the reach of the web. Download the Adobe AIR SDK and Ajax docs to start building applications today-http://p.sf.net/sfu/adobe-com ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] YASim sliding helicopters bug
Jon S. Berndt jonsber...@comcast.net wrote: Well, just very few years ago 'we' (TM) had a patch in our budget that would have allowed JSBSim to do excellent simulation of a tire's contact area. Some of us have seen with their own eyes that the guy (the submitter of the respective patch) obviously knows about how to properly deal with the topic. Can you give me some more information about the specifics of the patch you are talking about? Feel free to contact me via email, if needed. If you are referring to the patch I think you are referring to, I certainly agree that the guy knows what he is doing with respect to the solution of such a difficult modeling problem. If I recall correctly (and I'm not certain that I do - particularly today because I am home with a really nasty fever and cold) there was a lot of additional overhead and infrastructure that was needed to make it work, and it was a pretty large alteration of the existing JSBSim codebase. I may be recalling the wrong modification. Well, this matches with my memories about the respective patch - as far as I can tell there was just this single approach at contributing a rewrite of the tire/ground reaction feature to JSBSim. If I summarize correctly then we a) still don't have a single FDM in FlightGear that does proper simulation of this feature and b) it looks like major changes are required to get it going. To put it a bit provoking (no personal offense intended!) for the sake of getting the status right, this looks to me that we're never going to have this feature of proper tire/ground reaction simulation in FlightGear simply because the involved folks prefer to play around with smaller, 'approximative' workarounds forever instead of biting the bullet just once. Right ? Cheers, Martin. -- Unix _IS_ user friendly - it's just selective about who its friends are ! -- -- Create and Deploy Rich Internet Apps outside the browser with Adobe(R)AIR(TM) software. With Adobe AIR, Ajax developers can use existing skills and code to build responsive, highly engaging applications that combine the power of local resources and data with the reach of the web. Download the Adobe AIR SDK and Ajax docs to start building applications today-http://p.sf.net/sfu/adobe-com ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] The use of models from other formats
2009/2/5 Jon Stockill li...@stockill.net Tim Moore wrote: I don't know what to say about AC3D, but Blender has such a large community that I doubt you need to be suffering in isolation this way. Surely this is a known problem with a workaround? Before people spend too much time on that if you have a small sample model that you could upload somewhere I'd be happy to try and work through the conversion process in blender to determine what's required to get acceptable results - once you're happy it *can* be converted properly we can worry about how to achieve that on your platform. Yes a link to some basic cubes was in my previous message. I'm starting to guess collada may have the answers to all of this. Assuming it can do what has been touted for it. I got a horrid little feeling it could be messy due to what must surely be some rather hefty compromise though. It would be in it's nature given what it sets out to do. -- Cheers, Ian -- Create and Deploy Rich Internet Apps outside the browser with Adobe(R)AIR(TM) software. With Adobe AIR, Ajax developers can use existing skills and code to build responsive, highly engaging applications that combine the power of local resources and data with the reach of the web. Download the Adobe AIR SDK and Ajax docs to start building applications today-http://p.sf.net/sfu/adobe-com___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] The use of models from other formats
2009/2/5 Tim Moore timo...@redhat.com FGD ML wrote: Hi All, Just got directed to your list today. Hope I'm posting this right as that is a first for me too. Sorry if I goofed too. Welcome! Thanks, that feels a whole lot better now! (seriously!) I'm going to work through this a part at a time as there's a lot of good issues which it raises and I'd like to do it all justice where I can, senior moments aside of course! g I have zero experience with Lightwave, but if it's similar to the other big modeling packages, including Blender, then I would assume that its native file format is not suitable to be used directly in a game or real-time simulation. Well, no, it's quite unlike them, which is partly why we chose to use it. But I'd admit to some serious and very long standing bias there. In lightwave the format is adequately agile for real time video preview using DirectX but of far more interest to us, opengl, LW has been into using OGL for far longer than it has DirectX. The set of possible modeling operations is just too rich for OSG to support, and the file format is designed for editing, not fast loading and display. That is also probably one of the many reasons that Newtek (makers) split the job it into two discreet programs; The modeller produces finished objects, with ALL surface and image mappings (including defining bump mapping) all fully addressed, more fully than I have ever