erik wrote in Sun Mar 14, 2021 9:28 am:Indeed, it was not meant as an encouragement to start hacking at the code.
The people working on it know what they are doing, it just that they have limited time and a large todo-list.
Actually, I'd say nobody is actively working on this for the time being due to their very todo-lists.
That is why the current set of patches/topic branches will be only of interest to people who already know how to patch/rebuild FlightGear and to people who already know C++ OSG, too.
Both, Jules and Fernando, have laid out their thoughts on how to approach this, and the two previously shared wiki pages cotain plenty of information to go into greater detail and provide additional pointers.
Thus, the opposite seems true: what we have got for now is only of interest to people wanting to start hacking, rather than those only wanting to use a finished feature.
FlightGear/next already contains the key components for this feature: 1) the Compositor and 2) CompositeViewer support.
What is missing (and what the patch is all about), is the custom Canvas element that registers its own CompositeViewer Camera to render into a custom Compositor to apply custom effects/shaders (which is why the patch affects primarily $SG_SRC/canvas/elements).
Everything else is already in place, and the missing bits are well-documented in the form of wiki pointers - as long as people have a corresponding C++/OSG background.
Besides, the shuttle folks (and numerous airliner developers) have also been waiting for tailcam/gear view support, too:
Space Shuttle - Developmenteatdirt wrote:On the other hand, we don't have the luxury of having
an end effector camera that project the image of the grapple target onto a pattern . So either we forbid any mismatch of roll angle greater than, let's say 10 degrees, and the grabbing becomes even more challenging, or we stay like this and tolerate mismatch? May be temporarily, just for the time to have a canvas end effector camera
(woo, that would be cool!).
So, I would definitely encourage people with a corresponding background in C++/OSG to look at those patches and the wiki, check back with Fernando and Jules (ideally via the developers mailing list) and literally "start hacking at the code", while sharing early & often
And indeed, this is exactly how the current set of patches came to be, too - long before Jules and Fernando touched those (dating back to F-JJTH/Clement prototyping those in 2016):
Gear view in cockpit computer