Another suggestion for a project: a program for doing blackbox-like recordings, and reviewing them afterwards.
I can imagine:
1 using an interface into FG to map all available properties to a tree structure
2 finding a way to render the tree, and to select which properties to capture and record
3 capturing those properties via telnet or http ports
4 visualizing the data afterwards, in a way that allows scaling, panning and zooming of the timeseries
There are several attractions to this proposal:
1 This would be good (from your professor's perspective) as there is a clean deliniation between your code and that of others, which makes it more assessable, and (for you) reduces the time spent learning about others' code.
2 The telnet capture phase is a good bit of real-time coding (while also being comfortably low bandwidth)
3 The display phase is a nice opportunity for effective interface design
4 This would be a good foundation for an extension: real-time visualization of the property stream
5 By keeping the interface with FG simple, it is future-proofed
6 The main types of coding are in the areas of networking and interactive GUIs. There are some of Java's strong points, in my opinion.
I should say that I am quite new to FG, so perhaps a blackbox facility already exists. I am wanting a logging and visualization tool like the one described above, because I encounter annoying instances of limit cycle instability in the autopilot; and it would be much easier to trace and fix if I could see how selected properties varied with time. If you do write such a utility, I for one would use it!
Chris