"Add Air to Air TACAN and User-User refuelling over the Multiplayer Network.
With this change, your TACAN instrument can be tuned to the channel of a
Multiplayer ac. It also activates fuel flow between User and User aircraft
when they are less than 50 ft apart. To participate in multiplayer as a
tanker, all you require to do is to use the callsign MOBIL* (where * is some
number) on the net. Only MOBIL1, MOBIL2 and MOBIL3 have been assigned TACAN
channels, but any MOBIL callsign will be able to give fuel."
- PropertyObject: remove additional "values" member again
- don't create entry lists for <list>, <select>, and <combo> at dialog
creation and delete them on dialog close, but let a separate class
fgValueList handle this. The three widgets are now subclassed and the
derived widget lets fgValueList manage the lists
- make <select> consistent with <list>. This breaks backwards
compatibility, but not a single dialog in fgfs uses it and did so
since ... forever. (Shoot me!)
Rationale: now that dialogs are a bit more dynamic than they used to be
(thanks to embedded Nasal), we have to delete and recreate entry lists
during dialog use. Deleting only at dialog closing doesn't cut it anymore.
Especially list widgets that are updated several times per second would
use up a lot of memory otherwise. The route-manager doesn't update that
often, but it did already leak. One TODO less. :-)
"Preparations for an upgrade to Air-to-Air Refuelling to allow more than one
tanker in the environment at a time. This will only work with YASim models.
JSBSim models are unaffected by this change."
The ufo sets this to a very low value, "serious" aircraft (which don't want this
unrealistic automatism at all) set it to a very high value, and those that don't
care ... don't need to care.
signals, this is meant for attaching listeners. The ufo will use that to
hide/reveal the status line in screenshots. The following signal properties
are now available:
/sim/signals/exit ... set to 1 right before quitting
/sim/signals/reinit ... set to 1 on re-init (Shift-Esc)
/sim/signals/screenshot ... set to 1 before and to 0 after screenshot
/sim/signals/click ... set to 1 after mouse clicks at terrain, signalling
that the geo coords in /sim/input/click/ were updated
I've got some updates for the soaring scenario that will make for a more
realistic (and fun) experience. They are:
1) A cap cloud, which will sit atop each thermal
2) A thermal scenario with wide coverage around KSFO, and using cap clouds
3) A one-line change to AIThermal.cxx to position cap cloud properly
4) Schweizer 2-33 set file change to match cloud coverage with thermal
heights.
files:
1) data/Models/Geometry/thermalcap.ac
2) data/Models/Geometry/thermalcap.xml
3) data/Models/Geometry/thermal_cap.rgb
4) data/AI/thermal_demo.xml
5) data/Aircraft/sgs233/sgs233-set.xml
6) source/src/AIModel/AIThermal.cxx
*** or, if you prefer diffs ***
7) aimodel.diff
only used by the <list> widget. It allows to "dialog-update" the list,
which rescans the <value> children and redraws the list widget with new
contents. The old contents are only freed at dialog close, which should
eventually get changed.
two almost identical functions for these methods. It only forces to repeat
the redundancy for every small change to either.
- abstract out generation and destruction of plib string arrays
- abstract out generation of lists from <value> children
used in dialog.cxx to allow XML dialogs access to their own prop tree via
Nasal's cmdarg(). That way dialogs can generate dynamic content, such as
list entries.
- only call globals->set_initial_waypoints() if the waypoints list address
has actually changed, that is: if it has just been initialized
- remove trailing spaces
- fix indentation
but got changed so that Nasal listeners wouldn't be triggered needlessly.
Doesn't make sense, though, as Nasal will never be available before the
video size is set, and it prevents the window interface from setting the
startup size.)
"Add Air to Air TACAN. With this facility TACAN equipped aircraft can
measure the range and bearing of TACAN equipped AI Aircraft. ATM there is
only one assigned - callsign ESSO1 on TACAN channel 039X, but this can be
easily expanded to include other c/s channel # pairs - just ask me if you
want more."
list) and the arrows are clicked (patch sent to plib; workaround it to
be removed once fgfs officially depends on a plib version that includes
the fix)
- fix (very unlikely) crash in case the widget is redrawn between list
destruction and setting of the new list.
even be more than once in the same list. We need to remove all such instances,
or the a pointer to TowerPlaneRec may become invalid and cause crashes.
The proper fix would, of course, be to be careful with state changes and
to prevent *any* duplication of entries. [OK'ed by David]
colors: <color-{{back,fore}ground,highlight,label,legend,misc,editfield}>
<input-misc>, for example, sets the input field cursor color, <input-legend>
the input field text color. (This feature was always planned as part of the
'theming' capabilities, and most code is already in place. Only this line
was apparently fogotten. :-)
a crash when using the model manager from XML files (which apparently
nobody does, anyway ;-) Now those models work (again), but have no
shadows. Those placed at runtime (e.g. via ufo) still have a shadow.
<property>, except if they are activated, in which case the user input
should, of course, not get overwritten. But if such an input was active and
the user selected a different widget, then its contents were dropped.
Fix that by setting the "DownCallback" for live input fields.
Here is one patch that to make FlightGear run without floating point
exceptions on FreeBSD. Apparently, if we do not ignore floating point
exceptions per this patch, there is some occasional condition where the
nvidia driver is involved in delivering spurious floating point exceptions
to the fgfs process, causing it to core-dump occasionally without the patch.
With only this patch, FlightGear will compile and run properly on
FreeBSD 6.X as long as the nvidia accelerated driver is installed,
modulo proper switches to the SimGear and FlightGear configure script
executions.
Again, kudos to your team for the great work on the big release
push; it is super to see things come together like this!
- reduce it to 20 (30 is excessive and didn't match the property brower look)
- call puSlider with this size explicitly (otherwise its size is derived
from the font size, unlike the arrow buttons!)
respected, and black text on dark grey is a bit hard to read).
TODO: - submit that for inclusion in plib's puAuxList
- drop custom version and use plib's (after 0.9.10)
I had inadvertently terminated a data line when reaching a tab character after
initial data was supplied. I tested the lightning file and it now appears to
read in correctly.
entry was selected. Return 0 in this case, not an invalid string address
(causing segfaults).
dialogs.cxx: don't set property if no list entry was chosen.
