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.
Patches for configure.ac and Makefile.am files in FG/SG so Mac developers can build these in a unix way.
These also enables Mac developers to choose either PLIB framework or PLIB static libs.
Additionally to the original fix (problem with the Tec2b matrix initialization) I have modified the code for the "STRUCTURE" contacts in order not to generate NaNs when the z direction of the body frame is normal to the ground normal. Now there should no longer be any NaN generated by the landing gear code.
* line 343: comparison between signed and unsigned integer expressions
* line 441: 'lon', 'lat', 'slr' and 'alt' might be used uninitialized
* line 565: enumeration value 'etUnknown' not handled in switch
time' code paths. The problem may lead to skipped fdm updates at very high
frame rates. The most visible effect of that was that the aircraft
slips backwards wrt the forward moving carrier.
Remove unused stuff.
Modified Files:
configure.ac projects/VC7.1/FlightGear.vcproj
projects/VC8/FlightGearLib.vcproj src/Cockpit/cockpit.cxx
src/FDM/Makefile.am src/FDM/flight.cxx src/FDM/flight.hxx
src/FDM/SP/Balloon.cxx src/FDM/SP/BalloonSim.cpp
src/FDM/SP/BalloonSim.h src/Main/Makefile.am
src/Main/fg_init.cxx src/Main/main.cxx src/Time/Makefile.am
Removed Files:
src/Time/fg_timer.cxx src/Time/fg_timer.hxx
queries. This also fixes some issues with the carrier and the croaser
altitude values that is used when no hit is found.
Include some ifdefed out debugging code, that might be interresting.
Modified Files:
groundcache.hxx groundcache.cxx
Make leaner interfaces to the groundcache.
Remove legacy interfaces.
Update users of them.
Add new query routines for 'nearest point' and 'body with given id'.
Modified Files:
src/FDM/flight.cxx src/FDM/flight.hxx src/FDM/groundcache.cxx
src/FDM/groundcache.hxx src/FDM/JSBSim/JSBSim.cxx
src/FDM/JSBSim/JSBSim.hxx src/FDM/YASim/FGGround.cpp
src/FDM/YASim/FGGround.hpp src/FDM/YASim/Gear.cpp
src/FDM/YASim/Gear.hpp src/FDM/YASim/Ground.cpp
src/FDM/YASim/Ground.hpp src/FDM/YASim/Model.cpp
Background are problems modeling the rotax 912 engine. The idle speed
of the real engine is about half of the speed I could achieve with the
default minimum manifold pressure. While on ground I can switch off
the engine by pulling the throttle. The audible difference between the
different minimum idle speed (real vs. simulated) is extreme. With the
patch I get quite realistic sound. For the rotax engine I use
min-throttle="0.05" which is half of the former default value.
This gets rid of a lot of messy code. Although the performance is about
the same as the old code, there is the possibility of a big performance
boost if/when the polytope intersector is taught about KD trees.
* experimental clean-up / reduction on two of the FG headers:
(I'm going to await feedback on the developers list before doing more of
these, to avoiding going over files multiple times, but in principle it
seems pretty straightforward.)
* final fixes for SG_USING_STD removal
- this exposed a bizarre issue on Mac where dragging in <AGL/agl.h> in
extensions.hxx was pulling in all of Carbon to the global namespace
- very scary. As a result, I now need to explicitly include CoreFoundation
in fg_init.cxx.
- change SG_USING_STD(x) to using std::x
SimGear change. It changes all the SG_xxxx to be the 'real' includes, and gets
rid of many #ifdef SG_HAVE_STD_INCLUDES. As an added bonus, rather than
replacing 'SG_USING_NAMESPACE(std)' with 'using namespace std', I just fixed
the small number of places to use std:: explicitly. So we're no longer polluting
the global namespace with the entire contents of std, in many cases.
There is one more 'mechanical' change to come - getting rid of SG_USING_STD(X),
but I want to keep that separate from everything else. (There's another
mechnical change, replacing <math.h> with <cmath> and so on *everywhere*, but
one step at a time)
PLETE_FUNCTIONAL from SimGear and FlightGear.
