Re: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft model/cockpit rating
Thorsten -Original Message- From:.i.r...@jyu.fi [mailto:thorsten.i.r...@jyu.fi] Sent: 02 December 2010 10:58 To: vivian.mea...@lineone.net; FlightGear developers discussions Subject: Re: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft model/cockpit rating My point is your rating was based on an assumption that was totally incorrect: that the developer had made a reasonable effort to put the right gauges and levers in the right place. Do you make a similar assumption about the FDM? That it is approximately right? Is there much value in such a rating? Vivian, I am sorry if I'm now taking a little more of a lecturing attitude - I do not know how much you know about mathematical statistics, but I have the impression you are completely missing the issue here. What the rating represents is a screening procedure. A screening procedure is used to quickly assess a large number of something, to single out a subset with given properties. For instance, you might screen a population for breast cancer. Screening procedures are designed to process large numbers, i.e. they do not make use of all available diagnostic tools and replace detailed knowledge by plausibility, because usually applying detailed knowledge and detailed testing requires time and resources which are not available (a detailed cancer test requires you to be hospitalized for maybe 1-2 days, say that (optimistically) costs 200$, to do it for 100 Million people once per year is 20 Billion per year (hm...)- so maybe you'd rather test less accurately for 5$ per person). Screenings therefore often test proxies, rather than the real property you're interested in. For any given instance of the something, it is always true that a detailed test has more accurate results. It is also true that a screening produces both false positives (i.e. assigns a property to something which does in fact not have that property) and false negatives (i.e. does not assign the property to something which does in fact have it). It is not required (nor reasonable to require) that a screening procedure is always correct or that the plausibility assumptions underlying it are always fulfilled. What is required is that the screening procedure is right most of the time (dependent on the problem, you want to minimize the rate of false positives, of false negatives or both - in the cancer example, it it better to send a few more people to detailed testing than to miss too many real cancer cases, so you try to minimize the false negatives). So, what you have shown with the KC-135 is a case in which a default assumption was wrong, but in which the scheme still (for whatever reason) gave a good answer. That's not very problematic (one wouldn't consider it problematic if a screening test picks up a cancer for the wrong reason if there in fact is a cancer). Right now you have shown me one example in which the default assumption does not work. If there are no more, it means it has an accuracy of 99.75%. If you can find as many as 40 planes with a similar history in which the designer did not care about cockpit layout, the default assumption would still have an accuracy of 90%. That's pretty good to me - and the chance that the default assumption does not work but the result is still reasonable is even better than that! The Concorde is in some sense way more problematic, because it is actually a 'wrong' result - a false negative (i.e. a high-quality plane gets a low rating). But here precisely the same question arises - what is the rate of false negatives? What is the actual probability that this happens to a second plane in the sample? Of course I don't factually know that (because I have no detailed test data for all aircraft), but I can give an estimate based on the sub-sample of planes I know better - this is where statistics comes in (I could even compute error margins for that estimate, although I have not done that yet). And that estimate suggests that the rate of false positives and negatives is low (about 2.5% for a deviation of 5 points between quality and visuals - which means that it works better than that 97.5% of the time). Again, this is a number which I consider entirely reasonable. It doesn't matter if the rating works in every instance perfectly, or if the assumptions capture every instance correctly. On average, the results are reasonable and they give you an overview. Having an overview picture of something with a 10% error margin is better than having no overview at all with 1% error margin (screening 90% of a population for cancer with a 10% rate of false positives and negatives is way more effective than testing 1% of the population in detail with a 1% failure rate). *shrugs* Codify any testing scheme you like, and I bet I can construct a case which is somehow not adequately treated in it. It doesn't matter that I can do that - it's the rate with which it actually happens
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft model/cockpit rating
Nevertheless, I am not persuaded. Your rating is based on: Four legs good, two legs bad!. While that may be generally true, it will throw up many anomalies, and the problem is you neither know which these are, nor how many, because you haven't and can't properly test your hypothesis. First of all, I'm not making (and haven't made) any strong statements about the accuracy of FDMs, because the number of planes for which I have an idea what that number should be is small, and I think there is a general consensus that to judge an FDM adequately is lots of work. My statements about 'quality' and the correlation with 'beauty' are chiefly based on modelling of systems, instrumentation and implemented procedures - these I can judge better. It is simply not true that I can't test my hypothesis with regard to instrumentation - I have flown about 40 aircraft with some regularity since installing Flightgear, I have taken a look at real cockpit photographs for some of them, I have read their documentation and have knowledge of what the different buttons do, so I have a fair idea about how detailed their instrumentation is modelled. My hypothesis for fairly detailed planes is tested on that subsample of 10% of the available aircraft. In addition, there are about 40+ aircraft for which the lack of instrumentation and systems is fairly obvious (i.e. I see no gauge in the cockpit...) even without spending a longer time in the aircraft. For these I likewise claim knowledge of the quality of systems which is implemented. So I do know about 20% of the total number of aircraft in sufficient detail to estimate a correlation. I think a fair statement is 'A rating for the detail of instrumentation and systems has a chance of 80% to be no more than 2 points different from a rating of visual detail, i.e. there is an 80% chance that the visual rating and the final rating (averaged over visuals and instrumentation details) do not differ by more than 1 point. Let's look at a few examples (not brought up by myself): *** Stuart's rating of the c172p: 4/5 rescaled to a 10 point scale, that's an 8/10 where I have 7/10 - check. *** The KC-135 I'm not sure what your quality rating from 0-10 would be - probably not really zero, so I assume it's 1 or 2, so averaged with the visuals that's about 2 or 2.5 where I have rated 3 - yes. *** Sopwith Camel Does it win the ratings war? Indeed it does - it received 10/10. *** Lightning Assuming you'd rate the FDM and systems 10, the average with beauty would be something like 9.7 or 9.5, dependent if I take the FDM into consideration. My rating is 9. *** p51d-jsbsim Hal self-rated 7.5/10, I rated the p51d with 6 - that would pretty much fit already, except that the p51d-jsbsim is a bit more detailed than the p51d, so I would rate that 7 (well, sure I can say this after the fact...). Yes, fits as well. *** It seems you are bothered more by the fact that the F-14b is rated above the Lightning, but here you are asking too much of the test. The test can pick out both planes as 'has high probability of having very detailed systems and above average FDM', but if you want to know which of them is better in detail, the accuracy is not sufficient. The correlation between 'beauty' and 'quality' is there, but it is not that strong, correlation isn't equality. Which is why I am very much in favour of bringing in additional information (like the developer self-rating Stuart suggested). My point is not that rating based on visual detail is perfect and we should leave it at that - my point is that in practice it works quite a bit better than a mere beauty contest. If I recall my stats correctly, your assumption that there is a causal relationship between attractiveness of the cockpit and a high realism is unproven. In our statistically small sample, I think it will throw up as many wrong results as correct ones. Concorde is but one example. I have not assumed a causal relationship (not do I need to). I observe in practive a correlation, I utilize it, I don't need to understand it to do so (I have given some speculation where it comes from though...). Assuming that Stuart and Hal did the self-rating 'fair', and assuming you did not know my numbers when you picked your examples, the system has (within its accuracy) in fact not thrown as many wrong results as correct ones. From the above, it has managed well with 5/5 examples, 5/6 is you add the Concorde - but that was cherry-picked by myself as counterexample (!) and therefore doesn't really count for a statistical test of a hypothesis. So, under the reasonable assumption that you didn't pick planes randomly but that you picked planes assuming they would be likely to be counterexamples to my rating, you have to grant me that the system has dealt with them rather well and that your supposed counterexamples have in fact not turned out to be as many wrong results as correct ones. * Thorsten
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft model/cockpit rating
On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 8:45 AM, Thorsten R. wrote: Stuart wrote: In the great tradition of re-inventing the wheek, I'd propose 4 criteria: - FDM - Systems - Cockpit - External Model. It sounds very neat and if a large fraction of aircraft ends up rated that way, then I'll be the the first to admit that it works better than my scheme because it contains more information on other aspects. The main problems I see is: * it relies on a large number of people (= almost every developer should do it), otherwise if you create a list and people use it to pick aircraft, they will pick based on who bothered to self-rate, not based on what is good I think if we intended to include these ratings on the download page, developers would be very keen on rating their aircraft. After all, we create them to share with the community, and this will help encourage people to try different aircraft. * different people may have different ideas what for example an 'accurately modelled cockpit' is - the same way as right now 'alpha' and 'beta' ratings on the download page mean very different things dependent on developer So - let's simply see what happens! For comparison, here is a draft for how I would rate systems. I think an important idea is that a model should get full points whenever it is complete, i.e. implements all there is - so gliders are not punished for the lack of an engine startup procedure. In retrospect, I think my points system for systems isn't very well thought out so should be replaced with a sensible object ranking that doesn't discriminate against simpler aircraft. However, I'd like to differentiate between the straight instrumentation, which I think should be included in the cockpit rating, and the systems themselves. So, taking the ranking you proposed and modifying them slightly: 0 - No controllable systems: engine is always on, generic radio, 1 - Generic engine start/stop (}}s), correct size/number of fuel tanks, generic (untuned) autopilot, working flaps/gear 2 - Working electrical system, fuel feed cockpit controls, stable autopilot 3 - Accurate startup procedure, tuned autopilot with cockpit controls matching real aircraft systems, generic failure modelling (Vne, +ve/-ve G, gear limits) 4 - Primary aircraft-specific systems modelled (aero-tow, radar, GPWS). User able to follow normal PoH checklists (e.g. startup, shutdown) in entirety 5 - Some aircraft-specific failure modes implemented (e.g. flame-out, inverted engine limitations). Some emergency procedures implemented (RAT, emergency gear release), able to follow some emergency PoH checklists in entirety. I think this gives a fairly obvious progression in quality that would match how aircraft developers are likely to develop, and allows a glider to be rated accurately. -Stuart -- Increase Visibility of Your 3D Game App Earn a Chance To Win $500! Tap into the largest installed PC base get more eyes on your game by optimizing for Intel(R) Graphics Technology. Get started today with the Intel(R) Software Partner Program. Five $500 cash prizes are up for grabs. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intelisp-dev2dev ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft model/cockpit rating
