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Why are there fictional aircraft?

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Why are there fictional aircraft?

Postby Backwaterguard » Sun Feb 24, 2013 10:19 am

The Ogel is not a real vehicle. It should be replaced by a realistic World War I Albatross biplane with kid friendly controls and a wonderful paintjob. The Followme should be reformatted as a Renault Kangoo safety car. Please remove as much fictional vehicles as possible or it may be possible to see zany creations like the X-wing starfighter from Star Wars.
Last edited by Backwaterguard on Wed Feb 27, 2013 4:11 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Vehicle problem

Postby DFaber » Sun Feb 24, 2013 10:46 am

Backwaterguard wrote in Sun Feb 24, 2013 10:19 am:It should be replaced by a realistic World War I Albatross biplane with kid friendly controls and a wonderful paintjob.


which would not be realistic either, because WW1 Aircraft usually were hard to fly and land as well as engine handling was a lot harder than modern engines.

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Re: Vehicle problem

Postby Hooray » Sun Feb 24, 2013 12:43 pm

Backwaterguard wrote in Sun Feb 24, 2013 10:19 am:Please remove as much fictional vehicles as possible or it may be possible to see zany creations like the X-wing starfighter from Star Wars.


FlightGear is developed by a community of volunteers from all over the world, we contribute in whatever way we see fit, if you disagree with the way FlightGear development is going, your best chance to affect it, is by starting contributing yourself. FlightGear could only progress so far without any commercial backing for over a decade, because of FlightGear contributors and their very passion for turning their own ideas into FlightGear features.

FlightGear isn't only developed with a single role or purpose in mind, FlightGear is to be understood as a framework for developing new aviation related features, including fictional features. We have hundreds of "aircraft" and "vehicles" available in FlightGear, only a fraction of those are fictional, and most of the fictional ones are not even well-developed, you will surely be able to find other aircraft that you are interested in, see: http://www.flightgear.org/download/airc ... ilterable/

So until you roll up your own sleeves, let's just appreciate the variety of aircraft and other features to be found in FlightGear, including the X-wing star fighter from Star Wars, Star Trek space shuttles and lots of other passionately developed 3D models, like the BlueBird for example:

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http://seahorsecorral.org/flightgear_aircraft.html
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Re: Vehicle problem

Postby Backwaterguard » Mon Feb 25, 2013 10:16 am

Thank you for the advice. FlightGear has the pure realistic flight simulator side and the fictional side. Players can choose to pick either one of it or both. I was thinking maybe the contributors were creative enough to reformat or redesign fictional vehicles into accurate real world vehicles. When I finish college study in Malaysia, maybe I will learn C++ programming then I can contribute to FlightGear. I have Anim8or in my computer. My future project is to introduce the ZSU-23-4 "Shilka" with unlimited radar range and active all the time to guide stray aircraft into nearby airfields. The guns cannot be fired for less damage to other players.
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Re: Vehicle problem

Postby Hooray » Mon Feb 25, 2013 11:25 am

FlightGear doesn't necessarily have a real "fictional side" - it's just that we all needed to get started somehow. Contributing a completely new aircraft is obviously difficult. Contributing to existing aircraft is useful, but it doesn't teach you all of the skills required to create an aircraft from scratch. So people who want to do a full aircraft, need to start with something simple and "fun".

So what new contributors often do, is creating "fun" vehicles to learn how FlightGear works.

Aircraft like the ufo, ogel, bluebird etc were usually created by people in their initial phase of becoming familiar with FG - for example, the ogeL was made by the same guy who ended up modeling the Seneca, one of our most-developed (and maintained!) GA aircraft in FlightGear: http://wiki.flightgear.org/Seneca

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As you can tell from looking at the wiki, the ogeL aircraft developer has not only become the developer and maintainer of the Seneca aircraft in FlightGear, but he also has become a FlightGear core developer writing C++ code and maintaining the autopilot system for example, and he also happens to be a CPL-IFR/ME rated pilot in real life, who owns the Seneca he modeled for FlightGear.

Obviously, contributing to all these areas in FG takes time, a steep learning curve is an unfortunate but important part of it - rarely, do we see people who immediately start out with complex and well-developed aircraft, it's a process - and we all needed to get started at some point. Just because we contribute "playful" things to FG, doesn't necessarily mean that we are not interested in "realistic aviation" as you can see.

