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Wildfire Addon

FlightGear has support for add-ons, to further extend the simulator's core functionality.

Re: Wildfire Addon

Postby wlbragg » Wed Sep 22, 2021 8:06 am

I fixed a mistake in the land cover determination logic. It was broken. I also added a really cool search and rescue feature. It places, at random time and distance, same as the fire ignition, a person and a small campfire to locate and rescue. It's not finished and I have some checks to still put in place. But the base is done and it is a blast. Go to CL35 or any remote location and set the random range at max and whatever min/max time you want and click on the S&R timer start and wait for your mission. It is not easy to locate the single person model with a small campfire column of smoke next to them even when you have the exact coordinates. Part of the future features will be a selectable randomization of how close you want the incident report to get you to the scene. It should work on water as well and indicate a drowning. I didn't have time to test that portion, but it should work, so long as the human model doesn't sink. I also haven't removed the campfire smoke from the water incident either, so that might be a little funky. I suppose it could be boat debris still smoldering.

As far as this search and rescue feature, it really doesn't go with the wildfire addon, but I had all the underlying code set up for the random fire and thus was so easy to add a S&R feature. There has been discussion for years and a few attempts to do a mission generator. That is something I have been planning on doing from way back, eventually. My vision is really elaborate and also why I am preparing multiple aircraft with specific utility features. It's part of the masterplan, should I live long enough to create it. Nothing meant by that, only that time flies when your having so much fun and it is something I have been visualizing and thinking about for several years.
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Re: Wildfire Addon

Postby Hooray » Wed Sep 22, 2021 8:58 pm

wlbragg wrote in Wed Sep 22, 2021 7:53 am:Does anyone know how to "easily" get a canvas dialog that is sizable with the mouse? I can't find anything in the API that makes sense to me to make a sizable dialog canvas. I did see an example of making a dialog "scrollable". Although it wasn't all that clear as to how to use it. At least on my first attempt.


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myCanvasWindow.set('resize',1);
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Re: Wildfire Addon

Postby wlbragg » Wed Sep 22, 2021 9:34 pm

Thanks you, I figured it had to be something really simple as it is a very basic feature of a dialog window.

If you know, where is the documentation that particular flag is noted, or a documented example? I'm curious how dumb I really am and if i looked right at it and didn't see it.

FYI to anyone following. I am just about to push another update. Just polishing the S&R logic and features. Now when you locate the lost or drowned victim and get within 10 direct to meters of the victim it will clear the scene of the fire and human model and report it was found. If the victim is on the ground you have to have WOW condition on all wheels. I may add some kind of timer in which you have to complete the mission or fail to find a live body, maybe I'll let the campfire go out of control if you fail :). This type of mission will come only when I make features that make finding the victim much harder. Maybe a grid search system or something like that. That type of mission would come later with a full fledged mission generator.

I need to stop and separate this S&R functionality to a new addon before it gets too big. It's interesting how certain parts of three different addons could potentially be related and have crossover. Like the water systems and rope systems in the cargo towing addon relate to the wildfire addon and a S&R addon.

I'm so impressed by the FlightGear infrastructure and what it is capable of.
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Re: Wildfire Addon

Postby wlbragg » Thu Sep 23, 2021 7:46 am

I pushed my latest work and the Search and Rescue feature is finished for now.

I added the ability to limit what is reported on the incident report. You can now report any or none of the following data...

Latitude
Longitude
Heading
Range

Just uncheck what you don't want reported to make it more difficult.

There is also a checkbox for "Faint Smoke". Faint smoke is the default and even when the incident report is reporting all data it can be difficult to find the victim. The faint smoke is simulating a campfire, not an SOS type of signal fire. If you uncheck "Faint Smoke" the smoke will be darker and more noticeable, more like a signal fire.

I extended the search range max out to a little over 14 miles, 24000 meters.

Check it out, great fun and usable with any aircraft.

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Re: Wildfire Addon

Postby erik » Thu Sep 23, 2021 8:51 am

Funny, my first impression was: There are still areas where our normal scenery isn't up to par. Until I realized it's actually photo scenery which disappoints.

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Re: Wildfire Addon

Postby wlbragg » Thu Sep 23, 2021 6:13 pm

Photo scenery without a lot of custom cover ground cover does leave much to be desired. Especially at low altitude. But I still prefer seeing everything as I know it in real life over a semi close facsimile. It needs work though. I think we all know what that is. I also think making photo scenery available in FG was very important. The most accurate scenery I have is custom scenery covers and objects mixed with photo scenery as it's base. I proved to myself that my custom scenery without a photo base was almost as good as it was with the photo base. The difference for me was the reality of the scene. With the photo base it was so close to what I would see if I ran over to my local airport and went sightseeing, without it it was less close but still recognizable. Without either is is abysmal in my neck of the woods and photo scenery is by an order of magnitude at least more recognizable.

