8:: AWOS is available at AWOS locations. (Previously only ATIS was
implemented.)
9:: ATIS phraseology now more nearly conforms to international
standard METAR pattern, and therefore to usual FAA practice.(*)
Items marked with a (*) are fully implemented in the /text/ of the
ATIS message, but the voiced version of the message is degraded by
limitations of the FGFS built-in text-to-speech system.
10:: ATIS now reports sky condition.(*)
11:: ATIS now reports multiple layers of clouds, not just the lowest
layer.(*)
12:: ATIS now takes field elevation into account when calculating
sky condition and ceiling.
13:: ATIS now reports dewpoint.(*)
14:: ATIS now can handle negative quantities (temperature and dewpoint).(*)
15:: ATIS can now report report fractional-mile visibility.(*)
16:: ATIS now uses magnetic (not true) wind directions, as it should.
17:: ATIS generates correct runway number and suffix (nine right,
one one left).
18:: ATIS can be received on nav frequencies, not just comm.
19:: Nothing bad happens if the same ATIS is tuned up on more than
one receiver.
20:: ATIS can be updated at times other than at the top of the hour.
21:: ATIS listens for an "attention" signal, and responds to changes
in the weather by issuing a new ATIS message (somewhat like a
"special observation").
22:: ATIS volume now responds to radio volume setting.
23:: Area-related services (i.e. approach radar) are handled
more-nearly consistently with radio-frequency related services.
24:: ATIS sequence-letter generation has been fixed.
25:: ATIS messages are now in the property tree, so they can be read
e.g. via the http interface.
by frequency (which makes sense), and use the FGPositioned spatial data if
required. As a result, the marker beacon list is gone (since beacons are only
searched spatially). In the process, clean up various minor things - most
notably, all the 'airport-related' navaids (ILS, GS, LOC, and the beacons) now
store a FGRunway* instead of an airport id string. This is more precise, and
saves string allocations.
By way of example, here's a patch to make the position init code (in fg_init.cxx) cleaner, partly thanks to the FGPositioned changes. It reduces the file size by 200 lines - virtually all of which was copy-and-paste. Once the remaining class (FGAirport) is converted to inherit FGPositioned, all the future patches should be like this - touching one or a few files at most.
This factors the start-offset logic out into a helper, which also does the final property setting (which has to happen on both the /preset and 'real' values). Using the accessors in FGPositioned, and the offset helper, a couple of cases become trivial (fix and nav) and others become much simpler.
Convert FGNavRecord to inherit FGPositioned. This is much more self-contained than the FGRunway change, since FGNavRecord already had good encapsulation of its state. However, it's a large diff due to moving around two nasty pieces of code - the 'align navaid with extended runway centerline' logic and the 'penalise transmitters at the opposite runway end' logic.
In general things are more readable because I've replaced the Navaid type enum, and the use of Robin's integer type codes, with switches on the FGPositioned::Type code - no more trying to recall that '6' is an outer marker in Robin's data. The creation code path is also pushed down from navdb into navrecord itself.
Convert FGRunway to be heap-based, and inherit FGPositioned. This is a large, ugly change, since FGRunway was essentially a plain struct, with no accessors or abstraction. This change adds various helpers and accessors to FGRunway, but doesn't change many places to use them - that will be a follow up series of patches. It's still a large patch, but outside of FGAirport and FGRunway, mostly mechanical search-and-replace.
An interesting part of this change is that reciprocal runways now exist as independent objects, rather than being created on the fly by the search methods. This simplifies some pieces of code that search for and iterate runways. For users who only want one 'end' of a runway, the new 'isReciprocal' predicate allows them to ignore the 'other' end. Current the only user of this is the 'ground-radar' ATC feature. If we had data on which runways are truly 'single-ended', it would now be trivial to use this in the airport loader to *not* create the reciprocal.
Here's part 2 - converting FGFix (the simplest one) to be both heap-based and inherit FGPositioned. One minor benefit from this is replacing some dangerous code in FGFixList which used to return the address of an iterator member ('&it->second'). To keep the diff a sensible size, I'm not updating the callers to use the richer FGPositioned types - i.e replacing separate lat/lon handling with SGGeod. I will make those cleanups, but in future patches.
- Runways are now part of an airport, instead of a separate list
- Runways are no longer represented as a boring struct, but as a class
of their own.
-Improved runway access to unify various runway access methods.
* 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.
