FlightGear World Scenery 2.0 released

[Hooray]

yes, please tell us how to proceed to help with seeding a torrent - I have access to several servers with unlimited 100 MBIT bandwidth, so that could surely help in the beginning.
FlightGear RAM & Performance issues: http://wiki.flightgear.org/Subsystem-le ... FlightGear

[f-ojac]

@adrian terrafit -e 10 and maxnodes 20000

[cjp]

First of all, thanks for the hard work. The new screenshots look awesome!

I'm here because of a problem though: since November 2nd, my Flightgear no longer starts. I believe this has something to do with the World Scenery 2.0 release, since I can resolve it by manually reverting the airports directories to SVN revision 22556.

I have Flightgear 2.4.0-1, as supplied with Linux Mint 13 (probably from Ubuntu 12.04 repositories). I start it with the "fgrun" FlightGear wizard. It generates the following fgfs command:

Code: Select all

/usr/games/fgfs
  --fg-root=/usr/share/games/flightgear
  --fg-scenery=/home/cjp/.fgfs/scenery/
  --airport=FAPE
  --aircraft=777-200ER
  --control=joystick
  --enable-random-objects
  --enable-auto-coordination
  --enable-horizon-effect
  --enable-enhanced-lighting
  --enable-ai-models
  --enable-real-weather-fetch
  --enable-clouds3d
  --prop:/sim/menubar/autovisibility/enabled=1
  --geometry=1024x768
  --bpp=32
  --texture-filtering=2
  --timeofday=noon
  --atlas=socket,out,5,localhost,5500,udp
  --prop:/sim/rendering/texture-compression=off
  --log-level=warn


(note: I've enabled automatic scenery download in the directory "/home/cjp/.fgfs/scenery/"; this is probably why I'm automatically receiving the 2.0 scenery files.)

When running, it crashes with the following debug output:

Code: Select all

Processing command line arguments
Unknown font name '', defaulting to Helvetica
Unknown font name '', defaulting to Helvetica
Unknown font name '', defaulting to Helvetica
fgfs: runways.cxx:150: void FGRunway::processThreshold(SGPropertyNode*): Assertion `ident() == aThreshold->getStringValue("rwy")' failed.


I apologize if this is not the right thread for such bug reports, but I thought it was strongly related to the World Scenery 2.0 release. You might want to have a look at it, and fix the release if the problem is in the data files.

[f-ojac]

I guess your version is probably too old to understand the 850 format. 2.4 is a really old version, you should really consider installing 2.12 because a lot of bugs were fixedand enhancements pushed. We are not so many from this side to use 2.4, so it'll be hard to give more support on an outdated version.

[Johan G]

I guess your version is probably too old to understand the 850 format. 2.4 is a really old version, you should really consider installing 2.12 because a lot of bugs were fixedand enhancements pushed.

Is the 2.12 version the oldest one supporting the 850 format and thus the new World scenery?

[punkepanda]

2.12 is the newest stable realease and yes it supports the new 2.0 scenery. You should uninstall the 2.4 and its config directories and start with the new fresh 2.12 installation if you want to experience all the latest features.

There is also a development version on https://gitorious.org/fg (if you are familiar with compiling from source)
Use "git clone" to make a local copy of the ongoing development version (Usually pretty stable)

Good fly with FlightGear

[f-ojac]

I *think* 2.8 did also - but frankly, wouldn't it be better to migrate to 2.12 rather than 2.8 or 2.10 ?
I may miss something in your questions.

[Johan G]

Nope, I think you fully understood me. And yes updating to 2.12 would be optimal, provided I can run it, but I have not gotten that far yet (though I have had it downloaded for a while).

The reason I asked is to figure out what to add to the wiki about which version that would be the oldest one capable of using the new world scenery and TerraSync scenery from now on.

I will probably keep the old TerraSync scenery (probably by renaming the directory), as I have planned to be able to have all stable versions past 2.0.0 installed at some undefined point in the future. The reason to have them all would be to able to try understand the differences and pitfalls in trying to get aircraft flyable on all versions. Unfortunately it seems less and less practically possible, which quite make me understand the current situation where most aircraft developers expect the users to have the latest stable version (or even sometimes the bleeding edge GIT). (It's not your fault in particular though, I'm just venting some steam...)

[chris_blues]

As I understand it, and I may be wrong!, it's good to choose the latest version, because there have been several bug-fixes, performance-optimizations etc.
I've always been on git-level, but being on at least the release-level has it advantages, I gather...
my 2 pennies

[f-ojac]

@JohanG, ok, got it. I'm not expecting you to have latest git to run the new terrain, but sometimes changes have to be made in the code to be able to add new features. In our car, it wad necessary to update the code to make fg able to read 850 data. So this was made a lot of months ago. However, that's sure that, if I remember my first version of fg, 0.9.7, I'm not expecting the new terrain to be fully compatible with it, and that's the case with a lot of other programs I can think of.

[punkepanda]

Just wanted to share a couple if pics in my first test flight in the new World Scenery...Enjoy!!

This is of the famous mountans and fjords in Norway at "Trollveggen". "Eng: Troll Wall"

You can clearly see the rembrandt doing its work on casting shadows of the souranding mountain tops in the valley.


A stunt landing on the top of the Troll Wall. "Dont try this in at home"


Here with some bether view of the far away mountain tops


More info about the amazing place here: http://www.lovethesepics.com/2011/06/am ... e-33-pics/



Its an amazing work this scenery devolopers have done. I did compare some screenshots of FGFS againt both X-Plane and FSX and I must say the FlightGear scenery starts to rock on the clifs!!


