Maintain your local Scenery via TerraSync

[martin]

Some people already use it, some know about it, some might have heard some rumor .... and some didn't:
The TerraSync tool that comes with the 1.9.x FlightGear release allows you to maintain sort of a 'dynamic' copy of the most recent Scenery on your local disk. TerraSync itself is not entirely new, people have been using it for years to pull Scenery as they're flying with FlightGear. The striking difference with the 'new' TerraSync - I tend to call it "TerraSync/SVN" - is its ability to download _incremental_ changes.

In different words: With the 1.0.1 World Scenery release we've started to push the entire Scenery to a repository of the sort which is typically used to maintain source code (actually it's a Subversion repository). TerraSync, when set up to run with FlightGear, will then automagically pull the Scenery for the area you're currently flying, thus freeing the user from manually downloading and installing Scenery packages (as it already did before). The nice thing about TerraSync/SVN (in comparison to its predecessor): Feeding updates to the mentioned Scenery repository will automagically lead to feeding these updates to the user at the next time he's flying FlightGear in the respective area.

To give an example: If Vic is submitting a new static Scenery 3D model for Shoreham airfield, we're going to import this model into the repository, feed this update to the forementioned Scenery repository and _every_ user of TerraSync/SVN, if they're flying in this area, is going to get this update on the next day without any manual interaction. This feature is not limited to the use with 3D models only, we're also feeding updates to the underlying terrain via the same path .... and some day we're hopefully going to serve shared 3D models as well.
It's obvious that the proper use of TerraSync requires a working Internet connection. In contrast to the 'old' TerraSync, the new one for use with the SVN repository allows operation behind a firewall, pulling Scenery via a HTTP proxy, if configured accordingly.

If you'd like to know about TerraSync/SVN, please have a look at The Manual or the README that accompagnies the TerraSync source code. The Manual (chapter 2.1.3) as:

PDF: http://mapserver.flightgear.org/getstart.pdf
HTML:http://www.flightgear.org/Docs/getstart/getstart.html

The README:

http://mapserver.flightgear.org/git/?p=flightgear;a=blob_plain;f=utils/TerraSync/README.txt

As far as I can tell the FlightGear-'starters' for Windows and MacOS feature a checkbox to start TerraSync with FlightGear - but I'm not entirely certain. Therefore I'd be happy if people who already experienced the use of TerraSync/SVN on the respective operating systems would jump in with answering platform-specific questions.

Have fun, Martin.

[jano]

hi,just to say that i'm one of the current users of terrasync SVN.

it works well, except that the first time he downloaded the airport directory, he started with the "K" letter, then A,B ..... and once reaching K again he stopped saying K was existing or something like that, i made it going on by deleting the "K" directory once downloading in A letter.
(debian sid)

jano

[MD-Terp]

{...} As far as I can tell the FlightGear-'starters' for Windows and MacOS feature a checkbox to start TerraSync with FlightGear - but I'm not entirely certain. Therefore I'd be happy if people who already experienced the use of TerraSync/SVN on the respective operating systems would jump in with answering platform-specific questions.

I haven't used it, but I can attest (using Fred's latest CVS win32 build) that the box containing the checkbox and parameters for TerraSync is in fact there on the last screen of the Launcher application, just above the same for Multiplayer options. From talking to VicMar I know that the same or similar is definitely true for Mac.

[fg-torrents]

As far as I can tell the FlightGear-'starters' for Windows feature a check box to start TerraSync with FlightGear - but I'm not entirely certain. Therefore I'd be happy if people who already experienced the use of TerraSync/SVN on the respective operating systems would jump in with answering platform-specific questions.

Have fun, Martin.

Ah, but the trick for Windows users is that they have to go to start menu then to the FG menu then to the sub menu tools and click on TerraSync. Then they start Fgrun then tick the box which merely sets FG to communicate with an already running instance. Seems to me that the check box should also start TerraSync automatically and should be checked by default. I am sure the programmer no doubt is aware of the fact that this is not easy for users to figure out and has this planned in a future release.