seen it done anywhere else too. These bear the .lwo extension. Multiple model objects made by that can then be loaded into the layout software to construct a scene, which would ultimately go on to be rendered out to tape or film to use as special effects in tv and movies, titanic and babylon five and all that stuff which folk seem to like to tra-la about in the blurb! It also does good stills with quite an arsenal of real world cameras and lenses modelled too. Most people don't spot that right away but it does it rather well I've found. This scene can be lit and set up for motion as required, and then saved as a scene file, these are the .lws file you'll sometimes see with lightwave stuff. This software also allows some additional texture tweaking and things but that is not it's main purpose. So we end up with all the parts of a plane (or any other vehicle) in place and all hinged off of each other where that is desired. This gives so many useful options from the FG stand point it's like waking up on Christmas morning to find that Santa brought you, well, just about everything, if one chooses to make use of what is there of course. What art path are you using now with the simulations that apparently aren't MSFS? We have a plugin in for the current one, it's serves up some basically functional DirectX. The sims are not overly advanced so any lacking there would be in there is not a problem as the sim never gets as far as discovering a lack if there was one. I'll break there and come back with more where it seems it might be useful. Do please nudge me if I missed anytihng that is a burning issue for you though. Oh and Newtek are renowned in the industry for good docs and an SDK, with a pretty open approach to 3rd party software solution producers, freeware and for money alike. Looks like fertile ground to me. -- Cheers, Ian -- Create and Deploy Rich Internet Apps outside the browser with Adobe(R)AIR(TM) software. With Adobe AIR, Ajax developers can use existing skills and code to build responsive, highly engaging applications that combine the power of local resources and data with the reach of the web. Download the Adobe AIR SDK and Ajax docs to start building applications today-http://p.sf.net/sfu/adobe-com___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] YASim sliding helicopters bug
To put it a bit provoking (no personal offense intended!) for the sake of getting the status right, this looks to me that we're never going to have this feature of proper tire/ground reaction simulation in FlightGear simply because the involved folks prefer to play around with smaller, 'approximative' workarounds forever instead of biting the bullet just once. Right ? Cheers, Martin. Not quite. I'll write more this evening. Off to work, now. JB -- Create and Deploy Rich Internet Apps outside the browser with Adobe(R)AIR(TM) software. With Adobe AIR, Ajax developers can use existing skills and code to build responsive, highly engaging applications that combine the power of local resources and data with the reach of the web. Download the Adobe AIR SDK and Ajax docs to start building applications today-http://p.sf.net/sfu/adobe-com ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] terrasync - location change improvements
Thank you, those are both useful bug reports with the approach I took. Let me come up with clean fixes for both of them and then get back to you. On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 11:57 PM, Frederic Bouvier fredfgf...@free.fr wrote: Hi Alex, your version compiles under windows, but needs a continuous feed of messages to work. So it doesn't work with the new fgrun button that send a positional message to get a chunk of scenery without having to start the simulator. Moreover, I also thought about a tile cache that will prevent refetching an already downloaded tiles, but it would need to stop terrasync to have updates ( objects are added continuously to the repository ) or implement a sophisticated aging mechanism. So, in other words, I am not keen to commit your changes as they are. -Fred - Alex Perry a écrit : Following up on Fred's improvement to maintain a queue of pending tile syncs, the attached version extends the deque to a priority ordered list and also ensures we never repeat a sync that's already just been performed. Consequently, we're now as responsive as possible to the location change menu item. I'd appreciate if someone could check that this compiles under Windows and then commit. -- Frédéric Bouvier http://my.fotolia.com/frfoto/ Photo gallery - album photo http://fgsd.sourceforge.net/ FlightGear Scenery Designer -- Create and Deploy Rich Internet Apps outside the browser with Adobe(R)AIR(TM) software. With Adobe AIR, Ajax developers can use existing skills and code to build responsive, highly engaging applications that combine the power of local resources and data with the reach of the web. Download the Adobe AIR SDK and Ajax docs to start building applications today-http://p.sf.net/sfu/adobe-com ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel -- Create and Deploy Rich Internet Apps outside the browser with Adobe(R)AIR(TM) software. With Adobe AIR, Ajax developers can use existing skills and code to build responsive, highly engaging applications that combine the power of local resources and data with the reach of the web. Download the Adobe AIR SDK and Ajax docs to start building applications today-http://p.sf.net/sfu/adobe-com ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] The use of models from other formats
