I removed some pending random code and I also fixed a
small cosmetic glitch where dt_play was cleared before it was printed.
Curt: Erik changed the sound update intervale and I further I tweaked it.
The issue is that if we put too much into the sound buffer, then we can't react
quick enough to sounds like tire squeek that need to be synced with the visuals
and the action. We put too little into the sound buffer and we risk the
audio dropping out for moment if a frame takes longer to draw than the amount
of audio in the buffer.
I've modified the code to display a brief help message instead of the
whole bunch of options. To get the complete message -v or --verbose has
to be added to the command line.
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.
- Removed some old cruft.
- Removed some support for older versions of automake which technically was
correct, but caused the newer automakes to squawk warnings during an
initial sanity check (which isn't done very intelligently.)
NOTE: this fix is technically not correct for older version of automake.
These older version use the variable "INCLUDES" internally and could have
them already set to an important value. That is why we were appending
our values to them. However, newer versions of automake don't set this
value themselves so it is an error to append to a non-existant variable.
We seem to "get away" with overwriting the value on older versions of
automake, but if you have problems, consider upgrading to at least
automake-1.5.
Animations are now contained within the scene graph itself and are
updated whenever the graph is traversed -- that saves time by not
updating animations not currently in sight, and it allows animations
to be used for static objects and random objects as well.
Added new FGModelLoader and FGTextureLoader classes. These are intern
tables for models, to guarantee (mostly) that no model is loaded more
than once. FGTextureLoader is not yet used anywhere, but
FGModelLoader is now in place everywhere that ssgLoad* used to be
used (thus adding the ability to use animations).
In the future, FGModelLoader will add some interesting functionality,
including the ability to reload 3D models on the fly.
I've merged FGProps and FGTelnet so there is just a single property server.
I've left in the --telnet=port# command line option but it could be removed
if we wanted to. The command line accepts two forms of the --props option.
The original (--props=medium,dir,hz,host,port#,style) and the shorter
--props=port#. If you accept this change then src/Network/telnet.[ch]xx
can be removed from the cvs repository.
the triangles containing the objects were out of the view Frustum,
they were never traversed by ssg (and thus, never culled). Now, every
200 frames, do a pass through the whole scene graph with cull-testing
disabled and without drawing anything; that will allow random-objects
to be collected incrementally.
The present sets of bindings result in the throttle being "squared"
about its centre, which is silly. This is because the "squared"
parameter is not set by the throttle binding, but the default is
"true". We discussed this before and I think there was general
agreement that the default should be "false" on the basis of
generality.
Make locally-used strings local instead of global. (The safety and
cleanliness benefit outweights the slight performance hit. If
performance is an issue, the way these strings are used should be
optimised.) Use existing defined constant instead of a literal
number.
This is the small code fix which is needed for the new options.xml file.
It is needed because otherwise the "--prop:name=value" is showed
incorrectly.
There is another problem though, when compiling with --without-logging
the help message isn't displayed at all! We *must* change that somehow.
Curt: good point, the SG_LOG()'s have been switched to cout's ...
I've updated the FIXME in the code, and fixed a typo (descr instead of
description), but the SG_LOG() functions doesn't produce any output for
me. Could you confirm it's still working for you?
Curt Olson:
I did a bit of further tweaking and it all looks good now. The tricky thing
is that SG_LOG() always appends an endl at the end of every message.
This is an enhanced version of the options patch.
It's more robust now, and gives some helpful information if something
goes wrong. Also the naming in the options.xml file has changed to the
syntax David suggested.
Since no one objected to the patch I think it is safe to included it.
contain colon-separated ranges. For examples, winds from 180 degrees
10 knots gusting 15 knots would be
--wind=180@10:15
Winds variable from 180-220 degrees 5 knots would be
--wind=180:220@5
FGEnvironment does not yet support variable-direction winds, so
nothing will yet happen in the second case.
Fetch all pending remote fdm network packets so there is not chance of
getting behind.
Add support for driving control panel lights.
Working on better modeling KX 155 tuning behavior.
This is a small fix for what turned out to be a major bug. Ground elevation
was calculated incorrectly when distant from one of the view locations. This
resulted in several problems including bizarre gear trimming, mid air
"crashes" (as in thinking we hit the ground) and so on when close to or on the
ground.
Unfortunately it does require a second ssg traversal when in tower view
(only), but the increased load isn't all that noticable. For the time being
this really is the best solution. In a future update I will be eliminating
the unecessary per frame traversals for the static views (without having to
maintain multiple ssgRoots).
When we go to multiple FDM instances we will perhaps need to put the ssg
traversal and ground elevation queries for the FDMs into an event timer that
updates the FDMs ground elevation in a round robin fashion (maybe every 1/n
seconds where n is the number of FDM instances running).
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.
Here is the new super improved telnet property interface. CVS changelog
is at the end of this message. Once this new telnet code is in and
compiles every where we can remove Network/props.[ch]xx. I've added a
--telnet=<port> command line option to invoke the new server. Later on
we could remove the --props option, or least change it to invoke the new
server. I'll let you decide.
I've added some new commands to the telnet interface:
view next Select the next view.
view prev Select the previous view.
view set <n> Select view 'n'
view get Return index of current view
I'm not sure if these same effects could be achieved through property
operations. The commands provide a convenient shortcut in any case.
I'm also planning on adding a panel command to manipulate panels and
objects contained therein (eg simulated mouse clicks). There is going
to be some commonality with the command objects so we may need to
rationalize this in the near future.
Finally, I've also included my python stuff. This is still very much a
work in progress, basically I've been using it to test the new telnet
server. I have tested it with python 2.2. Feel free to add it to the
repository if you want. I would suggest a scripts/python directory
CVS Changelog
Network/telnet.cxx: New property telnet protocol interface. It supports
the same user interface provided by the --props server. Additionally it
handles multiple simultaneous connections. Added "view" command to
manipulate viewmgr.
Network/protocol.hxx: Added protocol configuration exception.
Main/fg_io.cxx: Added new "telnet" protocol. Added protocol
configuration parse exceptions. Simplified protocol configuration
parsing.
Main/options.cxx: Added --telnet=<port> command line option and help
message.
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.
object rather than a pointer.
FGEnvironment now has the beginning of an atmospheric model, and will
recalculate temperature (not pressure or density, yet) based on
elevation.
FGEnvironment has a copy constructor.
