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USS Nimitz Supercarrier

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Re: USS Nimitz Supercarrier

Postby Thorsten » Sun Jun 10, 2018 10:03 am

After I understood the concept of the new AI dialog I decided to add a click animation to the towers, as this is quite useful, but I stay with a carrier specific dialog (as the new AI dialog is a carrier dialog anyhow).


It seems you didn't really, because the new AI dialog concept is an object-specific dialog - it brings up a different dialog for the Truman and the Nimitz reflecting what each of them supports (or not), and by and large you ought to be able to have them spawn side by side and command them to do different things - which was why James came up with the requirement and made me tinker to implement this for a week in the first place.

For that (and other) reason, it'd be nice if you'd try to understand why I selected only parts of your work and left others out(god knows, I sure didn't like re-writing lots of stuff for the thrill of it, but I believed it might feel a bit unwelcoming if I'd just send it all back and make you do it according to James' specs to get committed... it might have felt discouraging) - in other words, I'd much prefer if you'd try to work with us rather than do your own thing in parallel because you find our attempts to future-proof FG offensive.
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Re: USS Nimitz Supercarrier

Postby mhab » Sun Jun 10, 2018 5:42 pm

Not sure if this will lead to anything useful, but some remarks on what I understood was decided ...

I learned that many of the things I did for carrier improvement are better dealt with in FG kernel.
I agree.

What this means from my understanding:
1. This will or will not happen at any time or whenever who knows ...

2. I am on the Nasal side of the fence and not in the inner circles of FG kernel C++ team

So that would mean for me: That's it

So if collaboration means to stop my activities I am not willing to do that for now.

And one thought about the new AI objects dialog ...

In FG 2018 it works on the following objects:

Code: Select all
var carriers = props.globals.getNode("/ai/models").getChildren("carrier");


and the approach means for current carriers:
- 7 different dialogs (if the missing Foch is counted)

- 4 out of the 7 are Nimitz class carriers
- 2 are Clemenceau and identical Foch
- 1 San Antonio ... with only a stern door

Well I prefer less redundancy, while I fully agree that carriers should be possible to control independently.

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Re: USS Nimitz Supercarrier

Postby Thorsten » Sun Jun 10, 2018 6:43 pm

I am on the Nasal side of the fence and not in the inner circles of FG kernel C++ team


I actually didn't change any Nasal to C++ - I did things like replace per-frame polling for property changes by more efficient listeners and such like.

So I'm pretty much on the Nasal side as well.

I'm not really aware of substantial features you brought to the table and I disabled - I added a few (Richards approach guidance system and the wave motion) but otherwise tried to keep everything I found functional.

So I'm not sure what we're talking about here - can you give an example?

Well I prefer less redundancy


This is not about what you prefer or what I prefer - the question was discussed on the mailing list, the spec for the AI control dialog was agreed upon there and when implementing it I had to adhere to that spec - like it or not (I did not very much, but I see the underlying reasoning).
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Re: USS Nimitz Supercarrier

Postby massima » Thu Jul 12, 2018 10:38 pm

I decided to install the carriers package and this is my report:

1)when i start from a parking position, on every carriers, the tomcat jumps and i read "aircraft hit ocean".
2) i cannot find a menu for the carrier (like the one in the forum).
3) if i replace my default.xml with the one in the package, simgear gives me an error at line 854. Restoring the original makes the launcher to start and i can use carriers.
4) there isn't an animation for Jet blast deflectors.

I think the guilty of all those issues is the broken custom defaults.xml file.
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Re: USS Nimitz Supercarrier

Postby mhab » Fri Jul 13, 2018 7:57 am

Hello massima

Thank you for your interest in this.
I guess from your forum info you are using FG version 2018.2.

FG 2018 contains the Truman carrier from the gitlab carrier package in a modified version, but none of the other improved carriers of the package and not the MPcarrier version of Truman.

The gitlab project is in a state ready and tested for FG 2017.1 but not for FG versions 2017.3 and later
Truman was merged into FG 2017.3 and this was accompanied with some other modifications related to AI carrier as e.g. Menu was changed
I mention this dependenciy in the gitlab Readme.

Some remarks:
I have started to adapt and improve the package to FG 2018 as mentioned in the forum above, but I am not sure about the outcome as I don't agree with every design decision made so far in FG kernel. I was struggling quite a bit to get everything running again in FG 2018.1 as the ported Truman is a different thing considering the Nasal and animation part of it.
It definitely is NOT compatible to the gitlab carrier extension package.

defaults.xml:
I guess you are right about the defaults.xml as this file is not supposed to be changed. Core team considers this to be too dangerous.
However I couldn't do everything I wanted with the available defaults-extension mechanism and therefore changed it despite recommendations.

So if you want to use the existing gitlab carrier extensions, it means you would have to go through a lot of adaptions.

If you think it is useful to port the gitlab package to FG 2018 let me know.
It would definitely improve my motivation to go on :wink:

Thanks again for your feedback
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Re: USS Nimitz Supercarrier

Postby Richard » Fri Jul 13, 2018 9:40 am

@mhab The changes made to get the carrier into the core made sense; with the way that carriers currently work.