On Wednesday 04 February 2009, FGD ML wrote: Hi All, Just got directed to your list today. Hope I'm posting this right as that is a first for me too. Sorry if I goofed too. I'm one of a bunch of content makers [snip...] Re the choice of model format; have you got a .3ds exporter for LW? That may be the easiest route for the time being. I believe it is as well supported as the .ac format in FG as the A-380 uses several model sub-objects that are in this format. I'm afraid that I can't tell you what the workflow is for that format though as I've never used it myself. Are you used to using multiple textures on individual objects, or are you normally restricted to a single texture per object? If you normally use several textures then this may be an issue; once again, having not used the .3ds format, I don't know if it supports multiple textures, and if so, whether that feature is supported in OSG. Another issue that may be problematic is that there are no bones or IK in the FG animation system. This isn't a show stopper and most animations don't need them, but it can make animating linked animations i.e. gear-linkages more time consuming; you'll have to work out and use interpolation tables for non-linear animations. The ordering of nested animations can also be time-consuming to sort out, but I've always found a way to do things in the end. There's also the issue that atm, the only way to check that an animation works properly is via a full run of FG, so you may find that you're spending more time waiting for FG to load than actually checking the animation. One tip when sorting out landing gear animations is to temporarily bind the animation axis you're working on to something like the rudder; you can then check that the gear extend retract and linkage compression animations etc. animate correctly by just using the rudder control; because you have to run to full sim to check your animations, retracting the gear while on the ground will just crash the aircraft. LeeE -- Create and Deploy Rich Internet Apps outside the browser with Adobe(R)AIR(TM) software. With Adobe AIR, Ajax developers can use existing skills and code to build responsive, highly engaging applications that combine the power of local resources and data with the reach of the web. Download the Adobe AIR SDK and Ajax docs to start building applications today-http://p.sf.net/sfu/adobe-com ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] YASim sliding helicopters bug
Em Qui, 2009-02-05 às 11:34 +, Martin Spott escreveu: To put it a bit provoking (no personal offense intended!) for the sake of getting the status right, this looks to me that we're never going to have this feature of proper tire/ground reaction simulation in FlightGear simply because the involved folks prefer to play around with smaller, 'approximative' workarounds forever instead of biting the bullet just once. Right ? As far as I know, this spring and damper around a stuck point is the method used even on race simulators. The best way to explain its principle is to compare it to the flexibility of the wheel rubber and the gear structure itself. After all fixed body physics don't really exist. Right now my code uses a 1cm long spring, it is not that much and I believe it could be reduced even more. To really give the best result with every plane, more information on the gear, and changes to the aircraft definition format, would be required. What I think may be acceptable. The bigger problem with this approach is the Carrier, but I don't see why it shouldn't work. Although I haven't got it working so far. I hope this can be solved soon, so I can send the patch as a proof of concept. IMHO it is working pretty well on land. Diogo -- Create and Deploy Rich Internet Apps outside the browser with Adobe(R)AIR(TM) software. With Adobe AIR, Ajax developers can use existing skills and code to build responsive, highly engaging applications that combine the power of local resources and data with the reach of the web. Download the Adobe AIR SDK and Ajax docs to start building applications today-http://p.sf.net/sfu/adobe-com ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] YASim sliding helicopters bug
* Diogo Kastrup -- Thursday 05 February 2009: The bigger problem with this approach is the Carrier, but I don't see why it shouldn't work. Although I haven't got it working so far. I hope this can be solved soon, so I can send the patch as a proof of concept. IMHO it is working pretty well on land. Excellent! And even if it doesn't work that well on the carrier, that's still a whole lot better than now, where it doesn't work well on either the carrier or on land. Carrier decks only cover a small part of the world, too. ;-) m. -- Create and Deploy Rich Internet Apps outside the browser with Adobe(R)AIR(TM) software. With Adobe AIR, Ajax developers can use existing skills and code to build responsive, highly engaging applications that combine the power of local resources and data with the reach of the web. Download the Adobe AIR SDK and Ajax docs to start building applications today-http://p.sf.net/sfu/adobe-com ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
[Flightgear-devel] fuel gauges ...
