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Crazy things to experiment with ...

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Crazy things to experiment with ...

Postby Jabberwocky » Tue Dec 16, 2014 6:47 am

Hi,

I put lately some time in just experimenting with some things. Just experimenting so nothing is "production ripe" yet, but just to gather some input, I put the basic ideas out here:

1.) Independent tracking
The current experimental construct is, that one can login from the plane on a webserver (standard http with a MySQL, in this case the one I have for my websites, which is actually not a physical but a very regular virtual server). All few seconds the plane sends its position, altitude and heading to the server, the server stores the information in the database and another page reads it out and generates the Google map from it.
This would take care of the problems we had lately with the MP map system as it is and it would take a little traffic from the MP system per se. Since it is connected with a login, it is theoretically also possible to log flight hours under different callsigns. As I said, this is still in some basic experiments.

2.) Independent property transfer
I abused the test construct from 1.) also to transfer property values in case one has to transfer more data than just 19 integers as is currently the limit in the multiply mechanism. It is also independent from the VHD22, so a win-win. As of yet, I only tranferred dummy data (lots of numeric values, some strings and so on, I generated in Nasal with the randomizer, just to test the timing behavior. It needs still some polishing and then a standardized interface into the real flight-operation.

3.) Pullback for Taildraggers
I built a little pullback (not pushback because they are actually pulled backwards) for taildraggers as part of my Lancaster-Jsb. It works almost as in, it works perfectly only the truck spawns under ground and emerges like Jaws through the tarmac when you connect it to the plane.
If and when I figure how to take out this attack shark behavior of the truck, I intend to pack this in two alternative packages (one comes with a lot of other stuff in one monster pack for convenient link in to a plane, the other one is just the pullback) for download and use by others who could use it. However, if someone has some real old pullback truck models, that would give it the nice historic touch!

4.) To update or not to update ...
All these experiments brought me to the idea, it is possible, a plane can figure that there is a newer version on a server when it spawns. It is even possible to load such an update online ... or it would be if Nasal can read and write files as regular text files. Can it or not? And if so, does the whole idea make sense at all or is it more convenient to look on a regular base if there is something new for the favorite plane?

Just some ideas in experimental or conceptual stages to toss around, I appreciate opinions.

J.
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Re: Crazy things to experiment with ...

Postby MountainFlyerN22 » Tue Dec 16, 2014 2:15 pm

The pullback truck sounds great. :D Sure would be helpful.
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