help request:: Bring the liveries home :D

[IAHM-COL]

Hi ALL

The Livery database:
http://liveries.flightgear.org/

Many aircrafts for flight-gear can be patched with amazing artwork done thru the years by outstanding FG artists. The livery database contains a nice collection of these liveries built thru the years. But each user needs to download any of these individually, to be able to enjoy them

The only disadvantage I found in the current set-up is for multi-playing. To be able to "see" the other user's livery, both the pilot and the company need to have the livery installed. Example, if you fly along a 737 that uses a given =non default= livery (that is the pilot installed it), but you did not installed, then you will not be able to see it, and the exercise of installing these liveries become a unnecessary computational exercise.

A solution:

Maybe if an aircraft will have "default" installed most liveries made in the past, then getting a given aircraft may also mean having the update livery database for such aircraft! , this way, all a pilot has to do to get a "customized" livery, is to have an updated aircraft from the source. I thought of this over the Spring festival, when D-LASER satisfactorily indicated seeing, to his surprise, Skyboat's very own customized Tour Livery on the MD-10:: This made possible thanks to D-LASER installing the FGMEMBERS MD-10 just hours earlier, and thus being all up-dated with a livery that existed in FG for only a few days. Quite a nice surprise


Requesting help!!

Installing all the liveries in the database, into the FGMEMBERS respective aircraft is a very convenient and easy move, but it requires an important amount of workmanship, and thus, I invite any volunteer that wants to help. We can do this together, as a community, one aircraft at a time!

The posts below exemplifies the steps required to get this goal achieved

Let's get those liveries installed, and let them exhibit themselves in all their glory in the FG world:: That was their intention by the authors and artists!!

[IAHM-COL]

Submitting a merge request to add the Liveries in the B1900D:: An example

1. Create a github account and/or login
2. Fork the FGMEMBERs Repository (for the respective aircraft; in this example the B1900D)
   
3. Clone the git repository to your local computer
   
4. Download the Liveries from the Livery Database
   
5. Install the liveries by unzipping each downloaded livery file in the aircraft root
6. Using git status, verify that the new files (the livery files) are non-stashed
   
7. As indicated in the verbose output, use git add, to add the new files
   
8. What does git status says now?
   
   That we have changes ready to be committed, and a list of new files added --which are the liveries we intend to add
9. Committing, with git commit
   The command git commit opens a text editior that allows adding a commit message. The title in yellow is required. But additional information can be provided. The source of the material (webpage), and the recognition to the great authors here can be done
   
   After saving the document written in the text editor, we get a list of new objects that had been added/created
   
10. git status now indicates that we have local commits not present in the remote (your fork in github)
    
    And we can git push that commit to the remote
11. After pushed to our "own" fork in github we can verify there that the commit had been added as expected
12. 
    
    https://github.com/IAHM-COL/b1900d/comm ... 7daabf9012
    
13. And if everything looks good --as it should-- then we can proceed with requesting this new fantastic changes to be merged with FGMEMBERS repo doing a pull request

Doing the Pull request

1. Pull request button is on your fork's page, on the right.
   
2. Create the new pull request
   
3. you will receive a confirmation that the pull request is open! and that FGMEMBERs can proceed to accept these new liveries!
   
4. Celebrate your cooperation to the FG project, and its aircrafts!

Best,
IH-COL

[Gijs]

Just for your information, the plan is to provide liveries through the download center. We've not decided yet whether we will add the liveries directly to the aircraft packages, or make them optional. For some aircraft, adding all liveries adds considerably to the download size (on the scale of quadrupling the package). Not all people will want to install dozens of liveries just to fly the plane.

[IAHM-COL]

Thanks for informing us Gijs

FGMEMBERS will be one of the "full install" variants.
FGMEMBERS will also create a download catalog to be available via the download installer.

Best,
IH-COL

[IAHM-COL]

Increased aircraft size after installing an "insane" amounts of liveries

Dear Gijs, after your indication:

For some aircraft, adding all liveries adds considerably to the download size (on the scale of quadrupling the package)

I decided to evaluate one of the most extreme cases. The Douglas-Dc3. This aircraft contains a total of 62 Liveries on the database.
http://liveries.flightgear.org/aircraft ... ge=2&id=76
https://github.com/FGMEMBERS/Douglas-Dc ... 281ca08825

I wanted to verify the size after all these were installed. This is the data I've got

***
File unpacked [No additional Liveries]

Liveries Included::31
Directory size(full aircraft)::240MB

Livery database
Liveries in the database::62
Size of all 62 liveries unpacked::101MB

File unpacked [All liveries from the database added]

Total Liveries Included::78
Directory size (full aircraft)::318MB
Fold-change (increasing of ratio With|Without):: 32.5%

***

An increase on an aircraft of 32.5% is not yet close to an expected quadrupling on the download size (such will be a 300% increase)
I am curious to know, which aircraft has this jump in size after unpacking the whole collection.