When AIFlightPlanCreateTaxi() function is called with the firstFlight
argument set to true, this is supposed to handle situations where the
the aircraft's timetable indicates it should have left between about 5 to
20 minutes earlier. In the previous version, all these aircraft started
taxiing from the first parking location available in the network, due
to the fact that the variable gateId was not assigned a value. In this
patch, route tracing starts from an assigned gate and the network node
following code is fast forwarded to a random location along the taxiways
to give a more realistic and natural distribution of taxiing aircraft
after startup.
This patch further addresses some weird ballet-dancing behavior that
aircraft were showing just prior to/right after parking and which was
related to a number of more or less duplicate waypoints in the transition
from createTaxi() to createParking() to createPushBack() to createTaxi().
Finally, a blatant typing error in the getParking() function was fixed.
at (lon, lat) coordinates -1000,0. This patch fixes the AIModels/Traffic
Manager side of things. The AIModels subsystems allowed the creation of
AIAircraft with non-existent 3D models. If such a model didn't exist, the
aip class didn't get initialized, resulting in the above-mentioned bogus
position information. Here I circumvent this problem by a) only interacting
with the tile loader if the model is visible (and hence has succesfully been
initialized) and b) by disallowing the traffic manager to create AIAircraft
objects if the path to the 3D model doesn't exist.
bunch of memory leaks that had accumulated over the years. FlightGear
doesn't currently bother to destroy and recreate a YASim context, but
at least it can do so now without worry.
groundcache addition -- the ground callback doesn't do anything at
solution time, so the ground plane was unset. Valgrind was whining
about this; it's not clear that it was actually causing a problem.
a race condition ending in warping twice and having huge increments for the
second warp.
I am not aware of such a flush function in glut. So we emulate that by
ignoring mouse move events between a warp mouse and the next frame.
That should make glut behavour aequivalent to sdl behavour.
This isn't the case if the model is destroyed on fgfs exit. To make <unload>
work under these circumstances, one would have to reorder subsystem removal,
but this doesn't seem overly useful, so we'll do it when we really need it.
aircraft models this is only called if they are loaded as AI, not if they
are the model flown by the human pilot. This has technical reasons (too
soon for Nasal/fg), but is useful to distinguish AI and non-AI use, for
example to set a different livery for AI models, or to set different
animation properties.
implement FGNasalModelData class for execution of XML <load> and <unload>
scripts. modelLoaded() is called by the model loader, and the destructor
on branch removal.
modelmgr.cxx:
tilemgr.cxx:
tileentry.[ch]xx:
make scenery and custom objects run their Nasal scripts on loading
and unloading. Let OBJECT_STATIC object not be cached.
<nasal>
<open>print("I'm called on dialog open")</open>
<close>print("I'm called on dialog close")</close>
</nasal>
All Nasal runs in a dialog namespace, so that variables and functions
defined in the <open> block can be used in <binding>s, etc. This is
especially useful for <radio> button handling. See "location-in-air.xml".
mf:
pthread_cancel doesn't seem to work correctly on all supported platforms.
It apparently causes SGBlockingQueue::pop() to correctly leave the thread on
the cancellation point pthread_wait(), but the SGGuard() destructor isn't
called, so the queue mutex remains locked. This triggered an assert() on
pthread_join(). This patch uses an empty ICAO request as signal for the
thread to terminate itself.
I have implemented a Honeywell MK VIII EGPWS emulation for FlightGear.
The MK VIII is an Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System aimed at
regional turboprop and small turbofan aircrafts such as the Citation,
Citation Bravo, B1900D, Beechcraft 99 and L410.
Frederic Bouvier:
make the MSVC compilation possible. Rearrange base package directories.
The original code selected the most preferable runway combination,
regardless of which combination was currently active. This patch
builds in some additional resistance against change, by keeping
track of which runways are already in use, and forces a change
in active runways only when new (wheather/time of day) conditions
force it to do so, resulting in much more consistent runway assignment.
behavior.
and in the calculation of the launchbar angle (by Vivian).
It also calculates the holdback angle, and sets a Boolean value which
can be used to initiate the release of the catapult strop submodel at
the appropriate moment (new code by Vivian).
control to piston engines that allows external scripts to control the
turbo/supercharger boost programatically by setting this axis to
values in the range [0:1]. It also adds a "turbo-lag" attribute (a
time in seconds) to engines implementing turbocharger spooling delays.
This isn't terribly well tested, but doesn't seem to have broken
anything.
I am attaching a trivial patch that changes the normalization from 24 to
12 in turn_indicator.cxx. With this change, the pa24 tc has a turn
indicator spin value in the property tree of 0.9996 and the same value
for the pa28-161 is 1.0, so there is no harm to a 24 volt electrical
system in this change. Should the battery or alternator put out a lower
voltage than 12 volts, the spin value goes down and the tc shows a
negative turn that increases as the voltage gets less. This file shows
you as the author. If you are comfortable with this change, commit it
to cvs and the tc will be correct even for 12 volt systems.
propeller pitch stops for constant speed propellers. The default
values are the same as the previous hard-coded values. The new
attributes, "fine-stop" and "coarse-stop", are documented in the base
package, Docs/README.yasim.
- remove cleanup handler that unlocks unused mutex
- make the result_queue a locking queue (blocking is only done in the
pop() anyway, and this isn't used in the thread at all)
- don't disallow thread cancelling in the request_queue's pop(), which
is the only cancellation point in this thread
This patch makes use of the vectors now available in simgear with that past
patch. And using that it simplyfies the carrier code somehow.
- Small additional factory's to the quaternion code are done in the simgear
part. Also more explicit unit names in the factory functions.
- The flightgear part makes use of them and simplyfies some computations
especially in the carrier code.
- The data part fixes the coordinate frames I used for the park positions in
the carrier to match the usual ones. I believed that I had done so, but it
was definitly different. Also there are more parking positions avaliable now.
The new multiplayer patch with an extension to transmit some properties with
the base package. The properties are transmitted in a way that will not
immediately brake the packet format if we need new ones.
Even if the maxmimum number needs to be limited somehow, that format might
work well until we have an improoved packet format which is even more compact
and that does not require to retransmit redundant information with each
packet.
