Board index FlightGear Development AI Traffic

Taxi Draw

Intelligent, computer controlled vehicles that drive/fly over the planet!

Taxi Draw

Postby jtprophet » Thu Feb 21, 2019 3:50 am

Good evening guys,

I am trying to place some runways in taxidraw and was wondering if anyone had any suggestions on how to determine the 2 boxes that ask for the runways center in regards to latitude and longitude?

Thank-you,

John
jtprophet
 
Posts: 205
Joined: Mon Apr 04, 2016 3:21 pm
Callsign: DAL1464

Re: Taxi Draw

Postby BecOzIcan » Thu Feb 21, 2019 10:33 am

You can either

1. Set 2 nodes at each end of the runway, based on the published LAT/LON of threshold then draw your runway on top, placing the extremities on these 'reference nodes'
2. Open the airport in WED (not your taxidraw version but the wed one see https://gateway.x-plane.com/scenery/page/KJFK) and click on the runway to get the LAT/LON centre data you are after in the RHS panel

You do not need extreme precision given the only use for a runway in Taxidraw is to satisfy the 'node is on runway' validity test of your groundnet. If you are looking at building/updating an airport layout, WED is the way to go

Cheers
Ian
Current Projects: AI Traffic, Models & Liveries
User avatar
BecOzIcan
 
Posts: 1302
Joined: Tue Oct 04, 2011 11:43 pm
Location: Sydney, NSW, Australia
Version: 2020.4.0
OS: Win10

Re: Taxi Draw

Postby jtprophet » Thu Feb 21, 2019 3:12 pm

Thank-you very much Ian.

John
jtprophet
 
Posts: 205
Joined: Mon Apr 04, 2016 3:21 pm
Callsign: DAL1464

Re: Taxi Draw

Postby jtprophet » Thu Feb 21, 2019 3:56 pm

Please forgive me for this but the work flow I am trying to accomplish is currently I have imported the KSEA airport using the WED (ver 1.51) "Import from scenery gateway" option and everything is clearly there as far as what I would need; although what is the process required for exporting the groundnet so that it can be used in FG? Within the forums I've seen so many contradictions regarding whether it is best to use taxi draw (there is only one version that is useful and does not crash upon importing) or using WED as I have done and somewhere I recall seeing that 1.51 is best to use for my purposes.

Thank-you,

John
jtprophet
 
Posts: 205
Joined: Mon Apr 04, 2016 3:21 pm
Callsign: DAL1464

Re: Taxi Draw

Postby wlbragg » Thu Feb 21, 2019 7:10 pm

I always used Taxidraw because I didn't think WED had the capability to export it?
Kansas and Ohio/Midwest scenery development.
KEQA, 3AU, KRCP Airport Layout
Intel i7/GeForce RTX 2070/Max-Q
User avatar
wlbragg
 
Posts: 7586
Joined: Sun Aug 26, 2012 12:31 am
Location: Kansas (Tornado Alley), USA
Callsign: WC2020
Version: next
OS: Win10/Linux/RTX 2070

Re: Taxi Draw

Postby BecOzIcan » Thu Feb 21, 2019 9:50 pm

Wed can not generate a groudnet BUT there is a python 'converter' you can find in the forums which converts wed yellow taxiway centrelines into a taxidraw compatible set of nodes and lines. You still need to refine this basic network with taxidraw but it gives you a base skeleton to work from
Current Projects: AI Traffic, Models & Liveries
User avatar
BecOzIcan
 
Posts: 1302
Joined: Tue Oct 04, 2011 11:43 pm
Location: Sydney, NSW, Australia
Version: 2020.4.0
OS: Win10

Re: Taxi Draw

Postby Hooray » Fri Feb 22, 2019 5:54 pm

to be honest, this may be the time when things have come full circle, i.e. most of the functionality provided by TaxiDraw could probably be implemented these days using a tiny fraction of the code, simply by using built-in FlightGear APIs like Nasal/Canvas.

We already have fairly sophisticated MFD-style avionics, as well as a MVC based mapping/charting framework on top of Nasal/Canvas (MapStructure).

It would be pretty straightforward to take those existing pieces, and adapt/generalize them as needed to come up with a built-in "taxiway editor" that would directly support the main FlightGear APIS, because it would after all be running inside FlightGear.

As a matter of fact, I believe that either jsb or ThomasS have created groundnet layers for the MapStructure framework.
So, it really is primarily an integration matter at this point.

Using the canvas system and Nasal for this would also mean that people don't need to know any C/C++ or git stuff to use such an editor. Also, anyone with fgfs installed, would automatically be able to run such an editor.

Packaging up the whole thing as some kind of custom add-on would also be straightforward thanks to the work done by Torsten and Florent.

Besides, any MFD/avionics developers would be able to help with the Nasal/Canvas coding side of this, because it would just be the equivalent of an interactive MFD after all.

I believe a simple groundnet editor supporting drag/drop (via Canvas Event Handling) would not take more than 200-300 lines of code, most of it being structural boilerplate code copied from the wiki to set up things as needed.

