stuart wrote:So we really need a single consistent weather state that's pushed out to all the clients via the MP server. A full set of /environment/layer properties, plus cloud positions would probably be adequate.
This probably means a single weather server for the entire MP environment that's pushing out weather state for each of the MP users. We'd either need to proxy this via the MP server, or have clients connect to it separately.
Such a server could also provide a consistent set of AI shipping and other AI aircraft. It would also have the opportunity to do much more interesting weather simulation, free from the constraints of having to run a simulator at the same time.
Like I said previously, that pretty much sums up my own thoughts, too.
Distributed systems are neat and interesting, but there are so many potential shortcomings that cannot be easily addressed.
But, I would certainly be interested in helping come up with a distributed prototype using Anders' "MP channels" to see how far we can get in the meantime.
On the other hand, the multiplayer protocol is severely limited already, there's simply a hard limit that can be reached pretty quickly, this also applies to fgms obviously. So, I have also always thought in terms of a separate "environment server" for such state.
I can't seem to find the related forum thread currently, but personally I would suggest to think in terms of having a METAR-like server, with a higher resolution (i.e. more stations per area) that handles interpolation etc - that server could also have its own Nasal interpreter to run certain code there. Jentron mentioned this 4 years ago: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2172&p=17200&hilit=metar+server#p17200
Most of this sounds fairly complicated and advanced at the moment, but once we have network access in Nasal (i.e. socket support) and possibly a dedicated server-side property tree, it wouldn't be all that complex to come up with a dedicated Nasal interpreter that may run as a "weather server" in a standalone fashion, and push out property updates to all connected clients, similar to the concept employed by Torsten's FGPanel code: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=15132&p=150341&hilit=#p150341
On the other hand, all of this is touching a number of areas that will be directly affected by the ongoing HLA work.