Re: [Flightgear-users] Re: version 0.9.8
Curtis L. Olson writes But at the same time, people need to feed thier families ... those of us who are cursed to live out their lives as software geeks (with few other marketable skills) Oh I dont know Curt looks like you might be able to turn a good dollar as a marriage councillor. :-)) I think the optimal way to develop software is to find good ways to marry the two approaches. But like any marriage, one of the hardest things is to figure out the exact details (balance of power, division of labor, etc.) between the spouses. Some matches work better than others, but a good match is far more powerful and capable than individuals working in isolation. Regards, Curt. Cheers Innis ___ Flightgear-users mailing list Flightgear-users@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-users 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
Re: [Flightgear-users] Re: version 0.9.8
Hi, I'd like to point out I have no objection to feeding families : we also happily use Maple (another commercial product by Waterloo) for instance. The problem is that Mathworks - in contrast with Waterloo - charges excessive prices that are in no relation to the quality of their product, simply because they have more or less a monopoly in their field. My idea is that we shouldn't contribute to make a greedy monopolist even richer : feeding your family doesn't necessarily mean that every child needs 2 Rolls Royces and a private jet ;-) -- Bye, Kees On Thursday 07 April 2005 16:14, Curtis L. Olson wrote: Kees Lemmens wrote: Hi, In our Math department we are rapidly replacing Matlab (commercial and VERY expensive !) with Octave (GNU Open Source). I wonder: wouldn't it be a better to make a connection to an Open Source project like Octave instead ? As someone else in this thread pointed out, the I/O capabilities in FlightGear are open for anyone to use. The work I did was simply to make the binary structure a bit more predictable in a cross platform environment. Does Octave have facilities for modeling flight dynamics or control systems? If so, I'm happy to work with an Octave developer to iron out any interfacing issues. Matlab is squeezing lot's of money out of people. They try to connect just about anything to their software so that users won't even consider using anything else (apart for those who pay the bills ;-). But I don't think that FlightGear - as an outstanding Open Source project - should co-operate in making this nasty company even more powerful ... Even Airbus seemed to be fed up with the Matlab tax-collectors and started developing their own Open Source Matlab-clone already some years ago : SciLab. BTW: this reminds me of another nasty company ;-) People are going to think what they are going to think about business, politics, etc. And this forum is the wrong place to discuss those issues. I have never looked at Octave, myself, but if it's a legitimate contender, and Octave users want to interface with FlightGear for some reason, then I'm happy to participate and make that as seamless and easy as possible. For what it's worth, many very big name companies use matlab/simulink. If these companies also start using FlightGear in conjunction with matlab as a visualization tool, then that increases FlightGear's market share in a very high profile segment of the market. That's good in and of itself, but if some of these companies (or developers that work at these companies) make changes/additions to FlightGear, that's a direct benefit to us. All of these forces feed each other, and hopefully build an upward spiral to make FlightGear better and better. Personally, I think open-source is a great and wonderful way to develop software ... it's not perfect, but it has many advantages. There's no question that this is the best approach for FlightGear. But at the same time, people need to feed thier families ... those of us who are cursed to live out their lives as software geeks (with few other marketable skills) shouldn't be prevented from making a living from our primary skill. I believe the world needs a combination of proprietary and open-source software. Both approaches have their own unique strengths and weaknesses. I think the optimal way to develop software is to find good ways to marry the two approaches. But like any marriage, one of the hardest things is to figure out the exact details (balance of power, division of labor, etc.) between the spouses. Some matches work better than others, but a good match is far more powerful and capable than individuals working in isolation. Regards, Curt. ___ Flightgear-users mailing list Flightgear-users@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-users 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
Re: [Flightgear-users] Re: version 0.9.8