- remove the OSX_BUNDLE crap *I* introduced years ago - we're always a a bun
dle on Mac now.
- fix up the default fg-root on Mac to be FlightGear.app/Contents/Resources/
data - i.e the location used by the macflightgear.org distro, and indeed the obv
ious 'correct' location. Not sure why I didn't use that in the first place, back
in the day.
- remove the CPSForegroundEnable hack. For one thing, we're a bundle and don
't need it, and for another, osgViewer on Mac does the same logic using a newer,
public API rather than a hack into the OS.
- remove the strange logic for doing fgOSInit 'early' (in bootstrap rather t
han main) when running from the command line on Mac; again this is obsolete, and
no one seems to know why it was ever necessary. I guess it was an interaction w
ith SDL when running without a bundle.
- (not Mac related) remove obsolete code bracketed by ENABLE_PLIB_JOYSTICK a
nd USE_GLIDE (neither of which are ever set, even from config.h that I can see)
in main.cxx
- drop unused parts (MouseQuat/GuiQuat)
- move "old-reinit-dialog" fgcommand to fg_command.cxx under new name
"reset" for now. (May later get merged with fgcommand "reinit".)
- move reInit() to fg_init.cxx: This was used by Shift-Esc and
Menu->File-Reset (via fgcommand "old-reinit-dialog"). We have already
a similar function fgReInitSubsystems() in fg_init.cxx, so these two
functions will probably get merged later.)
- don't allow to do that from any XML file. This is to prevent malign
code from writing a new fg-home in ~/.fgfs/autosave.xml or other files
in ~/.fgfs/.
Makes it possible to start at a parking location defined in the AI/Airports/*/parking.xml files, using the parkpos command line option.
Note that the name to pass is the concatenation of the "name" and "number" fields in the xml.
Make an OSG file reader for .stg files.
New class flightgear::SceneryPager, which is a subclass
osg::DatabasePager to handle explicit delete requests.
Modify FGNewCache, FGTileEntry, and FGTileManager to use
SceneryPager. Mostly this involved removing the queues that talked to
FGTileLoader.
Calculate accurate tile timestamps from the time they are traversed in
the cull stage (which means that they are visible) instead of updating
them periodically.
Replace tile entry transform and range node with one LOD node
"I have been investigating the Concorde IVSI problem. I came to the
conclusion that the trouble is that the environment altitude and thus
the pressure (which is calculated from that) is lagging by 1 frame.
Normally that wouldn't be a problem, but the IVSI calculates rate of
change and it will use the new dt with the old value difference,
thereby arriving at bad results if dt changes (and it does)."
them under /sim/presets/ but they aren't save there, and as fgInitPosition
and its subroutines overwrite them, we lose the information about what the
user really wanted. This is a temporary solution -- it really belongs into
options.cxx.
Why /sim/fg-current at all? Because we have a file selector dialog
(still unfinished), and one might like to start it from the current
directory, to find saved flights/screenshots/whatever.
because nasal's f_interpolate() may be called in Nasal at times when the
GENERAL subsystem group is being deconstructed; access it by addressing
the group directly, as using globals->get_subsystem() does then not
work any more then; yeah, it's all for a rare border case ... :-)
- loop up file name in the cache at startup. If it's found, check if the
file exists and use it, otherwise scan $FG_ROOT/Aircraft/ as usual,
and create a new cache while doing that. Rebuild cache on FG_ROOT change.
(including all subdirs and with max depth!), but only the outmost level.
There are no *-set.xml files in deeper nested dirs, and with an ever growing
number of aircraft the search just lasts too long.
in the case of fg_init.cxx we'll only see that if the log-level is set
in preferences.xml, because command line options weren't even processed
at that time. :-/
track and is a PITA for support staff. It's this message:
Error reading properties:
Failed to open file
at /home/newbie/.fgfs/autosave.xml
(reported by SimGear XML Parser)
and "latitude-offset" should not use a precalculated value of warp.
2) Since the values of cur_time and crrGMT are identical in the current
version of the SGTime class, the calculations of the "system", "gmt", and
"latitude" are re-evaluated and updated where necessary.
I attach 2 new files and a diff file for the associated changes to add a
“fluxgate compass” to the instrument inventory. Whist this outputs
essentially the same data as /orientation/heading-magnetic-deg, it has to
be powered, and can be made to fail. I also followed Roy’s suggestion to
generate the error properties for this instrument here rather than in
xmlauto.xml.
