Re: [Flightgear-devel] Rating System Redux (was Re:Flightgear-devel Digest, Vol 61, Issue 12)
On Tuesday, May 31, 2011 03:02:09 PM Vivian Meazza wrote: Hal, I can't follow your logic - because there are some aircraft that need a lot of work, the system shouldn't recognize advanced features in other aircraft that do have them? I should have been clearer - Sorry. What I was trying to say is that we shouldn't need special cases to include this type of stuff in the rating. I also disagree with Stuart that such advanced features are nice-to-haves and add little to the simulation - why the hell are we including them then? Do the stores so nicely added to the P-51 add nothing? These add a lot. I treated them as systems and included them in Systems rating. Seemed like the right way to handle this stuff to me. On the other hand, the ability to change liveries adds to the model? Sure doesn't wring my withers, but I suppose the airliner aficionados (and I'm not one) absolutely must have that. I agree with this (IE. that liveries only make sense for some models). Stuart changed the External Model category to make liveries optional to get a 4 or above. The P-51 is a superb model already, and at a reasonable frame rate here - about 75% of my benchmark figure. The yasim p51d gets about 35 FPS on my older system (it's probably a mid level system by todays standards) and the jsbsim version gets about 22 FPS under the same conditions. Considering how much more detail there is in the JSBSim cockpit I think it does OK frame rate wise. It would benefit from a tutorial on the start procedure - It does have a complete startup check list/procedure in the aircraft specific help that is basically copied from the pilots manual. The startup is fairly simple (comparable to a single engine GA aircraft) so most users should be able to get it running by reading the startup check list/procedure. but apparently that would win no points either. That seems to be a missed opportunity too. I agree that the quality of the aircraft specific help and the existence of tutorials needs to be factored into the rating system some how. I suppose the P-51 FDM is accurate - but I find it not all that pleasant to fly. There is a high pilot work load during take off and initial climb out and this makes things unpleasant during those part of a flight. Once up to or above normal climb speed and trimmed it becomes fairly easy to fly. It also can be a handful in high G maneuvers since it will snap if there is a yaw angle as you approach stall. You can appoach stall at fairly high speeds in high G maneuvers without blacking out. FG pilots will likely find this behavior surprising since the JSBSim P-51D is the only FG aircraft I know of that will do this. But after the pilot gets used to this behavior it gives the pilot a level of feedback near stall that is very useful. I would say that you have probably slightly underrated its score. I may have been overly critical with my ranking but I have a very long todo list and I am acutely aware of how much work remains to be done. I think this is a common situation among those who are trying to create very high quality models and I also believe that most individuals trying to create high quality models will tend to underrate their own models. I think this is a good thing since it sets a very high bar. In the final analysis - the system currently proposed is only marginally better than the current wet finger in the air method. I think we are falling a bit short here in our aim to be both objective, and to tell users more about the available aircraft. This I don't totally agree with. The system is far from perfect but at least we have a documented rating system that is somewhat objective and fairly easy to do. We can improve on it going forward to make it more complete and what we have now is a good starting place and is clearly better than the wet finger in the air method. In particular, the failure to tell users that they need a powerful system to use a model, and something about the difficulty of use, is going to disappoint and or frustrate users. I think these are separate issues from rating model maturity. Hal -- Simplify data backup and recovery for your virtual environment with vRanger. Installation's a snap, and flexible recovery options mean your data is safe, secure and there when you need it. Data protection magic? Nope - It's vRanger. Get your free trial download today. http://p.sf.net/sfu/quest-sfdev2dev___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Rating System Redux (was Re:Flightgear-devel Digest, Vol 61, Issue 12)
On Tuesday, May 31, 2011 10:26:18 PM Robert wrote: I absolutely agree with Vivian. The users should know about planes that need much resources (CPU, RAM, VRAM). This value should not influence the total score. I think how much compute power is needed and how difficult a model is to use/fly are seperate subjects from the status/maturatity of the model. In general models that are more mature will tend to require more compute resources and also will be more difficult to use/fly for aircraft of similar complexity IRL. Ease of use of the models should reflect how difficult the aircraft is to fly IRL at least for mature models. New users, particularly younger ones, sometimes think that FG is a game rather than a simulation and assume that how it presents aircraft should be arcade game like. I have seen a number of forum threads that started off with something along the lines of I just started using FG today and I tried to fly complex high performance aircraft and I always crash during take off Invariably the next post will point out that complex high performance aircraft requires a lot of skill and experience to fly and will ask the user if he has tried the C172P or some other basic aircraft. The OP will reply no but I will. Then they report that they were succesful with the