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Improving and maintaining aircraft on FGAddon

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Re: Improving and maintaining aircraft on FGAddon

Postby S&J » Sun Aug 22, 2021 4:03 pm

The GUI was created to help improve this problem, not the other way around.
Without a central repository - there was one even before the GUI - newcomers have an infinitely worse experience. The GUI makes FG accessible to people who aren't used to command-line interfaces.


Correction, it makes access to FGAddons planes more accessible, which lets face it was the point of it.

Previously a person downloaded a plane from the website and unzipped it into the planes folder.

As for other hangers, the proof of the puddings in the eating. There must therefore be a topic with a list of up to date alternative hangers on this forum, yes. I'm guessing it'd be 'stickied' to the top of the forum, easy to find, I've just not found it.

I'm not against the present GUI or how it uses FGAddon, there are +ve and -ve aspects of it. That's what this discussion is about, identifying these and coming up with ways of improving it.

But we must recognise that if a plane hasn't been updated for a year or two, by putting the plane into a 'pool' and allowing another person to come forward and maintain it. Does not constitute removing rights away from the original author, who can still pass modifications to the new maintainer. But what it might do is rejuvenate interest, leadership and open up the whole continual improvement process to whole new group of potential modders.
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Re: Improving and maintaining aircraft on FGAddon

Postby S&J » Sun Aug 22, 2021 4:22 pm

remember that the reason FGUK needs people like Helijah or Richard to add work to FGAddon is they have a lot of Windows users who find things like Git/Svn difficult, and collaborate by swapping zip files.


So maybe using a revision manager such as Git/SVN as the final point of FGAddon publication isn't the optimum approach.

If I was a maintainer of a plane, once I'd tested it on my machine and I was happy with it. I'd simply want to go to the GUI and press update, which for planes I wasn't a maintainer would be 'greyed out'. FgAdoon would then archive the previous version and replace with the update.

GUI's do help, but a poor GUI doesn't help anyone.
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Re: Improving and maintaining aircraft on FGAddon

Postby wlbragg » Sun Aug 22, 2021 5:28 pm

But we must recognise that if a plane hasn't been updated for a year or two, by putting the plane into a 'pool' and allowing another person to come forward and maintain it. Does not constitute removing rights away from the original author, who can still pass modifications to the new maintainer. But what it might do is rejuvenate interest, leadership and open up the whole continual improvement process to whole new group of potential modders.

My main point is I think this is a faulty premise. I would venture to guess that the amount of merge request on aircraft in fgaddon that get turned down is very low. Even on the 200+ aircraft of any individual author. It's an exception to the rule IMO. I work on the most exposed aircraft in FlightGear and we just don't get merge request from users outside the main development group. I can count on one hand over the last 5+ years the amount of times we get contributions. None of them were earth shattering updates. Most of the updating and upgrading is done by people that are directly invested in a group or individually interested in improving one particular aircraft. I would even venture to guess if not for the author of the 200+ aircraft updating them as the new version come and go, that they would be in an even less state of completeness.

One major problem with the idea of redistributing ownership. Who are you giving them to? Who wants them? Who will step up and "own" or monitor them (gatekeeper)? That goes back back to what I said about the request for people to update the tags. And yes gatekeeping means also the mundane updating. Also I think it incredibly unfair and even potentially demotivating to take control away from any author, keeping in mind, they already gave away the right to take any of their work and do with as you please. Just please have the respect to not force it back on their version that they gifted to the project. If that means fgaddon has to have a "few" more duplicates, or taken to a private repository, so be it. By my way of thinking it is a small price to pay.

That is why I say, it's GPL. If someone really wants to take an existing model a different direction, they can just do it. If it turns out to be a major step up in the right direction I think it will likely end up in fgaddon eventually.

But I agree with you, that in a perfect world fgaddon aircraft should accept all legit upgrades. I just don't think there will ever be a way to remove the argument over what is "legit". Mainly because there are so many different opinions as to what constitutes a "good" aircraft. Especially when so much is conditioned on hardware and philosophy.
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Re: Improving and maintaining aircraft on FGAddon

Postby vnts » Sun Aug 22, 2021 5:32 pm

S&J wrote in Sun Aug 22, 2021 4:03 pm:Correction, it makes access to FGAddons planes more accessible, which lets face it was the point of it.

Previously a person downloaded a plane from the website and unzipped it into the planes folder.


