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Flightgear and vatsim

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Flightgear and vatsim

Postby dtlan201 » Thu Feb 06, 2014 9:26 am

Will flightgear join VATSIM like other flight simulator like Fsx or x plane?
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Re: Flightgear and vatsim

Postby Michat » Thu Feb 06, 2014 10:54 am

Yes, using SquawkGear.

http://squawkgear.wordpress.com/
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Re: Flightgear and vatsim

Postby dtlan201 » Fri Feb 07, 2014 6:59 am

I have used it but you are always Boeing 747. I mean something like offical softwear, tools
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Re: Flightgear and vatsim

Postby Hooray » Fri Feb 07, 2014 8:01 pm

Please don't send support requests by PM, instead post your questions on the forum so that all users can contribute and benefit
Thanks & all the best,
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Re: Flightgear and vatsim

Postby dtlan201 » Sat May 03, 2014 4:14 am

So when will we able to fly VATSIm
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Re: Flightgear and vatsim

Postby Hooray » Sat May 03, 2014 7:50 am

I'd say: don't hold your breath - there are typically a handful of VATSIM/IVAO related "efforts" (discussions) per year. Most of these take up weeks discussing things, with very little (usually nothing at all) materializing ultimately. Usually, people are either no experts in VATSIM/IVAO or simply not familiar with FG internals. There are some very real restrictions on the FG side of things, especially related to our MP infrastructure (fgms/MP protocol) but also licensing. None of this is impossible to solve, but it takes time for very little gain - if we suddenly had VATSIM/IVAO support, our MP system would become more popular, which it is not designed for. Personally, I consider it much more likely/worthwhile to support VATSIM et al once HLA is fully supported and used to modernize/re-implement our MP system.

There are a lot of people here who have a ton of ideas on MP, without really understanding how it works, and why extending it in its current form would not be a good idea - our MP system is one of those components that will greatly benefit from being re-implemented sooner or later. Discussing this with non-developers is kinda pointless however. HLA is the right technology here, as it also handles multi-instance state synchronization/replication, i.e. for distributed setups, or even just professional multi-machine setups.

Mostly, FlightGear is an extremely inconsistent piece of software with many features being either partially re-invented in other places, or even completely incompatible. Things like the MP protocol or the native/controls protocols, but also the generic protocols system, are basically solving the same underlying problem but were never unified, so have some great ideas and concepts that are usually incompatible still.

Anybody looking at implementing VATSIM/IVAO support should be aware of such restrictions in the first place, and be aware of who they're talking to, because we have an increasing number of users trying to contribute to development discussions that are way beyond their expertise, which is adding to the confusion obviously. Stilll, they're the ones responding to certain threads and providing feedback, which is misrepresenting that state of support from fellow developers.

There's areas in FG development where it doesn't make much sense TECHNICALLY to build on existing stuff any longer, i.e. stuff that needs to be yanked sooner or later, and that is even already in the process of being yanked by some of the most experienced core developers, the multiplayer system certainly qualifies as such a component, and all developers who are aware of this, are extremely hesitant to extend, or even just maintain, such components.
Thus, unlike suggested elsewhere, this is not primarily a matter of someone coming along with the right "skills" to "fix MP", it's mainly a matter of consistently addressing our requirements in a generic fashion, not just MP centric.

We used to have roughly 2-3 discussions per year about ripping out the FlightGear GUI (PUI), but since the adoption of Canvas that discussion has stopped completely, for a good reason.
There's only so much that can be accomplished by extending mediocre technology, such as PUI, without causing lots of work, but also a ton of incompatibilites - preparing FG to get rid of PUI was the right decision, still it's taken many years, and we're still not quite there yet. We went through the same thing when PLIB SG was replaced with OSG, which ended up causing frustration, because certain features (shadows) would no longer work properly - still, it was the right decision. So waiting is not such a bad thing overall.
Please don't send support requests by PM, instead post your questions on the forum so that all users can contribute and benefit
Thanks & all the best,
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Re: Flightgear and vatsim

Postby kheitzman » Fri Jun 27, 2014 8:41 pm

Hi all. Long time no see. In regards to all of this, couldn't something like http://wiki.flightgear.org/Howto:Create ... c_protocol be utilized to do this easily? Push the data to a vatsim server or through a proxy of sorts to send the data to a VATSIM or IVAO server in the format it wants?
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Re: Flightgear and vatsim

Postby Hooray » Fri Jun 27, 2014 8:58 pm

It would be possible, even though the generic protocol is extremely limited and inflexible, i.e. there are certainly more "straightforwardd" options, such as exposing networking capabilities to scripting space or extending the GP system such that it supports embedded scripting. Overall, FlightGear's MP/networking system is not particularly efficient, i.e. was never designed to support huge communities of users like those common on VATSIM/IVAO or the FSX/XP multiplayer networks.
There are several proxy-based workarounds in place/available - most of these are Windows-specific, i.e. cannot easily work on Mac OSX/Linux etc.
Please don't send support requests by PM, instead post your questions on the forum so that all users can contribute and benefit
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Re: Flightgear and vatsim

Postby kheitzman » Sat Jun 28, 2014 5:04 am

One thing I'm unclear about for these generic protocols, do they have to point to 127.0.0.1 or can they point to any IP address or even domain?
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Re: Flightgear and vatsim

Postby Hooray » Sat Jun 28, 2014 11:24 am

For FG to act as a server, that will usually be localhost. and rarely have a domain assigned to it.
As a client, FG can connect to pretty much any combination of address/port - but there are technical limitations in the way GPs must be structured.
This is one of the reason why more "complex" protocols (like Multiplayer, httpd, jpegd etc) are -unfortunately not implemented on top of the configurable GP system, but through custom C++ code.

You may want to have a look here: Subject: Virtual Panel/Control from Web Browser
Please don't send support requests by PM, instead post your questions on the forum so that all users can contribute and benefit
Thanks & all the best,
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