The Future of FU3: Where do we go from here?

[Guest Ansgar]

Dear Peter and all interested...,here is a long report now.As stated above I used my time last week to download flightgear again (last version 0.9.3, windows binaries) and the additional scenery e000n50.tar.gz for an actual testing of their status. The last time I used it extensively I tried to compile it under Linux Suse 6.1. That one was horrible buggy and I only could run it after several bugfixes in the source by myself. The experience of flight at that time was: ....hmmmm it has somewhat to do with fly, but not more... -> a lot of basic functions doesn

[Lars Peter 0]

Hello Ansgar.Well I have never tried "Flightgear", and with that complex install-operation I think I will not use it.I have always said, and I say again.We are all blessed having people like you in this forum as expertguidetelling what is possible/not possible from the current sims available.My dear old IBM computer had A complete HD crash and 9GB FU3 stuffvanished out of the window without warnings.I am waiting to get it back from the mechaniks in short time with newHD.My new XP- computer is running FU3 without problems with a new Radeon 9600 videocard, but my old win 98-SE system is,- belive it or not mutch better and balanced to use with older software like FU3.Using a VOODOO5 videcard here is like heaven!!I hope some Company will struggle to do another high end GA sim soon.This will again wake up the competition and again have a lot of users.Best regards.Lars Peter.:-wave

[JimmiG 244]

FU3 works fine on my AthlonXP 2400+ @ 2800+ and Radeon 9700 Pro running XP :-hmmm

[PeterR 9]

Hi Ansgar!Thanks for your report. I agree with many of your statements and it's because of these things that FGFS needs help. Coordination and planning is key to effective use of resources during development of anything, big or small, but especially when it's as big and complex as a flight sim. I don't know if the FG team has experience developing games or stuff for other flight sims or not.I too tried out the latest version on Windows which resulted in a joystick issue with hat on the Microsoft Sidewinder 3D Pro Plus. I found out that Windows and Linux don't always report nor interpret joysticks the same way. Even the joystick name can be different. Apparently, no one used this stick on Windows so they didn't realize that the hat was misconfigured. Many of the joystick configurations appear to be optimized for non-Windows platforms (since most people use FGFS on non-Windows operating systems). Changing the axis assignments (e.g. hat on 6 and 7 for Windows instead of 4 and 5 for Linux) in the config file for my stick fixed the control problem.I didn't try all the planes, just the 3D Cessna 172P with the virtual cockpit. It was pretty cool as all the controls were operational with the mouse. I agree that there are too many so-so planes instead of just a few really good ones. But from what I saw, they don't seem to have people that are really into making high-res planes. A lot are ported from FS '98.The 3D model for the plane is easily painted using Paintshop Pro (or any other program that reads/writes SGI bitmap format) and I was able to double the size of the aircraft texture without having to touch the 3D model. Voila! More texture detail. That was nice. Straight stripes were a problem on the C172, as I've seen happen on planes for other sims, but that needs to be corrected in the 3D model.512x512 original size texturehttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/46467.jpg1024x1024 texture replacement. Stripes are same number of pixels wide.http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/46468.jpgI'm not sure what you meant about needing a Java editor for the XML files. I just used Notepad. However, jEdit is a fantastic Java-based editor that I use for programming and HTML on Windows and Linux. I highly recommend it, especially if you do cross-platform work like I do. It's better having the same tool on all platforms. (http://www.jedit.org)Since this sim hasn't yet reached version 1.0, there's of course more to be done but, as you said, it sure has come a long way. Focusing their efforts on showcasing the sim's abilities would be good for drawing end users but I find the platform itself is okay for development.Remember that since it is under GPL, if a group of people want to build it differently (e.g. concentrate on a few planes, key features, smaller area), then they can take the source code and go in their own direction. I don't know if there are enough people to cover the various parts in order to do something like that.Even though I'm not affiliated with the FG team, I appreciate the time you spent on it. It would be great if more people could help the project in order to more quickly get the sim to the point we wish it was at already. Imagine what FU3 life would be like without Gideon's tools!Peter http://bfu.avsim.net/sigpics/PeterR.gifBFU Forums ModeratorRenegade/Seawolf Design Group (RSDG)

[Guest Ansgar]

Hello Peter,the thing with the joystick was even more difficult at my first attempts under linux. ;-) So I didn

[PeterR 9]

I agree that more focus would certainly help. As you said, it's similar to what happened with Linux when a few companies decided that variety is nice but some decisions had to be made on what would be in a distribution to lock it down into a product. Well, there are still more iterations before 1.0.Now, back to our regularly scheduled program. :-)Peter http://bfu.avsim.net/sigpics/PeterR.gifBFU Forums ModeratorRenegade/Seawolf Design Group (RSDG)

[Guest Ansgar]

Hello Peter,by the way - and last but not least - I forgot an important feature of FSGS!!! : They also have some helicopters in their hangars - and I was surprised how easy and realistic they fly compared to that default ones I tested from FS2002! Only the animation of the rotors and sound still doesn

[PeterR 9]

Hi Ansgar,Actually, I haven't tried the helicopters. Thanks for reminding me! I've flown a lot of helicopter games and sims so if they're better than FS, that should be a lot of fun. That's a big benefit of supporting a variety of FD engines. The beauty of the system is that the individual aircraft defines which engine to use. So, the user doesn't have to deal with those details. FGFS just runs the plane with the required FDE.I think it's a great idea and a wonderful experiment to port one of your aircraft to FGFS! At least the model and FD. It would certainly be a good looking one.It would be nice if the FU scenery could be ported but I don't know if the mapping systems are compatible. I think the FGFS world is curved vs. the flat one of FU.You know what would be an interesting direction to take FGFS? Make a version that could read FS mesh, scenery and aircraft models and textures. Of course, the FD data would not be portable but you can't have everything ;-). However, being able to leverage all the existing freeware for FS would be a big leap forward!Anyway, with regard to FU 2&3 scenery development in the early days, all we had was FLED. I don't know if you've used it but it's clunky and crashes easily if you're not extra careful. I guess the state of FGFS is kind of like that too--a work in progress with lots of potential but not yet for the masses. Then, when Gideon started releasing his tools, things really started to take off. Remember that 747 that someone ;-) ;-) ;-) was able to coax out of the sim? Who would've thought we'd have something like that!If you do embark on that experiment, I'll be very interested to hear all the gory details! A little experiment here and there could result in surprising revelations.Peter http://bfu.avsim.net/sigpics/PeterR.gifBFU Forums ModeratorRenegade/Seawolf Design Group (RSDG)

[Guest jonpoint]

Folks,I was serious about porting my stuff to FGFS but I'd like to be able to happily fly it first. At the moment, I don't know where to start, apart from stripping everything from the model and sticking it in there - not much fun. I started investigating doing a 3D panel for the Dash-8, complete with 3D gauges etc. I reckon there's 12 month's work in the cockpit alone!Maybe, when it's a bit more mature, there'll be some powerful utilities to make life easier. I've done my days in Perl. Compared to FGFS's approach, FU3 (and it's utilities) are much easier to drive.When games are developed, utilities are usually written to save developers time when doing repetitive jobs. LGS didn't need Resviewer, they had a more poweful set of scripts that could create any resfile you want, however you had to be pretty smart to drive them. I must admit I prefer the start screen in the current version - even if I cannot actually take off from any airport :-grr:-waveJon Point*************************(effyouthree@hotmail.com)*************************

[PeterR 9]

Hi Jon,What's happening that you can't take off? Which plane are you using?Peter http://bfu.avsim.net/sigpics/PeterR.gifBFU Forums ModeratorRenegade/Seawolf Design Group (RSDG)

[Guest jonpoint]

Peter,ANY of them! I select an airport and say, a Cessna. It crashes to the desktop...If I input a location (nice feature), I'm there - instantly. Falling from the sky like a stone with no engine!Yes, I haven't got it setup properly yet. I WAS going to spend a lot of time with it for the reasons given above however I have since discovered the 'getting models into FGFS' and THAT really threw me. Gotta learn about XML I guess.Since last week, I have decided to set myself some simple rules for this; 1. FU3 gets my undivided attention until I can simply load FGFS and fly it. 2. FGFS gets my time when I can comfortably interface with it. If FGFS developers wish to put all their time into developing 50 different scripts to encompass some finite iota of data, great - what we need is ACCESS. Not in the form of source code either. FGFS will progress much more quickly when the developers come out with some good tools. Until then, it's for 'codies' only. I am not a 'codie', get no kicks out of running scripts and are only interested in creating usable, lifelike 3D models and aircraft - I think there's enough work in that alone.So, come on codies, stop playing with it and give us model creators a go. Until you do, your landscapes will look bleak and your aircraft not much better ;)Or, to paraphrase; how am I supposed to create new aircraft for FGFS when I cannot even fly it? :-waveJon Point*************************(effyouthree@hotmail.com)*************************