Best
IH-COL

[Gijs]

It's been a while since I did the numbers, but IIRC I found the dhc6 grew five times as big, while the b1900d's size was tripled. It's the absolute size that matters anyway. A 1MB package that triples isn't much of a problem, while it probably is for a 200MB package. You can question whether adding 100+ MB to a package for stuff that some people are simply not even remotely interested in, is really increasing the user experience.

[IAHM-COL]

Thanks for the info
Next to the dhc6 then...
I will take a look

Best,
IH-COL

[IAHM-COL]

The DHC6 case scenery

Dear Gijs

The dhc6 is, as you indicated, increased over 5 fold, close to six fold.
But I do not think that an increase on 80MB over an aircraft size of purely functional (rendered) files to be of a concern. I can see we differ a bit on this perspective.

Noticing, as an example, that Installing a livery that no-one else has, only allows "me" to see it. Whereas flying a livery that all other multiplayers have, will allow a more immerse experience that makes the livery take a new life.

I would argue thou, that you have a very valid point. As an example, the p51d, which has been discussed before. The aircraft size is an outstanding 700MB in size, and the repo close exceed 1GB by itself!! :S
But really, the major impact in aircraft size comes from huge Source files, that are not used in the aircraft functioning or rendering. In cases such as this, your position takes a new much valid perspective


RAW DATA

https://github.com/FGMEMBERS/dhc6
*******
File unpacked [No additional Liveries]

Liveries Included::3
Directory size(full aircraft)::12MB

Livery database
Liveries in the database::65
Size of all 65 liveries unpacked::69MB

File unpacked [All liveries from the database added]

Total Liveries Included::65
Directory size (full aircraft)::80MB
Fold-change (increasing of ratio With|Without):: 567%

[Johan G]

For those with very cramped hard drives, even those sizes can be prohibitively large if more than a few aircraft are downloaded.

Consider also those who actually download all aircraft (for sure not me ).

[themadgreek]

While it's nice having all liveries, I concur that it may not be a smart move to include all by default.

Liveries can take up huge amounts of space, relative to their added value (I've seen some in excess of 20mb!!! compress people, compress!).

Say you add an average of 50mbs (a complete guesstimate) of liveries to each plane in FG, and I have 100 of the 600 planes on FGMembers. That will take up an additional 5GB of space on my relatively small SSD... and bear in mind, I will probably never use a majority of them.

May I suggest an alternative?

Perhaps you could create another branch for the git repo, entitled "all-liveries" or something along those lines which is identical to master, except for the livery folder. This way, people have the option to clone or download the version they prefer.

Best,
Phil

[IAHM-COL]

hi phil
That can be a second step after installing them.

I am adding the liveries as a "commit" here: see examples above.
such commit can be separated in isolated braches a posteriori if we revise it pertinent.

So far it does not seem like to me here.
After installing the great majority of liveries, I calculate the size of the whole Aircraft repository (all aircrafts installed) is not growing more than 1.5G, max.
Note that not every aircraft in FG has liveries. Really we are looking around 2000 liveries total! (see the webpage stat).
The increase of 1.5G is really not big deal over the complete aircraft database.

Again, in FGMEMBERs every aircraft is optional, so still the impact on individual aircrafts is still more disregading.

Lets keep tuned, as soon as I finish installing the liveries, I will output absolute values on size increase.

Note, as well, that frequently the installing of the livery is not as "simple". Sometimes xml editions are required, and moving files to proper positions as well. So for the end user, having the livery functioning out-of the box pays the bill for the small size difference.

Also, the point I raised above. If I use a given livery but Only I have it installed, no-one else but me is going to be able to see that artwork. Really, liveries take another concept when everyone involved (say a MP event) have it. So it makes sense that the default for a livery is have, as oppose to have not.

Best,
IH-COL

[IAHM-COL]

Another CASE study:: The 777

@MD-GRK
Take the 777: https://github.com/FGMEMBERS/777
I had just installed the 113 new liveries from the database. ALL the variants (777-200/ER/LR,777-300/ER).

