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Airbus A320 [Family]

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Re: Airbus A320 [Family]

Postby jack » Wed Feb 16, 2011 8:04 am

Flightgear_captain wrote in Wed Feb 16, 2011 7:57 am:*scares away all users/MPers within 100m*


Translation:

*scares away all users that have no interest in a remotely accurate flight and just want to play a game within 100m*


:wink:
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Re: Airbus A320 [Family]

Postby Armchair Ace » Wed Feb 16, 2011 8:51 am

Take away the autostart if you want to, Skyop - if your startup procedure works properly, then it can be used as a sort of intelligence test. :) If you can't start the plane, you shouldn't fly it!

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Re: Airbus A320 [Family]

Postby nickyivyca » Wed Feb 16, 2011 9:08 am

The 787's never had autostart, and nobody's complained. I probably won't implement anything autostart related in it (or the CRJ-200) unless there are large amounts of complaints

So what I say? I say take the A320's autostart out. It's pretty easy for someone to use a built-in guide or look at the aircraft help dialog, whatever you're going to use.
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Re: Airbus A320 [Family]

Postby Gijs » Wed Feb 16, 2011 9:16 am

For testing autostart is a must-have feature. Also, what if FlightGear crashes during a flight? If I restart the flight in the air, I'd like to start the engines in an instant, rather than dropping to ground level before I'm finished with the checklist; knowing that I already went through the entire preflight phase on the same flight...

Just to indicate that the use of autostart isn't limited to people that "do not care to read" ;)
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Re: Airbus A320 [Family]

Postby Flightgear_captain » Wed Feb 16, 2011 9:38 am

i can just hack it to have the autostart.

btw I agree with Gijs- the autostart is good for testing. Please don't remove it. I don't want to be cursing hand coding in the autostart manually. I might have to do a hack though... :P
btw2: A jet is faaar removed from a piston engine- on a normal piston, you just hit ~ once and then } twice and you are on your way. But a jet? Noooo way! i can't even start the connie! (which is a piston, how ironic!) Only yesterday i started it, and the start procedure hard to remember. (the start instructions were wrong). I don't want the A320 to start out like the Connie- hard to start, mind boggling for noobs and incorrect instructions compounding the troubles. Please keep the A/Start- it will save us simmers a lot of time, allow quick crash recovery and save a lot of nagging in your PM inbox.
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Re: Airbus A320 [Family]

Postby scotth1 » Wed Feb 16, 2011 10:23 am

To be honest, the Airbus engine start procedure is not particularly difficult, we are not talking about a Tu-154 or anything here, however the starting in the air scenario is a possible problem area.

It recently happened to me that fgfs seg faulted during a descent during a MP event. I started the engines on the ground at the last starting position (I just up arrowed the command line) and then used Location -> Location in air with the engines running. I was then dropped mid air pointing up, but I can't remember the state the engines.

I did regain control about 14 000ft later... Not sure if a autostart would have saved me in this case, so it is a scenario you may want to try out, start the engines on the ground and then re-locate in air, obviously providing in air parameters to the command line is a different scenario and not particularly realistic and not related to the previous scenario of a FG un-commanded exit.


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Re: Airbus A320 [Family]

Postby Armchair Ace » Wed Feb 16, 2011 7:44 pm

Gijs wrote in Wed Feb 16, 2011 9:16 am:For testing autostart is a must-have feature. Also, what if FlightGear crashes during a flight? If I restart the flight in the air, I'd like to start the engines in an instant, rather than dropping to ground level before I'm finished with the checklist; knowing that I already went through the entire preflight phase on the same flight...

Just to indicate that the use of autostart isn't limited to people that "do not care to read" ;)


Well, I can see your point, but surely all you'd need to do to conduct your tests (and survive them) in an aircraft sans autostart is to start at a sensible altitude, and restart the engines while gliding - I suppose this could depend on what type of test you want to carry out, but still...

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Re: Airbus A320 [Family]

Postby skyop » Wed Feb 16, 2011 11:00 pm

Gijs wrote in Wed Feb 16, 2011 9:16 am:For testing autostart is a must-have feature. Also, what if FlightGear crashes during a flight? If I restart the flight in the air, I'd like to start the engines in an instant, rather than dropping to ground level before I'm finished with the checklist; knowing that I already went through the entire preflight phase on the same flight...


That's not going to help much, actually. All my autostart systems are not "instant-start," they actually go through the normal startup sequence.
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Re: Airbus A320 [Family]

Postby jack » Thu Feb 17, 2011 1:50 am

For testing, you could always just use the property browser. :wink:
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Re: Airbus A320 [Family]

Postby skyop » Fri Feb 18, 2011 1:01 am

Right now, I'm leaning towards disabling (commenting?) the autostart out for the next (possibly final) release. It seems to have few benefits.