Henri wrote: Please don't fall in the MSFS policy, when the eye candy is the main approach. I don't see 'accuracy' and 'visual detail' as mutually exclusive - you can have both. I for once am interested in 'realism' in a simulator. An important part is that the aircraft behaves like an aircraft, rather than an antigrav vehicle. But part of that is also the visual impression - that metal surfaces look like metal and clouds look like clouds is for me part of the immersion experience in the simulation (and yes, I am bugged by the fact that they behave weird in aerobatics - I just can't fix it...). I like to look out of the window and watch the terrain and clouds go by. I realize fully well that there are also people who are mainly interested in IFR flight who would probably be equally fine with a wireframe terrain or no terrain at all - but not everyone is like that. Equally well, while you think it is sufficient that an instrument is readable, I enjoy the experience more if it looks like a real instrument. A cockpit must be close to the real one, instrument position, and functionality There may not be 'the' real cockpit. The ASK-13 cockpit in Flightgear has instruments arranged differently from the ASK-13 I have flown in real life. Should this disagreement in positioning bother me? I have an altimeter in front of me, a vario, airspeed gauge, they look like they should, they work - and I just assume it's not the same aircraft and has a different cockpit arrangement. And naturally instruments must be functional (I didn't say it anywhere because it seemed obvious, but instrument fakes, i.e. photo-textures of gauges which are not operational didn't count as detail in my rating - they count as 'empty spots'). Hal wrote: On the other hand I do disagree with Thorsten with regard to the need to have all the ratings done by a single person or group. Short remark: We don't actually disagree here :-) - what I wrote is which means either by a single person (or a group of persons with averaging the opinions), or by a set of sufficiently well defined objective criteria as stated above Vivian wrote: If I might interject here, I would draw your attention to the KC135. I looked it up and it got a 3 - seems to be reasonable, even given your description (it shouldn't get zero because it actually flies - it shouldn't get 1 because it has usuable gauges, thus maybe it really (= according to a more involved set of criteria) should be a 2. So, funnily enough, the rating did produce a reasonable number, even given the additional info which I could not have known (and indeed did not know before). Your point being? Stuart wrote: In the great tradition of re-inventing the wheek, I'd propose 4 criteria: - FDM - Systems - Cockpit - External Model. It sounds very neat and if a large fraction of aircraft ends up rated that way, then I'll be the the first to admit that it works better than my scheme because it contains more information on other aspects. The main problems I see is: * it relies on a large number of people (= almost every developer should do it), otherwise if you create a list and people use it to pick aircraft, they will pick based on who bothered to self-rate, not based on what is good * different people may have different ideas what for example an 'accurately modelled cockpit' is - the same way as right now 'alpha' and 'beta' ratings on the download page mean very different things dependent on developer So - let's simply see what happens! For comparison, here is a draft for how I would rate systems. I think an important idea is that a model should get full points whenever it is complete, i.e. implements all there is - so gliders are not punished for the lack of an engine startup procedure. 0: doesn't have any instruments, flown with default HUD doesn't have controllable systems, engine is always on, no brakes, flaps etc. 1: has basic set of instruments (altimeter, airspeed, vario,...) has basic set of systems, can switch engine on and off, can extend and retract flaps and brakes 2: has extended set of instruments (navigation, engine gauges,...) has a working AP 3: has special instrumentation (basic radar, GPS,...) has realistic set of engine start/stop procedures, has tuned AP 4: has complete set of instrumentation (obviously, gliders don't have much instrumentation and it's unfair to ask for it, so whenever you have all instruments and systems an aircraft has in reality, you get this score) has realistic emergency procedures (engine flameout in the air, cf. the Concorde's ram air turbine or the emergency gear extraction of the IAR-80), models systems beyond those necessary for flight (the F-14b targeting radar and missiles for example) Cheers, * Thorsten -- Increase Visibility of Your 3D Game App Earn a Chance To Win $500! Tap into the largest installed PC base get more eyes on your
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft model/cockpit rating
Thorsten ... snip ... Vivian wrote: If I might interject here, I would draw your attention to the KC135. I looked it up and it got a 3 - seems to be reasonable, even given your description (it shouldn't get zero because it actually flies - it shouldn't get 1 because it has usuable gauges, thus maybe it really (= according to a more involved set of criteria) should be a 2. So, funnily enough, the rating did produce a reasonable number, even given the additional info which I could not have known (and indeed did not know before). Your point being? My point is your rating was based on an assumption that was totally incorrect: that the developer had made a reasonable effort to put the right gauges and levers in the right place. Do you make a similar assumption about the FDM? That it is approximately right? Is there much value in such a rating? Which brings me back to my original assessment - your rating system is a subjective view of how things look, and perhaps feel, (aka beauty contest) not an objective assessment of the accuracy of all aspects of a model. It is quite possible that a developer could give you a more accurate assessment of his model - he knows where the bodies are buried. Others are proposing this if I read their comments correctly. But I think you seek an independent view. I hope a better system will evolve from this debate. I think there is a need with 300+ aircraft a varying quality in our inventory. Vivian -- Increase Visibility of Your 3D Game App Earn a Chance To Win $500! Tap into the largest installed PC base get more eyes on your game by optimizing for Intel(R) Graphics Technology. Get started today with the Intel(R) Software Partner Program. Five $500 cash prizes are up for grabs. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intelisp-dev2dev ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft model/cockpit rating
My point is your rating was based on an assumption that was totally incorrect: that the developer had made a reasonable effort to put the right gauges and levers in the right place. Do you make a similar assumption about the FDM? That it is approximately right? Is there much value in such a rating? Vivian, I am sorry if I'm now taking a little more of a lecturing attitude - I do not know how much you know about mathematical statistics, but I have the impression you are completely missing the issue here. What the rating represents is a screening procedure. A screening procedure is used to quickly assess a large number of something, to single out a subset with given properties. For instance, you might screen a population for breast cancer. Screening procedures are designed to process large numbers, i.e. they do not make use of all available diagnostic tools and replace detailed knowledge by plausibility, because usually applying detailed knowledge and detailed testing requires time and resources which are not available (a detailed cancer test requires you to be hospitalized for maybe 1-2 days, say that (optimistically) costs 200$, to do it for 100 Million people once per year is 20 Billion per year (hm...)- so maybe you'd rather test less accurately for 5$ per person). Screenings therefore often test proxies, rather than the real property you're interested in. For any given instance of the something, it is always true that a detailed test has more accurate results. It is also true that a screening produces both false positives (i.e. assigns a property to something which does in fact not have that property) and false negatives (i.e. does not assign the property to something which does in fact have it). It is not required (nor reasonable to require) that a screening procedure is always correct or that the plausibility assumptions underlying it are always fulfilled. What is required is that the screening procedure is right most of the time (dependent on the problem, you want to minimize the rate of false positives, of false negatives or both - in the cancer example, it it better to send a few more people to detailed testing than to miss too many real cancer cases, so you try to minimize the false negatives). So, what you have shown with the KC-135 is a case in which a default assumption was wrong, but in which the scheme still (for whatever reason) gave a good answer. That's not very problematic (one wouldn't consider it problematic if a screening test picks up a cancer for the wrong reason if there in fact is a cancer). Right now you have shown me one example in which the default assumption does not work. If there are no more, it means it has an accuracy of 99.75%. If you can find as many as 40 planes with a similar history in which the designer did not care about cockpit layout, the default assumption would still have an accuracy of 90%. That's pretty good to me - and the chance that the default assumption does not work but the result is still reasonable is even better than that! The Concorde is in some sense way more problematic, because it is actually a 'wrong' result - a false negative (i.e. a high-quality plane gets a low rating). But here precisely the same question arises - what is the rate of false negatives? What is the actual probability that this happens to a second plane in the sample? Of course I don't factually know that (because I have no detailed test data for all aircraft), but I can give an estimate based on the sub-sample of planes I know better - this is where statistics comes in (I could even compute error margins for that estimate, although I have not done that yet). And that estimate suggests that the rate of false positives and negatives is low (about 2.5% for a deviation of 5 points between quality and visuals - which means that it works better than that 97.5% of the time). Again, this is a number which I consider entirely reasonable. It doesn't matter if the rating works in every instance perfectly, or if the assumptions capture every instance correctly. On average, the results are reasonable and they give you an overview. Having an overview picture of something with a 10% error margin is better than having no overview at all with 1% error margin (screening 90% of a population for cancer with a 10% rate of false positives and negatives is way more effective than testing 1% of the population in detail with a 1% failure rate). *shrugs* Codify any testing scheme you like, and I bet I can construct a case which is somehow not adequately treated in it. It doesn't matter that I can do that - it's the rate with which it actually happens that matters, and the amount of resources it takes to run the scheme. Hope that helps a bit, * Thorsten -- Increase Visibility of Your 3D Game App Earn a Chance To Win $500! Tap into the largest installed PC base get more eyes on your game by optimizing for
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft model/cockpit rating