Lets see the effect:

After commit 8ac635aa969c4f834bf69aced9f70bd01ef472ec (liveries added):
size

Code: Select all

281MB
./Models :: 268MB


Before commit on d13edddb5387b1e702471f84cdab25f21e6d0371

Code: Select all

201MB
./Models :: 194MB


The increase over the whole aircraft is about 50MB, but for one hundred liveries. No other aircraft has this wealth on livery database. and you can see that number of aircraft liveries decays really rapidly over here: http://liveries.flightgear.org/aircraft.php

I am now getting more and more convinced, that the effect size over installing all the liveries on the database is really totally neglectible, and we will see an increase of about 1.5GB on the whole collection of aircraft (ie FGDATA next with submodules!) That is we go from 28GB to 30GB to have the complete collection. I found that neglectible in relative terms.

[themadgreek]

Israel,

Some figures I just collected from a few randomly selected planes (I assure you, I have not picked numbers to favor my argument):

DHC6 size: 63.9 MB
Livery size: 21.5 MB
Livery percent: 33% (without extra liveries)

707 (Mark Kraus version) size: 224.5 MB
Livery size: 25.2 MB
Livery Percentage: 11% (without extra liveries)

A320neo size: 147.4 MB
Livery size: 34.5 MB
Livery percentage: 23% (without extra liveries)

C172P size: 16.4 MB
Livery size: 5.6 MB
Livery percentage: 34% (without extra liveries)

B1900D size: 37.8 MB
Livery size: 21.3 MB
Livery percentage: 56% (without extra liveries)

MD-10 size: 241.7 MB
Livery size: 84.2 MB
Livery percentage: 35% (without extra liveries)

As you can see, both for small and for larger planes, liveries are a significant portion of the file size, even without additional liveries.

Current FG install size: 3.23 GB
Current Aircraft folder size: 1.78 GB
Current Aircraft folder percentage: 55%

Percentage increase if I add 1.5 GB worth of liveries (your estimate): 46%
Percentage increase if I add 3 GB worth of liveries (halfway between your and my estimate): 92%

As you can see, such an increase in size will indeed affect my install size.

I very much support FGMembers as it has made my life quite a lot easier (although that's partially because I already was a git user before), and I love having a majority of the planes I use in one directory.

However, I ask that you consider the opinions and arguments we make regarding this before you go ahead and install all of the 2000 liveries to the repo's master branches.

Or at least please consider making a separate branch, as I have suggested, so that we can opt out of it if do not want to fill our drives with liveries we will rarely if ever use.

I agree with you, it's nice seeing other people's liveries over MP, and it's nice having your livery seen too, but I dont think we should "force" (I agree this is a bit of a strong word, but for lack of a better one I use it) this upon people.

Best,
Phil

[IAHM-COL]

Hi Phil
1. where are the "optional" liveries of the C172p? found them. There are 5.
2. The job is mostly done. I have completed the installation of liveries for every aircraft that has more than 20 liveries EDIT: I see Im missing the 787--- not for long!
In the concept of a pricipal component analysis, and looking at the distribution of liveries/per aircraft as I showed above, I already did create the aircraft size increase that we will see. Other aircrafts one or two liveries per aircraft will not have the greater impact.
The complete FGDATA next with submodules is currently 33G (with the .git folder, so the real git repository size). The "./Aircraft" directory (which is FGAddon after all additional aircrafts and livery expansions) is 14G.
3. We can come back to speak about isolating the liveries in a branch, as you suggest. But importing them is the first step required to open that conversation, and have some real numbers to discuss. It may be unnecessary to open a new branch for most aircraft with 1 or 2 additional liveries only, if you see where I am going.
4. Create the branch, adds an additional problem. The branch doesn't follow the development tip automatically

5.The solution I had everytime spoke about is modularity. Really, you will just install (init+update) those aircraft that fit your interest. So that will solve most of your repository size problem.

6. Isolating the liveries on its own branch has a very neglectible effect on the "repository" size. Actually. Because the repository, if you do a complete clone (as oppose to a single-branch approach) will contain ALL of the objects. So we have the same "net" size for No-liveries. ==Think about this point and if this point is unclear, lets talk about it again, since it is critical here.


Best,
IH-COL

[IAHM-COL]

@Phil

I also want you to take a look at your values. And they definitely don't correspond to triple or more of the aircraft size (which Gijs indicated do occur for a few exceptional cases , like the dhc6)

also, keep in mind that your numbers are telling us what is the size of the livery package without the extra liveries. What would be the size difference* after the extra liveries are installed, is what comes to more critical here.

*size of Models directory after extra liveries installed - Size of Models directory before extra liveries are installed