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Aircraft Rating System

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Aircraft Rating System

Postby stuart » Thu May 26, 2011 2:52 pm

Hi All,

Over on the -dev list there has been renewed discussion of an aircraft rating system, following on from a proposal I put together in December. This proposal now has some momentum behind it - i.e. aircraft authors are actually using it to rate their aircraft!

There is a wiki page describing the rating system here: http://wiki.flightgear.org/Formalizing_Aircraft_Status

As it says in the article, the aim is to provide a quick, objective (as possible) way for aircraft authors to rate their aircraft. This will help users find the "hidden gems", future FG download pages to filter on different criteria, and also help aircraft developers identify particular areas for improvement. I myself have found it very useful as it has highlighted that the c172p FDM is not as accurate as it could be!

I would like to encourage aircraft owners to rate their aircraft following the criteria in the appropriate -set.xml files. If enough aircraft are rated, we may be able to use this for the upcoming 2.4.0 release in August.

If you have any feedback on the rating system itself, please reply here (or even better on the -dev list). Please don't just edit the wiki page, as a number of aircraft have already been rated, and changing the criteria may impact their ratings!

Thanks,

-Stuart
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Re: Aircraft Rating System

Postby helijah » Fri Jul 15, 2011 1:08 am

Hey Stuart,

I started to edit my planes with this system.

View the Aichi D3A "Val" and the Lionceau :)

I find the system very convenient and easy to implement. Thank you.

Regards. Emmanuel
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Re: Aircraft Rating System

Postby El Flauta » Fri Jul 15, 2011 3:56 am

IMHO, is the best rating system for aircrafts available now. I'm working only on 2 aircrafts, but i started to use it, too.
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Re: Aircraft Rating System

Postby stuart » Fri Jul 15, 2011 9:24 am

helijah, El Flauta,

That's great news. I'm very glad that you find it easy to use - that was one of the key goals.

The more people we have using the rating system, the more valuable it will be for end-users.

-Stuart
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Re: Aircraft Rating System

Postby modamoha3141 » Tue Jul 26, 2011 1:56 am

Wow looks great,

It " picks " your rating automatically from the -set.xml file?
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Re: Aircraft Rating System

Postby kyokoyama » Tue Jul 26, 2011 2:04 am

Wow, that's actually a pretty good idea!

..However, is this system done manually? Or is there some sort of algorithm used to determine the ratings?
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Re: Aircraft Rating System

Postby stuart » Wed Jul 27, 2011 3:48 pm

Yes, you have to create the rating manually, based on the criteria in the wiki. It shouldn't take more than 5 minutes for an aircraft developer to rate their own aircraft.

-Stuart
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Re: Aircraft Rating System

Postby kyokoyama » Wed Jul 27, 2011 5:34 pm

Well, that's true..

...but then, is there going to be a way to actually enforce these rules?

So far, these rules and regulations for not only here, but any aircraft-in-development in general, do not seem to abide by any sort of regulations..?
Look for "B-BIRD" "N127KY" or "AVA0004" -that's me.

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Re: Aircraft Rating System

Postby stuart » Wed Jul 27, 2011 10:00 pm

No, there's no intention to enforce rating of aircraft.

However, once the majority of aircraft are rated, I expect we'll start seeing the launchers and websites using those ratings to filter the large number of aircraft available, and unrated aircraft will be at a disadvantage. From a user's perspective why would you fly airliner A with an unknown rating rather than airliner B where you know before you download the aircraft that the cockpit and systems are rated "4" and will be pretty good?

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Re: Aircraft Rating System

Postby kyokoyama » Wed Jul 27, 2011 10:13 pm

Good point.
...Now just to get that majority to notice and start editing their aircraft to implement that rating system...
Look for "B-BIRD" "N127KY" or "AVA0004" -that's me.

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Re: Aircraft Rating System

Postby hvengel » Fri Jul 29, 2011 6:28 pm

kyokoyama wrote in Wed Jul 27, 2011 10:13 pm:Good point.
...Now just to get that majority to notice and start editing their aircraft to implement that rating system...


I don't think this will be an issue in the longer term. The system is very easy for aircraft devs to use and there are already a significant number of aircraft in GIT using this system.

The system is also very useful to aircraft devs since it points out what areas of the model are weak and what specific things need to be worked on. When this was being worked on by the developers list two aircraft devs used the system as part of the discussion. I was one of those and found that my aircraft was very strong in the FDM area but needed work on the external 3D model and the cockpit modeling. The cockpit is now much stronger and as I find time I am now working on the external model.
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Re: Aircraft Rating System

Postby hockenberry » Sat Sep 10, 2011 11:29 pm

Here is a table: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ApzphjA4w05ndF94Y2F0bzJTbHQ5QTJXZXJRcUVRbWc&hl=en_US of the current aircraft status of the planes you can download for version 2.4 from there: http://www.flightgear.org/download/aircraft-v2-4/.
I built it on Sep 10, 2011 by extracting all the planes and looking for the <rating> tag in the *-set.xml file. As you can see, only a small number of aircrafts stick to the status description but i find the table already very useful. The table is editable so feel free to add new plane statuses or edit current ones when new versions are released.
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Re: Aircraft Rating System

Postby Gijs » Sun Sep 11, 2011 10:20 am

I saw your wiki edit. Nice job on the list! Maybe it's worth mentioning it at the mailings, to stimulate devs to rate their aircraft? At least mine are all rated :D
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Re: Aircraft Rating System

Postby turtle » Mon Sep 19, 2011 6:47 am

@hokenberry
Thank You for the rated aircraft list! Is there any chance you can add this link towards the top of the aircraft 2.4 download page? It might help hardcore Flight Simulator folks know which aircraft they can download and expect to look good & be working. Also, It can be a good way to attract them when they are low on $ to buy a newer version of payed flight simulator. :P In addition, it makes it easier for those who want to spread the word on FlightGear (Again thanks for taking the time to make that list).

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Re: Aircraft Rating System

Postby hvengel » Sat Oct 01, 2011 9:16 pm

I think the long term intent is to use these ratings as part of the info on the download page. Exactly how it will be used is currently up in the air (pun intended). One proposal is to divide the download page into separate sections (or perhaps pages) with the first section only having rated aircraft sorted by rating and then a separate unrated section. At some point when the system is in more widespread use it might make sense to exclude unrated aircraft from the download page. This would encourage aircraft devs to rate their aircraft and give aircraft dev a very simple way to keep immature aircraft off the download page(s).
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