Hello -- Create and Deploy Rich Internet Apps outside the browser with Adobe(R)AIR(TM) software. With Adobe AIR, Ajax developers can use existing skills and code to build responsive, highly engaging applications that combine the power of local resources and data with the reach of the web. Download the Adobe AIR SDK and Ajax docs to start building applications today-http://p.sf.net/sfu/adobe-com___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
[Flightgear-devel] fuel gauges ...
Hello , I would like to know if the jsbsim 'consumables/fuel/tank[?]/level-lb' property name could be changed to level-lbs for compatability sake ... Currently I have to chech the condition of that property to properly animate a fuel gauge and to me , level-lb just doesnt read right ... tanks hold more than a pound ... I think I brought this up quite a while back but dont remember the response . Cheers -- Create and Deploy Rich Internet Apps outside the browser with Adobe(R)AIR(TM) software. With Adobe AIR, Ajax developers can use existing skills and code to build responsive, highly engaging applications that combine the power of local resources and data with the reach of the web. Download the Adobe AIR SDK and Ajax docs to start building applications today-http://p.sf.net/sfu/adobe-com___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] fuel gauges ...
On Thu, 5 Feb 2009, syd adams wrote: Hello , I would like to know if the jsbsim 'consumables/fuel/tank[?]/level-lb' property name could be changed to level-lbs for compatability sake ... Currently I have to chech the condition of that property to properly animate a fuel gauge and to me , level-lb just doesnt read right ... tanks hold more than a pound ... I think I brought this up quite a while back but dont remember the response Hi, IIRC that property is created in JSBSim.cxx (the FG-JSBSim interface) and is one of the ones I'm itching to rename. If I rename it we do need to track down all uses of it in FG/CVS and fix them on the next FG-JSBSim synchronization. Anyone with CVS data access willing to help with that? If we get started with that we could also change all JSBSim aircraft using /engines/engine[x]/mp-osi for sound or animations to use mp-inhg as both those properties are actually in inHg (I'd like to remove the misnamed mp-osi property from JSBSim.cxx). Cheers, Anders -- --- Anders Gidenstam WWW: http://www.gidenstam.org/FlightGear/ -- Create and Deploy Rich Internet Apps outside the browser with Adobe(R)AIR(TM) software. With Adobe AIR, Ajax developers can use existing skills and code to build responsive, highly engaging applications that combine the power of local resources and data with the reach of the web. Download the Adobe AIR SDK and Ajax docs to start building applications today-http://p.sf.net/sfu/adobe-com ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
[Flightgear-devel] Q: OpenGL version requirement for FlightGear 1.9.1
What are the OpenGL version requirements for FlightGear 1.9.1? I haven't found a reference in FG documentation, yet. I have only seen specifications for the latest nVidia or ATI cards. Best regards, --Dave -- David L. Page Knoxville, Tennessee davidp...@ieee.org 865.607.8192 -- Create and Deploy Rich Internet Apps outside the browser with Adobe(R)AIR(TM) software. With Adobe AIR, Ajax developers can use existing skills and code to build responsive, highly engaging applications that combine the power of local resources and data with the reach of the web. Download the Adobe AIR SDK and Ajax docs to start building applications today-http://p.sf.net/sfu/adobe-com___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] The use of models from other formats