Le jeudi 02 décembre 2010 09:45:04, thorsten.i.r...@jyu.fi a écrit : Henri wrote: Please don't fall in the MSFS policy, when the eye candy is the main approach. I don't see 'accuracy' and 'visual detail' as mutually exclusive - you can have both. I for once am interested in 'realism' in a simulator. I didn't explain correctly my point,: I don't reject any 'visual detail', but, if it makes the instrument unusable. When we are in a real cockpit, we can notice that every instruments are protected from the reflecting light effect. We can read it in any condition ( but blackout :-( ). The real panel will reflect the minimum of light, and some of them reflect nothing, thanks to the Engineers. Some cockpit/instrument within FG have visual detail which avoid any realistic usage of the instruments, thus we cannot talk simulator, that is only art painting. To me the cockpit rating must, mainly, take in account that point. An important part is that the aircraft behaves like an aircraft, rather than an antigrav vehicle. But part of that is also the visual impression - that metal surfaces look like metal and clouds look like clouds is for me part of the immersion experience in the simulation (and yes, I am bugged by the fact that they behave weird in aerobatics - I just can't fix it...). I like to look out of the window and watch the terrain and clouds go by. no problem I realize fully well that there are also people who are mainly interested in IFR flight who would probably be equally fine with a wireframe terrain or no terrain at all - but not everyone is like that. Equally well, while you think it is sufficient that an instrument is readable, I enjoy the experience more if it looks like a real instrument. Flying IFR does not mean to me wireframe terrain or nothing but Atmosphere. We are talking about cockpit, which do not reject every external effect. At any altitude, in a real cockpit we can see the outside environment. A cockpit must be close to the real one, instrument position, and functionality There may not be 'the' real cockpit. The ASK-13 cockpit in Flightgear has instruments arranged differently from the ASK-13 I have flown in real life. Should this disagreement in positioning bother me? I have an altimeter in front of me, a vario, airspeed gauge, they look like they should, they work - and I just assume it's not the same aircraft and has a different cockpit arrangement. Yes it could be, like it could be, some variant, or some customized panel. There is old Aircraft in use in the Club, bought by some fortunate persons which where modified/adapted. My best example is the Stampe SV4C. There is a lot of others. And naturally instruments must be functional (I didn't say it anywhere because it seemed obvious, but instrument fakes, i.e. photo-textures of gauges which are not operational didn't count as detail in my rating - they count as 'empty spots'). Which is a long test, since a model instrument could seem to be right, when the model is on ground. At least an airborn, climb up to the celling of the aircraft and land on another Airport. Let say 20 min per Model. 400 models. 8000 min spent flying = 133 hours Hard to do. Thanks for your work Alva -- Increase Visibility of Your 3D Game App Earn a Chance To Win $500! Tap into the largest installed PC base get more eyes on your game by optimizing for Intel(R) Graphics Technology. Get started today with the Intel(R) Software Partner Program. Five $500 cash prizes are up for grabs. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intelisp-dev2dev ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft model/cockpit rating
Martin wrote: I think the risk of doing harm by rating aircraft and their cockpits after just a quick test is rather high compared to the potential benefit - especially when you're too unfamiliar with some of the respective real-life references. To put in into different words: By assigning too many inappropriate ratings, you're putting the entire effort at the risk of not being taken as seriously as you would expect. If I were you, I'd refrain from posting ratings as 'delicate' as this one. (...) My own ego is not affected in any way, last but not least because I didn't model any of these aircraft. But I do know some of the respective real-life counterparts (mostly single engined aircraft) pretty well because I'm flying these as PIC or at least as co-pilot and for almost all of them I'd end up with a different rating. Hm, I gather you don't like my idea (this seems to become a habit with us...). But I can't really figure out why. One interpretation I have is that you really want to say that I can't judge the level of visual detail by looking at a cockpit, I'd have to have real-life flying experience in the airplane. But it doesn't seem likely that this is what you mean, because for example I don't need to ever have entered an YF-23 to know that the cockpit of the Flightgear model has no visual detail - that's just obvious to me. The other interpretation I can think of is that you somehow mix up a rating of visual detail of the cockpit model (which I did) with a rating of aircraft realism based on a real life comparison (which I did not). But that also doesn't seem likely, because I set down a clear description of by what procedure the numbers are obtained, so you'd then call a rating 'inappropriate' because it is derived according to my (published) standards rather than your (unpublished) standards, and that doesn't make too much sense to me either. So I am a bit lost as to what you are actually criticizing, sorry. Curt wrote: 2. The rating could be broken down into 3 (or more) subsections and the overall rating could be a combination of the parts. 3 broad categories I see are: (a) cockpit/interior, (b) exterior model, and (c) flight model (how well does the thing fly, not to be confused with how hard the thing is to fly.) We could also talk about sound effects, systems modeling (electrical system, hydraulic system), fault modeling, night lighting ... and on and on. I have the idea of a scheme in which in addition systems and instrumentation (0-10) and FDM (0-10) are rated, and I would absolutely love the idea of having that info along with the visual detail. The problem is time - my optimistic figure to get a rough idea of the flight characteristics is something like 2 hours (certainly more to appreciate the fine points of high-level FDMs, not including research). Applied to the aircraft database, that's 800+ hours of work. Given that it took me 3 weeks to complete the project so far, it's simply not something that I can see is done in a systematic way for all aircraft we have. But in a more limited scope, there is some information out there about realism of FDMs (see the recent p51d discussion) - and even on the limited level of what FDMs are the favourites of people here, I think that would be very useful information to have out and to counterbalance the inherent bias of the visual detail rating. So if anyone wants to comment on what good FDMs are, please go ahead! James wrote: Sadly, I agree with both Tim and Martin - judging people's work is pretty risky, especially when they don't know it's coming - but we do make it really hard for casual users to find out aircraft that suit their needs. Hm, see my comment in the forum - it's not that I am completely unaware of things... *** First, it seems to me there is a fundamental (and unfair) mismatch between what a developer wants and what a user perspective (from which ratings are done) does. A developer usually wants some appreciation for hard work. A user wants a finished product which looks and feels great, and if it does suit his fancy, he expresses appreciation. Here's the problem: I spent the better part of 5 months coding work to make something disappear from the weather system. Now it's largely gone and doesn't bother me any more - but do you really think that any future user is ever going to express his gratitude that it's not there? Of course not - he'll never notice, which is just the point. He'll just notice that cloud texture X looks spectacular, which is nice, but that's 5 hours of work instead of 5 months. Also with cockpit design - it's obviously much easier to create a 'wow!' effect when you have a glider cockpit with 5 instruments, rather than the Concorde with 200. But a user simply isn't interested in the time it took to get something going - if I can't start a plane because it creates an error, I don't appreciate the hours gone into that plane. If someone spent 100 hours to get a nice cockpit,
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft model/cockpit rating
-Original Message- From: thorsten.i.r...@jyu.fi [mailto:thorsten.i.r...@jyu.fi] Sent: 01 December 2010 08:58 To: FlightGear developers discussions Subject: Re: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft model/cockpit rating ... snip ... Hmm - interesting. Are you sure you know what you are seeing? Your #2 is the Seahawk. It is a full 3d representation of the actual aircraft derived from the pilot's notes. There are no omissions from the main panel, although there are some secondary controls missing from the cockpit sidewalls, omitted in the interests of frame rate. The seahawk was rated 5, meaning I saw a complete 3d operational 3d cockpit without any glaring omissions of gauges or buttons, but without any fancy additions like metal texturing (most surfaces are just a single color), 3d effects (gauges look a bit like flat pictures glued onto the panel) or work on the sidewalls. Not an 'How nice!' or 'Wow!' cockpit, clearly not photorealistic, but good work. Would you disagree with this assessment, and if so, where? (I actually like to fly the seahawk very much... much better than the 5 would suggest). I'd like to stress again that this is in no way a judgement if the gauges are all in the right place or if the cockpit is complete down to the last detail - in order to do that, I'd need to acquire cockpit photographs which in many cases I don't have (and much more time). I must have misunderstood what you meant by is 2d, is 3d but largely untextured, lacks details, appears flat. But thank you for you other comments. The model was developed with the assistance of a pilot who flew that particular aircraft in the late '50s. I'm afraid that your grading is no more than a beauty contest. It does matter if the gauges are all in the right place or if the cockpit is complete down to the last detail. Under your grading a cockpit could be a complete figment of the imagination, but by looking pretty or having a wow factor it will get a high score. I would suggest that as such it has little value for a Flight Sim such as ours which values accuracy above all else. Bit of fun for the forum though. Vivian -- Increase Visibility of Your 3D Game App Earn a Chance To Win $500! Tap into the largest installed PC base get more eyes on your game by optimizing for Intel(R) Graphics Technology. Get started today with the Intel(R) Software Partner Program. Five $500 cash prizes are up for grabs. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intelisp-dev2dev ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft model/cockpit rating
I'm afraid that your grading is no more than a beauty contest. It does matter if the gauges are all in the right place or if the cockpit is complete down to the last detail. Under your grading a cockpit could be a complete figment of the imagination, but by looking pretty or having a wow factor it will get a high score. I would suggest that as such it has little value for a Flight Sim such as ours which values accuracy above all else. Bit of fun for the forum though. I wish we could dispense with such disparaging comments. To get it out of the way - yes, a cockpit could theoretically be completely fictional and get a high rating. So there are cases in which the rating could be or actually is misleading - so what? But to call it a 'beauty contest' doesn't reflect what actually happens, because the basic assumption to trust developers that they try to place gauges and levers right isn't that bad. It is simply not the case that everyone tries to make up fictional assignments of instruments in cockpits to get a 'Wow!' factor, and once you allow for that basic trust in model developers, I find a decent correlation between realism of systems, FDM and 'beauty'. That may not be what you are interested in, you may be interested in accurate positioning of instruments above else, which is fair, but it doesn't equal 'little value' and it doesn't mean everyone else is like you. As for an accuracy rating of instrument positions, see what I wrote in the forum: You'd be looking at maybe 30 minutes work per aircraft to get cockpit photographs, search for the position of each lever and gauge and compare and then make sure there is actually no version of the aircraft beside the one you have photographs for in which the gauges and levers are not placed differently. That's 200 hours of work - if you do it as a full time job with 8 hours per day, it's a whopping 5 weeks. Natural question - who spends that time? So, to get that out of the way as well - you can always make a point for the perfect rating which is much fairer and reflects your particular interests much better, then we find we can never invest the time to actually do it systematically, and then we all go home. I concede that point, you can make the case for having no rating at all because a completely fair one which can't be misused is too time consuming. Cheers to that! * Thorsten -- Increase Visibility of Your 3D Game App Earn a Chance To Win $500! Tap into the largest installed PC base get more eyes on your game by optimizing for Intel(R) Graphics Technology. Get started today with the Intel(R) Software Partner Program. Five $500 cash prizes are up for grabs. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intelisp-dev2dev ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft model/cockpit rating