The flightgear.org website's aircraft section used to linked to ibiblio.org central repo before the 1 click-download from the launcher e.g. https://web.archive.org/web/20160223224 ... -aircraft/
S&J wrote in Sun Aug 22, 2021 4:03 pm:As for other hangers, the proof of the puddings in the eating. There must therefore be a topic with a list of up to date alternative hangers on this forum, yes. I'm guessing it'd be 'stickied' to the top of the forum, easy to find, I've just not found it.

Only tiny fraction of people get to the forum - almost no one. Of those who do get this far - e.g. the vast majority are more computer literate Linux/Mac users going by the OS side bar for forum contributors (the impression I've got in the past).

The website aircraft section gets more views and is better than the forum, and these days there seems to be a 3rd party hangar section that links to the wiki which is a community resource: https://www.flightgear.org/download/download-aircraft/

(It's tricky to link directly to hangars from the official website without first making sure they aren't in violation of copyright - including things like having fictional craft from TV shows - but linking to something like a community edited wiki page for 3rd party hangars gives enough distance I guess).

I did add a link to the FGUK hangar at the top of the wiki heli page a little while ago, and update the description in the hangars page - but not having craft in a central repo massively decreases exposure as people make an assessment of FG based on what's included centrally and don't dig deeper if what they find at first view isn't interesting.
S&J wrote in Sun Aug 22, 2021 4:03 pm:But we must recognise that if a plane hasn't been updated for a year or two, by putting the plane into a 'pool' and allowing another person to come forward and maintain it.

People can already fork if there are collaboration issues, and take over if the maintainer isn't responsive.

By 'maintainer' the aspect you are mostly focusing on deciding approach and direction? The issues around that are mainly around helijah, and haven't got to the mailing list stage yet so FGAddon rules haven't come into play.

Usually maintainers are happy to review if they have time, and contributors are happy to have someone check/test their work - getting people to take over maintaining craft or other features is the hard bit. There's also the issue where if all of the work on the craft is by one person, then they are most qualified to review improvements (unless it's to an area they haven't really implemented in their craft, or the improvement goes significantly deeper than they did). There are also cases where a craft might be pretty detailed so there's less updates from someone after a while, or the maintainer might be away but have time to review work, or the maintainer might have been AFK for a while and returned recently.

Something that I've brought up IIRC in previous discussion on the mailinglist (or an issue tracker thread), is having collaboration details for aircraft visible from the launcher's browser - e.g. a button in the results next to the update/install button. Details would be things like development forums, issues trackers maintenance status, contact details, any development notes/standards etc. Tinkering is pretty much a core pillar of the UI for a non-commercial, opensource, sim.
S&J wrote in Sun Aug 22, 2021 4:22 pm:
remember that the reason FGUK needs people like Helijah or Richard to add work to FGAddon is they have a lot of Windows users who find things like Git/Svn difficult, and collaborate by swapping zip files.

So maybe using a revision manager such as Git/SVN as the final point of FGAddon publication isn't the optimum approach.

Accessibility of the project and FG in general is a work in progress, and aircraft development related to Windows users is another topic - a lot of forum people and FG contributors are on Linux/Mac so maintainers can take computer skills for granted and be surprised or not pick up on work [1]. In the case of FGUK they do video tutorials for most things on their channel, which is a good way for Windows users to learn. These days there are decent GUI clients on Windows for even svn and git (Git extensions seems pretty good), and probably a video tutorial with common operations needed for aircraft updates might go a long way to improve things.

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Re: Improving and maintaining aircraft on FGAddon

Postby S&J » Sun Aug 22, 2021 7:06 pm

It's kind of a self fulfilling fantasy that's going on here.

Using the minimalist communication (mailing list) developers go about creating a tag system. Once it's created and implemented they put a request on the forum that people come forward and volunteer to fill in each planes tag. Later on in subsequent conversations the failure of volunteers is used as justification that's there's not people interested in doing modding. Whilst at the same time an argument against change is that "this is my hobby and no one's telling me what I can do or must do".

No one's doing upgrades other than people in the present system, so that justification for not changing the current system.

Assumption are made that people don't look at the current system and quietly think to themselves "thanks but no thanks, if those are the rules". And past history has it that those that do stand up in opposition are shouted down, vilified and eventually banned.

I'd take on three planes, and when I say three planes that includes all variants if FGAddon worked in the way I've proposed. I'd project manage it, motivate 3d 2d modellers, XML writers and communicate it's progress in the forum.