To be continued.....

[Soitanen]

Why "textured-lines" option was not used in this generation?

[Hooray]

I have planned to be able to have all stable versions past 2.0.0 installed at some undefined point in the future. The reason to have them all would be to able to try understand the differences and pitfalls in trying to get aircraft flyable on all versions.

=> new features, and changes in old ones.

Unfortunately it seems less and less practically possible, which quite make me understand the current situation where most aircraft developers expect the users to have the latest stable version (or even sometimes the bleeding edge GIT). (It's not your fault in particular though, I'm just venting some steam...)

It's actually a good thing, because it means that core development is making progress - the real issue here is that there's no conscious effort to prevent breakage, i.e. by maintaining a minimal degree of backwards compatibility. Basically, we shouldn't be removing/renaming features (think APIs), but rather provide migration layers for 1-2 release cycles - obviously, it takes more time to implement such layers that translate new features into APIs understood by aircraft that haven't been updated.

Honestly, the way aircraft development is conducted, it is challenging to accommodate such needs - because, it's also not possible to maintain/update aircraft in a semi-automated/scripted fashion, due to their arbitrary internal structure, empowered by XML, the property tree and scripting.

At the end of the day, it's really up to aircraft developers to keep things up-to-date for different versions, that it's possible can be seen in examples like the bluebird - whose author/developer seems aware of major changes between different releases, and puts a conscious effort into abstracting away differences by using different *-set.xml files for different FG versions, and including shared/common stuff from there on. There's something to be learnt from such examples. But obviously it takes more time and energy to do this type of work, no matter if it's maintaining different -set.xml files for various FlightGear versions, or maintaining a certain degree of backwards compatibility in the core. In the end, time is a precious resource and we cannot expect people to find it more interesting to guarantee backwards compatibility, than working on new features. It can however, as could be seen in Thorsten's weather package or flug's bombable addon - both being much more complex and sophisticated than your average aircraft, but both "addons" supporting a wide range of FlightGear versions (up to a point), due to conscious design efforts.

But please don't expect 2013-era aircraft like the 707 to work in FlightGear 1.9:



Subject: Citation X CVS to FG 1.9.1

Quoting myself:

http://flightgear.org/forums/viewtopic. ... ity#p95615

This is not at all about "backward compatibility" - what you are asking for is sort of "forward compatibility".

What you have basically done is creating a document in "Microsoft Office 2010", and now you expect to be able to open this document in "Microsoft Office 97".

This is of course not possible. You have used new features that didn't exist in previous versions of FlightGear - FlightGear is improving, and you are basically complaining about the fact that these new features were not yet available in prior FlightGear versions.

Backward compatibility is about supporting features of past software versions in new/future versions. You are asking for the reverse.

To explain this even more bluntly: If users started to use YOUR aircraft now with FG 2.0, they would probably complain that YOUR aircraft was not implemented with backward compatibility in mind - simply because your work doesn't work with older FG versions.

Weird world, isn't it

We should probably copy this to the FAQ?

I use Ubuntu 10.04 because of the long term commitment to support for this version, I have flightgear 2.4 and find now that most developments eg aircraft etc are not backward compatible, ie a330-200 series doesn't work and many other things

I don't think that's a particularly fair thing to ask, and I don't think you can run FSX airplanes on Microsoft FlightSim 8 (which is the proper comparison).

FG is (in a limited way) backward compatible in such that a 2.9 binary runs many airplanes which have been released with 2.4. What you're asking however is forward compatibility, i.e. a 2.4 binary should be able to run airplanes for future releases - and that's just impossible to do.

New airplanes rely on new features present in the binary - for example a lot of MFD and HUD technology is now being built around canvas. Cavas doen't exist in 2.4, so there is no way this can be supported properly, even if we wanted to. If you have 2.4, you'll need to use airplanes released for 2.4.

We should probably add this in some way to the wiki, because it seems to be a rather common complaint:
http://flightgear.org/forums/viewtopic. ... ty#p148559

That said, some aircraft are obviously developed with backward compatibility in mind, such as the bluebird and a handful of others which provide different versions for different FG binaries. But like Thorsten said, this is only to a certain extent possible - and it is obviously a lot of work for the aircraft developers. Flug's bombable addon is another excellent example of an addon that is developed in a fashion to retain backward compatibility with earlier FG versions, and Thorsten's local/advanced weather systen is another example actually. However, this is obviously only possible to a certain degree. For example, Tom's canvas system is also being developed such that backward compatibility is an explicit design feature, yet - you will obviously need a binary that provides the canvas system, despite all the Nasal-space wrappers...

[f-ojac]

Why "textured-lines" option was not used in this generation?

Because there have been no new terrain for 5 years at least, quite a lot of "complaints" of not having a new worldwide terrain, and because we are doing it step by step. Having a terrain with all bells and whistles on would have meant to postpone this terrain for some more few months to check for the absence of regressions on a worwide basis, etc... But we wanted something good to show for 3.0... And try to merge custom scenery data within the official fg terrain too.
But now the toolchain is pretty well approved, the best is now probably yet to come... And the feature you mentioned is on the to-do list.

[Bjoern]

Incredibly dumb questions: Does the new terrain replace the old one in Terrasync? And is it available now or only after the upload is entirely done?