On Thursday 07 April 2005 11:11, Kees Lemmens wrote: Hi, In our Math department we are rapidly replacing Matlab (commercial and VERY expensive !) with Octave (GNU Open Source). I wonder: wouldn't it be a better to make a connection to an Open Source project like Octave instead ? Incidently I tried this the other day. Actually I tried to connect to SciLab's Simulink clone Scicos. Of course my first effort failed, but I will try again. I wanted to make an automatic control system in Scicos. I've done this with Matlab, back in university, with a physical helicopterish model. I think that Flightgear has all the functionality to connect to other programs, see README.IO. It is at the other end that work needs to be done. -- Roy Vegard Ovesen ___ Flightgear-users mailing list Flightgear-users@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-users 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
RE: [Flightgear-users] Re: version 0.9.8
On Thursday 07 April 2005 11:11, Kees Lemmens wrote: Hi, In our Math department we are rapidly replacing Matlab (commercial and VERY expensive !) with Octave (GNU Open Source). I wonder: wouldn't it be a better to make a connection to an Open Source project like Octave instead ? Incidently I tried this the other day. Actually I tried to connect to SciLab's Simulink clone Scicos. Of course my first effort failed, but I will try again. I wanted to make an automatic control system in Scicos. I've done this with Matlab, back in university, with a physical helicopterish model. I think that Flightgear has all the functionality to connect to other programs, see README.IO. It is at the other end that work needs to be done. If you haven't seen the most recent JSBSim Newsletter, there is an article there that you might find interesting about connecting JSBSim to Matlab/Simulink. The next issue will be getting put together shortly, and there will likely be a surprise in that issue. Jon http://jsbsim.sourceforge.net/Newsletter_1_4.pdf ___ Flightgear-users mailing list Flightgear-users@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-users 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
Re: [Flightgear-users] Re: version 0.9.8
Jon Berndt wrote: If you haven't seen the most recent JSBSim Newsletter, there is an article there that you might find interesting about connecting JSBSim to Matlab/Simulink. The next issue will be getting put together shortly, and there will likely be a surprise in that issue. A pleasant surprise I hope? :-) Erik ___ Flightgear-users mailing list Flightgear-users@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-users 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
Re: [Flightgear-users] Re: version 0.9.8
Kees Lemmens wrote: Hi, In our Math department we are rapidly replacing Matlab (commercial and VERY expensive !) with Octave (GNU Open Source). I wonder: wouldn't it be a better to make a connection to an Open Source project like Octave instead ? As someone else in this thread pointed out, the I/O capabilities in FlightGear are open for anyone to use. The work I did was simply to make the binary structure a bit more predictable in a cross platform environment. Does Octave have facilities for modeling flight dynamics or control systems? If so, I'm happy to work with an Octave developer to iron out any interfacing issues. Matlab is squeezing lot's of money out of people. They try to connect just about anything to their software so that users won't even consider using anything else (apart for those who pay the bills ;-). But I don't think that FlightGear - as an outstanding Open Source project - should co-operate in making this nasty company even more powerful ... Even Airbus seemed to be fed up with the Matlab tax-collectors and started developing their own Open Source Matlab-clone already some years ago : SciLab. BTW: this reminds me of another nasty company ;-) People are going to think what they are going to think about business, politics, etc. And this forum is the wrong place to discuss those issues. I have never looked at Octave, myself, but if it's a legitimate contender, and Octave users want to interface with FlightGear for some reason, then I'm happy to participate and make that as seamless and easy as possible. For what it's worth, many very big name companies use matlab/simulink. If these companies also start using FlightGear in conjunction with matlab as a visualization tool, then that increases FlightGear's market share in a very high profile segment of the market. That's good in and of itself, but if some of these companies (or developers that work at these companies) make changes/additions to FlightGear, that's a direct benefit to us. All of these forces feed each other, and hopefully build an upward spiral to make FlightGear better and better. Personally, I think open-source is a great and wonderful way to develop software ... it's not perfect, but it has many advantages. There's no question that this is the best approach for FlightGear. But at