And when I'd done as much as I could on them I'd hand them back into the pool for the next person to come along and improve them.

It's not my plane, never was and never will be.
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Re: Improving and maintaining aircraft on FGAddon

Postby Johan G » Sun Aug 22, 2021 8:59 pm

S&J wrote in Sun Aug 22, 2021 7:06 pm:Using the minimalist communication (mailing list) developers go about creating a tag system. Once it's created and implemented they put a request on the forum that people come forward and volunteer to fill in each planes tag.

It is not like the mailing list is a secret cabal behind closed doors, it is just that it is not convenient for some. I would expect most curious people have had a peek at it at least one; there are links to it both at the forum header, on the left side menu on the wiki, and (a few clicks in) on the official website. :wink: (And no I don't subscribe to it. While I like to have some idea on what is going on with core development, I do not think I am interested in every little aspect of it.)

S&J wrote in Sun Aug 22, 2021 7:06 pm:And past history has it that those that do stand up in opposition are shouted down, vilified and eventually banned.

There is one thing to have a differing opinion, but another thing to insist that people given the trust to for example set up a repository on the behalf of the project do it another way,* not to mention calling them all kinds of things when they do not comply.

The very most of about one or maybe two dozen people that have been banned permanently for other reasons than spam have been banned because of repeated abusive behaviors like ad hominem personal attacks, name calling, wishing people ill, or the like. Most of the time those who have been permanently banned had written posts that had to be redacted or removed in their entirety, and they had been given several warnings, and they also often had been given several shorter bans.

I think I speak for the other moderators as well when saying that we prefer not having to do any such moderation, but occasionally we have to. Both for the work environment, and because there are things that we potentially could be held responsible for if we would insist on letting it stay.
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Re: Improving and maintaining aircraft on FGAddon

Postby wkitty42 » Sun Aug 22, 2021 10:41 pm

vnts wrote in Sun Aug 22, 2021 5:32 pm:
S&J wrote in Sun Aug 22, 2021 4:03 pm:Correction, it makes access to FGAddons planes more accessible, which lets face it was the point of it.

Previously a person downloaded a plane from the website and unzipped it into the planes folder.


The flightgear.org website's aircraft section used to linked to ibiblio.org central repo before the 1 click-download from the launcher e.g. https://web.archive.org/web/20160223224 ... -aircraft/

i haven't checked but it probably still does link there... but it is more complicated now... why? because the repo is also versioned so that folks running the next branch have access to the latest, sometimes development, versions of the craft while those running the LTS or a previous FG version have access to the craft that are suitable for that version... so the general link to ibiblio may have been removed since there's no real easy way of linking to the proper versioned repo and bring sure that it is the proper one for the user's FG...
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Re: Improving and maintaining aircraft on FGAddon

Postby vnts » Mon Aug 23, 2021 12:15 am

@S&J I take it that this a different topic now? The discussion thread that wlbragg and I responded to account has completed?

S&J wrote in Sun Aug 22, 2021 7:06 pm:Using the minimalist communication (mailing list) developers go about creating a tag system. [..]

The tag system is not active anywhere, or implemented yet. The idea of the tags was just a way to help newcomers explore aircraft by type/characteristic (e.g. single-prop craft, airliners, ground effect vehicles, gliders, fighters, by manufacturer etc.) - similar to the aircraft screenshot thumbnails which are already implemented. Just seeing a full list of 900+ names in the launcher when browsing, like at ibiblio.org [1], isn't that useful for people that aren't looking for a specific craft by name. Tags weren't brought up or relevant to discussion thread in previous posts.

wkitty42 wrote in Sun Aug 22, 2021 10:41 pm:
vnts wrote in Sun Aug 22, 2021 5:32 pm:The flightgear.org website's aircraft section used to linked to ibiblio.org central repo before the 1 click-download from the launcher e.g. https://web.archive.org/web/20160223224 ... -aircraft/

i haven't checked but it probably still does link there... but it is more complicated now...


It does still link to central repository at ibiblio.org: https://www.flightgear.org/download/download-aircraft/ . I meant that these days there's also a section on 3rd party hangars and a link to the wiki page listing
hangars. In the past the link was just to the central repository.
wkitty42 wrote in Sun Aug 22, 2021 10:41 pm: but it is more complicated now...