To quote what I posted to the devlist a while back.

Richard on the devlist wrote:For a while I've been working in the background on improving carriers in general. My todo/wish list

- Improved views for both the AI and MP carriers

- Trying to get the carriers to participate in the instant replay. It's annoying[1] not to be able to review carrier landing without stopping the carrier[2]

- Moving all of my special carrier logic that is currently in Nasal (F-14) to allow reposition to cat launch, or generally on the carrier; together with a case 1 recovery initial position, overspeed on touchdown causing the wires to not work (etc). Calibration of cat launches based on mass (etc.).

- I want to know which wire I actually caught (if any); and I'd really like to at least put some support in for animation of the wire.

- JSBSim cat launches to have the catapult and launch bar engagement simulated[3]

- Change the MP carrier so that it doesn't reuse the AI carrier and instead is a genuine MP model that can be landed on. I've got a fairly good idea of what needs to be done in general, possibly extending the aircraft -> carrier comms with Emesary over MP. Also this may require core changes to support enable-hot. I'm not 100% sure that a true MP model is the way to go - but the only way to find out is probably to try it and see how it turns out.

-----------------------

[1] Most of the time I fail and a replay would be useful to get a feel for what I did wrong; sometimes I get it nearly right and then a replay would be nice to feel smug until the next failure.

[2] although this works it's not realistic at all as generally 25kts over the flight deck is considered to be required for all carrier landings and it does make something that is already difficult more difficult.

[3] yasim already has better support for catapults and carriers in general. I'd like to bring jsbsim to this level but without changes to the core of JSBSim as it's already been stated that adding code that only supports FG into the core of JSBSim is not encourage. So this might be difficult or impossible.


Currently I've managed to get the carrier included in the replay. Currently it is just the carrier and not the entire battle group; I need to think about how best to include the rest of the ships in the replay.

I've already been through https://gitlab.com/mhab/Flightgear-Carr ... ements.txt and I've got ideas how to handle some of the issues that have been raised.

In the F-14 I treat the active carrier as the one that is tuned on Tacan; but this isn't right. My current plan is to extend the Tower support to include carriers, and so the active carrier and active tower become the same thing; so you can then either select the carrier as a tower, or let the system pick the carrier tower as active. This will require core support but I think it's the right thing to do.

James wants to add better support for Carriers into the launcher - he's waiting on input (from me and anyone else) on how best to do this. Given the current state of carrier support in the core I think we need to get the improvements implemented and then figure out what needs to go into the launcher.

I had initially hoped to get this into 2018.3; but I'm running out of time for that, so it could be after 2018.3. It all depends on how well I do and how much help I get.
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Re: USS Nimitz Supercarrier

Postby massima » Fri Jul 13, 2018 10:24 am

You did a great job with the carrier package, i just want to put the tomcat in its natural environment.
I think that carrier OPS are just moving toward the right direction, they will need the right time slowly but one day everything will work perfectly.

EDIT: removed everything and reinstalled to test the CVN-75 standard, i can say :shock: :shock: amazing work :mrgreen: .
Only a problem the "v/V" and "x/X" buttons, they don't work :roll:
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Re: USS Nimitz Supercarrier

Postby Thorsten » Fri Jul 13, 2018 11:54 am

I have started to adapt and improve the package to FG 2018 as mentioned in the forum above, but I am not sure about the outcome as I don't agree with every design decision made so far in FG kernel


Okay. This is now growing into a major source of frustration for me.

It seems some people believe the incorporation of the Truman into FG was badly handled. My recollection is:

I volunteered to do this, as I enjoy carrier ops and didn't want this great ship to hang around not making it into FG. When looking at the package, I found several things which I judged needed to be altered. To my recollection, these were:

1) Much of the supporting Nasal was running in a loop polling properties for e.g. JBD operation events. This is bad practice, wasteful and better accomplished with listeners which do not take performance on a per-frame basis and such inefficient Nasal structures have contributed much to the bad reputation Nasal in FG enjoys.

I subsequently decided to re-write the relevant parts myself, rather than send the package back and ask mhab to do it, explaining the nature of my change. I did it myself to not cause frustration, making someone else re-do lots of work.

2) There was a cruise ship included which had no GPL compatible license - I removed it from what went to FGData, explaining why the license is not compatible. Given the legal situation of FG, this decision is not negotiable and could not have been any different.

3) There were details (e.g. the wake shader) added to other carriers - I did not include those, explaining that there are people who run FG on legacy hardware, so we ought to leave one lowres carrier (the Nimitz) for them to use without forcing expensive effects onto every carrier.

4) The control GUI I brought up on the mailing list where the discussion evolved into a general scheme to re-do the control of AI objects with certain requirements posted, the net result of this was that I ended up re-writing the GUI of *all* carriers to support the new scheme. I've tried to in addition implement the 'click on object to move' controls as they were in the package. Arguments pro and con the scheme and explanations are found on the mailing list ad nauseam - this particular change is a result of a consensus among the developers and hence not just my whim.