[martin]

Now, does it actually work for Win32-users ? I'm uncertain about the plans of the programmer, nevertheless I think he'll understand if we tell him about the involved difficulties.

Thanks for the feedback so far. I'd be happy to read a lot more about users' experience, because I'm planning to make TerraSync/SVN not necessarily the first but at least one of the the primary sources of FlightGear World Scenery - especially for those users who are having a reasonable Internet connection established while flying FlightGear. The simple fact that TerraSync/SVN allows us to easily feed 'interim'-updates between the 'official' World Scenery releases makes it highly appealing.

Cheers, Martin.

[fg-torrents]

Now, does it actually work for Win32-users?

It works great!

[AndersG]

Thanks for the feedback so far. I'd be happy to read a lot more about users' experience, because I'm planning to make TerraSync/SVN not necessarily the first but at least one of the the primary sources of FlightGear World Scenery - especially for those users who are having a reasonable Internet connection established while flying FlightGear. The simple fact that TerraSync/SVN allows us to easily feed 'interim'-updates between the 'official' World Scenery releases makes it highly appealing.

Are you planning to provide an up to date set of world objects over Terrasync/SVN too?
The last time I checked (a couple of weeks ago) the objects were those of World Scenery 1.0.1.
Automatically getting the new objects would make using terrasync very attractive.

Cheers,

Anders

[martin]

Hi Anders,

Are you planning to provide an up to date set of world objects over Terrasync/SVN too?
The last time I checked (a couple of weeks ago) the objects were those of World Scenery 1.0.1.
Automatically getting the new objects would make using terrasync very attractive.

I suspect you're talking about what I'd probably call the "shared model collection", the equivalent of the daily "SharedModels.tgz" file - right ?
Yes, I/we plan to distribute these via the respective SVN repository as well, in fact we could start almost the next day. Still there's an issue which prevents us from doing so: FlightGear is simply incapable of loading these Shared Models from any other place than the "${FG_ROOT}/Models/" location .... well, from "${FG_ROOT}", to be precise.

In order to circumvent this limitation I wrote the following posting to the FlightGear developers mailing list:

http://www.mail-archive.com/flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net/msg19669.html

.... in the hope that someone would add at least a quick hack for the 1.9.0 release. Unfortunatly a) nobody did, b) my C++ skills are too limited for digging through the code and adding the required feature within a short timeframe and c) after the release was out I got myself involved into too much diifferent stuff already :-)

Finally, my plan is to accompagny the alread existing "Terrain/", "Objects/" and "Airports/" directories with a "SharedModels/", which then would contain a copy of the stuff we're usually merging from the Scenemodels repository into the "Models/" directory of the CVS Base Package.

Cheers, Martin.

[AndersG]

Hi Anders,

Are you planning to provide an up to date set of world objects over Terrasync/SVN too?
The last time I checked (a couple of weeks ago) the objects were those of World Scenery 1.0.1.
Automatically getting the new objects would make using terrasync very attractive.

I suspect you're talking about what I'd probably call the "shared model collection", the equivalent of the daily "SharedModels.tgz" file - right ?

No, I was thinking about the Objects/ directory tree in the Scenery. But I didn't think about the problem that arise when new shared objects are added. Today this would only work for FlightGear/CVS users (who keep their FlightGear binary and data up to date).

OTOH perhaps the benefit of getting the latest static objects is great enough even for 1.9.0 users to live with the error messages about missing shared objects? (Which could be solved by occasionally updating the data dir with a new SharedModels.tgz.)

Cheers,

Anders

[martin]

Are you planning to provide an up to date set of world objects over Terrasync/SVN too?
The last time I checked (a couple of weeks ago) the objects were those of World Scenery 1.0.1.
Automatically getting the new objects would make using terrasync very attractive.

I suspect you're talking about what I'd probably call the "shared model collection", the equivalent of the daily "SharedModels.tgz" file - right ?

No, I was thinking about the Objects/ directory tree in the Scenery. But I didn't think about the problem that arise when new shared objects are added. Today this would only work for FlightGear/CVS users (who keep their FlightGear binary and data up to date).