When this instrument is included in cvs, I intend to use it in the Hunter,
A4F Seahawk and KC135. After a bit more research, it might be appropriate
for the Spitfire and Hurricane as well. AJ would also like to use it for his
Lightning model.
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.
The new multiplayer patch with an extension to transmit some properties with
the base package. The properties are transmitted in a way that will not
immediately brake the packet format if we need new ones.
Even if the maxmimum number needs to be limited somehow, that format might
work well until we have an improoved packet format which is even more compact
and that does not require to retransmit redundant information with each
packet.
That part is relatively fresh and based on that what Oliver provides on his
multiplayer server web page.
The properties are transferred to the client and I have modified the seahawks
rudder animation property to use a relative property path to verify that it
works appart from the fact that you can see it changing in the property
browser.
The movement is still a bit jerky, but that can be fixed/tuned later without
again braking the packet format.
or write to the color properties in /sim/screen/. If this Nasal/GUI
implementation turns out to be too slow, we'll write a generic OpenGL/plib
version simliar to the ATCdisplay code. (OK'ed by Andy and Stuart)
scripts that load/write user specific data that shouldn't go to PWD, and
can't go to $FG_ROOT (due to permissions and clean separation of 'official'
data and local modifications)
problems because a lot of people already have their *real* preferences
set in ~/.fgfs/preferences.xml (and don't want fgfs to stomp over them),
because the name doesn't tell people that their data aren't save there
(comments!), and because this is inconsistent with the global preferences.xml
file, where user changes *are* respected.
- Feet to meter conversion mistake (in AI getGround elev)
- Improved ground following code (not yet perfect, but for now no one will
notice it within the marginal altitiude differences at the taxitrack or
runway)
- Exclusion of the "AI" directory witihin data/Aircraft in
main/init/fgSearchAircraft, to prevent AI aircraft to be picked up by the
aircraft search function
- Provide a Nasal interface to display simple text messages on the screen
like the ATC display. In fact, I copied the code from the ATCDisplay.cxx
and simply shifted it further down the screen.
Erik:
TODO: Integrate the two pieces of code.
to pop themselves down while the simulator is paused.
The problem was with the "real time" queue in the event manager,
causing the third argument of Nasal's settimer() (a flag for "sim
time") to be ignored. Inverts the default sense of the argument, as
there are lots of uses of settimer() in the current code, almost none
of which want to use real time.
Note this fix introduces a header file incompatibility in SimGear --
be sure to update.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
/sim/startup/splash-progress)
- a string in /sim/startup/splash-title is displayed on top of the screen
and by default empty
- the splash image is scaled down if 512x512 is too big
- code cleanup
have a "property" mode as well as the original "binary" mode. The property mode
will allow the remote module to request any set of properties, and it will send
those properties each frame. The remote module can reply with a list of arbitrary
property name/value pairs to update on the FlightGear side.
This is a first stab, so it's not the cleanest, most well concieved code, but it
allows an external module (communicating via a pipe) to have a huge amount of
flexibility in the data in can access and update.
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.
RE: --aircraft=ufo in system.fgfsrc is ignored
To change a 'feature', one that has been mentioned here many
times, and again recently, place the following code block
into fgInitFGAircraft.
In its favour, I would argue this means FG can be run without
a command line, provided FG_ROOT has been set in the
environment, and that seems to me, as it should be ... ;=))
Perhaps the only counter, is that system.fgfsrc is read twice,
but so are others, like .fgfsrc, for other (local) options ...
or system.fgfsrc should .nt. be used for 'aircraft' ?
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.
Don't overwrite user settings from config files.
fgfs had in any case set bump-mapping to false, no matter if this
node did already exist (because it was defined in a config file).
A good elevation is critical for proper glide slope modeling. This patch
assigns the average field elevation to any ILS component that doesn't have
a valid elevation.
Also, for an ILS approach, use the GS transmitter elevation for glide slope
calculations rather than the localizer elevation, in some cases this can
make a big difference.
These change add some code that at initialization time will snap all
localizers into perfect alignment with their runways. It's my experience
that the DAFIF/FAA data reports runway and localizer headings to a level
of precision that is great for making charts, or adjusting your OBS, etc.
But the level of precision of this data can be far enough off to make you
visibly *un*aligned with the runway when the CDI needle is centered.