It is quite rewarding to know what your seeing is close to accurate. Our default scenery has always left me wanting more, thus why I originally got into the custom scenery generation. I imagine it is a little bi different in the areas of the world where much effort and time has gone into the custom scenery, such as Europe. But the North American continent is so bad overall, no water bodies or poorly shaped ones, completely inaccurate shorelines, vast stretches of inaccurate ground cover types and city boundaries that were poorly defined from data obtained 15 years ago. It just isn't moving. I really am not convinced that the new effort is going to fix this. Because, it will still need people to "customize" everything. Same as we have now. We may end up with better tools to do it however. I think we should marry a photo base with custom overlays and I am but hoping that the new stratagem will suit that better. But in the meantime custom scenery generation has all but stopped. Mainly because there never was a good method to incorporate custom efforts by individuals. There was always some hurdle to cross. In my efforts with custom scenery it was to heavy for the masses. Yes, it took a higher end CPU/GPU. Not the highest, but certainly a gaming GPU of some kind. So we were stuck with really crappy unrealistic scenery in vast portions of the world. All the tools in the world won't help much if the base is not sound, there is not enough people using those tools and what is done is not consolidated.

Don't get me started, :) I have a strong opinion of scenery and where I think it needs to be.

I feel like we are also letting real world data acquisition falter. We need some work on airport data I think. I don't use it much, but to those that do, those that use the simulator for real world application or training, I'm afraid it is degrading at a notable rate.

Sorry, scenery is a trigger for me. I want my scenery like I want my aircraft or the atmosphere or the real world meta data. As accurate to real world as I can get it. If any piece is missing, then it lessons my experience.

In the back of my mind though I know if I want to put the time to it. I can fix any piece of the puzzle. That's what keeps me interested.
My problem is I want it all!
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Re: Wildfire Addon

Postby wlbragg » Thu Sep 23, 2021 6:31 pm

OK, in fairness to all the people that have worked so hard on the default scenery throughout the years, here it is with default scenery.

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Re: Wildfire Addon

Postby wlbragg » Thu Sep 23, 2021 6:39 pm

Just for kicks. Here is a comparison of two different scenery rendering options in FlightGear. What a great open source simulator!



I can say because I know this area well that the ground cover on the hills are not correct in either example, especially at low altitude. This is chaparral country. If a victim was lost in the brush, you'd never see them. I've hiked these hills and it is so thick and tall in areas, you can't get through it. I suppose if we can render pine forests, we can render chaparral cover just as easily.
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Re: Wildfire Addon

Postby merspieler » Thu Sep 23, 2021 8:48 pm

wlbragg wrote in Thu Sep 23, 2021 6:13 pm:I also think making photo scenery available in FG was very important.


I've got a GPL2 compatible test package which I plan to drop in the next few days...
If I get support from the community and core devs we could have it in terrasync before the end of the year.
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Re: Wildfire Addon

Postby wlbragg » Thu Sep 23, 2021 9:10 pm

Really, I'll be paying attention. I'm curious about the details.
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Re: Wildfire Addon

Postby wlbragg » Fri Sep 24, 2021 7:15 am

I decided to decouple the search and rescue feature and the generate random fire feature from the wildfire addon. I've created a new addon called Mission Generator and put both of these features in it. The random fire feature in the Mission Generator requires the Wildfire addon to be enabled. The Search and Rescue feature will stand on its own. I decided to do this so we can grow the mission generator addon with virtually anything. I should be pushing all of it in the next day or two.
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Re: Wildfire Addon

Postby erik » Fri Sep 24, 2021 7:58 am

wlbragg wrote in Thu Sep 23, 2021 6:39 pm:Just for kicks. Here is a comparison of two different scenery rendering options in FlightGear. What a great open source simulator!

First off, I'm not against photo scenery but I really believe that properly fine tuned non-photo scenery (with the latest vector data, the previous run was way too coarse for America) can be as good at higher altitude and much better at low altitude.

Photo scenery is a much too easy fix for a difficult problem.

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Re: Wildfire Addon

Postby merspieler » Fri Sep 24, 2021 8:12 am

photoscenery is no easy fix, once you factor in procuring license compatible material, generating it (especially at the borders) and especially distribution.

It's true that it starts lacking at low alts tho... depending on the resolution.
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Re: Wildfire Addon

Postby wlbragg » Fri Sep 24, 2021 9:02 am

I'm not against photo scenery but I really believe that properly fine tuned non-photo scenery (with the latest vector data, the previous run was way too coarse for America) can be as good at higher altitude and much better at low altitude


I don't disagree with that. But lacking the manhours and manpower to make that hi-fidelity custom scenery, photo scenery is a decent representation at a higher altitude.

As far as an entire worlds worth of scenery, I don't think it is possible to create realistic, completely accurate to real life, scenery manually. Although with products like the NLCD as a base for the generation, you would have a decent shot at it, if you could find that type of product for the entire world. I think if we had competed a North American run with that data, then it would be better then any stand alone photo scenery.
Ideally, make a program that could look at photo scenery, parse it to land cover type masks and use that as a deep base layer to build custom scenery on top of, that would be the ultimate. I think you could build the most accurate scenery with that type of system.
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Re: Wildfire Addon

Postby wlbragg » Fri Sep 24, 2021 9:12 am

FYI:
The Wildfire addon has been reverted to the original wildfire product. There is now a new Mission Generator addon available.
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