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Cessna 182 - Improving the model

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Cessna 182 - Improving the model

Postby openflight » Sun Sep 20, 2015 4:08 am

I have not been able to find an updated model of the 182, the 172 model is quite nicely done, so is the 150 including it interior.

If not model is available I will embark on updating it, starting with the liveries, seats and that wing.

Saw this post


viewtopic.php?f=4&t=26353
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Re: Cessna 182 - Improving the model

Postby gsagostinho » Sun Sep 20, 2015 7:36 am

If you plan to work on that model, I would advise you not to start with working on textures. As the remodelling process progresses, the UV map will invariably change and your work may be lost. It's always better to work on textures once the model is more or less "stable".
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Re: Cessna 182 - Improving the model

Postby Martien van der P. » Sun Sep 20, 2015 10:09 am

Heiko Schulz made a C182s https://github.com/HHS81/c182 this one is actually much better then the original one in my opinion.
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Re: Cessna 182 - Improving the model

Postby gsagostinho » Sun Sep 20, 2015 11:26 am

That looks amazing!! Do you know if Heiko is on the forum? I'd love to contact him and offer help with the textures!
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Re: Cessna 182 - Improving the model

Postby Martien van der P. » Sun Sep 20, 2015 12:23 pm

He was on the forum as HHS but he's retired, I could pm his mail adress.
Last edited by Martien van der P. on Sun Sep 20, 2015 12:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Cessna 182 - Improving the model

Postby gsagostinho » Sun Sep 20, 2015 12:30 pm

Oh, if you could PM me with that info I'd be very thankful. That project looks amazing and I'd love to do a similar work for it with the textures as I did with the c172p! I am just addicted to single prop planes :)
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Re: Cessna 182 - Improving the model

Postby LesterBoffo » Sun Sep 20, 2015 5:28 pm

I'd sure like to finish his interior on the Augusta Westland 129, I had a fairly animated rotor head and tail rotor built up for it.
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Re: Cessna 182 - Improving the model

Postby openflight » Mon Sep 21, 2015 2:24 am

Very nice model. One has to just think of one and it is there in the git hub..

I wonder if there is a Piper Matrix...
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Re: Cessna 182 - Improving the model

Postby bugman » Mon Sep 21, 2015 6:28 am

I've had a number of private conversations with Heiko about fixes for his aircraft in FGAddon. I think he's also on the devel mailing list He posted a few months ago about another FGMEMBERS copyright violation. Gilberto, have you thought of asking on the list if you can be granted FGAddon commit access? You've more than proved yourself already! I wonder why this aircraft has not been merged back?

Regards,

Edward
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Re: Cessna 182 - Improving the model

Postby gsagostinho » Mon Sep 21, 2015 11:36 pm

@bugman Hi Edward, thanks for your message. I managed to contact Heiko and I do plan to collaborate with this amazing 182, I just gave it a spin and it looks really promising (I just love that 3D cockpit and I can't wait to texturize it!). As for the FGAddon commit access, I haven't thought about it because all the projects I worked with so far had their own separate repository and so it wasn't needed. Also, I work only with textures and sounds so far, and I can't really do anything on Blender or with Nasal. This means that in order to apply my textures or program my sounds into an airplane, I always need some help, and so I don't think I would ever send a commit for something on FGAddon without first having some help. What would be the main advantages of this type of commit access in your opinion?

Take care,
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Re: Cessna 182 - Improving the model

Postby bugman » Tue Sep 22, 2015 9:02 am

Hi Gilberto,

gsagostinho wrote in Mon Sep 21, 2015 11:36 pm:I managed to contact Heiko and I do plan to collaborate with this amazing 182, I just gave it a spin and it looks really promising (I just love that 3D cockpit and I can't wait to texturize it!)