2009/2/5 Tim Moore timo...@redhat.com It would be most useful to inquire in the Lightwave community what people do for export to games. Well this would always depend on the game in question as that is what generally calls the shots in the main. OSG supports DirectX .x files, Flight format, Collada, even plain .obj for geometry and textures; those all seem like better candidates for loading into Flightgear than .lwo. Well to take that in an assorted order but trying to logically link it all together: .lwo is probably directly analogous to .obj it's only a single solitary object with no facility to contain animation data as far as I know. I've not got any software that writes the .obj format natively so I can't say whether it's any better or any worse at doing that job than a .lwo can; I'd be surprised if the .lwo was found lacking in any way, and can easily imagine it doing it better than many or even most and at least equal to any other. DirectX differs from those two as it can and often will contain multiple frames and animation point info, frequently with several individual objects collected together and each of their local axis known, honoured and acted upon. It may be that collada can carry this much info too. So this is more of a container format than an actual object format, for want of a better description. As I have mentioned before this has an analog in the .lws file in lightwave parlance. As for flight format I've never even seen one, where has that been used out of interest? I've no idea which of these two styles it falls into, perhaps you could enlighten on that? I'm always interested to know a bit more. The more I think about all this the more I am wondering if it might not just be an absolute master stroke if flightgear had it's own xml format for laying out the various parts to a vehicle and where they all live relative to each other, where and how they sit at rest, and then, since OSG is on hand with it's multiple file reading abilities, it's not too far from plausible to imagine it could even handle a plane made with multiple format parts assembled by it. Which would be quite a breathtaking possibility, although the point of it is a bit less than obvious. What it would do though is allow any format that OSG can handle to be used to put together a fully working plane no matter what. All this via the existing animation facilities! Seems like huge value seen in those terms I'd have to guess. Sorry I may be bit slow responding for the next day or so, I've had some ill health issues giving me hell today, and have no idea how long it may decide to play up for. It flares up from time to time and is pretty painful which wears me down somewhat! Probably be OK again in a day or so. It normally goes that way. -- Cheers, Ian -- Create and Deploy Rich Internet Apps outside the browser with Adobe(R)AIR(TM) software. With Adobe AIR, Ajax developers can use existing skills and code to build responsive, highly engaging applications that combine the power of local resources and data with the reach of the web. Download the Adobe AIR SDK and Ajax docs to start building applications today-http://p.sf.net/sfu/adobe-com___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] fuel gauges ...
