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Boeing 777 Seattle - A sneak preview into our Hangar...

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Re: Boeing 777 Seattle - A sneak preview into our Hangar...

Postby Hooray » Thu Dec 17, 2015 11:10 pm

I-NEMO wrote in Sat Dec 12, 2015 5:49 am:Regarding the Standard: I remember a post exchange with Hooray some time ago, where I pointed out that in my opinion FG lacks a stable Standard.
Let me explain: of course the Core code side always tries to enhance performance and new opportunities.
That's absolutely correct, so to ensure technical growth of the whole platform.
I still think, though, that an effort to have stable versions, and a sort of fair calendar so that other people might have time to adapt the existing model to the new opportunities offered by the technical growth should be considered a priority for a proper overall growth of the FG Simulation platform.
[...]
Sometimes too much 'coding' is required in order to see the model flying again in the new framework updated to the latest technical standpoint. Which, in turn, makes the aircraft's fleet completeness erratic; sometime a model just lies abandoned, for several reasons.

We do grow, but sometimes in too wild a grow.
That's a key factor to ensure FG a consistent fleet of models (complete models, as I wrote above) flyable (I mean enjoyable) in a better technical framework.


I do remember that exchange, but I don't think I agree with you - simply because of the circumstances at hand: Basically, all FlightGear core developers agree that they are overstretched in terms of their responsibilities and workload - realistically, FlightGear is not seeing that much change in comparison to past times. The number of active core committers is remarkably low, and the number of patches that don't even make it into FlightGear clearly shows that there isn't too much being changed currently.

Under different circumstances, standardization would be a really good thing - which you can see by looking at other, more successful, open source projects and their efforts to introduce/maintain "long-term-support" (LTS) versions/distributions.

But with FlightGear, the challenges are hugely different, it does not make sense to focus too much on backward compatibility, or even release plans/roadmaps, given the very real constraints the project is facing.

A "stable" FlightGear version would be hugely frustrating for all the parties involved, especially end-users, who will want to use the latest/greatest features, despite not being willing to upgrade their hardware/system or even just FlightGear version. Just look at the number of threads where people wanted to run feature X (space shuttle, ALS, earthview, extra500, 777, Canvas stuff) with outdated FlightGear versions.

The whole thing would be reminiscent of the plib/osg migration process, where people (in fact, even core devs) began requesting certain useful changes to be "back-ported".
From a resource/manpower standpoint, that's simply not feasible given the challenges the project is facing.

The degree of changes the FlightGear core is seeing is not very much - if you are still concerned about those, it would be much better to get involved in testing so that you can provide timely feedback.

And in fact, many changes don't even involve the core (SG/FG) at all - i.e. backward compatibility is not just a core development issue, it can also be implemented by fgdata developers.

(Note that the release plan is in the process of being changed)
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,
Hooray
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Re: Boeing 777 Seattle - A sneak preview into our Hangar...

Postby I-NEMO » Fri Dec 18, 2015 1:08 am

Hallo Hooray,

yes, you are right.
I saw your post in another thread where you were complaining about the lack of stable 'manpower', only after I had posted my previous Post (the one about an ideal Standard).

I completely agree with your analysis: it is quite sad and/or frustrating to see that FG is facing a 'hangout' situation.
I do not know what would be a feasable solution: FG is now a huge Project, with so many things to be taken care of, that it is difficult to establish what would be the best path to ensure the necessary technical development of the whole platform.

Even if a promising and doable path would be envisioned, planned, and shared, its actual 'production' would need a substantial number of people, who should dedicate to the Project quite a lot of time; plus - and I assume this is the real main issue - those people should be 'working' on the various areas almost at full-time.
Being FG an Open Source Platform and - at the same time - a platform which involves fast pacing changes and continuos development so to profit of the best opportunities offered around, ... well ... It is possible that the 'hangout' will stay as we are now: a wonderful platform, with so many faces to be taken care of, and just a bunch of people slogging hard behind the scene.
I know that the Core developers are more than overstretched; I see that modelling (I'm talking of full, complete, aircraft's development, and update; not just 3d modelling) is wild and random and dispersed. That's a great pity, for all of us. The Core developers are a few, and the Aircraft Developing teams are a few as well; they rise and leave. In my personal case, you can imagine how hard it is to work for the 777 Seattle with a a team of two: Hyde and myself.

We need many professionals - at various level of interest and competence - to take the project, cut the unnecessary branches (hard thing to accomplish) and pave a brand new road. A road of change and evolution.
And this - just to be able to 'think', to 'realize', that we all need a crucial change in order to to make FG to further evolve - is quite difficult.

It may happen, of course, and I do wish so.
But, as you said, we need professional people, which would be really working almost daily for a substantial number of years; continuously.
That's very difficult. Passion is one thing; systematic commitment/work is another scenario.