There are probably cases where the localizer isn't really perfectly
aligned with the runway, or intentionally misaligned to avoid obstacles
or terrain. So I have made this configurable for those that trust the
data more than I do. Just set "/sim/navdb/auto-align-localizers" to
true/false in the preferences file to turn this feature on or off in the
code.
- 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.
are many recognized limitations and inefficiencies with this entire approach,
however, it's a quick and dirty way to get something working, where before
we didn't.
Here's a patch to locate the base package inside the application bundle on OS-X. The patch also disables the CPSForeground hack in boostrap.cxx, which is unnecessary if the we're running as a proper bundle rather than a Unix command line program.
Both of these changes are only compiled if OSX_BUNDLE is defined (I'm doing this via a setting in ProjectBuilder), so if you're building on OS-X using configure + make, you shouldn't see any chance.
now read the config file out of the individual aircraft directory rather
than the collective Aircraft-yasim/ directory (which is now obsolete.)
This requires a corresponding update of the base package cvs.
$FGROOT/data/Aircraft hierarchy. There could be some long term performance
concerns if a person has a *huge* collection of aircraft or a really slow
file system, but I see zero performance blip here from recursing the default
CVS tree. We should also allow the user to specify the whole path to the
-set.xml file if they don't want to recurse ... this way we could eventually
come up with an aircraft selection dialog box on the front end so the user
could manually walk the tree to the desired aircraft. There also the system
wouldn't have to search for the aircraft.
functions (note to Norman: I looked at the web page you listed and that
looks like a good idea, but I don't have time right now to go through and
debug an entirely new routine. What we have works well enough for now I hope!)
immediate end to glut, only that I'm going through and cleaning up (and
taking inventory of the actual glut dependencies in case I want to investigate
SDL.)
I have added a fledgling replay system that records flight data and control
positions during the flight.
I have added an internal command called "replay" which will trigger a replay
of the entire saved flight data set. This could be bound to a keyboard or
menu command, in fact this entire module is screaming for someone to build
a gui to control playback speed, amount of playback, etc.
This is the initial version so there are kinks that still need to be worked
out, please be patient.
etc.
Improved the weather system to interpolate between different
elevations and deal with boundary-layer conditions. The configuration
properties are now different (see $FG_ROOT/preferences.xml).
requested parameters to determine if this should be an on-ground vs. in-air
start. The problem was that we never defaulted the value to anything so
if we didn't match an in-air condition, we simply inherited whatever value
was there from before.
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.
The one to fg_init.cxx initialises the AI subsystem regardless of whether it's enabled or not so that later enabling by the user doesn't crash it, and the one to main.cxx avoids running the ATC manager and ATC display system unless enabled.
I've fixed a bug in FGRunways::search(aptid, tgt_hdg) which wasn't working properly for airports with multiple parallel runways. I've also firmed up and pulled out into it's own function the GetReverseRunwayNo code, and done some input checking.
As a result of fixing the above in runways.cxx, I've pulled out the
parallel implementation in the functions that set position by airport and
heading/runway number in fg_init.cxx and called the runways functions
instead.
earlier, before fgInitSubsystems().
Modify fgInitPos() so that the plane is not automatically aligned with
a runway when an airport is the reference point unless (a) a runway
was explicitly requested, or (b) the plane is on the ground with no
offset distance specified. To set up the plane lined up on an
approach to a runway, use something like
fgfs --airport=CYOW --runway=32 --altitude=300 --offset-distance=0.5
This way, it's possible to specify a starting position relative to an
airport without getting snapped onto a runway approach (unless you
want to be).
04Feb. Actually been running since the beginning of January with these
patches. All changes work without crashing with the current base package cvs,
but there are some visual problems with the views (other than pilot view)
without changes to the base package.
As soon as you can build test and commit I can add in those base package
updates that will make it all work nicely. I will also go through all the 3D
Aircraft configs to make sure the change in the "pitch-offset" for cockpit
views (see below) are made to maintain current behavior.
Here are the files (changes listed below):
http://www.spiderbark.com/fgfs/viewerupdate.diffs.gzhttp://www.spiderbark.com/fgfs/viewerupdate.tar.gz
if the station is too far away. Instead, simply return the closest station.
All the code that searches navaids does it's own range checking anyway.