thorsten.i.r...@jyu.fi wrote: Vivian Meazza wrote: I'm afraid that your grading is no more than a beauty contest. It does matter if the gauges are all in the right place or if the cockpit is complete down to the last detail. Under your grading a cockpit could be a complete figment of the imagination, but by looking pretty or having a wow factor it will get a high score. I would suggest that as such it has little value for a Flight Sim such as ours which values accuracy above all else. Martin wrote: My own ego is not affected in any way, last but not least because I didn't model any of these aircraft. But I do know some of the respective real-life counterparts (mostly single engined aircraft) pretty well because I'm flying these as PIC or at least as co-pilot and for almost all of them I'd end up with a different rating. But to call it a 'beauty contest' doesn't reflect what actually happens, because the basic assumption to trust developers that they try to place gauges and levers right isn't that bad. [... large fractions of the correspondig responses not cited here ...] So, what actually triggers the impression of a detailed cockpit ? I agree that you don't need to have a license for judging about a simulated replica of an aircraft cockpit, but the license at least qualifies for claiming a certain familiarity with those cockpits I've been 'operating' in real life - and only this small subset is what I'm talking about. Now, when I know a cockpit from real life, when I start FlightGear with the corresponding aircraft (or vice versa) and I'm instantly getting the feeling ah, this looks pretty familiar, then I very much claim this to be a valid criteria for judging about the grade of detail _and_ realism. I suspect this effect is mostly influenced by gauges and instruments looking familiar and being in the expected or at least a reasonable place (especially in SEP aircraft, where there is a wide spread in how 'optional' instruments are placed), proportions (of instruments, gauges as well as their placement) feeling sensible, gauges and procedures working as expected (within the limits of the respective FDM software). In this context I'd like to point out that the simple act of applying photo textures let's say to the cockpit panel does _not_ necessarily add to the feeling neither of realism nor of detail. In contrast, quite a few of these photo textured panels make the cockpit look more 'artificial' than a stupid, coarse grey or black texture would do, because these photo texture don't adapt to the sunlight as you would expect (in real life). So, if you claim that your rating is _not_ a beauty contest, then I'd ask you: After taking the above mentioned thoughts into account, what's left as a criteria for your rating ? Cheers, Martin. -- Unix _IS_ user friendly - it's just selective about who its friends are ! -- -- Increase Visibility of Your 3D Game App Earn a Chance To Win $500! Tap into the largest installed PC base get more eyes on your game by optimizing for Intel(R) Graphics Technology. Get started today with the Intel(R) Software Partner Program. Five $500 cash prizes are up for grabs. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intelisp-dev2dev ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft model/cockpit rating
So, if you claim that your rating is _not_ a beauty contest, then I'd ask you: After taking the above mentioned thoughts into account, what's left as a criteria for your rating ? Martin, I see no need to repeat myself over and over. Please read the explanations I have given so far, if you feel dissatisfied there is a factor of three times more explanation, response and disclaimer in the forum. If you think the scheme is grossly flawed, please point to a specific example where, then we can discuss that, maybe that's more productive. Now, when I know a cockpit from real life, when I start FlightGear with the corresponding aircraft (or vice versa) and I'm instantly getting the feeling ah, this looks pretty familiar, then I very much claim this to be a valid criteria for judging about the grade of detail _and_ realism. I'd be happy if this were the main issue as it would indicate we have a high level of realism to begin with, but a fair share of aircraft has _no_ gauges at all... Cheers, * Thorsten -- Increase Visibility of Your 3D Game App Earn a Chance To Win $500! Tap into the largest installed PC base get more eyes on your game by optimizing for Intel(R) Graphics Technology. Get started today with the Intel(R) Software Partner Program. Five $500 cash prizes are up for grabs. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intelisp-dev2dev ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft model/cockpit rating
On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 11:43 AM, Martin Spott wrote: So, if you claim that your rating is _not_ a beauty contest, then I'd ask you: After taking the above mentioned thoughts into account, what's left as a criteria for your rating ? Martin, I see no need to repeat myself over and over. Please read the explanations I have given so far, if you feel dissatisfied there is a factor of three times more explanation, response and disclaimer in the forum. If you think the scheme is grossly flawed, please point to a specific example where, then we can discuss that, maybe that's more productive. One example that strikes me is the c172p, though I'm biased as one of the maintainers of the aircraft, and it is rated accurately according to your criteria :) The cockpit interior is complete, down to panel lighting switches, parking brake handle etc. There may be a slight mis-alignment issue with regard to the fuel gauge and clock, but other than that, there really isn't anything further required. I don't think adding photo textures would add significantly to the look and feel, and in fact might detract from usability given the constraints on resolution, screen space view angle inherent in a simulator. I'm with Martin and Vivian on this - I don't believe that photo-textures add much to the wow factor, and I also agree with Vivian that this isn't really a particularly good indication of quality. However, beauty is in the eye of the beholder ;) As Curt and others have pointed out, there certainly is a place for rating aircraft to publicise those that are hidden gems, and your list is certainly going to make me look at some new aircraft. I think a more fruitful approach would be to formalize various rating requirements, such that anyone can evaluate an aircraft against largely objective criteria. This would remove the need for one person to evaluate all the aircraft, which as you've pointed out is a herculean task. Such ratings would certainly need to include cockpit quality, and your criteria would form a good basis, even if we disagree on the importance of photo-textures :) This has been discussed many times on the list and elsewhere before, but the actual criteria have never been really agreed, and the ratings (which one would want to encode into the -set.xml file) have never been implemented. There's a wiki page that discusses this here: http://wiki.flightgear.org/index.php/Formalizing_Aircraft_Status Personally, I prefer a numeric rating system as you have created, and a limited number of areas - possible just FDM, systems, cockpit and exterior model. I particularly like the option you've provided to add and extra point - it could be used to indicate a particularly nice feature not covered by the criteria itself, for example well modeled failure modes. The FDM is possibly the hardest to define, but I think it is certainly possible - from a basic Aeromatic or YASIM geometric model, through models that meet the PoH climb, cruise numbers to those like the P51d-JSBSim that match flight test data. -Stuart -- Increase Visibility of Your 3D Game App Earn a Chance To Win $500! Tap into the largest installed PC base get more eyes on your game by optimizing for Intel(R) Graphics Technology. Get started today with the Intel(R) Software Partner Program. Five $500 cash prizes are up for grabs. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intelisp-dev2dev ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft model/cockpit rating
One example that strikes me is the c172p, though I'm biased as one of the maintainers of the aircraft, and it is rated accurately according to your criteria :) Compared with, say, the A-10, the F-14b or the Tu-154b (which is not in the GIT repository) - how would you rate the c172p cockpit? Would you say that it has the same quality, would you say that it is better or worse? I'm with Martin and Vivian on this - I don't believe that photo-textures add much to the wow factor Please take a look at the aircraft which actually are at the top of the list. They don't necessarily use (as far as I can tell) photographs as textures, but they resemble a photograph rather than rendered polygons - textures show rust, wear and tear, gauges show glass reflections and so on. I think the c172p could get a 'wow!' factor that way, rather than by using actual photos as textures. I don't know if I messed up the word - 'photo-realistic' doesn't mean 'photo-texture' in what I wanted to say, it means that the cockpit screenshot resembles a photograph of the cockpit. and I also agree with Vivian that this isn't really a particularly good indication of quality. However, beauty is in the eye of the beholder ;) *sigh* Correlation is not causation - I seem to be unable to get that point across. There is no causal relationship between visual detail and quality, i.e. it is *theoretically* possible to make a model which scores high in visual detail, but is low quality. *In practice*, it turns out that I find my (vague) idea of the quality of the model usually close to the visual detail. To give an example - the quality of the instrumentation/procedures in the c172p I would rate with a full 10 of 10. The visual detail has 7 - that's just 3 points away. If that generalizes, it means that if you pick an aircraft with visuals 8, you are never really going to be completely disappointed by its systems, so while the list would not really correspond to a quality rating, it would give you some useful indication of how the quality list is going to look like. About the worst failure of the scheme I'm aware of is the Concorde to which I would assign 10 for procedures and instrumentation, but have rated 5 in visuals - in all other cases I know of, visuals and instrumentation/procedures are typically no more than 2, rarely 3 points different. From a different perspective - take again a look at the top of the list - the IAR 80 has emergency procedures to get out the gear without power, the MiG-15bis has a detailed startup procedure, models stresses on airframe, you can overheat the engine, the F-14b comes with the seeking missiles and a really detailed radar system - I can't really see that the scheme has moved aircraft to the top which 'just look pretty' and wouldn't have a good measure of quality to them as well. So while I am aware that there is no reason that visual detail and quality *must* correlate, I find that in practice they do. Which means that the list works better in practice than theoretical considerations a priori would suggest. That's something I did not know before making it, nor did I expect it, but I realized it after the fact. Is that easier to understand? As Curt and others have pointed out, there certainly is a place for rating aircraft to publicise those that are hidden gems, and your list is certainly going to make me look at some new aircraft. Well, you just made me happy :-) I think a more fruitful approach would be to formalize various rating requirements, such that anyone can evaluate an aircraft against largely objective criteria. This would remove the need for one person to evaluate all the aircraft, which as you've pointed out is a herculean task. Such ratings would certainly need to include cockpit quality, and your criteria would form a good basis, even if we disagree on the importance of photo-textures :) Hm, after skimming the page, there's basically a set of ko criteria for many of the suggested schemes. I've thought about this for a while, and as far as I understand, any scheme which could sort the whole set of aircraft needs to be fair, needs to generalize and needs to be viable. if you're interested in discussing only a subset of 20 aircraft, then much more involved schemes are possible. 'fair' means that every aircraft is judged the same way - which means either by a single person (or a group of persons with averaging the opinions), or by a set of sufficiently well defined objective criteria as you state above. 'generalization' means that one needs to be able to apply it to (almost) every aircraft in the repository. Judging realism based on first-hand experience in real aircraft is a good criterion and works really well for a number of aircraft, but it doesn't generalize (and it isn't necessarily 'fair') - I'm guessing we have a serious lack of people who fly supersonic jets on a regular basis. And 'viability' means that it must be doable in a realistic amount of time -
