"tidy up surfaces, cull vertices, provide second carrier for Med, finish
implementing improved features and improve nimitz-demo to demonstrate
features"
mf: made both Nimitz and Eisenhower share the same 3D model, and only
switch textures via startup material animation; created Nimitz island
texture
I have introduced the posibility to start directly on the carrier.
With that patch you will have a --carrrier=id argument where id can either be
the pennant number configured in the nimitz scenario or the carriers name
also configured in the carriers scenario.
Additionaly you can use --parkpos=id to select different positions on the
carrier. They are also configured in the scenario file.
That includes the switch of the whole FGInterface class to make use of the
groundcache.
That means that an aircraft no longer uses the current elevation value from
the scenery class. It rather has its own local cache of the aircrafts
environment which is setup in the common_init method of FGInterface and
updated either manually by calling
FGInterface::get_groundlevel_m(lat, lon, alt_m);
or implicitly by calling the above method in the
FGInterface::_updateGeo*Position(lat, lon, alt);
methods.
A call get_groundlevel_m rebuilds the groundcache if the request is outside
the range of the cache.
Note that for the real usage of the groundcache including the correct
information about the movement of objects and the velocity information, you
still need to set up the groundcache in the usual way like YASim and JSBSim
currently does.
If you use the native interface, you will get only static objects correctly.
But for FDM's only using one single ground level for a whole step this is IMO
sufficient.
The AIManager gets a way to return the location of a object which is placed
wrt an AI Object. At the moment it only honours AICarriers for that.
That method is a static one, which loads the scenario file for that reason and
throws it away afterwards. This looked like the aprioriate way, because the
AIManager is initialized much later in flightgears bootstrap, and I did not
find an easy way to reorder that for my needs. Since this additional load is
very small and does only happen if such a relative location is required, I
think that this is ok.
Note that moving on the carrier will only work correctly for JSBSim and YASim,
but you should now be able to start and move on every not itself moving
object with any FDM.
I have done some cleanup where I moved some values out of classes where they
do not belong and such stuff.
Also the fols offsets are now named in the carrier xml file with a more
verbose name (flols-pos/offset-*) than before (only offset-*).
There is a little preparation for definitions of parking positions on the
carrier which should later be used for starting flightgear directly on the
I attach the long-promised improved version of the USS Nimitz.
It includes an improved version of the FLOLS, which requires the attached
diff to be applied to AICarrier.cxx and AICArrier.hxx.
I've made lots of eye-candy in the form or the flightdeck crew.
Unfortunately, it about doubles the size of the tarball. I'll send it to you
later; when I've figured out some way of only loading on request (any advice
would be very welcome).
I could provide a \u2018bare\u2019 version to cut down on the vertex count for
less capable systems however, the count isn\u2019t huge in the first place.
I've cut the textures down as far as I can without losing definition.
These files add a functioning Fresnel Lens Optical Landing System (FLOLS).
The orange/red 'source' lights are illuminated according to the position of
the pilot's eye above/below the 3.5 deg glide slope. The apparent position
of the source light relative to the fixed green datum lights allow the pilot
to 'fly the meatball'. The green 'cut' lights flash when the pilot's eye is
below the coverage of the lowest (red) source light.
TODO - add rules for the operation of the wave-off lights.
I have now the FDM side of an aircraft carrier set up.
The implementation uses a local cache of the scene graph to do intersection
tests. This can then be done per gear/hook/lauchbar.
Also the required aircraft carrier hardware will show up in this cache and can
provide the required information.
The cache itself is ATM integrated into the FGInterface class.
New are functions to query a ground contact point below a given location in
the earth. Together with that contact point the surface normal and the
velocity of that contact surface are returned. The locations, normals and
velovities are cartesian vectors given in the wgs84 coordinate system (origin
in the earths center, x axis towards lat=lon=0, y axis towards lat=0, lon=90,
z axis towards the north pole).
A function to test catching a wire. The test is done by intersection of the
quad where the hook moved during the past timestep with the lines
representing the wires. When this test was sucessfull, we can query for the
locations/velocities of the wires mount points. When the wire is no longer
needed it should be released.
Catapults are also stored as special lines in the scenegraph. There is a
function which returns the nearest catapult line and its current
locations/velocities.
To build up the cache you need to call a function to let the cache know where
and how big the cache must be.
I have also a preliminary implementation to make use of that stuff from within
JSBSim together with an aircraft which I have used for development.
To play with that, you have to install the patches/new files described above.
The hook can be extended with the H key, retracted with h. Start flightgear
with
fgfs --lat=37.688 --lon=-122.683 --heading=180 --altitude=71
and you will be placed on the carriers deck rolling backwards wrt the carrier.
Then apply the breaks and wait until the aircraft settled down past being not
trimmed. Now taxi on the deck to one of the catapults. When the nose wheel is
above the first few meters of the catapult (please taxi exactly there). Apply
the breaks and leave them applied. lower the flaps to half and give full
throttle. Pull a little at your stick and release the breaks. As the breaks
are released the aircraft is launched.
Then you can cruise a bit, and again try to land on the nimitz. When you land,
do not forget to extend the hook with 'H'.
If you like it, you can then taxi to the catapult ... :)
The physical model is not yet ready, but the api between the FDM and
flightgear has prooven to be sufficient for that task.