Anyway, the A320 can now be started up realistically. In the past, without the OHP modelled, many of the A320's systems couldn't be modelled, so an autostart system made sense (like the 772ER, which despite popular belief is not a very complete aircraft system-wise IMHO). Now, starting up is a challenge, and kind of fun in a way. The startup procedure, as Scott mentioned earlier, is really not very complicated- the only hard part is getting the electrical system down. And a lot of the best aircraft for FG seem to lack autostart systems- the A380, the most complete Airbus aircraft in FG, for instance. (Starting up the A380 is really not very hard, BTW, once you get it down. The tutorial makes you follow the rules. :P )
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Re: Airbus A320 [Family]

Postby Tuxklok » Fri Feb 18, 2011 2:55 am

skyop wrote in Fri Feb 18, 2011 1:01 am:Right now, I'm leaning towards disabling (commenting?) the autostart out for the next (possibly final) release. It seems to have few benefits.

Though I almost always prefer things to be as realistic as possible, I do find auto starts very convenient at times..for example sim crashes, short on time, testing, flight training..etc. Normally I'd probably recommend to put things such as auto start and other similar types of things on hold and focus on real systems and other more important things. However in this case you apparently already have it implemented and working so I fail to see the point of removing it just for the hell of it. I don't see how keeping it can hurt anything, nor do I see how removing it would improve anything either...only abandon and/or alienate numerous users who prefer to have it for various legitimate reasons.

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Re: Airbus A320 [Family]

Postby Flightgear_captain » Fri Feb 18, 2011 7:02 am

I agree with Tuxklok. You will alienate me and other users who prefer to use it. If you uncomment the autostart, i might just recomment back in the a/s and re-release it here. How would you feel? :twisted: btw This was also commented in the tu154b thread, and someone said if you don't like the a/s, you don't have to click it. :wink: Please don't alienate your users.
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Re: Airbus A320 [Family]

Postby scotth1 » Fri Feb 18, 2011 10:19 am

skyop wrote in Fri Feb 18, 2011 1:01 am:Right now, I'm leaning towards disabling (commenting?) the autostart out for the next (possibly final) release. It seems to have few benefits.

Anyway, the A320 can now be started up realistically. In the past, without the OHP modelled, many of the A320's systems couldn't be modelled, so an autostart system made sense (like the 772ER, which despite popular belief is not a very complete aircraft system-wise IMHO). Now, starting up is a challenge, and kind of fun in a way. The startup procedure, as Scott mentioned earlier, is really not very complicated- the only hard part is getting the electrical system down. And a lot of the best aircraft for FG seem to lack autostart systems- the A380, the most complete Airbus aircraft in FG, for instance. (Starting up the A380 is really not very hard, BTW, once you get it down. The tutorial makes you follow the rules. :P )


I'm half way (more like 1/3) through writing a wiki tutorial on the A380 http://wiki.flightgear.org/index.php/A380_Tutorial , much of which should apply to the other recent Airbus equipment. I'm having some scenery fun at the moment so haven't touched the tutorial for over a month now, but it does cover the Autostart procedure (there is an extra step in real life, but I haven't modelled that on the A380 yet, but we are talking about an extra 2 seconds of effort at the most) and as you point out, it is in the built-in tutorial for the aircraft, I'm happy for you/me to add some general Airbus notes about common procedures in the wiki tutorial, but it should wait until I finish the tutorial, it needs quite a bit of editing as it stands.

Putting my software architects hat on, I'd say think about how you want to react to future releases of FG or the aircraft when the autostart may stop working (or you add features that can't be auto-started), do you want to; just drop it at that point, leave it for others to add into their own copies or leave it dormant.


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Re: Airbus A320 [Family]

Postby Alral » Fri Feb 18, 2011 6:49 pm

Looks nice on screenshot...one question - what should be modified to make this plane work on 1.9.1? And do engine-starting procedures preserve in this case?
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Re: Airbus A320 [Family]

Postby skyop » Fri Feb 18, 2011 11:34 pm

Autostart will remain on the Airbus A320 for the next release, which will be within the next couple hours.

Alral wrote in Fri Feb 18, 2011 6:49 pm:Looks nice on screenshot...one question - what should be modified to make this plane work on 1.9.1? And do engine-starting procedures preserve in this case?


If you get the release on the wiki, it should work fine with 1.9.1. But you can wait until the next (final?) version is completed, which will also be 1.9.1-compatible.
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