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.