OTOH perhaps the benefit of getting the latest static objects is great enough even for 1.9.0 users to live with the error messages about missing shared objects? (Which could be solved by occasionally updating the data dir with a new SharedModels.tgz.)

Hehe, the setup has changed since you've been checking. The "Objects/" tree from the Scenery SVN - which is serving TerraSync/SVN - actually _is_ already a representation of the most recent state of static objects in the Scenemodels repository :-)
I've started updating the "Objects/" by the end of last year - this is what I was hinting at when I gave the example of Vic adding a static model at Shoreham. You'll notice that TerraSync/SVN will pull a couple of additional models at EGKA, KOSH and KMTN - just to name a few. If you're using a default setup, FlightGear doesn't moan abount missing shared models - they simply don't show up if FlightGear is unable to load the model.

Cheers, Martin.

[VaLeo]

Hello Martin!

Eventually I compiled TG, and even learn how its use and made my first tile!
With shapes, edited in QGIS and airport, edited in Taxidraw.

However, at the edges of tile its dont fit with scenery well, there is walls and waves 1-2 m height.
May be this happens because I use wrong parameters, like --max-segment, or its need to add some parameter to terrafit.py?

And, how now I should submit my stuff?
Will send to you *.shp for mapserver and *.btg for terrascenery?

[martin]

Vadym,

Eventually I compiled TG, and even learn how its use and made my first tile!
With shapes, edited in QGIS and airport, edited in Taxidraw.

However, at the edges of tile its dont fit with scenery well, there is walls and waves 1-2 m height.
May be this happens because I use wrong parameters, like --max-segment, or its need to add some parameter to terrafit.py?

And, how now I should submit my stuff?
Will send to you *.shp for mapserver and *.btg for terrascenery?

Congratulations for getting TerraGear to work ;-)

For the tile edges I'd like to (re-)direct you to this posting of today:

http://www.mail-archive.com/flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net/msg20391.html

We're building the World Scenery directly from a data collection which is stored in a PostGIS database - and which is the same DB backend as the one behind the web mapping frontend. Importing Shapefiles into the DB is pretty easy (via 'ogr2ogr'), nevertheless I'm looking for someone who'd like to act as a guinea pig for creating GeoJSON files .... which is now the file format I'd wish to establish as a standard for contributing data to our collection.

In other words: We have a working infrastructure for importing polygons, lines and points remotely via HTTP as long as we're using GeoJSON files as a format and I'd be really happy to share the workload of (early) testing the content creation with someone who'd be ready to spend some time on investigating the creation of GeoJSON from the 'popular' desktop GIS applications.

I think that submitting Shape- or GeoJSON-files should be sufficient as we're having a readily working toolchain to rebuild tiles right from the DB and feeding these to the 'terrascenery' repository for TerraSync/SVN.

Cheers, Martin.

[fredb]

Seems to me that the check box should also start TerraSync automatically and should be checked by default. I am sure the programmer no doubt is aware of the fact that this is not easy for users to figure out and has this planned in a future release.

The very last version of fgrun (SVN 1.5.1 as of today) is able to start terrasync.exe under Windows. There is a field in the first panel to tell which directory is dedicated to terrasync.

Edit : the linux version is now able to start TerraSync too.

[fg-torrents]

Seems to me that the check box should also start TerraSync automatically and should be checked by default. I am sure the programmer no doubt is aware of the fact that this is not easy for users to figure out and has this planned in a future release.

The very last version of fgrun (SVN 1.5.1 as of today) is able to start terrasync.exe under Windows. There is a field in the first panel to tell which directory is dedicated to terrasync.

Edit : the linux version is now able to start TerraSync too.

Cool! I love FG because were else do you get interaction with the public from the programmers. You guys do such a good job.
I have been using the terrasync for a while now and I got to say, how did I ever live without this. Downloading scenery manually seems so quaint now. I wonder whats in store for the future for on the fly downloading?

[martin]

I wonder whats in store for the future for on the fly downloading?

We're now also offering the content of the daily SharedModels package via the repository behind TerraSync/SVN .... yet someone has to educate FlightGear as well as TerraSync to make use of it :-)

Martin.