This will make the navlist query functions a bit more useful for other
types of functionality where you may need to lookup a station without
consideration of range (i.e. presetting your position relative to a navaid.)
input bindings. They will work only with the latest CVS; otherwise,
./configure will disable them. There is a new command, 'script',
which takes a single argument, also called 'script', containing PSL
code (currently PSL requires a main() function).
Erik Hofman has written some more elaborate code for triggering PSL
code from drop-down menus and scheduling events; I will look at
integrating that next.
option to specify a starting airport + specific runway. If you don't specify
a runway, you get the one that's closest to your specified (or default)
heading.
The general idea is to help clean up some aspects of the FDM init and be
able to provide startup conditions in a less ambiguous manner.
Previously, things like positions, orientations, and velocites were set on
"the bus". These had to be read by the FDMs which then were supposed to
initialized themselves to those values and turn write around and start
modifying those values. It was messy and cumbersome.
Now, all the initial fdm conditions are written to a sub-[property-]tree
under /sim/presets/
The values in /sim/presets/ always stay set to what the user has specified.
The user can change these at his/her liesure, and then request a "reset"
which will reset to the new conditions. I don't even want to say how this
worked before. :-)
Now, an script, or gui interface can stage a set of initial conditions while
the sim is running (without disrupting it), and then call "reset" to commit
the change.
People who should worry about all this are FDM writters, and a small few
others who care about over all program structure and flow.
The biggest and coolest patch adds mouse sensitivity to the 3D
cockpits, so we can finally work the radios. This ended up requiring
significant modifications outside of the 3D cockpit code. Stuff folks
will want to look at:
+ The list of all "3D" cockpits is stored statically in the
panelnode.cxx file. This is clumsy, and won't migrate well to a
multiple-aircraft feature. Really, there should be a per-model list
of 3D panels, but I couldn't find a clean place to put this. The
only handle you get back after parsing a model is a generic ssg
node, to which I obviously can't add panel-specific methods.
+ The aircraft model is parsed *very* early in the initialization
order. Earlier, in fact, than the static list of allowable command
bindings is built in fgInitCommands(). This is bad, as it means
that mouse bindings on the instruments can't work yet. I moved the
call to fgInitCommands, but someone should look carefully to see
that I picked the right place. There's a lot of initialization
code, and I got a little lost in there... :)
+ I added yet another "update" hook to the fgRenderFrame routine to
hook the updates for the 3D panels. This is only required for
"mouse press delay", and it's a fairly clumsy mechanism based on
frame rate instead of real time. There appears to be delay handling
already in place in the Input stuff, and there's a discussion going
on about different mouse behavior right now. Maybe this is a good
time to unify these two (now three) approaches?
Now the options can be localized as well. This adds a slight problem for
the --language options, but not that much (worst case, the strings are
loaded twice consuming some more memory). I tried to be as accurate as
posiible when copying the options texts, but there might be some
mostakes left.
This adds supports for a language specific font, defined in locale.xml
I've also moved the fgInitLocale() routine from main.cxx to fg_init.cxx
to prevent an ungly extern definition in options.cxx.
Here is a FGIO class derived from FGSubsystem that replaces the fgIOInit()
and fgIOProcess() functions. The FGIO::update(double delta) doesn't use the
delta argument yet. I suspect it could be used as a replacement for the
calculated interval value but I'm not familiar enough with that piece of code
just yet.
I've also added two "command properties" to fg_commands.cxx that select the
next or previous view. Writing any value to these properties triggers the
corresponding action. As an example I modified my keyboard.xml:
<key n="118">
<name>v</name>
<desc>Next view</desc>
<binding>
<command>property-assign</command>
<property>/command/view/next</property>
<value type="bool">true</value>
</binding>
</key>
<key n="86">
<name>V</name>
<desc>Prev view</desc>
<binding>
<command>property-assign</command>
<property>/command/view/prev</property>
<value type="bool">true</value>
</binding>
</key>
And of course these actions can also be triggered from external scripts via
the props server.
This is a new improved patch for the previous tile manager fixes.
Rather than building dependencies between FGlocation or the viewer or fdm with
tilemgr what I ended up doing was linking the pieces together in the Mainloop
in main.cxx. You'll see what I mean...it's been commented fairly well. More
than likely we should move that chunk somewhere...just not sure where yet.
The changes seem clean now. As I get more ideas there could be some further
improvement in organizing the update in tilemgr. You'll note that I left an
override in there for the tilemgr::update() function to preserve earlier
functionality if someone needs it (e.g. usage independent of an fdm or
viewer), not to mention there are a few places in flightgear that call it
directly that have not been changed to the new interface (and may not need to be).
