Hi Everybody,
After a long break, much longer than I expected, I'm ready to get back to developing the AI traffic system. Given that the majority of development activities will probably fall under the category of "core development", it's my intention to keep development discussions focused on the mailing list.
See https://sourceforge.net/p/flightgear/mailman/message/35485443/ for my initial post. I just wanted to use this opportunity to state that things are moving again, and use this topic to give occasional updates on my progress.
As you can read in my post to the developers list, I'm inclined to break away from the approach I took for the current AI traffic system. The code has become too clunky too be maintainable. I will try to spend a limited portion of my development time for bug fixing the current code, but please don't expect any major changes any more. The new approach I have in mind should surpass everything we currently have, but it's going to take some time until it's all implemented.
Having said that, it's my explicit intention to make the new system 100% compatible with the current content (traffic database, AI Aircraft, liveries, etc). I also want to state that I am hugely impressed by the amount of good work that has been done to FlightGear's AI traffic in the almost four years that I've been away. This work is one of the major motivations for me to get back to core development.
Finally, although I want to keep the technical side of the discussion focused on the mailing list, as per project policy, I'm open to suggestions for improvement from content developers.
Cheers,
Durk