Track length is calculate every iteration/for every aircraft. Since some
tracks have hundreds of waypoints, calculation is slow. Cache the
track length between the waypoints ahead, so it rarely needs to be
recalculated.
Make landings and takeoffs look more correct; tweak climb-out and touchdown phases in particular, so the turn to destination heading occurs earlier on climb out, and touchdown occurs close the GS transmitter / some distance down the runway from the beginning.
Expand the performance DB logic to support aliases, and select based on aircraft type as well as class. This allows to introduce some variation into AI traffic performance. Change the initial climb-out waypoints to use pitch-hold until passing 3000', which looks much more convincing
* Landing AIAircraft now land properly!!!
* Fixed problems with takeoff scheduling.
* Untangled several vertical speed calculation algorithms.
* No more bent-over-backwards and jump-in-the-air AI aircraft initializations.
* Fixed intermixed target speed and target altitude during climb phase.
* Implemented beginnings of a "line up and wait" procedure.
* Tried to use actual runway elevation for calculating the decent profile.
Traffic Manager:
* Just continue routing until we run out of flights. This change removes one of the major requirements for setting the "Home port" field.
* Add a time restriction requirement for the aircraft scheduler; this became necessary after removing the limited-to-home-port routing restriction.
* Added a new field to the heuristics calculation: take into account whether an aircraft has already been used in a previous session. Rotate aircraft assignments for greater variability across sessions.
* Added a revision number to the cache files, so that old cache results, which are no longer compatible with the new file format, are discarded.
Groundnetwork and traffic control:
* Added a revision number to the cache files, so that old and incompatible results are discarded.
* The caching algorithm probably didn't store the correct data for airports that were processed while the user was quite far away. This is now corrected by checking whether the cached elevation data are equal to the generic airport elevation.
AIAircraft:
* I've been searching for the infamous aircraft bend-over-backward bug, that can occur during initialization, but to no avail yet. The only variable potentially responsible (tgt_vs) wich can explain the irregular jumping behavior, as well as the weird pitch results is initialized in AIAircraft's only constructor (through AIBase), and I can't find any situation in the ground handling code where this variable could get bizarre values. But,
* a couple of tgt_vs. calculations appear to be completely redundant. This value was calculated twice inside the ProcessFlightplan function, and subsequently again in the updateSecondaryTargetValues function. I have removed the calculations in the process flightplan function, without any apparent side effect.
- Better transistion between taxi and takeoff phases.
- Skipping the pushback stages when a gate doesn't require push-back.
- Some test code always chooses the user aircraft as the one that has to hold position.
- Change AIFlightPlan::waypoint into an independent class FGAIWaypoint
- Don't update leg count until the aircraft has passed the last waypoint that was created by the corresponding leg
- Clear ground network rendering for controllers that are no longer active.
Move the disable-HOT feature from the MP aircraft to the a/c base class,
disable HOT for all AIaircraft, since that's a fix/work-around for
#242: AI aircraft respect the user a/c only when HOT is _disabled_ for them
#221: AI aircraft don't stack at parking positions when HOT is disabled
Also generally disables HOT for ballistic and other models (suggested by vivian),
allowing it for ship/carrier models only.
* Update AI aircraft object based on user position.
* Process flightplan
* Don't try to update the radar information for AIAircraft that don't have a valid manager pointer
- Fixed a bug in AI aircraft ground steering code: When aircraft were not moving, the value of headingchangeRate kept increasing to insane levels. Although this was clamped to a maximum of 30 degrees per second, the initial rate could still push the aircraft in the wrong direction. In practice, this bug would be visible when an AI aicraft would be pushed back, when it tended to veer to the right.
- Make sure that the aircraft slows down well ahead of the pushback point. This change ensures that the AC will actually reach the pushback point. It also ensures a slightly tighter steering range.
- AI ground steering rate is tuned to 30 degrees per second at a nominal taxispeed of 15. I now modulate the heading adjustment rate by manipulating the adjustment using a non-linear function (the sqrt). This allows for a slightly tighter turn radius at speeds < 15 and slightly looser turns at speeds > 15.
- The AI Flightplan generation code can return false. This can be used to determine whether any additional AI aircraft may be created. Currently, the function returns false when no more parkings are available. This should limit the build-up of huge AIAircraft tower stacks.
- The ground network can now graphically display all aircraft actitivy on the ground network by using a virtual marker system.
Priority scheme for tile loading/removing
Cleaner tile manager interface for AI/groundcache/...
Reduce start-up delay. Drop splash screen when inner scenery is available.
Be nice to osg loader: slow-down main loop while initial scenery is still loading.
* New features
- More realistic descent paths
- Separation during descent and approach
- ATC approach controller (still silent)
- inbound traffic flow will start immediately
* Bug fixes
- Properly handle vertical speed when on ground
- Departing aircraft now wait for taxiclerance before moving
- Traffic manager waits for proper weather initialization
- Fixed instabilities in the preferential runway usage code
- Fine tuning of waypoint following code.
issue is numerical problems in _wgs84_inverse, triggered by the traffic-manager
testing enormous distances geodetically.
Changes
- refactor AISchedule::update, so the aircraft approximate position
calculation is simpler.
- refactor AIAircraft to no longer use exceptions as a return value mechanism
- change AISchedule::update to use cartesian math for in-visible-range check
Improvements to the cloudsystem:
- A new xml format
- Texture indexing based on the position of the sprite in the cloud
mass, allowing more control over the texture set.
- Improved fog and shading
- Better sprite distribution
- A more natural distribution of clouds, so no more obvious grids.