I have also had contact with Heiko. It is clear that the aim is to have this aircraft included in FGAddon (if you look at the aircraft download pages, you'll find Heiko's name all over the place, so this is normal procedure). I think Stuart has been contacted about this, but I would assume that he is very busy with the FlightGear policy and roadmap document, the FGMEMBERS statement, the FlightGear v3.6 release process, many other administrative tasks, and RL (real life) added on top. So I wouldn't expect a response for a while.

These are two independent developments and some things are better in Stuart's $FGAddon/Aircraft/c182/ and some better in Heiko's. For example the instrumentation in Heiko's version requires a lot of work to come up to Stuart's standard. So maybe it could sit along side the current c182 and c182rg, and Stuart's developments pulled into Heiko's c182s? It sounds like Heiko has very big plans for the C182S, but he may need help in a number of areas.

As for the FGAddon commit access, I haven't thought about it because all the projects I worked with so far had their own separate repository and so it wasn't needed.


The FlightGear community encourages aircraft development directly within FGAddon (this has been mentioned a number of times, and matches the old FGData position). Therefore it would be good, after communicating with Stuart, to move Heiko's C182S into FGAddon. The Aircraft/c182s directory might be a good destination.

What would be the main advantages of this type of commit access in your opinion?


The main advantage is that development is centralised. This allows the FlightGear community to maintain the aircraft, keeping it in a working state, as the project evolves in the decades to come. The concept of aircraft abandonment is also very different, as the aircraft can never disappear. It will forever stay a part of the FlightGear project. Abandonment is rather defined as a period of inactivity until someone new comes along to pick up the next stage of development. This is also similar to how many of the venerable private hangars function (however if the entire hangar is abandoned and the aircraft are GPLv2+ licensed, the entire hangar will often be absorbed into FGAddon, ensuring their survival). Most importantly, developing directly in FGAddon is essentially giving a gift back to the FlightGear community that has provided us with such a wonderful flight simulator.

I am currently in the process of completely rewriting the FGAddon wiki article. In the new section on development scenarios, I hope to show how powerful and flexible the centralised development strategy can be. When combined with git-svn, this allows for a combined centralised+decentralised strategy. Have a look at the private team development section - this is probably closest to how the c172p-detailed project was run. The idea is to have a decentralised development of a single aircraft in a private git repository under the team leader's SourceForge home page, which is directly linked to FGAddon using git-svn as a bridge to regularly push the developments into FGAddon. A dedicated development team, and even admin team, can be defined to set permissions on each piece of SourceForge infrastructure set up for the aircraft development. Communication is much easier on the in-house SourceForge infrastructure as the team leader can set up a forum dedicated for development of the aircraft. You can also set up a ticket tracker for the aircraft on your SourceForge home page (I should add this to the wiki). The team members can then develop directly on the team leader's git repository, or fork it and make merge requests, discuss on the dedicated forum, file bug reports on the dedicated tracker, etc. (see the admin section of your SourceForge homepage to see the other infrastructure elements available to you). Therefore, using this strategy, I believe that you could recreate exactly the same workflow as with the c172p-detailed on GitHub. But instead you'll be linked directly to FGAddon with commits freely flowing into the official repository, and you'll be using the in-house infrastructure of the FlightGear project.

For the c182s, using this private team development scenario, either Heiko or yourself could be the team leader. I think Heiko is planning a return to development of this aircraft. You two could then be in an admin team, and anyone else who would like to help can be in the development team. I can help with any of the details, but I'm hoping to expand the FGAddon wiki page enough so that that will be sufficient and no help would be required.

After you're efforts with the c172p and regional scenery, you have more than proved yourself and shown knowledge in the important licensing issues. Therefore if you were to set up a SourceForge account and then ask for FGAddon commit access on the FlightGear development mailing list, your access is pretty much guaranteed.

