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FGRUN 1.7.0 No TerraSync folder select button

FGRun is a no-longer maintained graphical frontend to run FlightGear.

Re: FGRUN 1.7.0 No TerraSync folder select button

Postby zakalawe » Thu Oct 10, 2013 9:59 am

wlbragg wrote in Thu Oct 10, 2013 5:04 am:Aesthetically speaking, why do you need to select starting location or aircraft from launch control? You could just start the game and then select it. Why have a launch control at all?

Actually, that's the goal, to get rid of the launchers for the common users, but first I need to fix the sim so you can select aircraft from within.

Once that is done, the role of the launchers changes exactly as you said, to a way for advanced users to customise settings without needed to edit command lines - and I'm absolutely agreed that is a reasonable use case - we sure don't want to try to create UI for every customisation option inside the sim!

The problem is right now the launcher has to do both tasks, and I care more about novice users than I do about your experience, because I'm confident you will ask or complain if you can't make something work. Novice users will simply walk away without us ever hearing their problems. Like I said, the solution here is simple - make an 'advanced' section for FGRun, or more likely make a new 'simple' section, and mark the entire existing UI as advanced apart from aircraft selection. Please feel free to work on doing that, I will be happy to help with advice on the coding!

wlbragg wrote in Thu Oct 10, 2013 5:04 am:are scenery files app data or user data? I guess I would lean towards app data except we have custom scenery which then I would categorize as user data. Lots of games use the users\Documents directory to store their settings, states, saved game data and other variable data in so maybe it would be a better fit for scenery.
If I was making the decision, I would put it in a Documents\flightgear.org\data\terrasync or something to that effect so users know it is there and can decide whether or not they want that much data on their system drive.
As long as we have the option to move it wherever we want I guess that will have to do. It wouldn't be the first thing I moved out of its default location because I disagreed with the authors reasoning for having it there.


Right, you could argue this either way. Some of the files we have a definitely AppData - the autosave files and aircraft XML state which records liveries, and the nav-cache. TerraSync and downloaded aircraft could be considered documents. I'd be happy to change the default path to 'Documents/FlightGear' if a majority of Windows users think that's a better location, I am no Windows expert at all!
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Re: FGRUN 1.7.0 No TerraSync folder select button

Postby Johan G » Thu Oct 10, 2013 11:14 am

About where to put what on a windows box, this is most probably relevant: For Developers: Windows Install and Runtime Best-Practices.

Kind of gives me even more feelings towards having my next computer primarily running some kind of Linux, whenever that might be.
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Re: FGRUN 1.7.0 No TerraSync folder select button

Postby wlbragg » Thu Oct 10, 2013 5:36 pm

I care more about novice users than I do about your experience, because I'm confident you will ask or complain if you can't make something work.

Sounds fair!


make an 'advanced' section for FGRun, or more likely make a new 'simple' section, and mark the entire existing UI as advanced apart from aircraft selection. Please feel free to work on doing that, I will be happy to help with advice on the coding!

I can agree with all of that.


About where to put what on a windows box, this is most probably relevant: For Developers: Windows Install and Runtime Best-Practices.

I think we meet in the middle here. Terrasync needs to be back a couple layers at
drive:\Users\account\flightgear.org\TerraSync
instead of
drive:\Users\account\AppData\Roaming\flightgear.org\TerraSync
like I said before, AppData and beyond by default is hidden.


Kind of gives me even more feelings towards having my next computer primarily running some kind of Linux, whenever that might be.

I agree, but if someone doesn't run win, who's gonna keep an eye on the fg crew sticking things where they don't belong. :lol:
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Re: FGRUN 1.7.0 No TerraSync folder select button

Postby Johan G » Thu Oct 10, 2013 7:41 pm

wlbragg wrote in Thu Oct 10, 2013 5:36 pm:I agree, but if someone doesn't run win, who's gonna keep an eye on the fg crew sticking things where they don't belong. :lol:

I'm not sure if that would make things worse or not; :wink: from reading another post by Jim in the topic i linked to above it would seem that not all Windows-only developers know (or can figure out) where to put what! :roll: :lol:

jharris1993 wrote in Fri Apr 19, 2013 4:47 pm:...this list represents many years of work in a Windows Software QA environment, working to figure out what even the developers didn't know about at that point in time.
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Re: FGRUN 1.7.0 No TerraSync folder select button

Postby Gijs » Tue Oct 22, 2013 10:37 pm

In current Git there's now a "TerraSync directory" option on the General section of the Advanced dialog. This allows you to set the directory to which TerraSync should download its data. If left empty, the default directory in FG_HOME/TerraSync is used. The TerraSync directory is automatically added to FG_SCENERY, so no need to have this directory listed on the first page of the launcher (unless you want to set it's priority).