The code has been optimized to avoid duplicate traversals and seems to run
generally quite well. Note that there can be a short delay reloading tiles
that have been dropped from static views. We could call the tile scheduler on
a view switch, but it's not a big deal and at the moment I'd like to get this
in so people can try it and comment on it as it is.
Everything has been resycned with CVS tonight and I've included the
description submitted earlier (below).
Best,
Jim
Changes synced with CVS approx 20:30EDT 2002-05-09 (after this evenings updates).
Files:
http://www.spiderbark.com/fgfs/viewer-update-20020516.tar.gz
or
http://www.spiderbark.com/fgfs/viewer-update-20020516.diffs.gz
Description:
In a nutshell, these patches begin to take what was one value for ground
elevation and calculate ground elevation values seperately for the FDM and the
viewer (eye position). Several outstanding view related bugs have been fixed.
With the introduction of the new viewer code a lot of that Flight Gear code
broke related to use of a global variable called "scenery.cur_elev".
Therefore the ground_elevation and other associated items (like the current
tile bucket) is maintained per FDM instance and per View. Each of these has a
"point" or location that can be identified. See changes to FGLocation class
and main.cxx.
Most of the problems related to the new viewer in terms of sky, ground and
runway lights, and tower views are fixed.
There are four minor problems remaining. 1) The sun/moon spins when you pan
the "lookat" tower view only (view #3). 2) Under stress (esp. magic carpet
full speed with max visibility), there is a memory leak in the tile caching
that was not introduced with these changes. 3) I have not tested these
changes or made corrections to the ADA or External FDM interfaces. 4) The
change view function doesn't call the time/light update (not a problem unless
a tower is very far away).
Details:
FDM/flight.cxx, flight.hxx - FGInterface ties to FGAircraftModel so that it's
location data can be accessed for runway (ground elevation under aircraft)
elevation.
FDM/larsim.cxx, larcsim.hxx - gets runway elevation from FGInterface now.
Commented out function that is causing a namespace conflict, hasn't been
called with recent code anyway.
FDM/JSBSim/JSBSim.cxx, YASim/YASim.cxx - gets runway elevation from
FGInterface now.
Scenery/newcache.cxx, newcache.hxx - changed caching scheme to time based
(oldest tiles discard).
Scenery/tileentry.cxx, tileentry.hxx - added place to record time, changed
rendering to reference viewer altitude in order to fix a problem with ground
and runway lights.
Scenery/tilemgr.cxx, tilemgr.hxx - Modified update() to accept values for
multiple locations. Refresh function added in order to periodically make
the tiles current for a non-moving view (like a tower).
Main/fg_init.cxx - register event for making tiles current in a non-moving
view (like a tower).
Main/location.hxx - added support for current ground elevation data.
Main/main.cxx - added second tilemgr call for fdm, fixed places where viewer
position data was required for correct sky rendering.
Main/options.cxx - fixed segfault reported by Curtis when using --view-offset
command line parameter.
Main/viewer.cxx, viewer.hxx - removed fudging of view position. Fixed numerous
bugs that were causing eye and target values to get mixed up.
Removed configuration option --with-new-environment and
FG_NEW_ENVIRONMENT macro.
Added configuration option --with-weathercm and FG_WEATHERCM macro.
FGEnvironment is now the default; use --with-weathercm to get the old
weather.
I have finished working the bugs out of my "Enhanced" version of the Magic
Carpet FDM. The UFO FDM works the same as the Magic Carpet with the
following exceptions:
The aircraft's pitch is determined by the Elevator setting (with a pitch
rate of 45 degrees per second).
Climb is forward velocity * sin(pitch)
Speed is forward velocity * soc(pitch)
Roll is tied to the aileron (again, with a roll rate of 45 degrees per
second)
Turn rate is sin(roll) * 45 degrees.
Yes, this does mean that turning is quite a bit more sluggish than
climbing.
If you are wondering why a UFO FDM, it is because it's best that I not
replace the existing magic carpet and this FDM does behave like a UFO (it
hovers, can spin and pitch while hovering, and does not obey the laws of
physics ;)
Minor fixes. Made some changes to get lighting correct for time of day
for now. MSVC compatibility fix and returned to clearing z-buffer only in
LOOKFROM (formerly pilot view).
[dpm: removed the last one, since I had already made a similar patch]
Here are the Boost-less FGEventMgr updates I promised.
Removed Boost dependencies from FGEventMgr.
Removed Boost configure check.
fgMethodCallback now handles const member functions.
I've successfully tested these changes with gcc and msvc.
Synced to CVS 19:36 EDT 2002-04-10 (after this evenings JSMsim and Base
package updates).
Description:
Added FGLocation class which is new home for calculating matrix rotations.
Viewer can now be configured to access rotations created by the model rather
than repeating the same calculations again.
Changed model initialization for the time being so that its location data is
available for the viewer (currently required by other subsystems). At some
point we can move this back to fg_init along with the viewer initialization.
Seperated the update from the draw function in the model code. The viewer
code needs the same matrix data, and moving the update portion at this time
does not increase the number of matrix math iterations.
Moved the model draw so that it always appears "in front" of lights and clouds.
Reogranized viewer update routine for using the FGLocation class and
simplified some more tasks. The routine is fairly easy to follow now, with
the steps ordered and spelled out in comments.
Viewmgr only updates the current (visible) view now, with the exception of an
old reference to "chase view" that will be corrected in forthcoming changes.
Also will be doing some work on the viewmgr outputs.
Model is now clears the z-buffer in all modes. This will be changed with the
next viewmgr update. The only side effect is that models always disappear
when over 5km distant from the eye point (can't really see them anyway:-)).
Other than a flag to indicate "internal" view I don't anticipate the
configuration interface for viewmgr/views will be changed a lot for now. It
is close to done. The next viewmgr update will however rework the outputs so
may change location.
This code will run with the previous version of preferences.xml, but will run
faster with the newer version. I am attaching a preferences.xml that should
not be commited before the code. All the changes are in the /sim/view section
and should show a simpler view configuration that references model locations.
Note that I've added a 2nd tower view in "lookfrom" mode for illustration
purposes. You can look around using the mouse. You may want to remove that or
comment it out.
Minor patches to initial tower view code. Added calculation for "tower" at
any airport, placed a couple fractions of a degree off the center. Moved the
farplane from 100m to 5km so that "lookfrom" mode can see the model. 5km is
still in a reasonable range for a depth buffer. Note that looking at a model
anything but a small distance will cause some problems on older cards.
Temporarily changed viewer to always report elevation/lon/lat of the aircraft
in order to avoid a problem with the ground trim getting recalculated when
tower and aircraft are on different tiles.
radiostack.cxx, fg_init.cxx and main.cxx. If these changes are accepted
then you can remove Time/event.[ch]xx and Include/fg_callback.hxx from
the repository.
case logging is disabled). This way, when people specify a
non-existant aircraft or have an error in a custom XML file, they'll
get an error report, at least.
system. A chap from Germany called Alexander Kappes (cc'd) got
in touch with me a few weeks ago and has written the start of
Approach control. At the moment tuning in to a valid approach
frequency (Dortmund or East Midlands) should result in vectors to
a spot about 3 miles from the active runway, and a telling off if you
stray too far from the correct course, in the console window. He
seems to know what he's doing so expect this to improve rapidly!!
I've added a rudimentry AI manager and a hardwired Cessna at
KEMT on the runway - I'll remove it before the next release if I don't
have it flying by then. There seems to be an issue with framerate
which drops alarmingly when looking at it - I've a feeling that I've
possibly created several Cessnas on top of each other, but am not
sure.
- implement the standard FGSubsystem interface, for consistency
- eliminate current_autopilot and add get/set_autopilot to FGGlobals,
for consistency
- use private methods rather than static functions for tying
properties
There should be no change in functionality.
is a work in progress and needs severe enhancement before it will be
useful. It provides a UDP data channel that goes both ways between
flightgear and the fdm. It also provides a TCP 'command' channel so
flightgear can 'reliably' send commands to the remote fdm (such as set
starting position, reset on ground, etc.)
subsystem to Flightgear. No more functionality is implemented
than at present (apart from an ATIS bug-fix - station wouldn't
change if the radio was switched directly from one station to
another) but it is much neater than the current hack and should be
easily extendable.
Some cruft is still probably left over in radiostack.[ch]xx such as
the bindings to the comm frequencies but I'll leave removing those
until I'm sure they're not needed there.