We need a shared 'Vison' first. Any change without a Vision would be lethal.

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Re: Boeing 777 Seattle - A sneak preview into our Hangar...

Postby Hooray » Sun Dec 20, 2015 10:07 pm

I-NEMO wrote in Fri Dec 18, 2015 1:08 am:I saw your post in another thread where you were complaining about the lack of stable 'manpower'[...]
We need many professionals - at various level of interest and competence - to take the project, cut the unnecessary branches (hard thing to accomplish) and pave a brand new road. A road of change and evolution.
And this - just to be able to 'think', to 'realize', that we all need a crucial change in order to to make FG to further evolve - is quite difficult.


I suggest to take the "Development Push" thread, and what's written there, with a grain of salt - Curt stated quite clearly, that he didn't disagree with what I said, but with how I said it, - and he's also expressed several times that he's aware of such challenges, one of the more recent examples being this:

http://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/content.p ... ear/view/2
Curtis Olson wrote:time is flying by. 18 years seems like an eternity for a software project, and it's long enough to realize that even if I would want to, I won't be around forever myself. So I have thought about this for quite some time and one of my goals as a project founder is to be a mentor myself (as much as possible) to others. I realize that FlightGear needs to bring in new and younger talent, and I and others need to be involved in bringing them up to speed, encouraging them, and helping them branch off in new directions with their own ideas.

Honestly, it is hard to give up control, but one thing I have tried to be conscious of is bringing in new people, helping them to get started, and then giving them the freedom and flexibility to enhance the project. I am human so I do everything imperfectly, never as well as I would hope or imagine, but I do think about these things, and I do try as best as I can to pursue these goals.

So I see all these things tying in together and being integral to a healthy long term project, mentoring, transition, hard work, learning as you go, taking some risks, and occasionally making mistakes (but also learning from them.)


So the project is not in such a bad situation, it's just that rejuvenation is long overdue - sooner or later it will happen, it will not necessarily have to involve a fork though. It could just as well be that external factors cause the project to attend to certain issues with higher priority, just like the whole fgmembers/gitorious->sourceforge migration forced the project to act.

In the aftermath of the whole "Development Push" thread, Curt posted this:
http://sourceforge.net/p/flightgear/mai ... /34658866/
Curt wrote:I've said this many times, but perhaps it bears repeating. FlightGear
developers are volunteers. Some of us get dozens or 100's of emails a week
related to FlightGear. I know some things sent to me fall through the
cracks ... often because I simply don't know the answer, or don't have time
or knowledge to address the problem or feature request. The expectations
of the user base sometimes seem to be more aligned with commercial software
projects with full time dedicated support, development, and management staff

People have suggested that we need to solicit funds or commercial support
to pay for a dedicated staff, but if anyone has actually tried to go
through the entrepreneurial process on a full scale, they understand the
magnitude of what is being suggested, and it's not easy to simply throw
money at a complex situation and see an improvement.

I'm still waiting for a benevolent commercial interest to bring a 1 or 2
million dollars to the table to transform FlightGear into a first rate
commercial entity. But do we even want that, and who of our existing
developers would jump over and do FlightGear for all out stress and full
time obligation and all the other things that go along with full
employment? I'm sure we could get 100's of applications of people who
would think this is their dream job, but the cold harsh reality is that
some manager level person is weeding through those resumes only looking for
super star stand outs with lots of experience in the needed areas. Most of
the people reading this thinking they'd love the job, probably wouldn't get
called in for an interview ... the commercial world is a harsh place.
Could we find these high quality/experienced people who are willing to work
for $$$ and pay them enough to get them to jump over to a speculative
venture? Would FlightGear ever be able to generate enough revenue to make
a 1-2 million per year investment pay off for someone? Do any of us want
(or are even qualified) to take on that kind of obligation and stress?
FlightGear is highly successful when we can share it for free, but who can
say how it would compete in a commercial world? The expectations of the
xbox/iphone crowd are much different than the hard core, life long aviation
enthusiast.

Anyway, the greatest challenge to regular releases is complexity.

Best regards,


You may enjoy reading this: On the Current State of Affairs in FlightGear
It's not all spot-on, but you will find that this is quite an interesting read for people familiar with the project.
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,
Hooray
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Re: Boeing 777 Seattle - A sneak preview into our Hangar...

Postby vnts » Mon Dec 21, 2015 3:26 am

I-NEMO wrote in Thu Dec 10, 2015 3:26 pm:achieving realistic renderings by using 'nodes' (Blender's Cycles Render is an example).
...
B) Inside the Node Editor, the modeller just sets up the required effect, using a concatenation of simple (but very powerful and effective) nodes ...

C) The node set-up works fine even without Texture, just using the relevant Colours instances of the nodes (later mixed) ...