more basic aircraft and are happy with FG. IRL you don't climb into the pilots seat of a complex high performance aircraft for your first flight ever and expect to walk away in one piece. Why would this be different for FG and why would FG users expect it to be different? Having a difficulty rating someplace visible to users is a good idea since it might clue in at least some new users that they probably need to start out with something easy to fly usless they fly complex aircraft IRL. So I agree ratings for difficulty of use and how much compute power is needed should be seperate from the status since these have nothing to do with model maturity. Maybe using the total score is not a good idea at all, because some users prefer the eye candy and don't worry about frame rate too much, others prefer an accurate FDM and a high framerate. So the total score doesn't tell the whole story! The overall status is for backward compatibility. It is displayed in fgrun and on the download page already. Also the most mature models will have eye candy, complex system modeling and a high quality FDM. So I think it does tell most of the story and users can infer how much compute power is needed for a given level of real life aricraft complexity from the status rating. A very simple aircraft (IE. Piper Cub or sail plane) of any status probably will run fine on a low to mid level system. But a highly complex aircraft that has a mature model (production or above) will probably require a high end machine to get good frame rates. It's not really rocket science as it just requires some common sense to figure out. But I don't see any reason not to also include information about required compute power for each model. But the idea of showing the user individual scores (FDM, Systems, Cockpit, 3d model, + needed resources) is a good one! What do you think? At this point users have to look in the XML files to see the FDM, Systems, Cockpit and External model scores. These are not visible in any UI or on the download page. So at this point only users who understand how things are setup in FG will be able to find this information and more work will be needed to make it available to nave users. Another issue is for the needed resources and difficulty rating to make sense there needs to be documentation on how to create the ratings and a description some place for user so that they can understand what these mean. Hal -- Simplify data backup and recovery for your virtual environment with vRanger. Installation's a snap, and flexible recovery options mean your data is safe, secure and there when you need it. Data protection magic? Nope - It's vRanger. Get your free trial download today. http://p.sf.net/sfu/quest-sfdev2dev___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Rating System Redux (was Re:Flightgear-devel Digest, Vol 61, Issue 12)
Adding to Hal's comments: On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 7:21 PM, Hal V. Engel wrote: On Tuesday, May 31, 2011 03:02:09 PM Vivian Meazza wrote: I also disagree with Stuart that such advanced features are nice-to-haves and add little to the simulation - why the hell are we including them then? Do the stores so nicely added to the P-51 add nothing? These add a lot. I treated them as systems and included them in Systems rating. Seemed like the right way to handle this stuff to me. Yes - these are now covered by the Systems rating, which feels like a much better place than my original suggestion of External Model. It would benefit from a tutorial on the start procedure - but apparently that would win no points either. That seems to be a missed opportunity too. I agree that the quality of the aircraft specific help and the existence of tutorials needs to be factored into the rating system some how. I was having a think about this myself today. I don't think having a tutorial is critical for a particular rating, but I do think that the start procedure should be documented in-sim, either in the aircraft help or as a tutorial. Accurate startup procedure is already a criteria for a System:3 rating. I propose that we change this to read Accurate startup procedure, documented in-sim (aircraft help or tutorial) Does that sound sufficient? Of course, this doesn't cover all the other procedures that we might want documented, but it is common to all (powered) aircraft. In the final analysis - the system currently proposed is only marginally better than the current wet finger in the air method. I think we are falling a bit short here in our aim to be both objective, and to tell users more about the available aircraft. This I don't totally agree with. The system is far from perfect but at least we have a documented rating system that is somewhat objective and fairly easy to do. We can improve on it going forward to make it more complete and what we have now is a good starting place and is clearly better than the wet finger in the air method. I think this is certainly a step in the right direction. The system isn't perfect, and I'm sure there are some aircraft that will end up under-rated and some over-rated, but it will certainly sort the wheat from the chaff and give new users and idea of what to expect from a given aircraft. If a new user looks at early production aircraft, they should get a very good impression of the quality available from FG. The perfect is the enemy of the good. - Voltaire (but A witty saying proves nothing. - Voltaire) -Stuart -- Simplify data backup and recovery for your virtual environment with vRanger. Installation's a snap, and flexible recovery options mean your data is safe, secure and there when you need it. Data protection magic? Nope - It's vRanger. Get your free trial download today. http://p.sf.net/sfu/quest-sfdev2dev ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Rating System Redux (was Re:Flightgear-devel Digest, Vol 61, Issue 12)
