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Starting from Nimitz - reset problem

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Starting from Nimitz - reset problem

Postby HJ1AN » Wed May 14, 2014 6:20 am

Just asking if anyone else knew about this problem.

I did my first carrier launch with the A6 intruder. Took off alright, but tried carrier landing but I stuffed it straight into the water (but of course). Then I reset the simulation.

Surprise!!

Upon reset I was dropped, literally, right into the center of KSFO, from about 50 feet above ground, near where the runways intersect. Resulting in a crash. Another reset nets the same thing.

Hilarious. Seems like the sim can't find the Nimitz on second time?
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Re: Starting from Nimitz - reset problem

Postby someguy » Wed May 14, 2014 3:08 pm

This is a known problem with 3.0. I brought it up months ago, but no one seems interested in fixing it.
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Re: Starting from Nimitz - reset problem

Postby Gijs » Wed May 14, 2014 3:11 pm

Hm, I don't see any bug reports about that issue... https://code.google.com/p/flightgear-bu ... &q=carrier
Forum posts tend to get lost over time, so filing a bug report is really the best way to get something fixed (apart from fixing it yourself).
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Re: Starting from Nimitz - reset problem

Postby someguy » Thu May 15, 2014 5:33 am

Gijs, I stopped filing bug reports after too many instances of our omniscient developers denying a problem exists, or telling me to fix it myself (yeah, right). Bug reports are a waste of time. You'll have a hard time convincing me that anyone cares about fixing bugs that don't bother them personally. I'm really glad some folks are writing free software for me, but you gotta admit, most of them are pretty arrogant about it.

Take the flooded airports issue with 3.0: the cause is apparently known, but no one has any clue if/when it will ever be fixed; I mean fixed at the user level, not in some potential future scenery build. My best advice to anyone is to enjoy what you have, consider the price, live with the bugs, and don't be in a hurry to upgrade, because each release is bound to be buggier than the last.
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Re: Starting from Nimitz - reset problem

Postby Gijs » Thu May 15, 2014 9:04 am

Sorry to hear that, but I still believe this should go to the bug tracker. Often it's lack of information making developers ignore certain issues. And who says "the developers" aren't interested in carriers? We've seen plenty of bugs that none of the developers are really bothered with, but still they were fixed eventually. Since we have no fixed developer team, I would suggest to drop your previous experiences aside and give it another try; you might reach different people this time.

The flooded scenery one is simple to explain: the fix requires us to rebuild all scenery, which takes a long time. There's nothing to be fixed on the user side. Just rebuilding a single airport is easy, but there are hundreds of instances of this bug all over the world. Besides that there was another issue, introducing lots of redundant vertices, which also requires a rebuild. The effort is therefore concentrated on getting that global rebuild going, rather than providing per case rebuilds. Finally there's also the issue that we can no longer use our existing hosting to distribute new scenery.
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Re: Starting from Nimitz - reset problem

Postby Thorsten » Thu May 15, 2014 10:58 am

Gijs, I stopped filing bug reports after too many instances of our omniscient developers denying a problem exists, or telling me to fix it myself (yeah, right). Bug reports are a waste of time. You'll have a hard time convincing me that anyone cares about fixing bugs that don't bother them personally. I'm really glad some folks are writing free software for me, but you gotta admit, most of them are pretty arrogant about it.


Let's start this with the obvious - how much of your free time do you invest into things which don't bother you personally? Do you volunteer for 3 hours per week to make the world a better place? Because preciously few do, whereas the average FG developer does.

For a bug to be fixed it takes the coincidence of a few factors:

1) Attention - someone who has the ability to fix it must know about it
2) Relevance - that person must judge it worth his time
3) Information - that person must either be able to reproduce it or be given enough information
4) Access - someone needs to commit the fix to the repository

If you tell me that you find that you get a shader compilation error of someshader.frag in line 401, you have covered 1) (told the right person), and 2) (we shouldn't have shader compilation errors) and 3) (I have all I need to fix it, a line number is as good as it gets) and since I have 4) covered myself, you'll see a fix overnight.

Sadly, that's not how bugs are usually reported. They're told to the wrong person with insufficient information given, follow-up requests for more information are ignored, and as a result nothing happens. Because I'm not going to spend hours guessing what people might be doing such that a problem becomes visible if I can't reproduce it, and neither is anyone else I know. Arrogance is to expect users have the right to such a chunk of developer's time and hence feel they shouldn't need to be asked for more info and to do checks.

Relevance stalls another bunch. The time of core-developers like Stuart or James (who do a hell lot of unpleasant bug-fixing) is precious - if they work on fixing something for 5 hours, I'd rather have them fix something important. Relevant things get priorized. If I judge a problem relevant which I can't fix, I gather enough information to make it easy to find the cause and then ask someone to look at it. TACAN got fixed within a day, lack of solidity of the carrier within a week. These are flight-critical, spawning on the carrier upon reset is not, it's a luxury - the sim can be operated just fine without the ability to reset and we could simply disable it.

Access stalls a fix really rarely - only if there is concern that the patch might have unwanted side-effects.

Also, in a fair share of situations, the problem is with the user or his system. A number of 'FG doesn't run' reports have to do with users messing up paths on their system during re-installing something. Many 'AP is broken' reports really are improper usage of correctly modeled systems (I'm guilty of that one myself in two instances). If FG has a problem only on your computer, it's unlikely to be a problem of FG. And so on. Of course, all users 'know' that the problem can't possibly be on their side...