Cheers,

Edward
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Re: Cessna 182 - Improving the model

Postby gsagostinho » Tue Sep 22, 2015 3:50 pm

Hello Edward,

Thank you so much for such a detailed answer! So here are a few comments on what you wrote:

- I will speak with Heiko about merging the improvements made by Stuart, I wasn't aware that he was also working on this same plane! I know stuart is super busy lately but we can all wait to see what he has to say.
- As for using FGAddon, my only remaining problem is that it already took me so long time to learn how to use git and to be comfortable with the interface of GitHub that the prospect of having to learn SVN is quite frightning. I don't know if it would be the same for Heiko or for other potential contributors, but that can be quite an inconvenience.
- That said, I obviously understand the advantages of developing directly on FGAddon, as you wrote it yourself so clearly.
- I will discuss these things with Heiko and see if he is also willing to work directly on FGAddon (given that I didn't contribute with a single pixel of texture in that project yet, I really can't do much more than simply recommend him to read this discussion here).
- I will also ask for FGAddon commit access on the development mailing list, but I guess first I must familiarize myself with SVN and this will take a little bit of a while.
- As for all the links you posted, I will have a look on all of them.

Thank you once again, your answer is really appreciated!

Take care,
Gilberto
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Re: Cessna 182 - Improving the model

Postby bugman » Tue Sep 22, 2015 4:33 pm

gsagostinho wrote in Tue Sep 22, 2015 3:50 pm:- As for using FGAddon, my only remaining problem is that it already took me so long time to learn how to use git and to be comfortable with the interface of GitHub that the prospect of having to learn SVN is quite frightning. I don't know if it would be the same for Heiko or for other potential contributors, but that can be quite an inconvenience.


With the git-svn solution, you won't actually be touching svn ;) Subversion is pretty basic though, especially if you already know git. Most command have one-to-one mapping, and svn branching is not really used in FGAddon (only for stable release tagging) so you don't need to worry about that part. You really only need 'svn co = git clone', 'svn add = git add' , 'svn mv = git mv' , 'svn rm = git rm', and 'svn ci = git commit; git push' to operate FGAddon.

For the SourceForge infrastructure part, I hope to document all of that on the FGAddon wiki article to make it very easy. How about this - I help you with all of the issues, and you help me improve the corresponding instructions on the wiki for the benefit of all?

gsagostinho wrote in Tue Sep 22, 2015 3:50 pm:I must familiarize myself with SVN and this will take a little bit of a while


Don't read the first Google hit, GitSvnComparison. This is a highly biased text designed to convince people to migrate from SVN to GIT. To learn SVN, you just Google search "git <cmd> in svn". Anyway, if you decide on the one of the git-svn based development scenarios, you won't actually touch the svn tools (later on I may document some cases where svn must be used in cases where git is deficient - the history concept in svn is more advanced, so some rare things cannot be done in git).

Regards,

Edward
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Re: Cessna 182 - Improving the model

Postby gsagostinho » Wed Sep 23, 2015 6:52 pm

Hi Edward,

Once again, thanks for your reply. I will wait to see what will be Heiko's reply and then we discuss these things further. I am grateful for your offer to help me with any possible issues, but as for the help for re-writing that article, this is a bit of a problematic time for me due to lack of time (I am working on my thesis right now...). What kind of help exactly would you need with it?

And as I wrote before, I completely understand that attracting developers to FGAddon is fundamental to the project and I am glad to hear you are in the process of rewriting that article, but I do hope you can also understand the situation from another point of view. If I may share it with you, this is my case: even though I do have some programming skills, learning how to use git was a painful and slow process. GitHub interface was also difficult for me in the beginning, and I know most people feel the same about it and I know lots of people that felt the same about it. The fact is that after having invested so much to became relatively fluent on it, part of me is just very lazy to make any move; ultimately, what I want to spend my free time in relation to FG is to develop aircraft and scenery, not to learn yet another interface and yet another list of commands and make yet another series of the same mistakes all over again. Also, GitHub is arguably the most popular repository host nowadays so very likely you will encounter this type of position.

