Orbital Makes the Sky Black

[MasteroftheSKIES]

Title pretty much says it all. The Orbital EOR (Earthview Orbital Rendering) makes the whole sky black, along with a bunch of other rendering glitches. Screenshot:




(by the way, the rendering during the day is nearly the same, so don't ask)

Thanks for all the help. Haven't really seen anything on this. BTW, graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 (fyi, a quite powerful graphics card)

[Philosopher]

And how does it look from Space?

[Hooray]

right, it is generally a pretty good idea to only use features that you understand:

Subject: FLIGHTGEAR 3.2

For instance, the way you have "demonstrated" the experimental EarthView feature, it is obvious that you don't quite know what it is about (orbital flight).

Thank you very much for your idea. Actually, I still can't figure out how EarthView works. Is there a bug or there are specific controls for this feature?

Otherwise, please don't complain - you could just as well complain that FlightGear's oceans look weird once you're "submerged". Honestly, people making such bug reports without bothering to read up how things are supposed to work, are really just showing their ignorance and the fact that others trying to explain such features are wasting their time: http://wiki.flightgear.org/FlightGear_N ... e,_Part_II

[MasteroftheSKIES]

Sorry, I had no way of really knowing. I just saw the feature and I assumed it would do something that wouldn't cause a black sky and multiple other rendering glitches at ground level. I wasn't complaining. Just asking what was wrong. It turns out nothing was wrong. Do you have to know exactly what a feature does before using it? I don't think so.

[Johan G]

right, it is generally a pretty good idea to only use features that you understand... Honestly, people making such bug reports without bothering to read up how things are supposed to work, are really just showing their ignorance...

Easy now. Should we Google any anomaly we encounter?

Some of the dialogs like this one could be much less enigmatic to users if there was a small button with a question mark opening a window with a very brief description (like 3-5 sentences*) of what it can be expected to do.

* For example: "The Earthview Orbital Rendering engine allows the use satellite imagery phototextures. Combined with the Atmospheric Light Scattering (ALS) shader, this improves the realism of the visuals of orbital flight in Flightgear substantially."

[Alant]

Here is the place to ask questions. Don´t be put off by the flak you may get sometimes.What is obvious to one person may escape another from time to time.

Remember that the stupidest question is the one that is not asked.

Alan

[Thorsten]

Some of the dialogs like this one could be much less enigmatic to users if there was a small button with a question mark opening a window with a very brief description (like 3-5 sentences*) of what it can be expected to do.

Right. Like 'Orbital rendering - renders thing from orbit' - you have to admit that the name is fairly descriptive

More seriously - sure, the list of things that could be done is endless... My day has only 24 hours - so I develop a feature, roll it out, write about it in the newsletter, announce it in the forum and in the mailing list, take bug reports, answer to feature requests...

I could in addition also make a wiki page, announce it on Facebook, write a README.earthview documentation for the Docs folder, change the GUI, add procedurally generated fake details for the planet shader, make a canvas GUI - all these things would be nice.

I just decided that it stops somewhere because I also want to do other things. So if you feel the GUI could be improved, don't tell me because that won't do anything, send me the patch for review

Sorry, I had no way of really knowing.

Except reading the forum thread, the newsletter, the Flightgear webpage, the mailing list ... it's not like I just added the feature without giving any information. So please be fair - theoretically there were many channels containing the information.

Here is the place to ask questions

Precisely so - but the thread starter hasn't asked a question but made a statement. These you should only make if you understand something.

Personally I think stating 'X is broken' in public is the equivalent of ringing an alarm bell - it pretty much forces the maintainer to react to your post. And as with a real alarm bell, you should only ring it if there's really a fire for obvious reasons.

[MasteroftheSKIES]

By "I had no way of really knowing," I meant that I was just discovering new features in 3.2 RC2, so I stumbled upon that and I decided to test it. Now any normal person would probably assume that a rendering glitch is a BAD thing, but clearly that assumption was mistaken. Sorry for "ringing the bell," I definitely should have looked it up. It would be nice if you could put some text to go along with new features so that users know how to use that feature.

Also, as one last note - I did Google search "orbital earthview makes sky black in flightgear" and nothing came up. Hence, I thought this was a glitch.

[Thorsten]

I meant that I was just discovering new features in 3.2 RC2, so I stumbled upon that and I decided to test it. Now any normal person would probably assume that a rendering glitch is a BAD thing, but clearly that assumption was mistaken

Since you want to phrase it that way, any normal person would probably also assume that orbital rendering has to do with, well, an orbit and know that San Francisco is not exactly in orbit around Earth.

I mean, I occasionally punch at buttons and options I don't understand just to poke around like the next guy in order to see what happens - but if anything unexpected happens, I don't make a report, I try to understand what the button is for or I leave it.

Btw - if I google your terms, I get this as the first link and it is right spot on!

[punkepanda]

Is there a manual for how to use the FlightGear GUI??? Sounds like that is what is needed here.. Maybe a big WARNING on buttons and checkboxes that makes things go crazy!!

Uffcourse a average user dont expect to have to use either Google, wiki, a manual or look at the source code to safely turn on listed features under options menu.

To assume that an option like "Orbital Rendering" mess up things below the orbit is not self explained or expected by most simmers.. What other flight sim have this "Bug/Glitch" before entering orbital altitude..
Would it not be better to answer politely that the glitch is a work in progeress and should soon be fixed than telling people that report such bugs (which is good) that they need to investigate deep inside FlightGear core source code to find a comment line; "To be continued, need to fix rendering glitches in ALS" or something..

Since you want to phrase it that way, any normal person would probably also assume that orbital rendering has to do with, well, an orbit and know that San Francisco is not exactly in orbit around Earth.

Would any normal person think that he/she can't turn on that feature at San Fransisco level without expecting such a terrifying rendering result?
Any reason for why it don't activate automaticly(if checked) at a certain altitude only?

[Hooray]

sorry to anybody who felt offended by my earlier response - even though I do still think that it was spot-on, and seems to match Thorsten's line of reasoning pretty well. With that said, the docs, UI and our features/code can obviously ALWAYS be improved - however, doing that takes a lot of time and energy, and 99% of the people still won't bother looking at the docs.
However, we can surely point out how to help with improving the docs, UI and the code.
Just let us know if you'd like to help with that.
Otherwise, please keep in mind, that most people around here care more about working features/code instead of carefully-documented features and elaborate manuals. Thus, any contributor needs to find a compromise between actually coding/implementing a feature, and document the thing properly, while also making it sufficiently straightforward.

[punkepanda]

My day has only 24 hours

You lucky bastard!! For us that have a daytime work and sleep at night we have maybe 6-8 hours!!
I would expect you dont leave glitches and make full documentation with all that time available for FG development!! LOL

[MasteroftheSKIES]

By the way, Thorsten, I didn't make a bug report. I just posted it here, because I assumed it probably wasn't a bug.

[Thorsten]

because I assumed it probably wasn't a bug.

vs.

along with a bunch of other rendering glitches

Please... you assumed it probably wasn't a bug? Really?

[MasteroftheSKIES]

I assumed it was an incorrect setting or a problem with my graphics card. I assure you, I did not assume it was a bug; and I did not report it as such either.