You will notice that many long-term contributors actually have an aviation-related professional background, be it flying (commercial, private, ATPL), software development, maths, physics, GIS or whatever. Among the long-term contributors are people with PhDs, Masters, commercial pilot rating, PPL or retired military pilots, and even one test pilot...
Still, 3D modeling is a completely new skills, and needs to be learned from scratch - which applies especially to people who "only" have a real background in aviation, but not in computers and/or games.

Creating the ogeL was obviously simple and fun, creating aircraft like the Seneca requires tons of skills, experience and expertise that you don't end up having "automatically". And it requires tons of dedication and discipline.

I hope that puts things a little into perspective.

maybe I will learn C++ programming then I can contribute to FlightGear

It's a long-standing misconception that you need to know C++ in order to contribute to FlightGear, we have tons of non-coding areas actually, please see: http://wiki.flightgear.org/Volunteer

And even if you want to write code, there are tons of ways to write code, without writing C++ - such as using Nasal or GLSL instead.

Finally, keep in mind that most of us started contributing to non-coding areas in FG, even if we did have a professional software development background. In fact, we have people who do software development for a living, but still prefer doing 3D modeling in their spare time (for *fun*).

Not knowing C++ is a pathetic excuse not to contribute to FlightGear, if you are serious about contributing there are really MANY options: http://wiki.flightgear.org/Volunteer
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Re: Why are there fictional aircraft?

Postby Backwaterguard » Tue Feb 26, 2013 9:45 am

Thank you Hooray, I finally understood what was being written here. I am sorry for being this critical and I am ashamed of myself. When I am done getting the information I need then I will delete this topic/conversation that I have started.
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Re: Why are there fictional aircraft?

Postby Hooray » Tue Feb 26, 2013 9:49 am

No need to feel ashamed at all, these are some of the less obvious relationships that I pointed out

And no need to delete anything here, the question isn't totally unusual - and at least we've provided a number of answers here that will be of use to other people in the future hopefully, and that in a non-heated fashion. . Regarding your ZSU-23-4 "Shilka" idea, you may want to start a new thread in the "Development" sub forum.
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Re: Why are there fictional aircraft?

Postby Michat » Tue Feb 26, 2013 10:59 am

There is no problem to be critic, you are FG like we are. Don't feel ashamed. Feel free.

Ogel is also the starring of a film by ortorea-aerotro.

I dream to place some of those object in the KXTA- Former- KUFO parking gap.

Image

Image

FG could have a short of Easy vesion-mode for children like FGTux mode or something like that. :idea:
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Re: Why are there fictional aircraft?

Postby Hooray » Tue Feb 26, 2013 11:39 am

Adventures of OLeg and his Ogel Aircraft (A NEW LIFE)


http://www.mail-archive.com/flightgear- ... 12487.html
http://www.mail-archive.com/flightgear- ... 12137.html

FG could have a short of Easy vesion-mode for children like FGTux mode or something like that.

That would certainly be possible, in the form of an extremely-downstripped custom version of FG. With just a single aircraft (ogel), very simple scenery ...
And it would be an interesting usability challenge to target kids!
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Re: Why are there fictional aircraft?

Postby Kabuki » Tue Feb 26, 2013 6:28 pm

My first attempt at modelling an aircraft resulted in a fictional plane that flew sideways. :oops:

I can certainly see the point of view, but you don't have to put the models on your system. There are also aircraft which were designed, but never built. I have a keen interest in the Boeing 2707 (SST), which dwarfed the Concorde, but had huge problems with design. The project was scrapped because Boeing couldn't get government funding. There used to be a cabin section mockup at a museum in Seattle where you could take a coast-to-coast flight in about half an hour, watching the country pass by beneath you on monitors every few rows of seats. There was also a hinge for a wing (orignally, it didn't have swing wings) that was HUGE, and there was this little crank you could turn to operate it. That hinge was probably the undoing of the entire design. Possibly one of Boeing's worst designs, at a time when they were developing the 737 and 747 and lunar lander also.

Would that be a fictional aircraft, in that none ever flew, although a full size mockup did exist? Or how about airplanes that maybe had one copy made?

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Re: Why are there fictional aircraft?

Postby Torsten » Tue Feb 26, 2013 7:47 pm

Actually, I started with the ogeL while working on the SenecaII. Back in those days, my little nephew visited my house and played with the real-life counterpart of the Lego toy airplane, I had at home. After some time of playing, he asked me "can you make it fly like REAL aircraft do?". Yes, sort of, I thought and started with the ogeL. A couple of days later, we had a very lucky kid at my computer, buzzing the ogeL around the KSFO buildings. Now, I can't wait, presenting the ogeL to my 1.5 year old son as now, he is playing with the very same Lego toys.

