I really like this idea, and had another one, really no kidding, I had a thought of my own.
As time goes on, and more modern computers with blazing fast features and unimaginable memory sizes are created, good modelers of flightgear get to use/exploit these new computer features to create ever more complete realism for planes and scenery.
Unfortunately, for people such as myself, I may never afford to be able to upgrade my equipment for personal reasons I will not go into detail here...
But the panel idea is something I personally would like to see exploited and in a way that might help people like myself.
If the panel could be used on highly detailed memory intensive planes, then people like myself would not have to hack a plane model to completely comment out the model in order to get memory enough to fly. What I mean is, say adding an option to wizards that would run the FDM of the model, not show the model, but render the panel alone.
Also, in this vain, it would be nice to use the wizard to set up so that heavily modeled scenery could be selected OFF/ON so that memory demands are lower.
I think it a mistake to allow scenery developers to add scenery to the scene's database. The entire world should be downloadable with just runways, taxiways and airport tarmacs -- this would allow for a minimal memory system to run -- and then any airport or city scenes could be added to the system by a completely different and adjacent, more complete scenery system. Terrasync shoudl be re-created for this idea, so that someone can choose whether or not they want complete scenes, condidered more memory intensive, or just a basic scene package reflecting just runways, taxiways and airport tarmacs.
Otherwise, developers can continue to outclass many potential users of the software.
Just a thought
Ray
Ray St. Marie