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft model/cockpit rating
On Wed, 2010-12-01 at 15:06 +0200, thorsten.i.r...@jyu.fi wrote: One example that strikes me is the c172p, though I'm biased as one of the maintainers of the aircraft, and it is rated accurately according to your criteria :) Compared with, say, the A-10, the F-14b or the Tu-154b (which is not in the GIT repository) - how would you rate the c172p cockpit? Would you say that it has the same quality, would you say that it is better or worse? Maybe it's an idea to differentiate between usefulness and pleasing factor, say 1 to 10 for usefulness and * to *** for a more appealing look? Erik -- Increase Visibility of Your 3D Game App Earn a Chance To Win $500! Tap into the largest installed PC base get more eyes on your game by optimizing for Intel(R) Graphics Technology. Get started today with the Intel(R) Software Partner Program. Five $500 cash prizes are up for grabs. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intelisp-dev2dev ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft model/cockpit rating
Le mercredi 01 décembre 2010 14:06:11, thorsten.i.r...@jyu.fi a écrit : One example that strikes me is the c172p, though I'm biased as one of the maintainers of the aircraft, and it is rated accurately according to your criteria :) Compared with, say, the A-10, the F-14b or the Tu-154b (which is not in the GIT repository) - how would you rate the c172p cockpit? Would you say that it has the same quality, would you say that it is better or worse? Hi, I am not fully aware with such talk, so my answer could be out of your target. A cockpit must be close to the real one, instrument position, and functionality ( i have read from Mr Martin Spott and Mr Vivian Meazza a similar opinion ) . The instruments must be readable, nothing else, no additional , suppose to be, eye candy artifact which would be unacceptable on a real aircraft. Yes, we can accept flat instrument. We can notice some instruments on some models which are crazy and unrealistic, yes eye candy, but unusable. And i am not talking about the stupid indications which could be given. Does Flightgear is a simulator or a Van Gogh painting ? The c172p is to me the first , since it it is validated by real pilot , and probably the Tu-154b. May be the A-10 and F-14b are right, may be not , as long a pilot did not say yes it is OK. Please don't fall in the MSFS policy, when the eye candy is the main approach. I hope i didn't hurt anybody with my answer, in case of, i apologize. Thanks for your work. Alva -- Increase Visibility of Your 3D Game App Earn a Chance To Win $500! Tap into the largest installed PC base get more eyes on your game by optimizing for Intel(R) Graphics Technology. Get started today with the Intel(R) Software Partner Program. Five $500 cash prizes are up for grabs. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intelisp-dev2dev ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft model/cockpit rating
thorsten.i.r...@jyu.fi wrote: One example that strikes me is the c172p, though I'm biased as one of the maintainers of the aircraft, and it is rated accurately according to your criteria :) Compared with, say, the A-10, the F-14b or the Tu-154b (which is not in the GIT repository) - how would you rate the c172p cockpit? Would you say that it has the same quality, would you say that it is better or worse? I don't know how the real A-10 looks like, I'm having some 'historic' documentation on the F-14 (including a really interesting book I bought on a school trip to London, more than 20 years ago) - but this probably still doesn't qualify for rating the cockpit model in FlightGear. On the other hand I _do_ know, among others, the C172-cockpit which is modelled here and I may tell you that FlightGear's C172 cockpit is done quite accurately - the real ones do indeed look pretty cheap, consisting of just a painted metal sheet with a plastic cover in the upper region. Not only the cover is pretty realistic, also the gauges, audio panel, avionics and switches are (the real switches are providing a rather 'cheap' haptic experience as well). Cheers, Martin. -- Unix _IS_ user friendly - it's just selective about who its friends are ! -- -- Increase Visibility of Your 3D Game App Earn a Chance To Win $500! Tap into the largest installed PC base get more eyes on your game by optimizing for Intel(R) Graphics Technology. Get started today with the Intel(R) Software Partner Program. Five $500 cash prizes are up for grabs. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intelisp-dev2dev ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft model/cockpit rating
Thorsten wrote -Original Message- From: thorsten.i.r...@jyu.fi [mailto:thorsten.i.r...@jyu.fi] Sent: 01 December 2010 11:43 To: FlightGear developers discussions Subject: Re: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft model/cockpit rating So, if you claim that your rating is _not_ a beauty contest, then I'd ask you: After taking the above mentioned thoughts into account, what's left as a criteria for your rating ? Martin, I see no need to repeat myself over and over. Please read the explanations I have given so far, if you feel dissatisfied there is a factor of three times more explanation, response and disclaimer in the forum. If you think the scheme is grossly flawed, please point to a specific example where, then we can discuss that, maybe that's more productive. Now, when I know a cockpit from real life, when I start FlightGear with the corresponding aircraft (or vice versa) and I'm instantly getting the feeling ah, this looks pretty familiar, then I very much claim this to be a valid criteria for judging about the grade of detail _and_ realism. I'd be happy if this were the main issue as it would indicate we have a high level of realism to begin with, but a fair share of aircraft has _no_ gauges at all... Cheers, If I might interject here, I would draw your attention to the KC135. It has a nice cockpit, albeit 2D. A working autopilot, a radar, a reasonable looking exterior. And, hey, it pumps gas! It should get a medium/low score shouldn't it? Perhaps equivalent to one of our early B737s? Or something? Now let me tell you that I knocked it up over a weekend in response to a request for a flyable tanker. The panel is a modified B737 with a few more bells and whistles. It has some photo-realism, but it is absolutely NOTHING like any version of the KC135 that I'm aware of. The 3d model is a conversion of the B707 which was already in data. It shouldn't be - the fuselage of a KC135 is narrower than a B707. The FDM is auto-generated by Aeromatic: good enough for government work. The only really authentic bit is the livery. How should it be rated now? Nil? Nevertheless, it's fun to use and fulfills a role in FG. I'm aware of several more models which come into this category. The point is that your rating system can't possibly pick this up. It is a subjective opinion of the attractiveness of a cockpit. Or, as I said, a beauty contest. This does have some value, and we certainly gain from drawing attention to those models that have no, or only rudimentary, cockpit interior details. Vivian -- Increase Visibility of Your 3D Game App Earn a Chance To Win $500! Tap into the largest installed PC base get more eyes on your game by optimizing for Intel(R) Graphics Technology. Get started today with the Intel(R) Software Partner Program. Five $500 cash prizes are up for grabs. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intelisp-dev2dev ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft model/cockpit rating
Martin wrote thorsten.i.r...@jyu.fi wrote: One example that strikes me is the c172p, though I'm biased as one of the maintainers of the aircraft, and it is rated accurately according to your criteria :) Compared with, say, the A-10, the F-14b or the Tu-154b (which is not in the GIT repository) - how would you rate the c172p cockpit? Would you say that it has the same quality, would you say that it is better or worse? I don't know how the real A-10 looks like, I'm having some 'historic' documentation on the F-14 (including a really interesting book I bought on a school trip to London, more than 20 years ago) - but this probably still doesn't qualify for rating the cockpit model in FlightGear. On the other hand I _do_ know, among others, the C172-cockpit which is modelled here and I may tell you that FlightGear's C172 cockpit is done quite accurately - the real ones do indeed look pretty cheap, consisting of just a painted metal sheet with a plastic cover in the upper region. Not only the cover is pretty realistic, also the gauges, audio panel, avionics and switches are (the real switches are providing a rather 'cheap' haptic experience as well). I thought I was a native English speaker, but I had to look up haptic. Nice one! So an old dog (me) can learn new tricks :-). Vivian -- Increase Visibility of Your 3D Game App Earn a Chance To Win $500! Tap into the largest installed PC base get more eyes on your game by optimizing for Intel(R) Graphics Technology. Get started today with the Intel(R) Software Partner Program. Five $500 cash prizes are up for grabs. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intelisp-dev2dev ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft model/cockpit rating
I like the work that Thorsten has done with the rating system, but you guys are getting all tangled up in the details. Why not build a pretty objective score card and then rate the aircraft on that? For example, you can have a list like this: Exterior --- Animated Control Surfaces Animated Landing Gear Livery/texture for 3D model Model is generally representative of depicted type Exterior Lighting Interior --- 2D Cockpit 3D Cockpit Photorealistic Textures/Panel Photorealistic Textures/General interior Panel controls generally representative of depicted type etc. Each one would add a point for a present feature and deduct a point for a feature it should have, but does not. No point would be awarded or deducted for a feature that doesn't apply. An example of this would be Animated Landing Gear - you would score that a zero on a Cessna 172 (if it's not the R model) since the 172 has fixed gear. These things are scorable based on the fact that either a model has this thing or not. It doesn't allow for well it just kinda looks wrong scoring. For the flight model, you can score it against how it compares to data in the POH or pilot's notes. I suspect a flight model evaluation script could be put together in Nasal that would prevent human interaction from ganking the flight test. :) Once the objective score is assembled, you could have another block that was strictly for the reviewers subjective opinon on the aircraft or vehicle being reviewed. Thorsten's made an awesome contribution here - quit flogging it and help refine it! g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.simpits.org/geneb - The Me-109F/X Project ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_! Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end. -- Increase Visibility of Your 3D Game App Earn a Chance To Win $500! Tap into the largest installed PC base get more eyes on your game by optimizing for Intel(R) Graphics Technology. Get started today with the Intel(R) Software Partner Program. Five $500 cash prizes are up for grabs. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intelisp-dev2dev ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft model/cockpit rating
On 2010-12-01 15.18, Vivian Meazza wrote: The point is that your rating system can't possibly pick this up. It is a subjective opinion of the attractiveness of a cockpit. Or, as I said, a beauty contest. This does have some value, and we certainly gain from drawing attention to those models that have no, or only rudimentary, cockpit interior details. Vivian Can't we just accept Thorsten's list as a review? Just like films have reviewers and their taste might fit yours. Either you trust the film review or not, and follow the recommendation. After a while you find your favourite reviewers and know which ones actually have similar film taste as you, or even better, draws your attention to films that you might miss otherwise. The same goes with Thorsten's list, either you think the ratings are useful or not. Or better yet, create your own reviews based on more or less subject scores. I hope that Thorsten will keep his list up to date with the development of the different models ... and one day all models have a wow factor! As several others stated before me, I think the list is useful and I'll test a few of the higher ranked planes. Cheers, Jari -- Increase Visibility of Your 3D Game App Earn a Chance To Win $500! Tap into the largest installed PC base get more eyes on your game by optimizing for Intel(R) Graphics Technology. Get started today with the Intel(R) Software Partner Program. Five $500 cash prizes are up for grabs. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intelisp-dev2dev ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft model/cockpit rating