That part is relatively fresh and based on that what Oliver provides on his
multiplayer server web page.
The properties are transferred to the client and I have modified the seahawks
rudder animation property to use a relative property path to verify that it
works appart from the fact that you can see it changing in the property
browser.
The movement is still a bit jerky, but that can be fixed/tuned later without
again braking the packet format.
This patch makes FlightGear at least compile on MSVC. I hope I have removed
reference of my other local changes. DSP and DSW files are included for
reference. They have been reconstructed with am2dsp.pl. I had to introduce a
change to am2dsp because of the need of filenames with embedded spaces. (Yuck)
The major direction is to remove clutter like the _USE_MATH_DEFINES and have it
on the compiler command line sice there is no central include file. You will
have to put it on the command line for your locale Project files, if it not
there, already. I added the _CRT_SECURE_NO_DEPRECATE define for 2005, since it
does no harm to other VC version.
the mouse pointer to a new position. Otherwise it can happen that the new
position is first set, but then come a few still unprocessed events for the
old position. This makes ugly jumps in mouse view mode.
the mouse rather than wrapping it. Wrapping around to the other side
of the screen has very bad consequences when using the mouse for
flying or viewing -- it can result in sudden jumps in the controls or
the viewpoint when the mouse jumps to another side of the screen.
Right now, the mouse is constrained to stay between 25% and 75% of the
screen on both the X and Y axis -- whenever it hits an edge, it jumps
back to the centre of the screen again (which causes no control or
view jump).
or write to the color properties in /sim/screen/. If this Nasal/GUI
implementation turns out to be too slow, we'll write a generic OpenGL/plib
version simliar to the ATCdisplay code. (OK'ed by Andy and Stuart)
or write to the color properties in /sim/screen/. If this Nasal/GUI
implementation turns out to be too slow, we'll write a generic OpenGL/plib
version simliar to the ATCdisplay code. (OK'ed by Andy and Stuart)
or write to the color properties in /sim/screen/. If this Nasal/GUI
implementation turns out to be too slow, we'll write a generic OpenGL/plib
version simliar to the ATCdisplay code. (OK'ed by Andy and Stuart)
scripts that load/write user specific data that shouldn't go to PWD, and
can't go to $FG_ROOT (due to permissions and clean separation of 'official'
data and local modifications)
right corner, not those that are result of centering a dialog if no x/y are
given. This centers screen.log messages correctly. But maybe we have to
rethink that special meaning of negative coords altogether.
This patch removes some useless indirection when creating AIModels. It
obsolets AIScenario*.
AIEntities are just an intermediate copy of an other intermediate copy of an
xml file on the way from the ai scenario configuration file to the AIModels.
As such the AImodels can now be created directly from the property tree read
from the scenario file.
This reduces the amount of work needed to add an other AIModel and reduces the
amount of copy operations done during initialization.
It also moves internal knowledge of special AI models into these special AI
models class instead of spreading that into the whole AIModel subdirectory
which in turn enables to use carrier internal data structures for carrier
internal data ...
Also some unused variables are removed from the AIModel classes.
I believe that there are still more of them, but that is what I stumbled
accross ...
Tested, like the other splitouts these days in a seperate tree and using the
autopilot for some time, and in this case with a carrier start ...
problems because a lot of people already have their *real* preferences
set in ~/.fgfs/preferences.xml (and don't want fgfs to stomp over them),
because the name doesn't tell people that their data aren't save there
(comments!), and because this is inconsistent with the global preferences.xml
file, where user changes *are* respected.
This patch is a combined effort by Gregor Richards, Oliver Schroeder, and
Vivian Meazza (and code cleanups and improvements by Erik Hofman). It corrects
the bug in which a Multiplayer model responds to local inputs, and the view
number bug which caused certain aircraft to appear as cockpit only models. It
passes remote properties over the net, and all major control surfaces and gear
are now animated correctly, providing that the local ~model.xml file contains
no leading "/" in the <property></property> data entries. MP objects
are now extrapolated using 1st and 2nd derivatives to make their movement
appear more smooth. The sim is now halted while a new client joins the net.
Known problems with MP are non-display of the remote client under certain
circumstances of starting/resetting, and a freeze on starting. These bugs are
long standing, and are not addressed by this patch.
Special thanks must go to AJ Macleod for his patient testing of this patch over many evenings.
We have also moved part of multiplayer into AIModels as part of the ongoing
development of MP.
because a dialog button can get pressed when its callback isn't available
any more. Ideally, we would close the dialog or update its buttons when
this happens. But this requires bigger changes.
/sim/messages/{atc,pilot,ai-plane,ground,approach}
These can the be used for differenct screen.log colors and for different
voices. (Aircraft & tutoruals may want to write to /sim/messages/copilot)
Fix the current buggy rain orientation behaviour for the views attached to the
aircraft (while still inheriting bugs with the views attached to anything else).
I had massive problems with tower.cxx, so I decided to doublecheck all
containers and iterators in order and found lot of potential problems.
Now I can fly with "debug on" of KSFO for minutes without problems.
The fix for AIMgr is from Mathias, but I reworked it. So blame me, not him.
- Feet to meter conversion mistake (in AI getGround elev)
- Improved ground following code (not yet perfect, but for now no one will
notice it within the marginal altitiude differences at the taxitrack or
runway)
- Exclusion of the "AI" directory witihin data/Aircraft in
main/init/fgSearchAircraft, to prevent AI aircraft to be picked up by the
aircraft search function
Jon Stockill wrote:
> I've just discovered that when using the null fdm I'm not getting
> updates to /position/ground-elev-m any more. So I can't actually
> retrieve the terrain elevation. Is there somewhere else in the property
> tree I could read this from?
The attached patch fixes this problem.
This patch limits the maximum simtime we do simulation computations for.
That is highly sensible if you run flightgear in valgrind or some realy slow
debug build. In such a case it is possible that flightgear gets totally
unresponsible, because simulation time might increase slower than real time.
That patch introduces a maximum simulation time per rendered frame to limit
that effect.
If the property /sim/max-simtime-per-frame is set to something strictly
positive, the simulation time is limited to that value.
The default is unchanged - no limit.
