Description:
This update includes the new viewer interface as proposed by David M. and
a first pass at cleaning up the viewer/view manager code by Jim W.
Note that I have dropped Main/viewer_lookat.?xx and Main/viewer_rph.?xx and
modified the Makefile.am accordingly.
Detail of work:
Overall:
The code reads a little easier. There are still some unnecessary bits in
there and I'd like to supplement the comments in the viewer.hxx with a tiny
bit on each interface group and what the groupings mean (similar but briefer
than what you emailed me the other day). I tried not to mess up the style,
but there is an occasional inconsistency. In general I wouldn't call it done
(especially since there's no tower yet! :)), but I'd like to get this out
there so others can comment, and test.
In Viewer:
The interface as you suggested has been implemented. Basically everything
seems to work as it did visually. There is no difference that I can see in
performance, although some things might be a tiny bit faster.
I've merged the lookat and rph (pilot view) code into the recalc for the
viewer. There is still some redundancy between the two, but a lot has been
removed. In some cases I've taken some code that we'd likely want to inline
anyway and left it in there in duplicate. You'll see that the code for both
looks a little cleaner. I need to take a closer look at the rotations in
particular. I've cleaned up a little there, but I suspect more can be done
to streamline this.
The external declaration to the Quat_mat in mouse.cxx has been removed. IMHO
the quat doesn't serve any intrinsic purpose in mouse.cxx, but I'm not about
to rip it out. It would seem that there more conventional ways to get
spherical data that are just as fast. In any case all the viewer was pulling
from the quat matrix was the pitch value so I modified mouse.cxx to output to
our pitchOffset input and that works fine.
I've changed the native values to degrees from radians where appropriate.
This required a conversion from degrees to radians in a couple modules that
access the interface. Perhaps we should add interface calls that do the
conversion, e.g. a getHeadingOffset_rad() to go along with the
getHeadingOffset_deg().
On the view_offset (now headingOffset) thing there are two entry points
because of the ability to instantly switch views or to scroll to a new view
angle (by hitting the numeric keys for example). This leaves an anomaly in
the interface which should be resolved by adding "goal" settings to the
interface, e.g. a setGoalHeadingOffset_deg(), setGoalPitchOffset_deg(), etc.
Other than these two issues, the next step here will be to look at some
further optimizations, and to write support code for a tower view. That
should be fairly simple at this point. I was considering creating a
"simulated tower view" or "pedestrian view" that defaulted to a position off
to the right of whereever the plane is at the moment you switch to the tower
view. This could be a fall back when we don't have an actual tower location
at hand (as would be the case with rural airports).
ViewManager:
Basically all I did here was neaten things up by ripping out excess crap and
made it compatible as is with the new interface.
The result is that viewmanager is now ready to be developed. The two
preexisting views are still hardcoded into the view manager. The next step
would be to design configuration xml (eg /sim/view[x]/config/blahblah) that
could be used to set up as many views as we want. If we want to take the easy
way out, we might want to insist that view[0] be a pilot-view and have
viewmanager check for that.
This seems to pretty much correct the problem. Part of the problem is that
rotations are occuring at the firewall (model origin) which seems a little
un-natural inside the cockpit. The rest of the problem is I am just learning
how this stuff works (I know I've been saying this for a couple months
now...but hey I'm slow :-)).
and soon to be renamed) is true, FlightGear will draw the 3-D model
even in internal view. This makes sense right now only with the C310
model, since the others don't have any kind of interiors modeled and
all surfaces in all models are one-sided.
This isn't quite working yet -- the view code is very hard to
disentangle, and currently, if the view is not forward, roll and pitch
are applied incorrectly. It looks interesting (modulo a messy model)
on the ground, in level flight, or looking straight ahead under any
other flight conditions.
actually very powerful when combined with factor and offset -- for
example, on the C310 model the nose wheel can now retract completely
before the doors start closing.
(other than "none") is "spin", which must be tied to a property giving
a value in RPM. This gets the DC-3 propellers turning. The next type
will be "rotation", which will allow the flaps, elevators, ailerons,
and rudders to move (and even gear, eventually). Later, I'll add
"shift" for sliding things around, and will figure something out for
blinking lights.
the XML file, including the path to the 3D file.
This change obsoletes the existing /sim/model/*-offset-deg and
/sim/model/*-offset-m properties in the main property tree, and
replaces them with /offsets/*-deg and /offsets/*-m in the model
property file. The /path property in the model XML file is relative
to the XML file's location rather than FG_ROOT.
