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 ;
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).
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
).
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.
- 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
Annexed an IVSI (instantaneous ertical speed indicator), which bypasses a
limitation with Concorde :
- the cruise at Mach 2 must be with a slow climb rate of 50/60 ft/min
(2h from 50000 ft).
- with /velocities/vertical-speed-fpm, the real climb rate (altimeter) varies :
One must constantly (every 5-10 minutes) change the vertical speed hold of
the autopilot between 10 ft/min and 200 ft/min.
This is very annoying because not a constant offset : that could be a lack of
sensitivity of /velocities/vertical-speed-fpm (FDM ?).
This new IVSI :
- Is an emulation with works with environment pressure : a real IVSI works with
static pressure (with lag) + accelerometers.
It is not forbidden to later upgrade to the real model.
- Doesn't require a tuning of the autopilot made with
/velocities/vertical-speed-fpm (also tested with 737, 747) :
Concorde's autoland works without update.
_course_deg is first initialized in the if()-branch (gps.cxx:419). But
this branch isn't entered at first run if wp0==wp1, so that in line 615
fgfs tries to SG_NORMALIZE_RANGE() a random value, which can take a
long while if the number huge. This was occasionally a number greater
than 10160!
- initialize all vars before they are used (fixes endless loop)
- fix some compiler warnings (initialization order, unused vars)
I just heard from John Wojnaroski that you and he are going to work on getting
a flightgear demo machine up for the linux expo thursday and Friday. John
indicated that he would very much like to get a CVS version with the new
traffic code up and running before the expo.
rather than /instrumentation/comm ... we need to be a little careful here
because typically, a single knob controls power to both matched com/nav pairs.
a single apt.dat.gz file which is in the native X-Plane format.
To do this I wrote a front end loader than builds the airport and runway
list. Some of the changes I needed to make had a cascading effect, so there
are minor naming changes scattered throughout the code.
I've finished the emigration of the radiostack, and I've also removed it
completely. It turned out that the comm radio is completely implemented in
the ATC subsystem. I've changed the affected ATC files to point
to /instrumentation/com, but I guess that the maintainer of the ATC code
should decide wether to make it configureable, and how.
I also had to change some files in Network and Main. The changes in network
should be obvious, but the changes in Main were a bit suspect. The files
included radiostack.hxx, but they weren't directly depending on
radiostack-hxx. They were depending on other files that were included by
radiostack.hxx. I got it to compile, but I'm not sure if I included the
correct directly depending file.
For the data directory I changed every occurrence of /radios/
with /instrumentation/ with this simple one-liner that I found on the net:
find -name '*.xml' -type f | xargs perl -pi -e
's/\/radios\//\/instrumentation\//g'
Instead of me sending all the files that got changed by this I suggest that
you execute the one-liner yourself. Of course I can not guarantee that this
will work perfectly, but I considered hand editing to be not an option (I'm
lazy). I don't want to test every aircraft to see if everything still works,
I think it's better to wait and see if anyone complaints about broken nav
radios/instruments.
directory and over to the Instrumentation directory and make them modular
in the sense of being able to pick and choose what you include with any
particular aircraft.
We have decided that hardcoded initialization of instruments and systems is
bad. So we remove them.
Hardcoded initialization is bad because it can't be overridden from config
files or from the command line. We prefer to do it through config files that
should be, eventually, aircraft specific (*-set.xml), not global
(preferences.xml).
on the ground) -- this is based on some wild guesses, but it seems
reasonable for now.
The next step will be to give the compass some angular momentum so
that it does not snap instantly to a heading, and so that it can
overshoot a heading and oscillate.
I've made an encoder and a transponder. The transponder gets C-Mode altitude
information from the encoder. These two might not be very usefull right now,
but I think they might come in handy when the ATC network gets going.
I've added two new debug log types for the instrumentation and systems. They
used to use the autopilot debug log, because I couldn't figure out how to
make new log types. Well, now I have figured it out. ;-)
compilation without ENABLE_SP_FMDS defined gave me a lot of link errors. It appeared that symbol used by ADA was still in use in the HUD.