As a result, SG_HAVE_STD_INCLUDES is now *always* set, so I will get the boring
fixes for that done, but separately. I'm still auditing the other things in comp
ilers.h - there's a lot that can die now BORLAND is gone.
The LOD far range on the tile entry scenegraph node was initialized to
0. This meant that any traverals of active children that happened
before the tile manager updated the node would ignore the node
altogether. Among these is the groundcache traversal which was failing
at startup even though scenery was loaded.
Also added a function to dump scene graph nodes to files; very handy
in gdb.
This fixes a race condition when teleporting somewhere outside of the
currently loaded scenery. Before, if there was no valid scenery, an
aircraft might end up at the center of the earth...
_material was uninitialized. This was causing a segfault with
as-yet-to-be-checked-in paging code; I don't know if it ever resulted
in a segfault with the old tile loader, but it certainly could have.
src/FDM/flight.cxx src/FDM/flight.hxx
src/FDM/LaRCsim/LaRCsim.cxx src/FDM/SP/ADA.cxx
src/Scenery/scenery.cxx src/Scenery/scenery.hxx:
Remove obviously unused variables from FGInterface, make use of
SGMath functions. No longer use plib math functions in FGInterface.
"minor update for the rotor FDM. It results in a more realistic
calculation of the phase shift of rotor and therefor in a little bit
more realistic flight behavior.
(Additionally you can modify the initial position of the rotor and some
(not finished) modifications for the jet ranger rotor)."
"""
Fix Y2K bug triggering string overflow
sim_control_.date_string is a char[7], so it can contain "yymmdd" and
the terminating '\0'. However, nowtime->tm_year is 107 for the year 2007,
so you'll end up with a 7 digit number and the string written to
sim_control_.date_string is longer than sim_control_.date_string is.
Ouch!
"""
mf: ... and sim_control_.date_string isn't even used.
"""
- ground properties (e.g. feel bumpiness and the reduced friction of
grass or go swimming with the beaver)
- initial load for yasim gears (to get rid of the jitter the beaver has
on ground)
- glider/winch/aerotow (do winch start with YASim glider or do aerotow
over the net) I will place a how-to on the wiki soon, here very short:
use the sgs233y (or the bocian if you have AJ (up ot now) non-GPL
bocian)
winch start: Ctrl-w for placing the winch, hold w to winch, press
Shift-w to release the tow
aerotow: Place the glider within 60m to a MP-aircraft, press
Ctrl-t to tow to this aircraft. If the MP-aircraft is the
J3 and the patch is installed on both sides, the J3 feels the
forces, too. The J3-pilot has to taxi very slow up to the
moment, the glider starts moving. Increase the throttle gently.
Don't lift the J3 early, wait for the glider being lifted,
lift gently.
"""
src/FDM/groundcache.cxx src/FDM/groundcache.hxx: Store the material
that was used to get the croase agl level and return that material
in case we need to make use of that croase value.
utils/Modeller/Makefile.am src/FDM/YASim/Makefile.am:
Remove -lssg from the linker lines.
Do no longer build threedconvert. A very similar functionality
is available with osgvconv. But leave threedconvert in place
if somebody will need that ...
I found a small conspicuity in YASim. The destructor of the fdm was
never called, therefore a modification of the heli fdm (not in cvs) did
not work after reset (I tie some properties and untie them in the
destructor, but the destructor was not called and the tieing failed
after reset. I don't know if any other parts of YASim need their
destructors, at least it wastes memory.
Another small fix I have made to the turbulence.cpp. The code needed,
that (a-floor(a)) is >=0 and <1. This is analytical correct, but
numerical only for "small" values. In normal fg-operation a in this
function is always small, but with unrealistic parameters in the
aircraft config file it is not and then fg crashes (instead a crash of
the aircraft or cataputling it far away).