And that certain applies to other apps in the FG ecosystem (think atlas, map etc) - FlightGear is meanwhile sufficiently powerful to allow fgdata/middleware devleopers to create the corresponding functionality using very little code, all on top of technologies that people are already familiar with, because they're using the same mechanisms to also create/develop aircraft, scenery and in-sim UI resources.

Again, rendering a groundnet is trivial to do via MapStructure, and it is also trivial to register an event handler that responds to mouse clicks, e.g. to bring up a context menu - which is after all just a popup, i.e. a window with a bunch of buttons arranged in a vertical layout.
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
Help write next month's newsletter !
pui2canvas | MapStructure | Canvas Development | Programming resources
Hooray
 
Posts: 12707
Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2008 9:40 am
Pronouns: THOU

Re: Taxi Draw

Postby BecOzIcan » Sat Feb 23, 2019 4:47 pm

Hooray wrote in Fri Feb 22, 2019 5:54 pm:It would be pretty straightforward to take those existing pieces, and adapt/generalize them as needed to come up with a built-in "taxiway editor" that would directly support the main FlightGear APIS, because it would after all be running inside FlightGear.


Sounds very good. Still the biggest issue (in my view) is we have no easy way to share groudnets.

In parallel at looking into a new tool to produce groundnets it would be good to consider having a simple submit form/page similar to the scenery models one https://scenery.flightgear.org/contribute.php we could push our groundnet to.

I feel a lot of individuals have already built plenty of decent groundnets if I trust the amount of posts I get in this forum about taxidraw so it would be awesome to see this work actually contributed to the main repos

Cheers
Ian
Current Projects: AI Traffic, Models & Liveries
User avatar
BecOzIcan
 
Posts: 1302
Joined: Tue Oct 04, 2011 11:43 pm
Location: Sydney, NSW, Australia
Version: 2020.4.0
OS: Win10

Re: Taxi Draw

Postby Hooray » Sun Feb 24, 2019 5:32 pm

that's not difficult to do actually, someone with a good grasp of Nasal should also be able to use Php, Python or JavaScript to come up with the corresponding CGI side of this - at that point, it would then make sense to reach out to Torsten, Stuart or James so that hosting can be taken care of.

Again, it's not complicated, and could possibly even use existing tools/infrastructure (think terrasync)
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
Help write next month's newsletter !
pui2canvas | MapStructure | Canvas Development | Programming resources
Hooray
 
Posts: 12707
Joined: Tue Mar 25, 2008 9:40 am
Pronouns: THOU

Re: Taxi Draw

Postby pb321 » Wed Mar 06, 2019 10:18 am

Would it make sense to be able to upload both groundnets and optional rwyuse.xml files to the scenery database? Also jetway.xml files?
pb321
 
Posts: 424
Joined: Sun Nov 27, 2016 5:08 pm
Version: 2020.4.0
OS: Windows 10 Pro

Re: Taxi Draw

Postby portreekid » Wed Mar 06, 2019 3:39 pm

Hooray wrote in Sun Feb 24, 2019 5:32 pm:that's not difficult to do actually, someone with a good grasp of Nasal should also be able to use Php, Python or JavaScript to come up with the corresponding CGI side of this - at that point, it would then make sense to reach out to Torsten, Stuart or James so that hosting can be taken care of.
Again, it's not complicated, and could possibly even use existing tools/infrastructure (think terrasync)

So it has begun. https://github.com/Portree-Kid/groundweb
It should handle all airport specific xml files.
portreekid
 
Posts: 651
Joined: Tue Jan 14, 2014 4:36 pm
Location: Leipzig
Callsign: PORTREE
Version: 2020.2.1
OS: Windows 10

Re: Taxi Draw

Postby BecOzIcan » Thu Mar 07, 2019 12:31 pm

So excited already. Can't thank you enough for looking into it.
Cheers
Ian
Current Projects: AI Traffic, Models & Liveries
User avatar
BecOzIcan
 
Posts: 1302
Joined: Tue Oct 04, 2011 11:43 pm
Location: Sydney, NSW, Australia
Version: 2020.4.0
OS: Win10

Re: Taxi Draw

Postby wlbragg » Thu Mar 07, 2019 6:40 pm

I second that, long time coming and will go far to improve and update the data sets we use.
Kansas and Ohio/Midwest scenery development.
KEQA, 3AU, KRCP Airport Layout
Intel i7/GeForce RTX 2070/Max-Q
User avatar
wlbragg
 
Posts: 7586
Joined: Sun Aug 26, 2012 12:31 am
Location: Kansas (Tornado Alley), USA
Callsign: WC2020
Version: next
OS: Win10/Linux/RTX 2070

Re: Taxi Draw

Postby jtprophet » Thu Mar 07, 2019 8:54 pm

Man oh man! I love you guys!

Thankful,

John
jtprophet
 
Posts: 205
Joined: Mon Apr 04, 2016 3:21 pm
Callsign: DAL1464

Re: Taxi Draw

Postby portreekid » Thu Mar 07, 2019 9:04 pm

Oh I feel pressure :-D
portreekid
 
Posts: 651
Joined: Tue Jan 14, 2014 4:36 pm
Location: Leipzig
Callsign: PORTREE
Version: 2020.2.1
OS: Windows 10

Next

Return to AI Traffic

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests