Crashpilot wrote:Stuart, I thank you for your answer, and I think you are mostly right. Just one thing I ask you to consider: Is there really a sharp distinction between contributing and non-contributing people? Your text sounded a little bit like there is a "we" and "they" to me. But isn't there a group between those entities? I think so, and I believe most non-developers posting here belong to it.
You make a good point - there isn't a black-and-white distinction - that's largely just a strawman that I've put up.
However, I've lost count of the number of times people state "I'd love to contribute to FG, but I don't know any C++", which a lot of the time is a bit of a cop out. I think these people _could_ contribute valuably in a variety of ways.
The issues identified in this topic will only get addressed with voluntary effort, and the best way to make that happen is for people to roll up their sleeves and get involved. Most of the current contributors are extremely busy people and don't have the bandwidth to address new issues.
Just to give you an idea, here's what I currently do in FG on top of a full time job, moving house and preparing for a baby in September:
- Moderate the forums
- (Sometimes) edit the newsletter
- Maintain The Manual
- Maintain c172p, pitts1c, vulcanb2, flash2a, c182, c182rg
- 3D clouds & trees (though these are basically complete now)
- Random enhancements (currently looking at improving AI aircraft performance)
Only the last two of these require C++, and only the first of these requires a signficant time commitment, yet together they represent a lot of time.
Crashpilot wrote:I am subscribed to the mailing list for over 2 (maybe three?) years now, I am monitoring IRC as often as possible, and I am reading a lot in flightgears wiki and forum. I am currently learning C/C++ and I recently wrote just for fun (or for self-education) a standalone autopilot using flightgears socket- and telnet-interface (unfortunately I lagged control engineering skills, but at least the communication uplink/downlink worked). Sometimes my real live (work, family) demand my time, and all those projects hibernate for month.
To make a long story short, admitted, I have never contributed anything useful to flightgear, nonetheless I just don't feel like the guy who just downloaded flightgear considering it as a "free game", and who starts to rant about it in the forum after he "played" it for a while. And I guess many people here feel like that. Please be aware of that.
Understood.
It would be great if you could write a couple of paragraphs on your autopilot investigations for the next edition of the FG Newsletter. That would be very interesting, and would only take 30 minutes or so.
-Stuart