Added two new properties:
/environment/temperature-sea-level-degc
/environment/pressure-sea-level-inhg
These are now supported in FGEnvironment as well, though they always
have the same value for now. They need to be hooked up to the FDMs.
different locations, and hitched it into FGGlobals. FGEnvironmentMgr
has taken over as the subsystem, while FGEnvironment is simple the
information that it returns. I've removed current_environment
completely -- everything now uses properties or goes through
FGGlobals. FGGlobals itself has a couple of useful methods:
const FGEnvironment * get_environment ();
const FGEnvironment * get_environment (double lat, double lon, double alt);
The first one returns the environment data for the plane's current
position, while the second returns the environment data for any
arbitrary location. Currently, they both return the same information,
but that will change soon.
properties have been renamed from wind-(north|east|down)-fps to
wind-from-(north|east|down)-fps, and the FDMs modified appropriately.
No other changes should be visible unless FG_OLD_WEATHER is defined.
are being driven from an external data source.)
Akso found and fixed a bug in the simgear that caused the time to go goofy
temporarily while scenery was being loaded.
/sim/freeze/master (implimented)
/sim/freeze/fuel (implimented)
/sim/freeze/position (not implimented)
/sim/freeze/time-of-day (not implimented)
/sim/freeze/master is bound to the 'p' key via keyboard.xml, however,
/sim/freeze/fuel is not bound to anything at the moment so you must
change it via the external property interface, or specify an initial
value on the command line.
function to allow property files as non-option parameters after the
options have finished (and added "--" to terminate options). It's now
possible to do something like
fgfs denver-am.fgd
or even
fgfs at-lax.fgd in-c310.fgd around-sunset.fgd
This works the same way as the --config option, but will be friendlier
for GUIs, where start-up situation files can now be associated easily
with FlightGear.
material-specific logic is now removed from the material library and
encapsulated in the material class itself, and materials are loaded
from $FG_ROOT/materials.xml rather than $FG_ROOT/materials. This also
removes a nasty bug in the old material-loading code that caused a
floating-point exception.
works like this:
1. Parse preferences.xml, which will usually specify a default
aircraft using the /sim/aircraft property.
2. If /sim/aircraft is specified and not empty, parse the properties
in $FG_ROOT/Aircraft/{/sim/aircraft}-set.xml to set up a default
aircraft.
3. During command-line parsing, whenever the --aircraft option appears
set /sim/aircraft appropriately and parse the properties in
$FG_ROOT/Aircraft/{/sim/aircraft}-set.xml. Any --config, --prop, or
--aircraft options afterwards will take precedence.
more intuitive. We switch to an include in the preferences.xml to include
the default model, and then if the user specifies --aircraft=, that is
expanded immediately so portions can be overwritten by subsequent command
line options.
a top level aircraft def file (c172-set.xml)
preferences.xml or --aircraft= or any other property setting mechanism can
be used to set the property "/sim/aircraft". After all options and config
files are parsed, the contents of /sim/aircraft is expanded into a *-set.xml
file and loaded.
fix startup sequence problems where we initialize the FDM before we know
the desired starting altitude.
These changes delay fdm initialization until the local tile has been loaded
and we can do a real intersection and find the true ground elevation.
In order to do this, I depend more on the property manager as glue, rather
than the FGInterface.
There are some glitches still when switching to a new airport or reseting
the sim. I will work on addressing these, but I need to commit the changes
so far to keep in sync with other developers.
meaning of "win_ratio". I've removed win_ratio and added fov_ratio and
aspect_ratio, as it seems both are needed.
n.b. The multi-line changes in fgReshape comprise:
extracting common code,
removing an apparently arbitrary "+1" on the view height,
changing "set_win_ratio" to "set_aspect_ratio".
I've updated the WeatherDatabase to be able to use only the n closest
stations. This can speed up the initalization dramatically.
To take a benefit from that you need:
- http://129.13.102.67/out/flight/current.txt.gz in
FG_ROOT/weather/current.txt.gz
- --prop:/environment/weather/working-type=internet
- --prop:/environment/weather/max-stations=what_ever_you_want
The WeatherCM stuff now publishes its data in the property system.
/environment/weather/wind-north-mps
/environment/weather/wind-east-mps
/environment/weather/wind-up-mps
/environment/weather/temperature-K
/environment/weather/air-pressure-Pa
/environment/weather/vapor-pressure-Pa
/environment/weather/air-density
are the new properties.