There is also a typo from Curt in instrument_mgr.cxx where he #include "kr_87.cxx" instead of "kr_87.hxx"
Instrumentation and systems are now configureable from xml files. The two
generic configurations generic-systems.xml and generic-instrumentation.xml
configures the systems and instrumentation as it was hardcoded. You can
override the generic configurations in a similar way as you override the
autopilot configuration.
All necessary elements for an ADF gauge had been migrated from
Cockpit/kr_87.cxx to Instrumentation/adf.cxx. Migrating the sound
related elements was apparently planned, but not done yet. This
intermediate state broke the ident morse sound: it couldn't get
turned off and it always indicated "SF", regardless of the tuned-in
frequency. The following patches continue the migration:
adf-radio.diff => Base/Aircraft/Instruments/adf-radio.xml:
---------------------------------------------------------------
* sets maximum volume to 1 (rather than 2); Not only is 1
loud enough (and 2 unpleasantly noisy), it also prevents
the knob from being turned to non-existant positions. :-)
* fixes wrong use of /instrumentation/adf/ident
* the voice/ident selector(?) remains unchanged, but as it's
not switched to "IDENT", there'll be no ident sound by default
this is consistent with other sounds and DME.
radiostack.diff => src/Cockpit/radiostack.[ch]xx:
---------------------------------------------------------------
* comment out use of FGKR_87 class. kr_87.[ch]xx is now no
longer used. kr-87adf.xml would no longer work, either, but
isn't used anywhere, anyway. Future adf radios have to use
the adf instrument, using xml/Nasal for specific hardware
implementation details.
adf.diff => src/Instrumentation/adf.[ch]xx:
---------------------------------------------------------------
* adds ident morse sound capability using two new input
properties:
- /instrumentation/adf/volume-norm (double)
- /instrumentation/adf/ident-audible (bool)
will delay it's reply by 50ms. The ground station can change it's reply delay
to trick the airborn dme unit into reporting a distance that is offset from
the true distance by some constant value. In FG we model this by subtracting
a fixed distance from the actual distance.
It is thus possible in our implimentation for the displayed distance to become
negative. This patch clamp DME distance to a minimum value of 0.00 so it can
never go negative.
- FG now directly supports Robin's native nav database file format.
- His latest data now separates out dme, gs, loc, and marker beacon
transmitters rather than lumping them all into a single "ILS" record.
- These new data structure changes prompted me to do some code restructuring
so that internally these different types of navaids are all kept as
separate lists and searched and handled separately.
- This structural change had a cascading affect on any code that
references or uses the nav databases. I've gone and "touched" a lot of
nav related code in a lot of places.
- As an added bonus, the new data (and code) adds DME bias so these will
all now read as they do in real life.
- Added Navaids/navdb.cxx and Navaids/navdb.hxx which provide a front
end loaders for the nav data.
- Added Navaids/navrecord.hxx which is a new "generic" nav data record.
- Removed Navaids/ils.hxx, Navaids/ilslist.cxx, Navaids/ilslist.hxx,
Navaids/mkrbeacons.cxx, and Navaids/mkrbeacons.hxx which are all now
depricated.
Fix the leg distance calculation to display nautical miles instead of meters.
It turns out that Simgear already has a range normalize function, so I use
that one instead.
I've added a vertical navigation capability to the GPS module. One can input
two waypoints, wp[0] and wp[1], with altitude. If the altitudes differ, then
the altitude deviation from a "straigth" line from wp[0] to wp[1] is
calculated. The true course and course deviation from wp[0] to wp[1] is also
calculated. All this can be found in the wp subdir where one also finds the
wp[0] and wp[1] subdirs.
All this has to be done through the property browser. Maybe I should make a
gui window for the GPS!
I've added a tracking bug to the gps. This is of course very similar to a
heading bug for a DG. I don't know if this is the common name, but I feel
that for a gps the name tracking bug is more accurate than heading bug. A
true bug error and a magnetic bug error is calculated and shifted into the
-180 to 180 range so that they can be used by autopilots.
I've also fixed a property name that crept in when I had to change back to
indicated-***. Back then I accidentally changed the desired course name to
"indicated-course". The property that is supposed to be the input for the
desired course should naturally be named something like "desired-course", and
definitely _not_ "indicated-course". If this name change breaks anything it
should be fixed in the other end.