It should be possible to 'bake' any surface properties created procedurally and save as a texture. A modelling program such as Blender may use any number of ways of letting people conceptualise and define surface material properties, but at the end of the day Blender has to calculate the properties at a point in a surface - and that information should be able to be saved as a texture. If Blender also creates surface geometry detail procedurally as part of a material then that information should be able to be saved as part of a normal map (with fairly smooth aircraft surfaces it's unlikely you are using this). You should be able to keep your current workflow (asking at a Blender forum should help).

Speaking as someone with an interest in the physics of light, I'm not sure what the end understanding of the discussion was, but I hope it was that surface material properties and lighting (what light ends up being reflected from a particular point on a surface towards the eye, which will depends on the light bouncing off many surface points in the scene as well as the volume of air) are different things. A lot of the difference in the screenshots is Blender's non-realtime lighting. There are limits to the resolution of any model that is practical in a application like FG (vertices and texture size), but if Blender's lighting options were turned down the difference should be much smaller. If there is a surface property that seems to you to not be present in FG which makes a large difference, then that might (perhaps) be addressed without massive performance implications.

Kind regards,
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Re: Boeing 777 Seattle - A sneak preview into our Hangar...

Postby I-NEMO » Thu Dec 24, 2015 4:50 am

Image
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Re: Boeing 777 Seattle - A sneak preview into our Hangar...

Postby biloute974 » Thu Dec 24, 2015 9:19 am

Merry Christmas to all.
Intel I7 7700 - 16Gb DDR4 - Nvidia GTX970 - FG 2017.4.0 from D&C
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Re: Boeing 777 Seattle - A sneak preview into our Hangar...

Postby abassign » Thu Dec 24, 2015 11:05 am

Merry Christmas and happy new version 3.8 for 2016!

Image
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FDM developer of the G91R1B aircraft https://wiki.flightgear.org/FIAT_G91R1B
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Re: Boeing 777 Seattle - A sneak preview into our Hangar...

Postby legoboyvdlp » Thu Dec 24, 2015 2:00 pm

In case anyone forgot, it's only December 24 ;) not trting to spoil your fun, but :)
Nice photos!
And same t'ye all.
Last edited by legoboyvdlp on Wed Feb 28, 2018 3:33 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Boeing 777 Seattle - A sneak preview into our Hangar...

Postby radi » Fri Dec 25, 2015 6:40 am

In some countries, the 24th is the big day.
OSM buildings for LOWI, EDDC
Custom scenery for VHXX YMML
Edit .stg via the FG Object Placement Tool
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Re: Boeing 777 Seattle - A sneak preview into our Hangar...

Postby MSA-S23 » Fri Jan 08, 2016 12:27 am

Is there a planned release date? #hoping #hoping #praying #hoping #hoping #hoping #praying #praying #hoping #praying
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Re: Boeing 777 Seattle - A sneak preview into our Hangar...

Postby legoboyvdlp » Fri Jan 08, 2016 1:08 am

I-NEMO wrote in Thu Dec 10, 2015 6:02 am:Hallo FG Pilots,

As I reported (quite a long time ago, to be honest) I have been really busy working on the NEW external model for our Boeing 777 Seattle.
As Hyde and myself love realism, I completely remodeled the fuselage, the Nose Landing Gear (NLG), the Main Landing Gear (MLG), the Engine (GE90 Turbofan, inspectable on ground, with internal parts modelled and textured), and the wings (I'm actually working on the 777-200, to start with). All the job is based - as usual - on Boeing manuals and reference pictures, carefully respecting dimensions and proportions.



So, in due time (some months!) the external model will be ready.



Since the new [i]Seattle won't be ready shortly, [/i]


Here you go, MSA :)
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Re: Boeing 777 Seattle - A sneak preview into our Hangar...

Postby MSA-S23 » Fri Jan 08, 2016 1:12 am

MSA-S23 wrote in Fri Jan 08, 2016 12:27 am:planned release date?
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Re: Boeing 777 Seattle - A sneak preview into our Hangar...

Postby legoboyvdlp » Fri Jan 08, 2016 1:16 am

"Consider that my current job on the external fuselage took me about one year and a half of modelling"
-- I would not expect much till later on 2016:)
Ps He actually happens to be a proffesional 3D model maker in his job! I'd love that job :P
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Re: Boeing 777 Seattle - A sneak preview into our Hangar...

Postby MSA-S23 » Fri Jan 08, 2016 1:17 am

*sniffle*
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Re: Boeing 777 Seattle - A sneak preview into our Hangar...

Postby Barambu2sa » Sun Jan 10, 2016 11:23 pm

Wonderful
With nVidia GT200 [GeForce 210]
will be possible to play?
Or is too old gpu?
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