And since I brought it up , yes, I'll track down and make the required animations changes . (If the other aircraft modellers have no objection). On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 4:09 PM, Jon S. Berndt jonsber...@comcast.netwrote: Sounds like a good idea to me to change it to lbs. Jon -Original Message- From: Anders Gidenstam [mailto:anders-...@gidenstam.org] Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2009 2:55 PM To: FlightGear developers discussions Subject: Re: [Flightgear-devel] fuel gauges ... On Thu, 5 Feb 2009, syd adams wrote: Hello , I would like to know if the jsbsim 'consumables/fuel/tank[?]/level- lb' property name could be changed to level-lbs for compatability sake ... Currently I have to chech the condition of that property to properly animate a fuel gauge and to me , level-lb just doesnt read right ... tanks hold more than a pound ... I think I brought this up quite a while back but dont remember the response Hi, IIRC that property is created in JSBSim.cxx (the FG-JSBSim interface) and is one of the ones I'm itching to rename. If I rename it we do need to track down all uses of it in FG/CVS and fix them on the next FG-JSBSim synchronization. Anyone with CVS data access willing to help with that? If we get started with that we could also change all JSBSim aircraft using /engines/engine[x]/mp-osi for sound or animations to use mp-inhg as both those properties are actually in inHg (I'd like to remove the misnamed mp-osi property from JSBSim.cxx). Cheers, Anders -- --- Anders Gidenstam WWW: http://www.gidenstam.org/FlightGear/ --- --- Create and Deploy Rich Internet Apps outside the browser with Adobe(R)AIR(TM) software. With Adobe AIR, Ajax developers can use existing skills and code to build responsive, highly engaging applications that combine the power of local resources and data with the reach of the web. Download the Adobe AIR SDK and Ajax docs to start building applications today- http://p.sf.net/sfu/adobe-com ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel -- Create and Deploy Rich Internet Apps outside the browser with Adobe(R)AIR(TM) software. With Adobe AIR, Ajax developers can use existing skills and code to build responsive, highly engaging applications that combine the power of local resources and data with the reach of the web. Download the Adobe AIR SDK and Ajax docs to start building applications today- http://p.sf.net/sfu/adobe-com ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel -- Create and Deploy Rich Internet Apps outside the browser with Adobe(R)AIR(TM) software. With Adobe AIR, Ajax developers can use existing skills and code to build responsive, highly engaging applications that combine the power of local resources and data with the reach of the web. Download the Adobe AIR SDK and Ajax docs to start building applications today-http://p.sf.net/sfu/adobe-com___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] fuel gauges ...
If we get started with that we could also change all JSBSim aircraft using /engines/engine[x]/mp-osi for sound or animations to use mp-inhg as both those properties are actually in inHg (I'd like to remove the misnamed mp-osi property from JSBSim.cxx). Cheers, Anders Ah yes , I always wondered about those duplicates , but never really looked into it but I agree that one should be enough :) -- Create and Deploy Rich Internet Apps outside the browser with Adobe(R)AIR(TM) software. With Adobe AIR, Ajax developers can use existing skills and code to build responsive, highly engaging applications that combine the power of local resources and data with the reach of the web. Download the Adobe AIR SDK and Ajax docs to start building applications today-http://p.sf.net/sfu/adobe-com___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] fuel gauges ...
On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 4:09 PM, Jon S. Berndt jonsber...@comcast.netwrote: Sounds like a good idea to me to change it to lbs. Jon Oh good . Thanks Jon . I'll send a patch after I test it better to make sure I don't break anything , and find all other uses of it , unless Anders has beat me to it :) Cheers -- Create and Deploy Rich Internet Apps outside the browser with Adobe(R)AIR(TM) software. With Adobe AIR, Ajax developers can use existing skills and code to build responsive, highly engaging applications that combine the power of local resources and data with the reach of the web. Download the Adobe AIR SDK and Ajax docs to start building applications today-http://p.sf.net/sfu/adobe-com___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] fuel gauges ...