the same time, people need to feed thier families ... those of us who are cursed to live out their lives as software geeks (with few other marketable skills) shouldn't be prevented from making a living from our primary skill. I believe the world needs a combination of proprietary and open-source software. Both approaches have their own unique strengths and weaknesses. I think the optimal way to develop software is to find good ways to marry the two approaches. But like any marriage, one of the hardest things is to figure out the exact details (balance of power, division of labor, etc.) between the spouses. Some matches work better than others, but a good match is far more powerful and capable than individuals working in isolation. Regards, Curt. -- Curtis Olsonhttp://www.flightgear.org/~curt HumanFIRST Program http://www.humanfirst.umn.edu/ FlightGear Project http://www.flightgear.org Unique text:2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d ___ Flightgear-users mailing list Flightgear-users@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-users 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
Re: [Flightgear-users] Re: version 0.9.8
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Curtis L. Olson schrieb: For what it's worth, many very big name companies use matlab/simulink. If these companies also start using FlightGear in conjunction with matlab as a visualization tool, then that increases FlightGear's market share in a very high profile segment of the market. I haven't looked at the latest versions of Octave, but I'd wonder if anything has changed: Octave doesn't do any visualisation. It just offers an interpreter for an programming language that is really close to that from Matlab. When you want to visualise something, Octave starts GNUPlot. So if your only desire is some visualisation you should an GNUPlot interface (btw: IIRC GNUPlot isn't from the GNU project and also not under the GPL - but it's free) Don't misunderstand me: Octave is a great programm, but don't expect a Matlab clone. CU, Christian -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.0 (MingW32) iD8DBQFCVVP0lhWtxOxWNFcRAjBcAKCAGEa5IiAaKt8vSZQPFFjZa64U6wCfUWbw EO/BqLZ8mvgMd4KNiPtUJRE= =bHxo -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ Flightgear-users mailing list Flightgear-users@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-users 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
Re: [Flightgear-users] Re: version 0.9.8
There is some good news (I hope on this front.) I have spoken with one of the lead matlab/simulink developers, and we have discussed ways to improve FlightGear = matlab interoperability. I believe the next version of simulink (and FlightGear) will have some improvements here, although I don't know all the specific details of how future maintanance would work. (And I don't know enough about matlab to make any sort of guesses.) Regards, Curt. Melchior FRANZ wrote: * Lara Esteban -- Tuesday 05 April 2005 14:23: I'm new to this group and I'd like to ask you some questions. Hi welcome. I'm developing an automatic flight control system for helicopters as a final year project. I'd like to link matlab/aerosim blockset with flightgear but I haven't been able to do it with the newest version of flightgear. Nervertheless, I've tried with an old version (v 0.9.2) and it is possible with airplanes but I can't install any helicopter. I haven't used matlab, but this question comes up regularly. Unfortunately we have no influence on which fgfs version the matlab module works with. (I would find it a good idea if the responsible people kept it compatible with the last version, which wouldn't be *that* hard.) And unfortunately, you can't even check out old 0.9.2 helicopter code, because that was introduced in the next version: 0.9.3. :-( BTW: the helicopter FDM is still unfinished and lacks important features: http://baron.flightgear.org/pipermail/flightgear-devel/2003-October/021940.html Only the bo105 FDM config is usable. (bell206, as350, and ch47 are IMHO not even worth to try.) We give what help we can, but aren't really competent for matlab specific problems. Maybe you could ask the authors of matlab/aerosim? Or you could try to get matlab to output the data in a way that you can feed into the current version of fgfs (via network/telnet/etc.) m. ___ Flightgear-users mailing list Flightgear-users@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-users 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d -- Curtis Olsonhttp://www.flightgear.org/~curt HumanFIRST Program http://www.humanfirst.umn.edu/ FlightGear Project http://www.flightgear.org Unique text:2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d ___ Flightgear-users mailing list Flightgear-users@flightgear.org http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-users 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d