Yep, looking at it again, is https://www.flightgear.org/download/download-aircraft/ supposed to link to a different ftp folder for 2020.3 LTS? It links to http://mirrors.ibiblio.org/flightgear/ftp/Aircraft/ which only has folders with last modified date of 2018. It should refer to the LTS http://mirrors.ibiblio.org/flightgear/f ... raft-2020/ or maybe to several release folders? People who need to download manually or are trying to download everything will get old versions. The aircraft page probably missed getting updated for 2020.3.

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Re: Improving and maintaining aircraft on FGAddon

Postby wlbragg » Mon Aug 23, 2021 3:50 am

I give up! If you think a database of free models that can only be written to be people that have proved themselves but can be submitted to by anyone, is in anyway a hindrance to entry into the developer community, I'm not sure any explanation is going to change the perception of your reality.

I don't base my knowledge of the way this project works on any one example. I base it on the 300+ aircraft that are totally free for you or anyone else to develop to your hearts content that sit there year after year with only the improvements needed to keep them working with the latest version of the simulator, if even that. No one is stopping anybody else from developing anything. It's all free and open source. The only thing these millions of hypothetical disgruntled developers can't do is push their creations to the repository without review by someone that already has access. Your manufacturing problems and issues where there simple are none, period.
You want proof, just go take a look at the totally uncontrolled and unmoderated fgmembers repository. The amount of production going on there is nil. That was someone else's brilliant idea of how a better system could get more contributors. It just didn't happen. The system they though would make it better wasn't adopted by a majority of the community. That is an example of what I keep saying when I say you can do anything you want. Someone, or a couple people didn't get their way and so they created a different system, their way. All it seems to have done was to fracture the community a little more and left more confusion in its wake. It certainly didn't make anything better.

The truth is this community is healthy. Everyone that contributes does so because they enjoy creating and using this simulator and for the most part enjoy the comradery of the community at large. They recognize the contributions of hard working members.

I'm done arguing about this, it's waiting too much of my time. Time that could be used to make the a fuel system on the AIrCrane, or make the wildfire fire front driven by the wind.

The only reason I replied is because I see things in a totally different light that you do even though I am one of the people that you would have disgruntled because I didn't get my version of an updated aircraft adopted in its entirety into fgaddon by the maintainer of that aircraft. I'm OK with it. If I wasn't I would have asked to push a variant. I can live with it. I still have my version to do with as I please. I can still make it available to all that want it. I can add a link to it in the wiki for the AirCrane if I want more exposure for it. But I don't care. I do this to learn. I do this because I enjoy it, not to fight, argue or have a pissing contest. My version is still my version and I'm still improving it.
It's all about perceptions. I think we need to change perceptions more than we need to change systems.
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Re: Improving and maintaining aircraft on FGAddon

Postby wkitty42 » Wed Aug 25, 2021 12:40 am

vnts wrote in Mon Aug 23, 2021 12:15 am:The tag system is not active anywhere, or implemented yet.

AFAIK, the tags are active in the launcher's craft selection pane... i could be incorrect on that, though... i haven't looked in a while...

vnts wrote in Mon Aug 23, 2021 12:15 am:
wkitty42 wrote in Sun Aug 22, 2021 10:41 pm: but it is more complicated now...

Yep, looking at it again, is https://www.flightgear.org/download/download-aircraft/ supposed to link to a different ftp folder for 2020.3 LTS? It links to http://mirrors.ibiblio.org/flightgear/ftp/Aircraft/ which only has folders with last modified date of 2018. It should refer to the LTS http://mirrors.ibiblio.org/flightgear/f ... raft-2020/ or maybe to several release folders? People who need to download manually or are trying to download everything will get old versions. The aircraft page probably missed getting updated for 2020.3.

yeah... the ibiblio mirror is maintained by curt... i'm guessing it is a manual update scenario... i'm sure he'll get "a round tuit" at some point...

FWIW: manual downloading of craft and scenery (outside of custom stuff) should be discouraged... the launcher has made things so much easier and cleaner not to mention installing them properly so FG can actually use them...
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Re: Improving and maintaining aircraft on FGAddon

Postby Johan G » Wed Aug 25, 2021 9:24 am

vnts wrote in Mon Aug 23, 2021 12:15 am:The tag system is not active anywhere, or implemented yet.
wkitty42 wrote in Wed Aug 25, 2021 12:40 am:AFAIK, the tags are active in the launcher's craft selection pane... i could be incorrect on that, though... i haven't looked in a while...

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