I'm with Jari here. Let's not get all bent out of shape and make this way more complicated than it was intended. Sure, someone could design the mother of all ratings systems and build an online web based system to track aircraft and ratings and sort and dice and do it all -- nothing wrong with that. Of course there is some subjectivity to Thorsten's ratings. Of course his rating system doesn't cover every aspect of every aircraft -- he intentionally kept it extremely simple. I think this thread is classic evidence that some people can find the negative in just about anything. No good deed is left unpunished! :-) As Jari points out, Thorsten has essentially done a review of the FlightGear aircraft based on a clearly defined perspective and rating system. I think we could thank him for his efforts to provide us with some interesting information. We should all be able to understand the context and then leave it at that. I'd rather go check out some cool airplanes I haven't looked at yet or forgot about, rather than wasting too much time nitpicking the reviewer's evaluation system. I still haven't figure out how to start the IAR80, but I'm fascinated by all the exposed tube structure inside the cockpit. :-) Hey, let's at least keep the fun stuff fun! Curt. On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 9:37 AM, Jari Häkkinen wrote: Can't we just accept Thorsten's list as a review? Just like films have reviewers and their taste might fit yours. Either you trust the film review or not, and follow the recommendation. After a while you find your favourite reviewers and know which ones actually have similar film taste as you, or even better, draws your attention to films that you might miss otherwise. The same goes with Thorsten's list, either you think the ratings are useful or not. Or better yet, create your own reviews based on more or less subject scores. I hope that Thorsten will keep his list up to date with the development of the different models ... and one day all models have a wow factor! As several others stated before me, I think the list is useful and I'll test a few of the higher ranked planes. Cheers, Jari -- Increase Visibility of Your 3D Game App Earn a Chance To Win $500! Tap into the largest installed PC base get more eyes on your game by optimizing for Intel(R) Graphics Technology. Get started today with the Intel(R) Software Partner Program. Five $500 cash prizes are up for grabs. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intelisp-dev2dev ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel -- Curtis Olson: http://www.atiak.com - http://aem.umn.edu/~uav/ http://www.flightgear.org - http://www.flightgear.org/blogs/category/curt/http://www.flightgear.org/blogs/category/personal/curt/ -- Increase Visibility of Your 3D Game App Earn a Chance To Win $500! Tap into the largest installed PC base get more eyes on your game by optimizing for Intel(R) Graphics Technology. Get started today with the Intel(R) Software Partner Program. Five $500 cash prizes are up for grabs. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intelisp-dev2dev___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft model/cockpit rating
On 12/01/2010 08:14 AM, Gene Buckle wrote: I like the work that Thorsten has done with the rating system, but you guys are getting all tangled up in the details. Why not build a pretty objective score card and then rate the aircraft on that? For example, you can have a list like this: Exterior --- Animated Control Surfaces Animated Landing Gear Livery/texture for 3D model Model is generally representative of depicted type Exterior Lighting Interior --- 2D Cockpit 3D Cockpit Photorealistic Textures/Panel Photorealistic Textures/General interior Panel controls generally representative of depicted type etc. Each one would add a point for a present feature and deduct a point for a feature it should have, but does not. No point would be awarded or deducted for a feature that doesn't apply. An example of this would be Animated Landing Gear - you would score that a zero on a Cessna 172 (if it's not the R model) since the 172 has fixed gear. These things are scorable based on the fact that either a model has this thing or not. It doesn't allow for well it just kinda looks wrong scoring. For the flight model, you can score it against how it compares to data in the POH or pilot's notes. I suspect a flight model evaluation script could be put together in Nasal that would prevent human interaction from ganking the flight test. :) Once the objective score is assembled, you could have another block that was strictly for the reviewers subjective opinon on the aircraft or vehicle being reviewed. Thorsten's made an awesome contribution here - quit flogging it and help refine it! g. Actually, fixed gear can have animations. The C172 gear flexes with gear compression. The wheels spin (when on the ground) and the nose gear links are animated. There are a number of fixed gear aircraft in fgfs that don't have one or more of these animations. I recently added such animation to the Pitts, including reducing the spring and compression in the fdm which improved ground handling. With rudder pedals I can now do takeoffs and landings w/o whacking the lower wing tips on the ground. ; -) I agree with the last comment concerning Thorsten's contribution. Dave P. -- Increase Visibility of Your 3D Game App Earn a Chance To Win $500! Tap into the largest installed PC base get more eyes on your game by optimizing for Intel(R) Graphics Technology. Get started today with the Intel(R) Software Partner Program. Five $500 cash prizes are up for grabs. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intelisp-dev2dev ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft model/cockpit rating
On Wed, 1 Dec 2010, dave perry wrote: Actually, fixed gear can have animations. The C172 gear flexes with gear compression. The wheels spin (when on the ground) and the nose I *knew* this was going to come up. *laughs* gear links are animated. There are a number of fixed gear aircraft in fgfs that don't have one or more of these animations. I recently added such animation to the Pitts, including reducing the spring and compression in the fdm which improved ground handling. With rudder pedals I can now do takeoffs and landings w/o whacking the lower wing tips on the ground. ; -) Try taxiing the F-15 some time. The stupid thing tips over. :( g. -- Proud owner of F-15C 80-0007 http://www.f15sim.com - The only one of its kind. http://www.simpits.org/geneb - The Me-109F/X Project ScarletDME - The red hot Data Management Environment A Multi-Value database for the masses, not the classes. http://www.scarletdme.org - Get it _today_! Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end. -- Increase Visibility of Your 3D Game App Earn a Chance To Win $500! Tap into the largest installed PC base get more eyes on your game by optimizing for Intel(R) Graphics Technology. Get started today with the Intel(R) Software Partner Program. Five $500 cash prizes are up for grabs. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intelisp-dev2dev ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft model/cockpit rating
I don't want to flog a dead horse, but you deserve answers to your questions. On Wed, Dec 1, 2010 at 1:06 PM, Thorsten wrote: One example that strikes me is the c172p, though I'm biased as one of the maintainers of the aircraft, and it is rated accurately according to your criteria :) Compared with, say, the A-10, the F-14b or the Tu-154b (which is not in the GIT repository) - how would you rate the c172p cockpit? Would you say that it has the same quality, would you say that it is better or worse? Probably slightly less, if I'm honest. However, those aircraft have much more complex cockpits, which naturally adds to the apparent level of detail. I'm with Martin and Vivian on this - I don't believe that photo-textures add much to the wow factor Please take a look at the aircraft which actually are at the top of the list. They don't necessarily use (as far as I can tell) photographs as textures, but they resemble a photograph rather than rendered polygons - textures show rust, wear and tear, gauges show glass reflections and so on. I think the c172p could get a 'wow!' factor that way, rather than by using actual photos as textures. I don't know if I messed up the word - 'photo-realistic' doesn't mean 'photo-texture' in what I wanted to say, it means that the cockpit screenshot resembles a photograph of the cockpit. I may well have mis-interpretted photo-realistic with photo-texture. and I also agree with Vivian that this isn't really a particularly good indication of quality. However, beauty is in the eye of the beholder ;) *sigh* Correlation is not causation - I seem to be unable to get that point across. There is no causal relationship between visual detail and quality, i.e. it is *theoretically* possible to make a model which scores high in visual detail, but is low quality. *In practice*, it turns out that I find my (vague) idea of the quality of the model usually close to the visual detail. To give an example - the quality of the instrumentation/procedures in the c172p I would rate with a full 10 of 10. The visual detail has 7 - that's just 3 points away. If that generalizes, it means that if you pick an aircraft with visuals 8, you are never really going to be completely disappointed by its systems, so while the list would not really correspond to a quality rating, it would give you some useful indication of how the quality list is going to look like. I'd say that 3 points is quite a difference in this case. Given the number of aircraft, a new user will naturally start at the top and work downwards, and may never bother trying anything below (say) an 8. About the worst failure of the scheme I'm aware of is the Concorde to which I would assign 10 for procedures and instrumentation, but have rated 5 in visuals - in all other cases I know of, visuals and instrumentation/procedures are typically no more than 2, rarely 3 points different. From a different perspective - take again a look at the top of the list - the IAR 80 has emergency procedures to get out the gear without power, the MiG-15bis has a detailed startup procedure, models stresses on airframe, you can overheat the engine, the F-14b comes with the seeking missiles and a really detailed radar system - I can't really see that the scheme has moved aircraft to the top which 'just look pretty' and wouldn't have a good measure of quality to them as well. I think my issue is that it misses aircraft that are particularly rich in other ways, and to me that seems more of an issue. I think a more fruitful approach would be to formalize various rating requirements, such that anyone can evaluate an aircraft against largely objective criteria. This would remove the need for one person to evaluate all the aircraft, which as you've pointed out is a herculean task. Such ratings would certainly need to include cockpit quality, and your criteria would form a good basis, even if we disagree on the importance of photo-textures :) Hm, after skimming the page, there's basically a set of ko criteria for many of the suggested schemes. I've thought about this for a while, and as far as I understand, any scheme which could sort the whole set of aircraft needs to be fair, needs to generalize and needs to be viable. if you're interested in discussing only a subset of 20 aircraft, then much more involved schemes are possible. snip Applying these three requirements to proposed ideas cuts things pretty much down. Which is why I came up with such a dumb 'visual' scheme in the first place :-) Given sufficiently objective criteria, aircraft developers can easily evaluate their own aircraft pretty quickly and efficiently as Hal has mentioned. As others have pointed out, the developers tend to be their own worst critics (though I may be an exception with my comments on the c172p :) In the great tradition of re-inventing the wheek, I'd propose 4 criteria: - FDM - Systems - Cockpit - External
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft model/cockpit rating