Anyway, from the point of view of gui responsiveness and responsiveness to
realtime controls like joystick inputs it might be a good idea to limit that
by default to say 1 second. If you have less than 1fps, flightgear is
unplayable anyway and I believe we do not longer need to care for realtime
correctness for that case ...
though the window wasn't resized. I'm just not adventurous enough for
a cleaner solution in the light of the upcoming release. At least the
xsize/ysize properties aren't set each frame any more, so listeners
work now properly.
Incorporating the shared ptr code:
- All scenegraph references from SimGear
- SGMaterial which already had a reference counter uses now that common
infrastructure.
- SGMatModel is now counted.
- SGSoundSample from SimGear
- And the corresponding change for the sound samples in flightgear which fixes
a latent crash if FGBeacon would evern be deleted.
Erik Hofman:
This patch contains an update to net_ctrls.hxx that adds an extra 100 bytes
(or an equivalent of 25 (u)int32_t types) of reserved space. This could be
used to make the protocol forward and backward compatibel within a certain
scope. Be sure to read the instructions at the begining of the header file
when addinf new variables.
"play-audio-function" command. This function can be called from internal
code, from nasal scripts, or from external scripts to play a single one-off
wav file. File/audio data is loaded and unloaded on the fly automatically.
Create a queue of one-off wav files. Calling layer can request the system
to play any wav file. The request is thrown at the end of a play queue.
The queue is serviced sequentially so that queued wav files will no longer
overlap. When a sample is finished playing. It is removed from the queue
and deleted from memory. The next remaining request in the queue is then
played.
- Provide a Nasal interface to display simple text messages on the screen
like the ATC display. In fact, I copied the code from the ATCDisplay.cxx
and simply shifted it further down the screen.
Erik:
TODO: Integrate the two pieces of code.
anything in the nav tree is valid or not.
- Fix an order problem between caching data values and searching for a new
station that could cause odd and unexpected and hard to reproduce results.
Added a convenience function to estimate the time to intercept the selected
radial give the current heading and speed. This can be useful to a flight
directory to compute the point to switch from armed to coupled mode at just
the right time so the pilot can roll out onto the desired heading on the
desired radial.
Add a first whack at estimating a ground track heading error (difference
between aircraft heading and ground track directon.) This needs more work
and testing.
The prototype of update_metar_properties does not match overridden func.
trafficmgr: iterators below begin() and after end().
tower.cxx : iterator incrementing beyond end().
replaced with efficient listener callbacks. One use is the new FPS display.
This is reviewed and OK'ed by Andy, relatively trivial and separated from
the rest of Nasal, so problems are quite unlikely and confined to users of
this function.
The callback is executed whenever the property is written to -- even if
the value didn't change. The triggering Node is available via cmdarg().
Examples: _setlistener("/sim/crashed", func {print("haha!")});
_setlistener("/foo/bar", func { print(cmdarg().getPath() ~ " changed")})
it's also possible to enable/disable menu/item entries with higher numbers.
This can be useful for adding entries from other config files (aircraft
specific or local). I'd say aircraft files can use indices starting with
[100] and local files starting with [1000]. Such high number will never
collide with an entry in menubar.xml, even if entries are added/removed
there.
Display the ground intersection point on mouse click (if click not consumed
by the gui or the panel.) This should eventually get stuffed into the
property tree.
Computes the pick direction and starting point. This is code that translates
a screen coordinate into a vector in the FlightGear world (between the eye and
the on-screen coordinate.) Armed with this vector in FG world coordinates,
you could call a scenery intersection routine and lookup the lon/lat/elev of
the point in the world that was clicked on.
* in some cases more specific sg exception types were used in place
of the more generic one, e.g., sg_io_exception instead of sg_exception
when the context of the error was an IO error
* in some cases, the error message was made more specific
* minor style fix for exception rethrowing --- using throw; whenever
a re-throw is made; sometimes optimizing away the exception symbol name
in the catch handler at all
* more specific catch handlers added in some places -- e.g.,
an sg_io_exception caught ahead of sg_exception
- fix indentation (there were 2, 3, 4, 7(!) space indents as well as tab
indents, all mixed together)
- no code changes, except one "if (foo) {}" changed to "if (!foo) return; ..."
Unfortunately, we don't have an easy way to access the puObjects
only by knowing the respective XML property node, because the
menu structure was built by plib from string lists. That's why
we walk the puMenuBar tree and store {property node}->{puObject*}
pairs in a map. With this infrastructure in place we can now
easily enable/disable entries, but we can also make other changes
to menu buttons as we see need. The structure of puMenuBar is
described in the pui documentation, so it's less of a hack than
it looks. :-)
remove a hack and do it properly: if the requested elevation is for some
reason below the surface and the intersection test fails (as it appears
to be the case in EGLL), try again from 10000m ASL
mf: typos
Insert empty string as marker between FG_SCENERY path elements.
FG_SCENERY=A:B expands to [A/Terrain, A/Objects, "", B/Terrain, B/Objects, ""]
(assuming that both A/ and B/ have Terrain/ and Objects/ subdirs).
tileentry.cxx -- FGTileEntry::load():
Check all tile dirs in FG_SCENERY from left to right: add all objects
to the scenery until a terrain tile was found: In this case read the
rest of that group (i.e. the Objects/ twin dir) and then stop scanning.
Better structuring of log messages & fix warnings.
sea tile, and finally process the objects. This guarantees that all objects
are placed relative to a valid tile center, rather than to the origin (0/0/0).
This is important for objects in sea tiles, and allows to display objects
of *.stg files that came sooner in FG_SCENERY.
This was the reason why some people (especially SuSE10.0/gcc 4.0.2
users) couldn't see others in MP. I don't even know why I'm committing
that. It's less important than taxi lights ...
metar fetcher. Effectively this caused the metar thread and the main
thread to both attempt to fetch weather data. This could lead to long pauses
when the main thread decided to fetch the weather, and introduced a race
condition that could cause a segfault/crash.
Investigating this issue, I discovered that even longer ago, someone confused
#defines and #ifdef symbols with C/C++ variables. If I #define XYZ 0 it is
defined so #ifdef XYZ is true, not false like a variable. Our thread
detection made this mistake and there were follow up patches to work around
it.