We used the ogeL often at our FSWeekend and LinuxTag booth when kids were around and it really worked well to pull the little-ones into our booth.

And another ogeL trivia: it's one of the very few aircraft, we have written permission from the original manufacturer to use the model in our project.
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Re: Vehicle problem

Postby 439Tiger » Tue Feb 26, 2013 9:36 pm

Hooray wrote in Sun Feb 24, 2013 12:43 pm:
So until you roll up your own sleeves, let's just appreciate the variety of aircraft and other features to be found in FlightGear, including the X-wing star fighter from Star Wars, Star Trek space shuttles and lots of other passionately developed 3D models, like the BlueBird for example:



A Viper would be nice :wink:
Specializing in Canadian built aircraft and aircraft flown by the RCAF

http://www.flightgearcanada.ca/ or: https://sites.google.com/site/flightgearcanada/
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Re: Why are there fictional aircraft?

Postby Michat » Tue Feb 26, 2013 10:57 pm

The viper hardware cockpit is already finished. http://wiki.flightgear.org/FlightGear_N ... ember_2012

My little family niece callsign Moni 7 years old use to fly FG since two years ago, she really like to play computer and big planes in FG. What she really wants is coming to my home and playing TUX paint in Gnewsense OS which she has great concept. She is really interested in create video games. She declared this year her desire again to be a game developer, my brother just laugh, however I detected that's not a joke. She is always asking me about the GNU.....

Anyone knows a good software for learning programing, in GNU, MAC, and windows.
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Re: Why are there fictional aircraft?

Postby Kabuki » Wed Feb 27, 2013 5:48 am

Michat wrote in Tue Feb 26, 2013 10:57 pm:Anyone knows a good software for learning programing, in GNU, MAC, and windows.


In the late seventies and early eighties, there was some incredible research done towards teaching small children to program computers and robots. The studies had especially amazing results with kids who lived in poor circumstances. Of course, this was the dawn of the age of personal computing, and more people were becoming interested in computers, and others were becoming passionate about them. This is still going on bigger than ever, meaning that there are more projects competing for attention, when back then, there were some that became classics.

These classic early studies of childhood programming education used LOGO as the teaching language, and there was an extension called "Turtle Graphics", where the programmer writes things like "turn left 20" and "forward 20". They quickly learned procedural abstraction. Here's a link that I haven't actually watched :roll: because I'm in a low bandwidth situation, and it's probably dated, but I have a hunch it'll be stimulating, because those were stimulating days.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMzojQFyMo0

I have no idea what the state of the art is in computer education for children is today, except that about a year ago, I did 10 minutes of research and found some very impressive stuff. It's out there.

From my own college days in the early nineties, my school's CS students had an ongoing superproject called "C robots". It was a game played by programming robots (virtual, onscreen) to fight it out. It became the basis of all sorts of side projects that were motivated by class assignments. The system ran a multitasking C interpreter that would load each robot's program, then referee the fights. The thing to remember is that once somebody hit 'start' on the interpreter, there was no human intervention of any kind. The winning or losing came from the programming. Some programs were very short, some were more elaborate, and there was no telling which would win. Some really crude programs did quite well.

Now, think about autopilot dogfights. What fun is that? What fun is it to be shot down when your brain simply overflows? You hit autopilot and just watch until you black out.

(God, I'm long-winded. But typing is easy)
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Re: Why are there fictional aircraft?

Postby Hooray » Wed Feb 27, 2013 11:52 am

Michat wrote in Tue Feb 26, 2013 10:57 pm:My little family niece callsign Moni 7 years old use to fly FG since two years ago, she really like to play computer and big planes in FG.
Anyone knows a good software for learning programing, in GNU, MAC, and windows.


3D games are best done in some 3D environment like Alice (Google)/Blender with scripting support (usually python).
But to learn programming basics, make sure to check out KidBasic/Basic256 (free, open source, multi-platform using GTK).

KidBasic is a completely self-contained development environment:
Image

For example, here's exactly your question answered on stackoverflow: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5961 ... 7-year-old
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9609 ... each-a-kid

For kids who already know about basic programming stuff (loops, functions etc), a good low-level option is using GNUSim8085 which also teaches more about hardware, addressing, registers etc.

The KidBasic community comes with its own programming books for children:
http://www.basic256.org/index_en
http://www.basicbook.org/
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