More realistic calculation of vortices at the blades and therefore
real airfoil parameters can be used now (not to be mixed up with the
vortex ring state which is still not simulated), ground effect is now
continuous e. g. at buildings, calculating of the rotor in more than 4
directions, better documentation of the airfoil parameters.
values that were angles between the aircraft's orientation and the
global velocity vector, not the airflow velocity. So the HUD velocity
vector was wrong when the wind was non-zero. Fix that.
generates a data file of aerodynamic lift and drag (and L/D) against
AoA at a specified speed and altitude through a full circle. Wrote it
to track down the YF-23 superthrust issue, but it wasn't any help.
All the forces look fine.
state. The only really obvious problem was a giant negative engine
RPM, which happened because of a lack of clamping in the engine code
combined with the YF-23's ability to actually reach speeds near the
engines _vMax value. It's not clear to me that this will fix the
superthrust issue at high AoA's, but it's an obvious bug nonetheless.
+ The wing compilation step was accidentally omitting regions that lie
between the tips and the first/last control object. That's a real
problem for wings that contain no controls, and a significant issue
for those that contain only a few. I'm stunned that this went
undetected for so long.
+ The Surface::flapLift() function was oddly returning 1.0 Newtons as
a minimum, instead of zero.
calculations. We run the FDM at 120hz and compute how many loops can fit into each FG loop.
Floating point rounding could lead to a situation where we could end up running
1, 3, 1, 3, 1, 3... loops of the FDM when in fact we want to run 2, 2, 2, 2, 2...
If we artificially inflate ml above by a tiny amount to get the
closest integer, then subtract the integer from the original
slightly smaller value, we can get a negative remainder.
Logically this should never happen, and we definitely don't want
to carry a negative remainder over to the next iteration, so
never let the remainder go below zero.
src/AIModel/AIAircraft.cxx src/ATC/AILocalTraffic.cxx
src/FDM/flight.cxx src/FDM/flight.hxx src/FDM/groundcache.cxx
src/FDM/groundcache.hxx src/Main/fg_init.cxx src/Main/main.cxx
src/Scenery/hitlist.cxx src/Scenery/hitlist.hxx
src/Scenery/scenery.cxx src/Scenery/scenery.hxx
Make use of the attached SGMaterial reference userdata on scenegraph
leafs. Make the SGMaterial pointer available to the ground query
routines.
SGPropertyNode to guarded ones. This is also done for JSBSim/JSBSim.hxx,
for which JSB had given explicit permission a while ago. I postponed that
back then, but now is the time.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
"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).
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
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
this is basically the past patch I sent to the list and which should now
really (...!?!?) fix the no ground below aircraft problem.
Reasons:
I understood my remaining thinko I introduced with the prevous patch, and the
same thinko I made in my test cases.
The feedback from the list told me that it should help.
2.
I made YASim query the the ground cache at the wrong place. This one fixed
this, one can now land the bo105 on top of the oracle buildings :)
3.
Is a followup of the scenery center update code: Register the scenery center
transform at the time it is put into the scene graph not at creation time.
4.
I held that part back from the past hitlist patch, because I hoped that it
will be sufficient (and the last one was in fact the biggest part) without.
As some test cases from Melchior showed me, it is not. We have additionally
to the wrong computed transform from the prevous patch some roundoff
problems. This patch adds some small tolerance to for the point in triangle
test.
... may be one even needs to increase the eps value further if starting at
some tile boundaries still fails.
5.
That is a big chunk.
Tested now for two days while hunting the second patch :) .
That is a partial rewrite of the groundcache to use its own datastructures for
that flat scenegraph in the cache. The basic advantage is, what Erik
suggested, to precompute some often used values of these triangles. Also
allmost all computations are now in double precision which should decrease
(hopefully fix), together with a similar tolerance for some point in triangle
tests, the problems with 'no ground below aircraft'.
I am playing with octrees for the groundcache, that will finally solve the
performance problem when high triangular count models end up in the
groundcache. This patch is also some prework for those octrees ...