Hal, I can't follow your logic - because there are some aircraft that need a lot of work, the system shouldn't recognize advanced features in other aircraft that do have them? I also disagree with Stuart that such advanced features are nice-to-haves and add little to the simulation - why the hell are we including them then? Do the stores so nicely added to the P-51 add nothing? On the other hand, the ability to change liveries adds to the model? Sure doesn't wring my withers, but I suppose the airliner aficionados (and I'm not one) absolutely must have that. The P-51 is a superb model already, and at a reasonable frame rate here - about 75% of my benchmark figure. It would benefit from a tutorial on the start procedure - but apparently that would win no points either. That seems to be a missed opportunity too. I suppose the P-51 FDM is accurate - but I find it not all that pleasant to fly. I would say that you have probably slightly underrated its score. In the final analysis - the system currently proposed is only marginally better than the current wet finger in the air method. I think we are falling a bit short here in our aim to be both objective, and to tell users more about the available aircraft. In particular, the failure to tell users that they need a powerful system to use a model, and something about the difficulty of use, is going to disappoint and or frustrate users. Vivian -Original Message- From: Hal V. Engel [mailto:hven...@gmail.com] Sent: 30 May 2011 23:45 To: flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Flightgear-devel] Rating System Redux (was Re:Flightgear-devel Digest, Vol 61, Issue 12) On Monday, May 30, 2011 12:47:41 PM Stuart Buchanan wrote: I don't have a good answer for the other items. Some are nice-to-haves that enrich the simulation experience but don't impact simulation of flight itself, but others (such as a co-pilot) are more important for multi-crew aircraft. Call them all advanced features. That could be a/the criterion for advanced production I'm not sure. The Advanced production bar is already very high - two 5s and two 4s. I'm not sure if any aircraft will actually gain it! I would expect that at this point only a few aircraft out there are close to or are advanced production quality. It is a very high standard and any aircraft that is that far along should really stand out. I would expect that most of the most advanced current models only need perhaps 1 or 2 points to get there but adding points when the models are that far along is a lot of work. But I would be surprised if there were more than a handful of aircraft that were far enough along to only need 1 or 2 points to become advanced production. I think I agree with Stuart that having some things called advanced features does not add much if anything to the system particularly when we have so many models that are missing many basic things. An example of one that is close but needs more work is the p51d-jsbsim model. It only needs to improve the external model (add livery support to go from a 3 to a 4) to get to production status and then add one more point in cockpit, external model or systems would make it advanced production. Currently it has the following ratings: rating FDM type=int5/FDM systems type=int4/systems model type=int3/model cockpit type=int4/cockpit /rating The 3D modeling stuff is not my strong suit but I do have new more accurate 3D models for the fuselage and wing (including flaps and aileraons) for the P-51D that I created a while back. I have also more accurately modeled the cooling inlet passages and the oil and coolant radiators so that these will look correct (once textured) when looking into the cooling inlet. I need to uvmap all of this stuff now and this is where I get stuck as I can't figure out how to do this so that the resulting uvmaps can be used to create livery support. Having a nice user friendly uvmap for the fugelage and wings is more or less nessary to move ahead with libery support I think. For Systems adding emergency gear release support, oxygen system support, full cooling system support, VHF radio support, rear warning radar support, IFF support and some missing electrical system stuff would increase this to a 5. The 3D models for the controls for all of these systems are already in the cockpit. One comment about systems. For the P-51 series there are two cooling doors that are used to control cooling airflow. One for the engine coolant and one for the oil cooler. JSBSim has support for the coolant door controls but not for the oil cooler door controls. I have the automatic coolant door stuff modeled but not the automatic oil cooler stuff because of this. I also need to add manual overides for these at some point (the controls are in the cockpit but currently only allow for automatic control). What I am getting at is that some systems can not be fully
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Rating System Redux (was Re:Flightgear-devel Digest, Vol 61, Issue 12)
I absolutely agree with Vivian. The users should know about planes that need much resources (CPU, RAM, VRAM). This value should not influence the total score. Maybe using the total score is not a good idea at all, because some users prefer the eye candy and don't worry about frame rate too much, others prefer an accurate FDM and a high framerate. So the total score doesn't tell the whole story! But the idea of showing the user individual scores (FDM, Systems, Cockpit, 3d model, + needed resources) is a good one! What do you think? -- Simplify data backup and recovery for your virtual environment with vRanger. Installation's a snap, and flexible recovery options mean your data is safe, secure and there when you need it. Data protection magic? Nope - It's vRanger. Get your free trial download today. http://p.sf.net/sfu/quest-sfdev2dev___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