I repeat: I am really not trying to revive any old discussions about it, I am simply sharing my personal view and why I am a bit reticent about it all, and stating that you may encounter this type of barrier with other developers as well (although I hope this won't be the case). As I said, I am willing to give FGAddon a try for this project if Heiko is also up to, as well as trying to pick up other projects already there. If indeed what I need would be just those couple of commands you shared, then it would be a piece of cake, but frankly speaking I heard the same about git and it wasn't really the case.

Heiko had told me he is quite busy right now, but as soon as he replies and we make a common plan regarding the 182s I will let you know.

Thanks a lot once again and take care,
Gilberto
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Re: Cessna 182 - Improving the model

Postby bugman » Wed Sep 23, 2015 8:38 pm

gsagostinho wrote in Wed Sep 23, 2015 6:52 pm:Once again, thanks for your reply. I will wait to see what will be Heiko's reply and then we discuss these things further. I am grateful for your offer to help me with any possible issues, but as for the help for re-writing that article, this is a bit of a problematic time for me due to lack of time (I am working on my thesis right now...). What kind of help exactly would you need with it?


Simple advice when following the instructions would be very useful. Simply pointing out what is confusing, what is missing, what could be written better, etc. This would be of great help. Just give me a few days to get everything together, the wiki article still needs a lot of work.

gsagostinho wrote in Wed Sep 23, 2015 6:52 pm:And as I wrote before, I completely understand that attracting developers to FGAddon is fundamental to the project and I am glad to hear you are in the process of rewriting that article, but I do hope you can also understand the situation from another point of view. If I may share it with you, this is my case: even though I do have some programming skills, learning how to use git was a painful and slow process. GitHub interface was also difficult for me in the beginning, and I know most people feel the same about it and I know lots of people that felt the same about it. The fact is that after having invested so much to became relatively fluent on it, part of me is just very lazy to make any move; ultimately, what I want to spend my free time in relation to FG is to develop aircraft and scenery, not to learn yet another interface and yet another list of commands and make yet another series of the same mistakes all over again. Also, GitHub is arguably the most popular repository host nowadays so very likely you will encounter this type of position.

I repeat: I am really not trying to revive any old discussions about it, I am simply sharing my personal view and why I am a bit reticent about it all, and stating that you may encounter this type of barrier with other developers as well (although I hope this won't be the case). As I said, I am willing to give FGAddon a try for this project if Heiko is also up to, as well as trying to pick up other projects already there. If indeed what I need would be just those couple of commands you shared, then it would be a piece of cake, but frankly speaking I heard the same about git and it wasn't really the case.


This is a real and unavoidable inertia problem that affects a subset of aircraft developers. The biggest problem might be convincing people that the biggest learning curve is/was git. The git learning curve is steep. So if you know git already, then using git-svn to work with a git repository is simple. You don't need to learn svn, only how to push (dcommit) to it and how to pull (rebase) from it. I hope to write some simple instructions about this git-svn bridging interface soon (it must be kept simple with a linear history to work). If you do choose svn, it can be thought of as a simpler version of git without all the tonnes of options. The svn option is the simplest option for those who don't know version control, especially if you use one of the svn GUIs.

The rest of the learning curve is the web interface. Fortunately this part is quite simple with SourceForge, and is conceptually not so different from GitHub (GitHub is in a continual process of copying a lot of concepts directly from SourceForge). I hope to write a short set of instructions to make the web interface even simpler. The GitHub interface is tightly twisted around the git concept of forking - that is their main design and selling point. The SourceForge interface on the other hand is very straightforward and provides basic tools in a bookcase-like design (for those interested, the SourceForge library is far more extensive than that of GitHub, including forums and basic wikis for example).

In the FGAddon wiki article, I hope to make the info so crystal clear that there is no learning curve (unless, of course, you remember what you did). Instead you find the correct section for your problem and blindly follow the step-by-step instructions. I will point to the extensive external documentation for each concept, but I will try to make the wiki article self-contained so that you'll never need it. Anyway, please keep the commentary frank so that the documentation can be improved.

Cheers,

Edward

P. S. Good luck with the thesis!
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