I've also commented out a lot of #includes that I don't think is needed. I'm
on Suse 9.0 now, and it builds fine here, but this might be a problem for
different platforms I guess we have to cross our fingers.
I've done som more work on the gps instrument.
- You can now input airport-, nav- or fix-ID to select a waypoint.
- You have to specify either "airport", "nav" or "fix" in the waypoint-type
property (some fixes and navs have identical IDs).
- Formatted the time to waypoint output.
- Cleaned up and changed some propery names (wp-heading -> wp-bearing).
- I've also added a name member to the FGNav class so that the gps instrument
can get the name of the nav.
- Changed the airport name parsing in simple.cxx.
explicitely. This value has always been feet, but there were a couple places
in the code that assumed this elevation was meters. The result was that you
could park directly over the top of the Black Forest VOR (112.50) NE of KCOS
and get a dme reading of 2.5 or so. This problem is now resolved.
places now use sgCartToGeod() instead of rolling their own
approximation. And YASim is now using exactly the same 3D coordinate
system as the rest of FlightGear is.
These patches add a clock instrument, which allows to model failure ("serviceable") and to adjust the time independently of the system time (defaults to GMT). The main incentive is to make the p51d clock work and adjustable via the knob.
o Offers a time string ("12:03:15") for the LCD or for LED
clocks, or an empty string in case of failure/power off. The
instrument assumes that digital clocks are battery buffered,
so they will be updated even if there's nothing on the display.
o Offers the number of seconds since midnight for analog
clocks, like in the p51d. This number is not increased
if !serviceable. So the clock will stand still and continue
where it stopped when it's serviceable again.
I did not consider voltage yet, because the Mustang's clock will need a lot more current than the LCD clock. The instrument is updated 4 times per second but returns immediately if neither time nor offset changed. The function getGMTString() in fg_props.cxx could be removed after applying these patches.
scene management code and organizing it within simgear. My strategy is
to identify the code I want to move, and break it's direct flightgear
dependencies. Then it will be free to move over into the simgear package.
- Moved some property specific code into simgear/props/
- Split out the condition code from fgfs/src/Main/fg_props and put it
in it's own source file in simgear/props/
- Created a scene subdirectory for scenery, model, and material property
related code.
- Moved location.[ch]xx into simgear/scene/model/
- The location and condition code had dependencies on flightgear's global
state (all the globals-> stuff, the flightgear property tree, etc.) SimGear
code can't depend on it so that data has to be passed as parameters to the
functions/methods/constructors.
- This need to pass data as function parameters had a dramatic cascading
effect throughout the FlightGear code.
appears still to be indicating.
Added a 'caged' property to the AI, for aerobatic work.
Temporarily disabled tumbling due to pitch, until I can learn more
about it.
Publish the current amount of tumble (-1.0:1.0) under
/instrumentation/attitude-indicator/tumble-norm.
proceed to search for an VOR of that same frequency. On rare occasion
this search could return true with a far distant VOR and cause a small
amount of confusion.
for a little while, since it uses different properties. There are
some improvements, especially with searching and range. It also has
its own serviceable and in-range properties, independent of any
coupled VOR.
a spinning gyro.
Changed FGInstrumentMgr to inherit from FGSubsystemGroup, greatly
simplifying the (already simple) class. I should probably rename this
to FGInstrumentGroup or something similar, but not today.
Added the gyroscopic turn indicator (part of the TC).
Ok, I found the problem. You're computing the dynamic pressure in
"psf" and adding it to the static pressure in "inHg" to form the
total pressure. The attached patch is the simple fix to the source.
With that fix, failing the pitot while in cruise at 3k' will cause
the airspeed to indicate beyond redline during climb ... well before 4k'.
Thus, a pitot problem can be detected on any IFR altitude change.
Similarly, failing the static (with working pitot) while cruising 4k'
causes the airspeed to indicate beyond redline during a descent
well before reaching 3k' (during which, of course, the ALT looks fine).
Thus, a static failure can be detected before the aircraft breaks out
of the pilot tolerance range and is blatantly conspicuous soon after.
