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.
fixed this when I made the mistake the first time.
The view code wasn't properly handling the transition across tile
boundaries so we'd get a 'flash' of the scene wrongly transformed for
one frame at every tile boundary crossing. This is what
scenery.get_next_center() is for.
created a new class, FGViewPoint (declared in viewer.hxx) that holds a
single position in FlightGear coordinates, and have used it to factor
a lot of the common code out of viewer_lookat.cxx and viewer_rph.cxx.
I don't know whether this new class will stay or not; it might just be
a temporary step, or it might end up taking over much of the current
viewer functionality. It would be a bad idea to code against it right
now.
was some confusion between degrees and radians which would lead to a huge
goal_view_offset value. The display would sit and spin for a *long* time
trying to wind it's way up to this large value.
max(width, height) by default (easily changeable) rather than just width.
(src/GUI/gui.cxx, src/Main/main.cxx, src/Main/viewer.cxx, src/Main/viewer.hxx)
1. Enable auto-configure on more versions of auto tools. (configure.in)
2. Warnings from auto-configure tools. (src/Time/Makefile.am)
3. Typo: "the it's" -> "its". (docs-mini/README.Joystick)
4. Remove definition of FGViewer::update() that now is (or can be) pure
virtual\
. (src/Main/viewer.cxx)
5. Preferred form of function name according to comments in plib:
"not_working"\
-> "notWorking". (src/Sound/soundmgr.hxx)
(i.e. multiloop). Most subsystems currently ignore the parameter, but
eventually, it will allow all subsystems to update by time rather than
by framerate.
derive specific viewer classes from it. Here's what I currently have in mind:
FGViewer
|
|-> FGViewerPRH (current system with orientation specified in
| LaRCsim Euler angle convention)
|
|-> FGViewerLookAt Feed in a position, view direction, and up vector
|
|-> FGViewerHPR (similar to PRH, but using ssg hpr euler angle
| convention)
|-> others?
ing features:
a) ADA Flight model - ADA.cxx, ADA.hxx, flight.hxx
b) Fighter a/c HUD - flight.hxx, hud.hxx, hud.cxx, cockpit.cxx, hud_ladr.c
xx, hud_card.cxx
c) 3-window display - options.hxx, options.cxx, viewer.cxx
d) Moving objects (ship) - main.cxx
e) Patches - main.cxx
ADA.cxx, ADA.hxx
--------------------------
Interface to the external ADA flight dynamics package.
flight.hxx
----------
Included prototypes for accepting additional data fron the External flight
model for fighter aircraft HUD
Hud.hxx
-------
Included prototypes for accepting additional data for fighter HUD from Exernal F
light model.
Defined FIGHTER_HUD pre-processor directive to enable compilation of fighter hud
code.
hud.cxx, cockpit.cxx, hud_ladr.cxx, hud_card.cxx
---------------------------------------
Included code to initialise additional reticles/text for fighter HUD which is co
nditionally
compiled if FIGHTER_HUD is defined.
options.hxx
-----------
Added window_offset, and function to retrieve its value for 3 windows
options.cxx
-----------
Changed few options to suit ADA/CEF projection system/screens and checks for win
dow offset.
views.cxx
---------
Added code to retrieve view offset for window.
Main.cxx
--------
Added code to load and move an aircraft carrier.
Patch to enable clouds from command line until Curtis fixes it. By default cloud
s are disabled.
