Well, all this may seem daunting at first - but once you actually start playing with it, you'll see that it's not all that difficult - the main showstopper/challenge that people typically face in situations like these is that they have HUGE expectations and they don't manage to adapt their expectations to their own skills, expertise and the degree of spare time that they're willing to invest.
For instance, here's a mission generator script (pseudo code) that only spits out "text missions":
- Code: Select all
var supported_aircraft = ["bo105", "c130", "r22"];
var supported_airports = ["KLSV", "KLAS", "KRNO"];
var supported_objectives = ["fly to ", "fly over", "land at"];
foreach(var aircraft; supported_aircraft) {
foreach(var airport; supported_airport) {
foreach(var objective; supported_objectives) {
var mission = sprintf("Mission generated for %s %s %s", aircraft, objective, airport);
print(mission);
}
}
}
(if I didn't make any typos, you can directly paste this into the Debug/Nasal console and execute the snippet)
Depending on your background this may seem too simple at first, or maybe a bit intimidating given those three nested foreach loops - but what it is really doing there is using all sorts of "variables" (aircraft, airport, objective) and creating combinations of all variables to create different missions. Equally, those variables could be randomized - e.g. to pick different groundspeeds, altitudes, time of day etc
Such a stub could be easily populated to create real missions using geo.nas helpers.
So all the building blocks are there - and we can even walk people through the whole who are completely new to Nasal, or programming altogether - it's mainly a matter of motivation and spare time, not so much skills/expertise - you'll learn along the way. That's how Thorsten created the Advanced Weather system, too.
You may want to dabble a bit with the Nasal snippet above - it can easily be extended.
PS: Meanwhile, you can indeed restart/re-init the sim without necessarily having to exit the sim:
http://wiki.flightgear.org/Reset_%26_re-inithttp://wiki.flightgear.org/Aircraft_Center