Hello , Ok, I have everything in the data folder converted to /level-lbs. (The Concorde was a bit of a nightmare) ... :) If someone could commit the patch , I'm ready to commit the data ... Thanks . -- Create and Deploy Rich Internet Apps outside the browser with Adobe(R)AIR(TM) software. With Adobe AIR, Ajax developers can use existing skills and code to build responsive, highly engaging applications that combine the power of local resources and data with the reach of the web. Download the Adobe AIR SDK and Ajax docs to start building applications today-http://p.sf.net/sfu/adobe-com___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] YASim sliding helicopters bug
To put it a bit provoking (no personal offense intended!) for the sake of getting the status right, this looks to me that we're never going to have this feature of proper tire/ground reaction simulation in FlightGear simply because the involved folks prefer to play around with smaller, 'approximative' workarounds forever instead of biting the bullet just once. Right ? Cheers, Martin. Not quite. I'll write more this evening. Off to work, now. JB OK. The answer to your question (which is really more like an assertion disguised as a question ;^) follows below. There are many kinds of simulations, that all address particular needs. Are we talking about a training simulator, or an engineering simulator, or an entertainment simulator, or ... ? In my day job I work on a sophisticated launch vehicle simulator. For our specific uses, we are not overly concerned about the exact dynamics of the vehicle during its flight, but we are concerned that the launch vehicle arrives at a particular point in time and space with a particular state, so we can test the abort systems. The level of fidelity for the various subsystem models should be driven by the purpose or intended use of the simulator. In the case of ground reactions for JSBSim, from the start we noticed that it is difficult to model ground reactions when at rest or at small velocity. The wheel slip angle, for instance, varies wildly in JSBSim when no filtering or other compensation is used: http://jsbsim.sourceforge.net/NoFiltering.png If the output is filtered at the frame rate, the slip angle doesn't oscillate quite so fast, but it's still bad: http://jsbsim.sourceforge.net/FilteringOn.png If the forces are ramped down to zero below some threshold, the dynamics improve greatly: http://jsbsim.sourceforge.net/FilterAndRamp.png Finally, adjusting the longitudinal and lateral ramp thresholds can improve response even more. Note the scale on the left side of the plot: http://jsbsim.sourceforge.net/FilterAndRamp2.png So, I have to ask you: what is proper tire/ground reaction? With a few lines of code I've reduced the ground reactions artifacts for the f-16 to very small levels - and I really haven't optimized them, yet. They could maybe be improved even more. So what is the cost/benefit to adding more code to do gear modeling more precisely? How much would the user really notice the difference? If we model the ground reactions to such high fidelity, should we then also model the aero characteristics using the Navier Stokes equations? There are always tradeoffs in simulation. In the case of JSBSim, I am hoping to model ground reactions so that the end user is satisfied with the response. There's not a simple answer to this question. There is definitely a need for more documentation on our gear modeling, and perhaps some software tools for people to use when creating the landing gear portion of a JSBSim configuration file. Jon -- Create and Deploy Rich Internet Apps outside the browser with Adobe(R)AIR(TM) software. With Adobe AIR, Ajax developers can use existing skills and code to build responsive, highly engaging applications that combine the power of local resources and data with the reach of the web. Download the Adobe AIR SDK and Ajax docs to start building applications today-http://p.sf.net/sfu/adobe-com ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] The use of models from other formats
On Thu, 5 Feb 2009 11:07:45 +, FGD wrote in message 9dfda0650902050307n513838b7x6f06bca893b2b...@mail.gmail.com: 2009/2/5 Jon Stockill li...@stockill.net Tim Moore wrote: I don't know what to say about AC3D, but Blender has such a large community that I doubt you need to be suffering in isolation this way. Surely this is a known problem with a workaround? Before people spend too much time on that if you have a small sample model that you could upload somewhere I'd be happy to try and work through the conversion process in blender to determine what's required to get acceptable results - once you're happy it *can* be converted properly we can worry about how to achieve that on your platform. Yes a link to some basic cubes was in my previous message. ..??? I could not find that link. Lost message? I'm starting to guess collada may have the answers to all of this. Assuming it can do what has been touted for it. I got a horrid little feeling it could be messy due to what must surely be some rather hefty compromise though. It would be in it's nature given what it sets out to do. -- ..med vennlig hilsen = with Kind Regards from Arnt... ;o) ...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. -- Create and Deploy Rich Internet Apps outside the browser with Adobe(R)AIR(TM) software. With Adobe AIR, Ajax developers can use existing skills and code to build responsive, highly engaging applications that combine the power of local resources and data with the reach of the web. Download the Adobe AIR SDK and Ajax docs to start building applications today-http://p.sf.net/sfu/adobe-com ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