In addition, while I was working with the carriers anyway, I decided to re-do the lights to use ALS procedural lights, which took a while tuning, I checked back and forth between rendering schemes that the visuals during approach from a given distance do not greatly differ, although they're not always identical. To my recollection I also added Richards approach guidance scheme to the Truman and polished the flightdeck.

There might have been the one odd smaller thing no mentioned here, but these are the main things I recall.

Even after re-thinking it, I would make each of these decisions the same way today. I do not feel I have wronged anyone, I'e tried to be open about the 'why', I've invested about ten times more work into this than I initially planned when taking on the review procedure - yet people continue to be unhappy.

The net result is a forked development which likely will be ported to every new FG version over and over and unhappiness on many fronts.

So please help me out here - what is it I should have done differently in all of this? What is the nature of the decisions which are not agreeable? What crucial step did I not do?

This is a genuine question - I really do not want to repeat the experience, contributing to FG should be as pleasant for everyone as possible (given that we have to compromise on some things).
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Re: USS Nimitz Supercarrier

Postby Richard » Fri Jul 13, 2018 12:09 pm

Thorsten wrote in Fri Jul 13, 2018 11:54 am:It seems some people believe the incorporation of the Truman into FG was badly handled.


I'm genuinely pleased to have the Truman in the core and I'm happy with the way that you did it. No complaints from me about this. You may read my misgivings about carrier handling, dialogs, etc. but this isn't related to the work you did, carrier support justs need to be better.

4) The control GUI I brought up on the mailing list where the discussion evolved into a general scheme to re-do the control of AI objects with certain requirements posted,


This was absolutely the right way; I'm sure I used to be able to control the deck floodflights and deck lights on the Nimitz separately - but this is a minor issue and once that I'm sure I can resolve, I personally don't like the clickable areas and tooltips, but that's my personal preference and I'm happy to live with this.

I just want carrier support to be better; I want a LSO view, I want to know which wire I caught, what my descent rate, alpha and centre line deviation were at touchdown; I want multiplayer carriers to be better etc... None of this is related to the good work you did on the Truman.

I like landing on the Truman; yeah it's more expensive in rendering but it is so nice.
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Re: USS Nimitz Supercarrier

Postby mhab » Fri Jul 13, 2018 2:46 pm

So things are quite clear.
There won't be a public fork anymore and with so many people involved I don't see me contributing for the near future.

Bye
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Re: USS Nimitz Supercarrier

Postby wlbragg » Fri Jul 13, 2018 3:24 pm

I had initially hoped to get this into 2018.3; but I'm running out of time for that, so it could be after 2018.3. It all depends on how well I do and how much help I get.


Richard, I haven't been following any of this work very closely, but if there is something specific I can help you with, say animation modeling, let me know.
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Re: USS Nimitz Supercarrier

Postby wlbragg » Fri Jul 13, 2018 3:33 pm

@mhab, I remember when you took on the responsibility of working on this carrier. I was thrilled, as well as others apparently, that this carrier was going to be available for use in FG. Your work was and is greatly appreciated. I thank you for getting it into a state that culminated into a permanent place in FGDATA, in whatever final format it ended up being.

Your work is appreciated!
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Re: USS Nimitz Supercarrier

Postby Thorsten » Fri Jul 13, 2018 3:36 pm

So things are quite clear.


Not to me at least - which is why I asked:

what is it I should have done differently in all of this? What is the nature of the decisions which are not agreeable? What crucial step did I not do?

If you disagree with something, would you at least tell us with what specifically and why?
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Re: USS Nimitz Supercarrier

Postby wkitty42 » Fri Jul 13, 2018 4:54 pm

mhab wrote in Fri Jul 13, 2018 2:46 pm:There won't be a public fork anymore

can't the changes be pulled into your dev fork to bring it up with what exists in FG? or maybe clone the FG part and continue your work in it so those updates can be merged into FG easier than had to be done initially?

mhab wrote in Fri Jul 13, 2018 2:46 pm:and with so many people involved I don't see me contributing for the near future.

i don't think you should stop... just realize the changes, how they work, and how you can add new things within what is available... as the other work gets completed and added, it all becomes better... only now there's a team working on it instead of just one... i think you should continue working on it with the others...
"You get more air close to the ground," said Angalo. "I read that in a book. You get lots of air low down, and not much when you go up."
"Why not?" said Gurder.
"Dunno. It's frightened of heights, I guess."
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Re: USS Nimitz Supercarrier

Postby Richard » Fri Jul 13, 2018 10:51 pm

mhab wrote in Fri Jul 13, 2018 2:46 pm:There won't be a public fork anymore and with so many people involved I don't see me contributing for the near future.


That's not what I wanted to hear; so far the only person actively working on carriers at the moment[1] is me and I could do with some help from you given your knowledge and experience in this area.

Other contributors are welcome to volunteer - the goal here is to really improve carrier operations.
---------
[1] that I'm aware of
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