Dual control for FlightGear/CVS (copilot OSG only)
--------------------------------------------------
Anders Gidenstam (anders at gidenstam dot org)
This collection of Nasal code and instruments enables a pilot and
copilot to jointly fly an aircraft over the FlightGear multiplayer
network. Pilot and copilot can have shared control over primary
flight controls, throttle, mixture, elevator trim, flaps, brakes,
cockpit switches, part of the radio stack and instrument settings
and so on.
To use the system two "aircraft" needs to be created:
- The pilot uses the original aircraft (or a variant thereof).
The pilot need to specify the callsign of the copilot (other copilots
will be ignored).
Usage example:
fgfs --aircraft=ZLT-NT --prop:/sim/remote/pilot-callsign="copilot"
- The copilot uses a special "aircraft", <aircraft>-copilot, which
piggybacks on the designated pilot and captures the local control
inputs. A current limitation is that only the cockpit view
is jitter free. There is also a noticeable delay between control inputs
and effect, since they are passed via the the multiplayer protocol.
The severity of this delay depend on round trip time and some other
factors - the delay seems significantly longer than the round trip time
itself which is due to buffering in the MP protocol receiver.
That said, I have flown successfully as copilot in a setup with
100-120ms round trip time between both pilot and server and copilot and
server (total delay >500ms). Landing is a bit exciting in that
case, however.
Usage example:
fgfs --aircraft=ZLT-NT-copilot --prop:/sim/remote/pilot-callsign="pilot"
Visit http://www.gidenstam.org/FlightGear/DualControl/ for the latest
information.
Developer notes
---------------
The dual control mechanism is divided into to several parts:
- the generic core modules in DualControl/ ;
- the 3d instrument sharing wrappers in DualControl/instruments/ ; and
- the aircraft specific configuration in Systems/ZLT-NT-dual-control.nas
and the ZLT-NT/-set/-copilot-set files.
See the ZLT-NT aircraft for an example how everything come together.
aircraft_dual_control
---------------------
The aircraft specific dual control Nasal module MUST be loaded as
aircraft_dual_control and MUST define the following variables and
functions:
pilot_connect_copilot(copilot) : returns a list of DCT components
Does whatever initialization needed to connect the copilot and
returns a list of dual-control-tools components whose update() method will
be called (in list order) once per frame.
copilot is the node hash for the base of the multiplayer tree for the
copilot user.
pilot_disconnect_copilot() : void
Does whatever cleanup needed when the copilot disconnects.
copilot_connect_pilot(pilot) : returns a list of DCT components
Does whatever initialization needed to connect to the pilot and
returns a list of dual-control-tools components whose update() method will
be called (in list order) once per frame.
pilot is the node hash for the base of the multiplayer tree for the
pilot user.
copilot_disconnect_pilot() :
Does whatever cleanup needed when the pilot disconnects.
pilot_type : string
The identifying string of the pilot aircraft is the path of the
3d model XML file of the pilot aircraft (as found in sim/model/path
under the multiplayer entry).
copilot_type : string
The identifying string of the copilot aircraft is the path of the
3d model XML file of the copilot aircraft (as found in sim/model/path
under the multiplayer entry).