[PeterR 9]

That's really weird that you can't fly. Here's what I did. 1. Download the package 2. Run fgsetup-0.9.3.exe and it'll install the files 3. Run FlightGear Launcher from the Start menu or fgrun.exe from the FlightGear-0.9.3binWin32 folder 4. Click the "..." button next to Executable and select FlightGear-0.9.3binWin32fgfs.exe 5. Click the "..." button next to FG_ROOT and select the FlightGear-0.9.3data folder 6. Click the Update button next to Airport to update the airport info in the launcher, then select the desired airport (to get more airports, you have to download the scenery for the desired area) 7. Click the Update button next to Aircraft to update the aircraft info in the launcher, then select the desired aircraft 8. Click the Control drop down list box to choose the desired controller 9. Adjust any other desired features (e.g. enhanced lighting and horizon effects in Features and 3D clouds in Rendering) 10. Click the Run button to launch the simAlso, make sure that you have OpenGL support for your video card. If your desktop spans more than one monitor, try switching back to a single monitor. I found that on my Radeon, games that use OpenGL don't like it when the desktop is on more than one screen.XMLAs for XML, even if you're not a codie, it's worth knowing because so many things use XML these days. Isn't too complicated, especially if you know some HTML. Here's a crash course.Things in XML are defined (marked up) by tags, just like in HTML. A tag consists of the tag name surrounded by less-than and greater-than characters: . Each item has a beginning and ending tag where the ending tag has a slash in it: . There's a special format for beginning tags that don't have an ending tag: . But, you can always use the format.For example, in FGFS, an aircraft's fuel level is defined with the level-gal_us tag. To define an aircraft with 20 gallons in the tank, you write it as:20Tags can be nested in order to build hierarchical structures of data. For example, that level definition applies to a tank; tank number zero, to be exact:20And that tank is a fuel object which is a consumable:20If you want two tanks, tank 0 and tank 1, just add another tank tag inside the fuel tag:2020And that's how things are defined using XML. Whether it's an FGFS aircraft definition, a Microsoft Office XML document, or a news web site's RSS data feed, it's all XML.Peter http://bfu.avsim.net/sigpics/PeterR.gifBFU Forums ModeratorRenegade/Seawolf Design Group (RSDG)

[Guest Paul_S]

I've been thinking along the same lines - moving all my sim development efforts into FlightGear.FlightGear is still very rough at the moment and lacks some editing tools but all it needs is some help from developers.Most of the basics are already there and we can add whatever features are missing very easily since we have the source code.What FlightGear needs is some high quality aircraft and scenery as a showcase of what FlightGear can support.What I REALLY love about FGFS are the runways that follow the slope of the terrain! This is the first sim I have seen that incorporates this very realistic aspect of flying. You will be amazed at how many runways in real life are like roller coasters and tricky to use.FlightGear is one of those projects that can be very satisfying over the long run. We can make it into whatever we like - no begging and pleading with companies is neccessary and the sky is the limit.Paul

[Guest jonpoint]

Paul,I agree that FGFS needs support. My points related to the fact that it would be easier to support with some good tools. It's no good that the developers expect that everyone will even wish to gain an understanding of the machine code or file structure. Creators are artists, technically speaking, and do better work when they can concentrate on the 'art' bits! Without Resviewer for example, we simply would not have anything for FU3, same goes for FLED (as primitive as it is). We need some equivalent tools for FGFS.I will be spending some time over Christmas, looking at what I can do. :-wave Jon Point*************************(effyouthree@hotmail.com)*************************

[PeterR 9]

Well, for aircraft, you use a 3D editor. For textures, anything that supports the SGI bitmap format will work (e.g. I use Paintshop Pro).Where a tool would be nice is for defining moving parts. The definitions are in an XML file. A visual tool would be cool.Peter http://bfu.avsim.net/sigpics/PeterR.gifBFU Forums ModeratorRenegade/Seawolf Design Group (RSDG)