So I fixed the configure script (ahhh, reading the autoconf manual is highly
recommended excercise for people editing the configure.ac file.) I also
discovered that we were hardwiring with_threads=yes with no way via configure
options to disable threads from the build so I fixed that.
Then I patched up the #ifdef's scattered through the code to match the
configure script changes, oh and by the way, I stumbled upon a past typo
that led to the race condition in the metar fetching thread and fixed that.
Here's a fix for a bug I introduced when I updated the AIStorm with
turbulence. The change I made to the FGAIEntity struct was overriding the
thermal <strength-fps> data.
too old (wrong system time or broken proxy): stops after 10 stale reports
were fetched in a row. This should simply stop further fetching, but due
to a bug in the threading system(?) it does currently lead to abortion,
just like any other exception in the fetcher.
each other out. The problem is this: if we press, for example, "Ctrl-a", but
release the "Ctrl" modifier button *before* the "a" button (which nobody does
intentionally, but which happens all the time), then we don't get the RELEASE
signal on "Ctrl-a" (keycode 1), but on the "a" (79). But "a" hasn't been
pressed, so the signal is dropped. And who releases "Ctrl-a"? Nobody!
So the next PRESSED signal for "Ctrl-a" is ignored, too. It is still
"pressed" after all, isn't it? That's the reason for the occasional
non-functioning of keys.
Due to the nearing 0.9.9 release, I only commit a crude last-minute fix.
It's not as intrusive as it looks, and shouldn't be "dangerous" at all.
It only makes sure that when we get an unexpected RELEASE for one letter
key ("a") that the two twins "A" and "Ctrl-A" are released if they are
still in "pressed" state.
The proper fix will be to let fg_os{,_sdl}.cxx always report presses on the
same key ("a", "Shift-a", "Ctrl-a", "Alt-a", and other combinations of
modifiers) as the *same* key (97), only with modifiers appropriately set.
are sharp, as intended. These were are never seen in practice; I
found the problem while looking at 360 degree lift curve graphs
looking for discontinuities.
to pop themselves down while the simulator is paused.
The problem was with the "real time" queue in the event manager,
causing the third argument of Nasal's settimer() (a flag for "sim
time") to be ignored. Inverts the default sense of the argument, as
there are lots of uses of settimer() in the current code, almost none
of which want to use real time.
Note this fix introduces a header file incompatibility in SimGear --
be sure to update.
to other color than "Yeukky Pink"; #undef'ed for older plib versions; plib
patch will be made available in case fgfs 0.9.9 is released before plib 0.8.5
redraw(): redraw gui without distroying dialogs (fgcommand "gui-redaw"/Shift-F10)
This change makes sure that Nasal-generated and dynamic dialogs can be
re-opened correctly when cycling through themes.
Take any arbitrary vector (not necessarily vertical) and intersect it with
the current set of loaded terrain tiles. Returns lon, lat, elev. This
could have a multitude of useful applications such as testing line of sight
between two objects, faking a terrain following lookahead radar system,
virtual georeferencing, etc.
because this creates an empty entry if it didn't exist. This made the
activation of the dialog mandatory before the next gui subsystem update()
happened. Otherwise fgfs segfaulted.
right/upper screen edge (analogous to the --geometry spec), assuming
that we never want to draw outside the screen area; for this to work
we need to write the original x/y coords back to overwrite the absolute,
positive values that the layouter stored there
"jitter" when the aircraft was stopped. This is a fundamental
characteristic of the gear model, and can't be fixed without major
surgery (and not a small amount of blinding insight). But we can at
least clamp it so the value can't change unless the wheel is moving
with a nontrivial velocity (5cm/sec in this case).
property (e.g. <keynum>49</keynum>). The numbers are the same as in
keyboard.xml. (Could later be replaced/enhanced with <key>Ctrl-a</key>
notation.) This does, of course, only work for widgets with assigned
bindings.
there was the situation where four directories contained jst two files,
of which three directories were aircraft related, and one directory contained
test code from Curt that might be better of in SimGear anyhow.
This is just a patch to move a bunch of files to new locations. In case of
local changes to any of them you can do the following:
move replay.[ch]xx from src/Replay to src/Aircraft
move control.[ch]xx from src/Control to src/Aircraft
move ssgEntityArray.[ch]xx from src/Objects to simgear/screen
In addition it has been decided only to use .[ch]xx files in all directories
unless it's contained within an FDM specific directory, in which case the
author is free to do whatever (s)he wants.
In this repspect the following files have been renamed in src/Multiplayer:
tiny_xdr.[ch]pp has become tiny_xdr.[ch]xx
multiplaymgr.[ch]pp has become multiplaymgr.[ch]xx
"the model is deref'd and deleted when the refcount is null *but* it is
still referenced in the ai model list, so next time you ask for it you will
have a reference on something deleted"
and text strings are filled in before displaying. For testing: the new
dialogs are available under menu -> ATC -> Frequencies, and when
communicating with ATC (' key). This isn't completely finished yet, and
will probably profit from some feedback from the ATC folks.
tower.cxx: remove redundant "if (foo) delete foo".
I tried to make sure accessor functions which return by reference act
on const objects. also replaced some iterators with const_iterator
and a few return/pass by reference that were missed the first time
around.
* Use "const string&" rather than "string" in function calls when appropriate.
* Use "const Point3D&" instead of "Pint3D" in function calls when appropriate.
* Improved course calculation in calc_gc_course_dist()
* Safer thread handling code.
Vassilii Khachaturov:
Dont use "const Point3D&" for return types unless you're absolutely sure.
Erik Hofman:
* Use SGD_(2)PI(_[24]) as defined in simgear/constants.h rather than
calculating it by hand every time.
this patch eliminates some cut-and-paste,
as well as makes some frequently used strings const static at the same
time. A couple of interfaces are decorated with 'const' on the parameters
that are such, in line with other such interfaces where const is used.
"NINE" changed to "NINER", to match ICAO practice and the current FGFS
voice data.
A fixed buffer, sprintf and a warning comment replaced w/ostringstream.
