Tips on Startup (aka Tip of the Day)

[stuart]

Hi All,

James has been doing some great work on improving the splashscreen (aka loading screen).

As part of this, he's implemented a "tip of the day" feature, where a small piece of text is displayed (See fgdata/Translations/en/tips.xml for those on "next"). For example:

* Drag while holding the right mouse button to look around in most views
* Hold [Shift] while looking around to move the view up, down, left or right
* Press a/A to adjust the simulation speed
* Find frequencies of nearby ATC services nearby from the Radios dialog

The idea is to provide useful tips for people just beginning to use FlightGear to help them discover more of the capabilities.

So, I'd like to "crowdsource" some ideas for tips to include.

Some general advice:

* The tip should be a single sentence, the shorter and simpler the better.
* Think of things a user can do within the simulator immediately.
* Think back to what things you discovered that you'd wished you'd known when you started using FlightGear.
* If you previously used FS-X or X-Plane, are there any concepts that have a different name in FlightGear?

Thanks in advance.

And yes, I'm going to add "Join the FlightGear community at http://forum.flightgear.org"

-Stuart

[wlbragg]

It would be helpful to keep a running list of all that have been created and suggested to date as to eliminate duplicating efforts.

[Necolatis]

Tips:

When running with ALS and ALS filters enabled, you can also experience tunnel-vision and greyout.
If your framerate is very low, try disable AI traffic.
Press ctrl-v to get back to default cockpit view.
Press F3 to take screenshot.

[Isaak]

I'll come back to this thread, but my first shots:
Press h to bring up the HUD-display
Experience live or different weather conditions under the 'Environment' > 'Weather' > 'Detailed weather' dialog.
(This brings up a thought to me: is translation of language specific items an option in the splashscreen?)

[D-ECHO]

If translation to german is necessary, I can do this once the tips are ready

[Parnikkapore]

-Press F12 to bring up the Radio dialog in a hurry.
-Press F10 to hide the menu bar.

[Catalanoic]

i can do translations to spanish, catalan and other romance languages, as german support too.

[stuart]

Thanks very much for the tips so far. I will add them shortly.

@BEL ISAAK : Yes, the strings are language-specific, so we would translate them into the other languages supported by the simulator
@Catalonoic: Thank-you for volunteering for the translations.
@wlbragg: Good point. The current set of tips is here: https://sourceforge.net/p/flightgear/fgdata/ci/next/tree/Translations/en/tips.xml

-Stuart

[Johan G]

Press Ctrl-v to reset the view.

[Parnikkapore]

In view mode use the Middle mouse button to move the view.

In view mode, press <???> While dragging with the middle mouse button to move the view forward or backward.

(Can you make the second one shorter?)

[Michat]

Do you know that you can access to the internal property tree by pressing / key. Doing so you can consult and modify parameters or even prompt them on the screen, just select the parameters you are interested in, SHIFT + CLICK will do the trick. EDIT One useful example for newbies is going under property tree Environment > Metar SHIFT+CLICK on the parameter called Data will prompt the METAR report on your screen. Easy and cool.EDIT
Those parameters will not appear next time you start FG.
If you want to remove them from your current screen session just CONTROL + SHIFT + CLICK in any parameter of the tree.


Also this feature is available in the GUI FGmenu> Debug > Browse Internal properties.

[sanhozay]

Just a bug report, rather than a suggestion ... tip n=3 reads:

Find frequencies of nearby ATC services nearby from the Radios dialog

[stuart]

@Parnikkapore: How about "Drag while holding the middle and right mouse buttons to move the viewpoint"

@Michat: I think that's a bit advanced for the new user. However, I like the idea of exposing them to the properties. How about "Press / to explore the internals of the simulator"

@sanhozay; Whoops! Thanks for spotting that. I'll get it corrected

Keep them coming

[agough]

Any chance of the odd bit of humour too? Like old-school programs used to? Not for every message of course, but just the occasional quip?

E.g. a different version of Michat's:
"Backslash is the key to the universe."

One for the shuttle:
"Loading Orbiter here. Note: Black side down."

"Gravity getting you down? Ctrl-u for an instant vertical teleport!"

[Thorsten]

"Loading Orbiter here. Note: Black side down."

That'd often get you killed...