On 2 Dec 2010, at 00:18, Hal V. Engel wrote: Total is 15 average is 3.75. For a developer this is very quick to do as it took me all of perhaps 2 minutes. In addition this has very few things that are at all subjective. I like it. It is perhaps a little simplistic in some ways but it does allow the devs a way to rate their aircraft this is quick, easy and objective that will allow users to know approx. how good each model is. My one reservation is that the system category could be problematic for very simple aircraft like a glider since even in a perfectly modeled glider it may never be possible to get the full 5 points allowed. This is a minor issue however. +1 to Stuart's system here. James -- Increase Visibility of Your 3D Game App Earn a Chance To Win $500! Tap into the largest installed PC base get more eyes on your game by optimizing for Intel(R) Graphics Technology. Get started today with the Intel(R) Software Partner Program. Five $500 cash prizes are up for grabs. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intelisp-dev2dev ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft model/cockpit rating
Running through the same exercise for the p51d-jsbsim: FDM: 5 Systems: 4 (still needs some electrical systems stuff) Model: 3 (missing cooling door animation, liveries and Ambient Occlusion effect) Cockpit: 3 (what is there is a 4 but it is missing a few things IE. not complete) Total is 15 average is 3.75. For a developer this is very quick to do as it took me all of perhaps 2 minutes. In addition this has very few things that are at all subjective. I like it. ... Hal I also think that the criteria laid out is good. One thing, though (and I apologize if this has already been discussed), but it might be fair to point out examples of a five somewhere for each category. The point being that can we really expect to find an aircraft model that is a solid 5? What is the gold standard? We know how much effort Hal has expended on the P51 flight model, and I will certainly agree that it rates a 5. Which aircraft models rate a 5 in which categories? Jon -- Increase Visibility of Your 3D Game App Earn a Chance To Win $500! Tap into the largest installed PC base get more eyes on your game by optimizing for Intel(R) Graphics Technology. Get started today with the Intel(R) Software Partner Program. Five $500 cash prizes are up for grabs. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intelisp-dev2dev ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft model/cockpit rating
thorsten.i.r...@jyu.fi wrote: What do the numbers mean? = Roughly, anything below 5 means that it isn't really finished and that I think they should be alpha status. 7 and 8 are really nice cockpits, and 9 an 10 usually create a spontaneous 'wow!'. I think the risk of doing harm by rating aircraft and their cockpits after just a quick test is rather high compared to the potential benefit - especially when you're too unfamiliar with some of the respective real-life references. To put in into different words: By assigning too many inappropriate ratings, you're putting the entire effort at the risk of not being taken as seriously as you would expect. If I were you, I'd refrain from posting ratings as 'delicate' as this one. Cheers, Martin. -- Unix _IS_ user friendly - it's just selective about who its friends are ! -- -- Increase Visibility of Your 3D Game App Earn a Chance To Win $500! Tap into the largest installed PC base get more eyes on your game by optimizing for Intel(R) Graphics Technology. Get started today with the Intel(R) Software Partner Program. Five $500 cash prizes are up for grabs. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intelisp-dev2dev ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft model/cockpit rating
On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 5:54 PM, Martin Spott martin.sp...@mgras.netwrote: thorsten.i.r...@jyu.fi wrote: What do the numbers mean? = Roughly, anything below 5 means that it isn't really finished and that I think they should be alpha status. 7 and 8 are really nice cockpits, and 9 an 10 usually create a spontaneous 'wow!'. I think the risk of doing harm by rating aircraft and their cockpits after just a quick test is rather high compared to the potential benefit - especially when you're too unfamiliar with some of the respective real-life references. To put in into different words: By assigning too many inappropriate ratings, you're putting the entire effort at the risk of not being taken as seriously as you would expect. If I were you, I'd refrain from posting ratings as 'delicate' as this one. I for one really enjoyed the list and plan to check out some of the more highly rated ones with which I'm not familiar. I can't believe that the ratings will come as a surprise to any aircraft developer, and I hope that their egos aren't so fragile as to be discouraged by a low rating! Tim Cheers, Martin. -- Unix _IS_ user friendly - it's just selective about who its friends are ! -- -- Increase Visibility of Your 3D Game App Earn a Chance To Win $500! Tap into the largest installed PC base get more eyes on your game by optimizing for Intel(R) Graphics Technology. Get started today with the Intel(R) Software Partner Program. Five $500 cash prizes are up for grabs. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intelisp-dev2dev ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel -- Increase Visibility of Your 3D Game App Earn a Chance To Win $500! Tap into the largest installed PC base get more eyes on your game by optimizing for Intel(R) Graphics Technology. Get started today with the Intel(R) Software Partner Program. Five $500 cash prizes are up for grabs. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intelisp-dev2dev___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft model/cockpit rating
Tim Moore wrote: I for one really enjoyed the list and plan to check out some of the more highly rated ones with which I'm not familiar. I can't believe that the ratings will come as a surprise to any aircraft developer, and I hope that their egos aren't so fragile as to be discouraged by a low rating! My own ego is not affected in any way, last but not least because I didn't model any of these aircraft. But I do know some of the respective real-life counterparts (mostly single engined aircraft) pretty well because I'm flying these as PIC or at least as co-pilot and for almost all of them I'd end up with a different rating. This is the rather simple background to my 'complaint'. Cheers, Martin. -- Unix _IS_ user friendly - it's just selective about who its friends are ! -- -- Increase Visibility of Your 3D Game App Earn a Chance To Win $500! Tap into the largest installed PC base get more eyes on your game by optimizing for Intel(R) Graphics Technology. Get started today with the Intel(R) Software Partner Program. Five $500 cash prizes are up for grabs. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intelisp-dev2dev ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft model/cockpit rating
On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 11:04 AM, Tim Moore timoor...@gmail.com wrote: I for one really enjoyed the list and plan to check out some of the more highly rated ones with which I'm not familiar. I can't believe that the ratings will come as a surprise to any aircraft developer, and I hope that their egos aren't so fragile as to be discouraged by a low rating! Right, I also have a couple new aircraft I'm going to go check out in a few minutes. I think ratings can be good if put in the proper context ... and in this case it's one person's opinion. Thorsten has been clear about how his rating system works, and as a result, I think it's reasonably fair. In order to maintain such a ratings system over time, it must be kept fairly simple. However, I could come up with many ideas to extend the system ... 1. It would be interesting if there was a system where everyone could vote on the rating for a particular aircraft ... kind of like rating a youtube video. 2. The rating could be broken down into 3 (or more) subsections and the overall rating could be a combination of the parts. 3 broad categories I see are: (a) cockpit/interior, (b) exterior model, and (c) flight model (how well does the thing fly, not to be confused with how hard the thing is to fly.) We could also talk about sound effects, systems modeling (electrical system, hydraulic system), fault modeling, night lighting ... and on and on. 3. Ratings are imperfect, especially end user ratings. If I can't figure out how to start some airplane or I crash on take off because of some operator error, I might give it a really low rating out of frustration. On the other hand we all intuitively get eye candy and model details so some aircraft might get really high ratings even though they don't fly right or they have severe systems modeling problems. At the end of the day, each of our aircraft has strengths and weaknesses, and even some low rated aircraft (rated low because of less detailed cockpits) might have other really cool features to offer. I've always liked the YF-23 because it handles so well across a wide speed range ... it's a blast to fly even though it doesn't have any 3d cockpit. Regards, Curt. -- Curtis Olson: http://www.atiak.com - http://aem.umn.edu/~uav/ http://www.flightgear.org - http://www.flightgear.org/blogs/category/curt/http://www.flightgear.org/blogs/category/personal/curt/ -- Increase Visibility of Your 3D Game App Earn a Chance To Win $500! Tap into the largest installed PC base get more eyes on your game by optimizing for Intel(R) Graphics Technology. Get started today with the Intel(R) Software Partner Program. Five $500 cash prizes are up for grabs. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intelisp-dev2dev___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft model/cockpit rating
On 30 Nov 2010, at 17:04, Tim Moore wrote: If I were you, I'd refrain from posting ratings as 'delicate' as this one. I for one really enjoyed the list and plan to check out some of the more highly rated ones with which I'm not familiar. I can't believe that the ratings will come as a surprise to any aircraft developer, and I hope that their egos aren't so fragile as to be discouraged by a low rating! Sadly, I agree with both Tim and Martin - judging people's work is pretty risky, especially when they don't know it's coming - but we do make it really hard for casual users to find out aircraft that suit their needs. A thick-skin is a requirement for publishing any creative work into the world, I'd say - Torsten's comments aren't meant to be critical (as he said), but I'd hate to do anything which means people keep aircraft 'secret' until they are 'finished' - we already know that leads to many bad results. Development needs to happen in the open - ideally without confusing end-users in the process, though. James -- Increase Visibility of Your 3D Game App Earn a Chance To Win $500! Tap into the largest installed PC base get more eyes on your game by optimizing for Intel(R) Graphics Technology. Get started today with the Intel(R) Software Partner Program. Five $500 cash prizes are up for grabs. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intelisp-dev2dev ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft model/cockpit rating
I do like Thorsten's list, especially since he attached images of each single cockpit. This makes it clear at what time of development he checked the aircraft. Anyway, it is still a delicate subject and I don't think we'll ever find a rating system that works for all... Curt wrote: 1. It would be interesting if there was a system where everyone could vote on the rating for a particular aircraft ... kind of like rating a youtube video. Bring us back to an old discussion. This was implemented in the wiki, but without dozens of people voting per-aircraft it isn't very usefull... (most votings are just the single author's 5 stars I guess :P) For example, see right side of page: http://wiki.flightgear.org/index.php/Boeing_747-400 And here's the top 20: http://wiki.flightgear.org/index.php/Ratings -- Increase Visibility of Your 3D Game App Earn a Chance To Win $500! Tap into the largest installed PC base get more eyes on your game by optimizing for Intel(R) Graphics Technology. Get started today with the Intel(R) Software Partner Program. Five $500 cash prizes are up for grabs. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intelisp-dev2dev___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft model/cockpit rating
On 30 Nov 2010, at 17:30, Gijs de Rooy wrote: Bring us back to an old discussion. This was implemented in the wiki, but without dozens of people voting per-aircraft it isn't very usefull... (most votings are just the single author's 5 stars I guess :P) I voted! And I didn't make a single aircraft so far! :) James -- Increase Visibility of Your 3D Game App Earn a Chance To Win $500! Tap into the largest installed PC base get more eyes on your game by optimizing for Intel(R) Graphics Technology. Get started today with the Intel(R) Software Partner Program. Five $500 cash prizes are up for grabs. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intelisp-dev2dev ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft model/cockpit rating