Alex Romosan:
+string ConvertRwyNumToSpokenString(const string s) {
this should be string ConvertRwyNumToSpokenString(const string& s)
so we don't make unnecessary copies.
it isn't there, this is a bug. Thus centralize the error message so that it
doesn't have to be repeated everywhere. Of course, the calling code should
still consider that a returned property node may be 0.
I found that all the current users of the companion
function, findByFreq() actually did assume radians despite the misleading
comment in the .hxx and .cxx saying it's degrees. I've fixed the
comment now, and no longer change the Navaids code. The new Navaids user
in NewWaypoint() is now passing radians to the findByIdent().
Note that along with fixing the comments in the navlist.hxx, I removed
an obsolete method findByLoc() declaration (there is no definition
anywhere).
CygWin/gcc-3.4.4 updates.
I replaced my cygwin compiler with 3.4.4, did a make clean of plib, simgear,
and flightgear, then did a make install of all three. With the included changes,
everything builds fine, and runs fine.
or data blocks) from layouter and dialog creator. This is required for
dynamically generated/modified dialogs. Parts in the XML file can be
hidden and turned on by the C++ code. Other hidden parts can be used
as templates that are multiply used. Hidden datablocks can contain
strings that are used in dialog context, that are easier to translate
or modify in the XML file.
Attached is a patch to add oil temperature to the YASim piston engine
model. This brings to life one of the pa28-161's otherwise 'dead'
guages. It's a pretty simple 'model' based on temperatures and warmup
times I've observed in the labs on auto engines and run through my
dodgy-memory filter. It does the job of populating the guage with
something plausible though.
Auf Niederlandisch:
Bij deze de patch voor de taxiway code. Deze code is nog gebaseerd
op de bestaaande architectuur, gebaseerd op de FGAirport class in simple.[ch]xx
Ik heb me voornamelijk gericht op nieuwe functionaliteit; de volgende
submissie zal waarschijnlijk bestaan uit opschoning, opsplitsing en een
implementatie van de nieuwe airport architectuur, zoals voorgesteld door
David Luff.
En Anglais:
Here is the patch for the taxiway code. This code is still based on the
exsisting architecture, which is based on the FGAirport class in simple.[ch]xx
I've aimed mostly at new functionality; The next batch will probably contain
code cleanups, splitups and the implementation fo the new airport architecture,
as proposed by David Luff.
I have corrected a few bugs with the owner draw gauge, weather radar code and heat-haze effect.
- od_gauge.cxx :
corrected a rendering bug where the generated texture was only visible
from a certain angle or distance ;
corrected the search of textures inside the aircraft scene graph ;
- wxRadar.cxx :
the echo of clouds was lost when the pilot was not looking in the
plane direction ;
Using new gcc 4.0 I have some serios warnings about uninitialized
variables, that are used. I created a patch, but I have no idea if it
is possible to do it my way. Can you check this out please?
Erik: I've modified the patch slightly based on the contents of an older
version of hitlist.cxx. I think this is correct now.
modeling of a simple single vacuum system with a pump source on each engine
in a multiengine aircraft. The highest rpm engine takes priority for driving
the vacuum system.
I had a quick view over the ssgBase::ref() calls in flightgear.
I made them all symmetric and used ssgDeRefDelete to dereference them.
This has the basic advantage that ssgDeRefDelete additionaly deletes the
memory instead of just decrementing the reference cound without deletion ...
This includes an incorrect deref instead of a ssgDeRefDelete in the placement
transform registration I introduced earlier. I believe that this causes the
problems with long flights (unverified, but with a big propability).
it for the B-29). The gear model itself has supported this always,
but there was no interface from the XML file. Should be backwards
compatible. I don't think I broke anything...
I have done a valgrind run in flightgear. Just start it up and close it at the
fist change I had about half an hour later.
source-leak.diff:
Also two minor ones, but leaks ...
I stumbled across two memory errors with two wrong const references to
std::string.
As I fixed that, I also moved aircraft_dir which is only used from UIUC into
UIUC. With that uiuc_aircraftdir.h is empty and can be removed.
I believe I have found the agl hud problems as well as the 'hole' in the
carrier's deck. I spent half the day to reproduce that problem, it did not
occure when you start on the carrier not does it occure with JSBSim and my
really often used testaircraft. So I really need to improove my helicopter
flying qualities.
I was under the impression that *all* FDM's call
FGInterface::updateGeo*Position(..)
so set the new position in the FDM interface. Therefore I had added at the
some code that updates the scenery elevation below the aircraft to *those*
functions.
Ok, not all FDM's do so :/
The attached patch factors out a function computing the scenery altitude at
the current FDM's position. This function is also used in those FDM's which
need to update this value themselves.
Also this patch restores the nearplane setting and uses the current views
altitude instead of the current aircrafts. I think that this should further
be changed to the eypoint's agl in the future.
The agl is again ok in YASim's hud.
Changes
=======
- acmodel.cxx :
we now have an optional new property (/sim/model/texture-path) that is used
as the first path in wich aircraft textures are searched. If textures are not
found there then the usual texture path or model path is used ;
This allows to replace only needed textures for liveries ;
- options.cxx :
added a new --livery=xxx option for the user pleasure ;
this will just set the /sim/model/texture-path property with /livery/xxxx
- od_gauge.cxx, og_gauge.hxx, cockpit.cxx, cockpit.hxx,
generic-instrumentation.xml :
added an helper class that contain a rendering context for glass instrument
or any other opengl drawn instrument ;
- wxradar.cxx, instrument_mgr.cxx, wxradar.hxx :
first experimentation of a weather radar ;
This adds a TACAN instrument to the inventory. Range and bearing are calculated
to the TACAN or VORTAC beacon selected by means of the Channel Selector in the E
quipment/Radio pull-down menu.
A TACAN beacon has also been added to the aircraft carrier Nimitz (channel #029Y
).
I've prepared a patch as suggested by Hans-Georg Wunder and Jeff McBride.
In addition I've removed the ability to completely leave out the integral
action by setting Ti to zero. The velocity form of the PID algorithm _needs_
the integral action.