James will remove the directory dropdown from the in-sim dialog, as it is no longer used.
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Re: FGRUN 1.7.0 No TerraSync folder select button

Postby zakalawe » Tue Oct 22, 2013 10:42 pm

wlbragg wrote in Thu Oct 10, 2013 5:36 pm:Terrasync needs to be back a couple layers at
drive:\Users\account\flightgear.org\TerraSync

Dumb question - are we allowed to write to such a location? I.e the root of the user's account? That feels very intrusive to me - I can believe making it a subdirectory of Documents so it's visible is useful for some people, but adding a new root directory in $HOME seems drastic and much more unfriendly. Looking at my Windows 7 box no app I've installed so far does that.
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Re: FGRUN 1.7.0 No TerraSync folder select button

Postby Alant » Tue Oct 22, 2013 10:57 pm

Yes, you can write there.

The biggest problem is that it is , by default, a hidden directory and windows explorer does not normally show it.

This default can be over-ridden, but only by those who have started on the path to becoming windows "experts".

Changing the default makes all hidden files and folders on the computer visible so may not be advisable on a computer that is used by others (e.g. the kids). Most of these files are hidden to make it hard for the casual user to break installed applications by editing or deleting them.

If you don´t already know the trick, See http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/wind ... =windows-7
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Re: FGRUN 1.7.0 No TerraSync folder select button

Postby penta » Tue Nov 05, 2013 8:42 am

I've a question about the use of terrasync with FGRUN: how can I make terrasync download an airport that I don't already have locally? I can find the ICAO code only of the already downloaded scenery.
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Re: FGRUN 1.7.0 No TerraSync folder select button

Postby wlbragg » Mon Nov 11, 2013 10:40 pm

As far as I know you can't I just ran into that and had to go int FGFS and change to that Airport from there.
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Re: FGRUN 1.7.0 No TerraSync folder select button

Postby Gijs » Mon Nov 11, 2013 10:45 pm

This requires a little more work. The airport selection in FGRun was never designed to have you start at a scenery-less location. With James' recent work, FlightGear downloads the scenery before it starts, so we now need to display all 20,000 airports from apt.dat. I'll need to have a look at the code to see if that's worth implementing and if it doesn't take too long to parse all those airports. Else I'll just add a text field where you can input the ICAO code.
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Re: FGRUN 1.7.0 No TerraSync folder select button

Postby ludomotico » Wed Nov 13, 2013 10:51 am

Gijs wrote in Mon Nov 11, 2013 10:45 pm:Else I'll just add a text field where you can input the ICAO code.


This would be a very nice addition, IMHO. There is already a text field to input the ICAO code, but it is only used to filter the list of loaded airports. If you enter a code not in the list, fgrun selects an airport "close" (alphabetically speaking) to the input text. I would prefer that if the filter is not found, no airport is selected and AirportBrowser::get_selected_id() returns the text in id_ instead of returning an empty string. This would be an easy addition (only two lines of code that I will inmediatly write in my local copy of fgrun :)), and copes with areas not downloaded yet. This is my proposal:

Code: Select all
@@ -488,11 +488,18 @@ AirportBrowser::browser_cb()
     table_->browser_cb();
     show_runways( table_->get_selected() );
     show_parking( table_->get_selected() );
+    const apt_dat_t* apt = table_->get_selected();
+    if ( apt >= 0) {
+        id_->value ( apt->id_.c_str() );
+    }
 }
 
 string
 AirportBrowser::get_selected_id() const
 {
+    if ( strlen( id_->value() ) > 0 ) {
+        return string( id_->value() );
+    }
     const apt_dat_t* apt = table_->get_selected();
     return apt == 0 ? string("") : apt->id_;
 }


The only drawback using this approach is if the user enters a non-existing code. Currently, fgfs runs but resets the position to the default airport KSFO. Maybe fgfs must fail with an "airport not found" message, as it does if you enter a non-existing aircraft. In any case, this is unrelated to fgrun.
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Re: FGRUN 1.7.0 No TerraSync folder select button

Postby KL-666 » Thu Nov 28, 2013 4:45 pm

Hi All,

As a windows user, i would like to add something to the terrasync directory issue. Nowadays the combi of a small ssd system disk with a huge normal disk gets quite popular. In that config you can not have large data of all kinds of programs in the home directory.

It is not a problem to start off with the home directory. But if a user gets into trouble with a filling system disk, he will want to direct the terrasync data to his big normal disk. And if changing the terrasync directory is made hard to find, many questions will be asked about it on the forum.

So it would be a nice courtesy to have that somewhere in the gui, either in fgrun or the fg menu.

Kind regards, Vincent
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Re: FGRUN 1.7.0 No TerraSync folder select button

Postby Gijs » Thu Nov 28, 2013 4:52 pm

It's already in the new FGRun, see my comment slightly above: viewtopic.php?p=192307#p192307
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Re: FGRUN 1.7.0 No TerraSync folder select button

Postby KL-666 » Thu Nov 28, 2013 4:56 pm

Hi Gijs,

Sorry i read over that. Glad to know it is done.

Kind regards, Vincent
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