Feature Poll

[Sebulba]

What would you want to see most of all in the next flight gear major release? You got 3 votes!

[Hooray]

What would you want to see most of all in the next flight gear major release? You got 3 votes!

Don't you think it would have been better, to first collect suggestions for features and then start a corresponding poll??

[Sebulba]

i believe i covered every possible suggestion but even if i didn't one can always write an answer including something else

[xyz32]

For "Space Flight Support" it will be nice to merge FG with Orbiter or better yet with Celestia

[Sebulba]

For "Space Flight Support" it will be nice to merge FG with Orbiter or better yet with Celestia

that is a great idea but in the case of the orbiter i don't know what is going on with the licence

[xyz32]

Another problem with orbiter is the fact that it is using DirectX and I don't know if there is an abstraction level between the code and the engine. As for the licence doesn't look like it is using GPL http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/disclaimer.html

[simbabeat]

And it would be absolute hell to try and merge two programs into one.

[someguy]

Most important: the ability to disable stuff that isn't supported on computers that don't have the latest video cards, to get the frame rate back up into double digits and stop the freezes whenever a new user spawns.

Other than that, shadows would be nice.

[flameout]

This should probably be split into a separate thread, but I have to mention this.

You mentioned space flight. A month ago (os so,) I really looked hard for an open-source spaceflight simulator. I could not find one (Orbiter is freeware.) However, very recently, I ran across OpenOrbit (I'm not sure about its capitalization.) This is a spaceflight simulator that is in its early stages. I may begin to focus on it, rather than FlightGear, as my main open-source project.

Here are my three wanted features:
1. Graphics throttling, I envisioned something where it would automatically change the detail level to keep the framerate constant.
2. Improved aircraft.
3. More reliability (not actually a feature, but having it work with no additional configuration on a larger variety of systems is always a goal.)

I hope we get most of these features -- but some of them are just not FlightGear's goals.

[simbabeat]

1. Graphics throttling, I envisioned something where it would automatically change the detail level to keep the framerate constant.

Ya that would be nice. In X-PLANE the game automatically manages all rendering options and automatically sets the best detail levels for the framerate you specify as the target framerate. Now of course, you can override the sim's rendering decisions but if you are more for framerate than eye candy it is very nice. This probably wouldn't be to hard to implement either. FlightGear obviously knows what framerate it currently has and it could be told to automatically turn something off if a certain framerate comes up and automatically turn it on at a certain framerates. Some good info to know for developing that would be approximately how many framerates a feature takes up when turned on. Say I'm getting 50, then I turn something on and it goes to 42, that features framerate effect would be 8fps. So Flightgear could be told to automatically turn features on at a certain framerate without the framerate dipping 24. I say 24 because 24 is the industry medium (correct me if I'm wrong here) for video. Soooo anyway that would be cool....

Cheers

[flameout]

Actually, I just looked through my FGDevel email folder, and found that there is currently a huge discussion about terrain detail level adjustment. This may be a new feature soon.

I hope this helps.

[MD-Terp]

I say 24 because 24 is the industry medium (correct me if I'm wrong here) for video.

I believe motion picture (film) is 24, and television (and videotape) is 36...??

[simbabeat]

Hmmmm why would television be so much higher?

[Sebulba]

Actually, I just looked through my FGDevel email folder, and found that there is currently a huge discussion about terrain detail level adjustment. This may be a new feature soon.

I hope this helps.

It would be very helpful if any of the developers came here and give us such info for sure. But we are just trying to lead them into the desired direction here aren't we? Anyway i think the results of the poll are starting to be clear. We need improvement on the current(many) aircrafts, better terrain (more accurate and better looking), and improved performance. I believe these three things for the time being are the most desired from the users

[redneck]

Does it matter? Graphics throttling would be awesome! When I can get 20 fps just by checking a couple boxes, I'll be VERY happy with FG.