Attached is a patch to the airport data storage that I would like committed
after review if acceptable. Currently the storage of airports mapped by ID
is by locally created objects - about 12 Meg or so created on the stack if
I am not mistaken. I've changed this to creating the airports on the heap,
and storing pointers to them - see FGAirportList.add(...) in
src/Airports/simple.cxx. I believe that this is probably better practice,
and it's certainly cured some strange problems I was seeing when accessing
the airport data with some gps unit code. Changes resulting from this have
cascaded through a few files which access the data - 11 files are modified
in all. Melchior and Durk - you might want to test this and shout if there
are problems since the metar and traffic code are probably the biggest
users of the airport data. I've also added a fuzzy search function that
returns the next matching airport code in ASCII sequence in order to
support gps units that have autocompletion of partially entered codes.
More generally, the simple airport class seems to have grown a lot with the
fairly recent addition of the parking, runway preference and schedule time
code. It is no longer just an encapsulation of the global airport data
file, and has grown to 552 bytes in size when unpopulated (about 1/2 a K!).
My personal opinion is that we should look to just store the basic data in
apt.dat for all global airports in a simple airport class, plus globally
needed data (metar available?), and then have the traffic, AI and ATC
subsystems create more advanced airports for themselves as needed in the
area of interest. Once a significant number of airports worldwide have
ground networks and parking defined, it will be impractical and unnecessary
to store them all in memory. That's just a thought for the future though.
I have prepared a new patch for multiplayer, which fixes endianess issues with
multiplayer code. It's basically identical to the patch I sent before my
vacation, but contains minor fixes.
Multiplayer should now be working under all unix-like environments and windows
native. The basic trick is to let configure check for endianess of the host
system.
It will not work on system not using configure in the build process (excluding
windows), ie. possibly MACOS. For those system we should provide #ifdefs in
tiny_xdr.hpp.
Erik:
I've updated the patch to use the Plib utils package for endian swapping an
used a preprocessor directive to detect endianess.
>> Hello List,
>>
>> I think there's a small bug in the moving-average filter in
>> xmlauto.cxx
>>
>> I noticed that the output from it was always out a bit and
>> checking with a calculator showed that it seemed to be dividing
>> by the number of samples + 1 instead of just the number of
>> samples.
>>
>> subtracting 1 from 'samples' in line 702 seems to fix the problem
>> and as 'samples' doesn't seem to be used elsewhere I think it's
>> safe. Possibly implies that the number of samples may be one
>> less than specified but I'm not familiar enough with c++ to spot
>> it.
Roy Ovesen:
You are right. I would suggest resizing input[] to (samples + 1) instead.
Change lines 654 and 661 to:
input.resize(samples + 1, 0.0);
That way we average over the number of samples as configured.
There was a patch from Manuel Masing a few months ago which cleaned up
SGLocation's way depending on input values. That means that with that patch
SGLocation does no longer have calls with unneeded input arguments.
I took his patch and integrated that into flightgear and made maximum use of
that changes.
Erik Hofman:
Remove some duplicate code that was moved to simgear/compiler.h
- replay.cxx :
corrected a bug, now reinitialize the recording data when replay is
deactivated
- fgclouds.cxx :
cloud layers and weather condition are saved when choosing a weather scenario,
added a new scenario 'none' so we can switch back to standard flightgear
weather
- navradio.cxx :
force a search() on init to initialize some variables, preventing a nearly
infinite loop when delta-time == 0 on the first update()
- electrical.cxx :
uninitialized variable in apply_load() for FG_EXTERNAL supplier
- panel.cxx, panelnode.cxx :
added a property "depth-test" for 2.5D panels so that they update the depth
buffer and are no more visible from the outside of the aircraft when the
aircraft uses textures without an alpha channel
- panel.cxx :
moved the computation of the instruments diffuse color outside the
texturelayer code since this is constant during a frame, this is a big speedup
for 2D panels
Some quite extensive changes to the AIModel code:
1. Mathias has made major changes to the AICarrier code to provide better
alignment of an aircraft on deck with the carrier - this feature is a major
improvement on the existing, but has a bug which might cause it to fail when
the computer carries out other tasks - changing window size is a known
example. This bug is outwith this code.
2. I have made significant changes to the AIShip code to enable a ship the
turn and roll smoothly.
3. I have added some simple AI which enables the carrier to remain within,
or return to, an operating box.
4. An automated turn into wind for flying operations.
5. A simplistic implementation of TACAN within AICarrier. I am in the course
of implementing this as a generic instrument, but this is some time off
completion.
I have prepared a patch that:
- Introduces a FGTileMgr::scenery_available method which asks the tilemanager
if scenery for a given range around a lat/lon pair is already loaded and make
use of that method at some -9999 meter checks.
- Introduces a FGScenery::get_elevation_m method which queries the altitude at
a given position. In constrast to the groundcache functions this is the best
choice if you ask for one *single* altitude value. Make use of that thing in
AI/ATC classes and for the current views ground level. At the current views
part the groundcache is reused if possible.
- The computation of the 'current groundlevel' is no longer done on the
tilemanagers update since the required functions are now better seperated.
Alltogether it eliminates somehow redundant terrain level computations which
are now superseeded by that more finegrained functions and the existence of
the groundcache. Additionally it introduces an api to commonly required
functions which was very complex to do prevously.
- automatic detection of axis directionality, so that axis inputs are appropriately inverted only when necessary
- fixed trim axis names for better understandability
- fixed signs for flaps up/down property increments
- button 0 was previously used for skipping axes and buttons in both loops. Now button 0 can be assigned a binding (e.g., brakes). Instead, moving any axis during the button-assignment-loop indicates skipping.
- The user is now told how to skip a control.
I did some profiling of the code and found a few interessant things. Some corrections are obvious like the one in the multiplayer code, the fps is no more divided by 2 or 3 when another plane is on screen.
Other things like collision detection and computation of agl can not really be optimized. I changed a few things in hitlist.cxx but this only give a very low increase of fps. The groundcache eats a lot of cpu but I think that the real way to do it is to use a real collision system like OPCODE or something like that.
And I added an option to disable the recording of replay data. It takes more cpu than we can think.