Cool, I wasn't aware of the wiki voting Here's a random idea: if we put the wiki link for each aircraft in the corresponding aircraft-set.xml file we could automatically link to it from the aircraft download page ... Curt. On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 11:30 AM, Gijs de Rooy wrote: I do like Thorsten's list, especially since he attached images of each single cockpit. This makes it clear at what time of development he checked the aircraft. Anyway, it is still a delicate subject and I don't think we'll ever find a rating system that works for all... Curt wrote: 1. It would be interesting if there was a system where everyone could vote on the rating for a particular aircraft ... kind of like rating a youtube video. Bring us back to an old discussion. This was implemented in the wiki, but without dozens of people voting per-aircraft it isn't very usefull... (most votings are just the single author's 5 stars I guess :P) For example, see right side of page: http://wiki.flightgear.org/index.php/Boeing_747-400 And here's the top 20: http://wiki.flightgear.org/index.php/Ratings -- Increase Visibility of Your 3D Game App Earn a Chance To Win $500! Tap into the largest installed PC base get more eyes on your game by optimizing for Intel(R) Graphics Technology. Get started today with the Intel(R) Software Partner Program. Five $500 cash prizes are up for grabs. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intelisp-dev2dev ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel -- Curtis Olson: http://www.atiak.com - http://aem.umn.edu/~uav/ http://www.flightgear.org - http://www.flightgear.org/blogs/category/curt/http://www.flightgear.org/blogs/category/personal/curt/ -- Increase Visibility of Your 3D Game App Earn a Chance To Win $500! Tap into the largest installed PC base get more eyes on your game by optimizing for Intel(R) Graphics Technology. Get started today with the Intel(R) Software Partner Program. Five $500 cash prizes are up for grabs. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intelisp-dev2dev___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft model/cockpit rating
Curt wrote: Here's a random idea: if we put the wiki link for each aircraft in the corresponding aircraft-set.xml file we could automatically link to it from the aircraft download page ... Wouldn't it be easier to create redirect in the wiki from (for example) http://wiki.flightgear.org/index.php/f-14b to http://wiki.flightgear.org/index.php/Grumman_F-14_Tomcat This would only require you to add a link with http://wiki.flightgear.org/index.php/aircraft to the boxes at the download page... Another possibility is to check the wiki for |fgname = occurences, as you can see at the F-14's page, there is |fgname = f-14b, which corresponds to --fgname=f-14b in Flightgear commands... Cheers, Gijs -- Increase Visibility of Your 3D Game App Earn a Chance To Win $500! Tap into the largest installed PC base get more eyes on your game by optimizing for Intel(R) Graphics Technology. Get started today with the Intel(R) Software Partner Program. Five $500 cash prizes are up for grabs. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intelisp-dev2dev___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft model/cockpit rating
On 30 Nov 2010, at 18:16, Gijs de Rooy wrote: Wouldn't it be easier to create redirect in the wiki from (for example) http://wiki.flightgear.org/index.php/f-14b to http://wiki.flightgear.org/index.php/Grumman_F-14_Tomcat This would only require you to add a link with http://wiki.flightgear.org/index.php/aircraft to the boxes at the download page... Yes, this would be awesome! James -- Increase Visibility of Your 3D Game App Earn a Chance To Win $500! Tap into the largest installed PC base get more eyes on your game by optimizing for Intel(R) Graphics Technology. Get started today with the Intel(R) Software Partner Program. Five $500 cash prizes are up for grabs. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intelisp-dev2dev ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft model/cockpit rating
Thorsten wrote -Original Message- From: thorsten.i.r...@jyu.fi [mailto:thorsten.i.r...@jyu.fi] Sent: 30 November 2010 10:49 To: FlightGear developers discussions Subject: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft model/cockpit rating I'd like to let everyone know that I just finished a project assigning each aircraft model/cockpit a number between 0 and 10 indicating the visual level of quality of the cockpit. The results can be found in the forum here: http://www.flightgear.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4t=10080 Why did I do this? == My prime reason is that this is information I would like to have as a Flightgear user. Faced with 400+ aircraft, I was often annoyed to download one and see that it was basically unfinished in spite of the official status indicator. Eventually I gave up and stuck with the few aircraft I knew well - which means that I completely missed some truly great aircraft. To give an example, I think the Pipers (pa-22-160, pa24-250-CIII,...) are really great models with lots of attention on the proper handling of the on-board systems - and I only found them just now (and am enjoying them since). I did not do the list to en- or discourage developers. If an aircraft is still under development, and it scores low in visual detail, there is no shame in that - a low score means nothing but 'needs more developement'. More explanations and disclaimers in the forum. What do the numbers mean? = Roughly, anything below 5 means that it isn't really finished and that I think they should be alpha status. 7 and 8 are really nice cockpits, and 9 an 10 usually create a spontaneous 'wow!'. What does the list represent? = On face value, the list represents my partially subjective, partially objective judgement of the visual quality of a cockpit. After having made it however, there appears to be more to it. There is usually a correlation between the level of detail of the modelling of systems and procedures and the level of visual detail in the cockpit - realistic procedures require more gauges and buttons, and immediately the cockpit increases in detail. About the weakest correlation in this respect is the Concorde, which is very detailed in procedures and in modelling systems, but scores only a 5 in visual detail. Usually, the correlation is way better. There is also a (weaker) correlation between visual quality of the cockpit and the FDM - planes with great cockpits tend to have at least a better than average FDM. I think that's because developers who spend long time researching cockpit photographs usually don't ignore the FDM. The list is unfair in the sense that there are planes with really great and well-tuned FDMs which don't score too high on the visual detail. The problem is that it is impossible to make a similar list for the FDM quality for all 400+ aircraft in a finite amount of time. But I think all in all the list does tend to draw attention to the aircraft Flightgear can be really proud of. What do I want to do with it? = Basically nothing - it's up to the community what to do with the numbers and thumbnails. Options which have at one point or the other mentioned and discussed in the forum range from doing nothing nothing via creating a Wiki page using the numbers or introducing options on the download website and in fgrun to sort aircraft acccording to the rating all the way to structuring the FGData on GIT according to status. I clearly can forsee useful applications, but I consider my work done at this point, and it's not up to me to decide if e.g. any sorting scheme for aircraft downloads is useful or not. * Thorsten Hmm - interesting. Are you sure you know what you are seeing? Your #2 is the Seahawk. It is a full 3d representation of the actual aircraft derived from the pilot's notes. There are no omissions from the main panel, although there are some secondary controls missing from the cockpit sidewalls, omitted in the interests of frame rate. I will at some stage tinker with the gunsight, but beyond that I have nothing to improve on the main panel. If technology permits I will add stuff to the cockpit sidewalls. Vivian -- Increase Visibility of Your 3D Game App Earn a Chance To Win $500! Tap into the largest installed PC base get more eyes on your game by optimizing for Intel(R) Graphics Technology. Get started today with the Intel(R) Software Partner Program. Five $500 cash prizes are up for grabs. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intelisp-dev2dev ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft model/cockpit rating
James Turner wrote: A thick-skin is a requirement for [...] everyone who's seriously trying to survive in the FlightGear developer's shark tank ;-) [...], but I'd hate to do anything which means people keep aircraft 'secret' until they are 'finished' - we already know that leads to many bad results. Well said !! Martin. -- Unix _IS_ user friendly - it's just selective about who its friends are ! -- -- Increase Visibility of Your 3D Game App Earn a Chance To Win $500! Tap into the largest installed PC base get more eyes on your game by optimizing for Intel(R) Graphics Technology. Get started today with the Intel(R) Software Partner Program. Five $500 cash prizes are up for grabs. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intelisp-dev2dev ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft model/cockpit rating
On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 3:20 PM, Martin Spott wrote: James Turner wrote: A thick-skin is a requirement for [...] everyone who's seriously trying to survive in the FlightGear developer's shark tank ;-) Any time someone criticizes my work I just watch a funny cat video like this one and that really helps me feel better ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CULU09VCu14feature=player_embedded Regards, Curt. -- Curtis Olson: http://www.atiak.com - http://aem.umn.edu/~uav/ http://www.flightgear.org - http://www.flightgear.org/blogs/category/curt/http://www.flightgear.org/blogs/category/personal/curt/ -- Increase Visibility of Your 3D Game App Earn a Chance To Win $500! Tap into the largest installed PC base get more eyes on your game by optimizing for Intel(R) Graphics Technology. Get started today with the Intel(R) Software Partner Program. Five $500 cash prizes are up for grabs. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intelisp-dev2dev___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft model/cockpit rating
Curtis Olson wrote: Any time someone criticizes my work I just watch a funny cat video like this one and that really helps me feel better ... Aaaah, good recipe, will try next time ;-) Martin. -- Unix _IS_ user friendly - it's just selective about who its friends are ! -- -- Increase Visibility of Your 3D Game App Earn a Chance To Win $500! Tap into the largest installed PC base get more eyes on your game by optimizing for Intel(R) Graphics Technology. Get started today with the Intel(R) Software Partner Program. Five $500 cash prizes are up for grabs. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intelisp-dev2dev ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] Aircraft model/cockpit rating
I think the list is a good start , but as already mentioned , I'm my own worst critic. Rating my own work , I'd say decent 3d model , working FDM's but plenty of room for improvement , and a FAIL for autopilot configuration . Hopefully I can get back to work on them once life stabilizes here , and once I figure out how to update via Git :) P.S. I'll keep the cat video in mind too ;) Cheers On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 2:46 PM, Martin Spott martin.sp...@mgras.net wrote: Curtis Olson wrote: Any time someone criticizes my work I just watch a funny cat video like this one and that really helps me feel better ... Aaaah, good recipe, will try next time ;-) Martin. -- Unix _IS_ user friendly - it's just selective about who its friends are ! -- -- Increase Visibility of Your 3D Game App Earn a Chance To Win $500! Tap into the largest installed PC base get more eyes on your game by optimizing for Intel(R) Graphics Technology. Get started today with the Intel(R) Software Partner Program. Five $500 cash prizes are up for grabs. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intelisp-dev2dev ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel -- Increase Visibility of Your 3D Game App Earn a Chance To Win $500! Tap into the largest installed PC base get more eyes on your game by optimizing for Intel(R) Graphics Technology. Get started today with the Intel(R) Software Partner Program. Five $500 cash prizes are up for grabs. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intelisp-dev2dev ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