Take the flooded airports issue with 3.0: the cause is apparently known, but no one has any clue if/when it will ever be fixed; I mean fixed at the user level, not in some potential future scenery build.


In what way would a future scenery build not fix things at the user level?

The World Scenery 2.0 has been released along with a List of known bugs and limitations. f-ojac is running around in the forum telling everyone who didn't bother to read the smallprint that several issues are known and will be fixed with the next scenery build.

For years, people have argued with the scenery team that it'd be better to release something, even imperfect, than nothing. They have done so and made the proper disclaimers. If you don't like the small print, the user-side fix is simple - revert to the 1.0 World Scenery. If you don't accept the smallprint, don't use it. As simple as that.

I mean, here's what you're doing:

People have told you 'Here's the new world scenery, we know it's not perfect yet, but we're working on it, but you can use it' and your reply is 'Hey, this isn't prefect, why isn't this fixed already???' Isn't that just a bit... ignorant?
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Re: Starting from Nimitz - reset problem

Postby someguy » Thu May 15, 2014 2:41 pm

No, Thorsten, that's not what I'm doing. I follow my own advice above: I accept what I have, with gratitude, and try to use it within its limitations. So far, no one who has asked when the new scenery will be generated has gotten a real answer, not next month, not next year, perhaps not ever. I think I understand why, and I understand that developers think their job is done, but to users a vague promise of a "future scenery rebuild" is not the same thing as a fix. I'm not complaining about FlightGear, I am complaining about developer attitudes. If you think that's the same thing, I don't know what to say.

As for volunteering to make the world a better place, is 3 hours per day enough?
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Re: Starting from Nimitz - reset problem

Postby Gijs » Thu May 15, 2014 2:51 pm

someguy wrote in Thu May 15, 2014 2:41 pm: I understand that developers think their job is done

None of the developers thinks that. Please read my reply above (then you'll also understand why no one can give a definitive release date for a new scenery build). Making such statements without reading up on the matter is far worse than the attitude I've seen from the majority of our developers over the years...
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Re: Starting from Nimitz - reset problem

Postby Thorsten » Thu May 15, 2014 5:23 pm

I accept what I have, with gratitude, and try to use it within its limitations.


Making claims like but you gotta admit, most of them are pretty arrogant about it or because each release is bound to be buggier than the last without coming up with any scrap of evidence for what you throw at people here sure sounds a lot like gratitude to me.

At least be honest!
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Re: Starting from Nimitz - reset problem

Postby Hooray » Thu May 15, 2014 5:45 pm

@someguy: keep in mind that a developer is typically not much different from a "user" at all - most contributors started out as users, too. Just because someone suddenly considers you "useful" and gives you certain privileges (website, forum, wiki, fgdata, core) doesn't change very much - except for the feeling of pressure and having additional obligations.

Honestly, you could be given commit access to fgdata/core/TerraGear within 3 seconds, and suddenly others would consider you a "developer", even though not much would have changed, would it ?
That really is how the whole process works, and why it also sucks so much at times, end-users perceive "us" as some kind of "authority", and part of the project - even though we also really just random contributors - all of that just because of some "track record", i.e. contributions made in the past. This really gets kinda annoying - some among us are not even subscribed to the developers list, but are treated by newcomers like we "ARE the project". This isn't any different for scenery developers, or the guys developing the scenery engine.


Subject: Where are we going? An honest discussion from me
curt wrote:Last thing I want to say: I don't like this conceptual division between users and developers. A user is just a developer who hasn't popped the hood on their car yet. I had a random idea today that it might be fun to launch a series of "contests" that would really be easy and more like "drawings" -- but with the intension of getting users to pop open the hood and learn how to check their oil, or change a wiper blade ... stay tuned, I have a lot on my plate, but hopefully I'll get a chance to formulate something more concrete before too long.
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Re: Starting from Nimitz - reset problem

Postby HJ1AN » Fri May 16, 2014 2:57 am

Whooaaa, didn't mean to start a fire here.

First of all, I want to thank those who contributed to making FlightGear such an awesome sim. In fact, I was thinking just a few days ago, why the people who contributed the core code weren't credited in the software itself. Sure there are credits with planes etc, but I don't see credits for the core codes, at least not to my knowledge. A rolling credits list would make be like a big pat on your backs.

Secondly, this problem, like Thorsten said, this is not such a big issue. I found it hilarious, I was laughed so hard when it happened, and then again. So, the obvious fix for the time, just change the airport location, or restart the sim. I only mentioned it here because I searched the forum about it and found nothing (or I am not searching the correct words).

As a person who "pops the hood" on his car every few weeks to check on some things and make DIY services and adjustments, I have a lot of interest in FG "under the hood". the problem I'm taking baby steps at the moment, and time constraints. At 35, with a job, a son, loans and other commitments, it is hardly the ideal time to tinker with computer stuff.. if I were younger and had plenty of time to sit in front of a computr just to learn it would be perfect. This is why I have such respect for thoese who developed, contributed and committed to Flightgear. It's hard to put in 2-3 hours to something, when you have other problems heading your way. I mean, I hardly put in 2-3 hours every few days just to have FUN in FG at best.
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Re: Starting from Nimitz - reset problem

Postby TheTom » Tue May 20, 2014 2:40 pm

I've just checked this with FlightGear 3.1 and works without any problems. I remember some problems with Carriers beeing not solid (I think in 3.1 a while ago) but now I'm able to start and reset on a carrier without any problems.
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