Changes
=======
- panel.cxx :
moved the computation of the instruments diffuse color outside the texturelayer code
since this is constant during a frame, this is a big speedup for 2D panels ;
- hitlist.cxx :
changed the computation of the intersection between ray and triangle, optimized
the sphere culling by using a normalized direction vector. This can give a
35% speedup on the computation of elevation in some situations ;
- renderer.cxx, acmodel.cxx :
call ssgDrawAndCull with plane scene graph in external or internal view,
calling ssgDrawAndCull with the root scene graph was drawing other players plane
a second time in multiplayer mode ;
- mplayer.cxx :
removed the calls to ssgFlatten and ssgStripify because it was degenerating models,
causing a massive drop in frame rate ;
- replay.cxx :
added an option to disable the recording of the flight
- fgclouds.cxx :
changed the path of cloudlayer properties to match preferences.xml ;
set the altitude of clouds from scenarios to a more correct value if metar is not enabled ;
I have now included a patch to the multiplyer protocoll which does:
1. place the 3d model into the scenery using a placement transform which can
dynamically change its scenry center.
2. Transmits unique position and orientation data for the 3d model.
3. Thus breaks protocol compatibility.
Oliver Schroeder:
With help from Norman I fixed the alignment in the used headers.
But this patch again fixes only symtoms, not the problems. I suggest to
put it into cvs anyway, as it will enable the majority to get experience
with the multiplayer mode.
Turns out to be a bad interaction between jsbsims crash detection and my
past initialization changes.
The attached patch fixes this by moving crash detection out of the
initialization phase of jsbsim.
- AIManager.cxx :
- we can now have multiple <scenario> entries in the sim/ai entry in preferences.xml
- AIBase.cxx :
- added an exception handler around the loading of the 3D model to not exit FG
if the model is not found
- AIScenario.cxx :
- removed a duplicated read of the xml file, this was also exiting FG is the xml file
does not exist
Changes
=======
- shadowvolume.cxx, renderer.cxx :
- reduced the polygon offset a bit to eliminate some artifact ;
- changed again the cleanup code for objects inside a tile because it could crash on rare occasion ;
- the culling of shadow casters has been rewritten to traverse the scene graph, it should be
a bit faster when there is a lot of objects ;
- the range selector was not correctly handled, sometimes the wrong LOD was casting shadows.
- added the option to display aircraft's transparent objects after the shadows, this will
reduce the problem of shadows being hidden by the transparent object (propeller disk,
rotor, etc). A side effect is that aircraft's transparent objects won't receive shadows
anymore. This is usually a good thing except when the aircraft use a 'transparent'
texture where it should not. A transparent texture in the plib context is a texture
with an alpha channel or a material with alpha <= 0.99.
- model.cxx, animation.cxx, shadowvolume.cxx :
- added an optional <condition> under the <noshadow> animation
- tower.cxx
- correct a rare bug where all occurences of the aircraft are not deleted from the
departure list causing a crash in FGTower::CheckDepartureList function.
Somehow the MIPSpro compiler doesn't like an STL map entry being called
using a variable when the reference is an object and not a pointer to an
object.
Preliminary support for a fontcache is added which prevents fonts from
being loaded more than once and takes care of freeing them up again.
The fontcache isn't used yet since there seems to be a problem somewhere.
I have traced that reset on carrier problem down to several problems. One of
them is the fact that on reset the carrier is updated while the aircraft is
not. That made the aircraft drop down an elevator sometimes. Depending on the
passed realtime while loading some parts of the scenery.
LayoutWidget::setDefaultFont() wants puFont* /and/ pointsize as extra
parameters, when puFont knows its pointsize anyway. Didn't want to change
that yet, though.) Now the HELVETICA_10 font makes actually sense. :-)
font similar to Helvetica/Swiss. The license doesn't allow to redistribute
modified fonts under the original name. While it's only a converted font,
and not manually modified, it can no longer be seen as original. Changes
so far are (a) conversion from vector to bitmap, (b) different empty space
width, (c) different & constant gap value, without other kerning information.
Further changes may be necessary in the future.
[new_gui is] "using copies of puFont objects that are not yet initialized, I
think that dependant of link order (and so tor execution order) it can
work or not. Changing puFont font by puFont *font should work in all cases."
hardcodes the text color as black, which makes them a bit hard to read
on dark backgrounds; fix sent to the plib list; (the added code isn't
pretty and hence fits the existing style quite well ;-)
colors from /sim/gui/colors/ into map;
- set default color scheme
- handle fonts
- implement color class
- close all dialogs on reinit, set up style again, and then reopen all
(non-nasal generated) dialogs again
generated by freeglut's genfont utility. That application also generates
a copyright message that I did not copy into this file, because it is
wrong: the author of genfont claims copyright for data that *I* generated
using his program; this doesn't fly. Of course, the copyright will remain
in the (heavily edited) version of *his* code. I'll commit that, too.
no longer save inaccessible bindings copies, but only pointer to the
bindings in the property tree (which was desirable to get accurate
error messages for Nasal bindings).
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.
- add <vrule>
- allow elements to default to foreground color (black)
- remove redundant if (foo) delete foo;
The rules do currently need a dummy child for the layouter to work correctly,
(<hrule><foo/></hrule>). The goal is to make a simple <hrule/> work.
on RPM via a model developed by Vivian Meazza. Add a "boost" output
to the property tree. Fix a bug where MP would be reported "before"
the wastegate clamping.
- use new removeChildren() to remove the named js nodes that we don't
need any more (they are now *really* removed, not just detached), and
- move it into postinit(). (getChildren() returns a SGPropertyNode_ptr,
so all nodes are refcounted and, thus, after the last sg/props change
no longer removable in that scope ;-) Maybe we'll need an alternative
getChildren() that returns SGPropertyNode* ...
- This doesn't do what the author though it would do:
if (modifiers&KEYMOD_RELEASED == 0) ... (see below)
- MSVC and type fixes
mf:
fixing this uncovered an old bug: the "key pressed" branch was
actually never executed -- always only "released". And that is why
the <repeatable> property didn't work. And *that* was the reason
why the Spitfire's starter didn't work with freeglut, and Vivian
had to write a nasty workaround for it.
Changes
=======
New volumetric shadows for FlightGear.
There is now two new checkboxes in the rendering dialog to enable/disable shadows
for the user aircraft and for static scenery objects (ie those defined in the .stg files).
AI and random objects are not handled for the moment.
known bugs
==========
- ghost objects
