A380

[scotth1]

There is an update to the A380 Milestone 1 available from the wiki page

http://wiki.flightgear.org/index.php/Airbus_A380


Enjoy
S.

[Rew Boors]

Wow. I must say, Im loving this one. Every aspect of this plane has been upgraded - Landing gear, cockpit, fdm, liverys etc. Have been testing it and it hasn't disappointed. Took a while to get the engines running though. Autostart gave me no response but its simple enough to do manually.It fly's well + the autopilot is spot on and it feels like the big plane that it is. A must have for those of us who like big airliners. Cheers

[Gijs]

There is an update to the A380 Milestone 1 available from the wiki page

The file does not include all of the files. Is it intended to overwrite/extend the CVS aircraft?

[Rew Boors]

Hi Gigs. Even so. Im not running cvs and the improvements are considerable. Does this mean that if you have cvs its even better or am i missing something? Thanks

[scotth1]

The file does not include all of the files. Is it intended to overwrite/extend the CVS aircraft?

It should overwrite everything, at 7.5MB everything should be there.. But you will need to download FMS files for any airports you fly between if you use the Flight Planning on the MFD screen.

It is possible I left something out when packaging it up, are you getting some errors?

Don't forget this uses features from the current CVS build of FGFS and it hasn't been committed to Aircraft repository yet, and as always you should backup the A380 directory before unpacking this milestone release. It is a milestone release because it obviously isn't complete yet, but we felt it had reached a level of work done that it was worthwhile doing a release.


S.

[Gijs]

It is possible I left something out when packaging it up, are you getting some errors?

When I downloaded it this afternoon, there were no files within the A380 root (no -set.xml file, no fdm). Downloaded the file again now and by suprise everything seems to be in.
I'll see if I can make some free time tomorrow

[Liam]

Nice improvement, The liveries are not correct however, the fuselage appears painted on the top instead of the sides, the tail is on the fuselage, etc. However when I checked inside the A380 folder, there didn't appear to be a problem with them, so i assume its something on the models part. No console message given.

Regards, and nice work all of you.

[scotth1]

Nice improvement

thanks a lot of effort has gone into it, but there is still a lot to be done, I keep finding more and more things that need to be "fixed", just a matter of time...

The liveries are not correct however, the fuselage appears painted on the top instead of the sides, the tail is on the fuselage, etc.

Yeah I haven't look into that closely as I'm no expert in livery mappings, but it is already on the ToDo list on the wiki.


S.

[Fahim Dalvi]

Hey Scott,

Thanks for Releasing this Aircraft. I would have taken Ages to do so :p

Sadly, I am not getting time for FG, and I think I will have to give up work on this Huge Aircraft. It was a lot of Fun, a lot of things learned. I may return, but for now, I am off this project!

Thank you all for making this a success!

Regards,
Fahim

[scotth1]

Thanks Fahim for all your hard work, I feel we worked quite well together and there wasn't any disagreement on anything! Just got on and did it. I'm still
admiring the overhead panel you did (and thinking of all the animation that has to be done to it yet).


S.

[Gijs]

Ok, first congrats on this awesome plane! Nice to see it in FlightGear. Fahim, thanks for the amazing work you did the past year(s), and see you soon
I do not feel like I am the right person to check the flight behaviour, as I can in no way tell you if it is realistic. However, it does fly like one would suppose it to fly.
Therefor I only listed some technical-bugs/tips.

Texture resizing

Code: Select all

Scaling image 'D:\FlightGear\data\Aircraft\A380\Textures\Common\buttonlight.png' from (34,32) to (32,32)
Scaling image 'D:\FlightGear\data\Aircraft\A380\Textures\Panels\ecam\sd_doors_01.png' from (342,237) to (256,256)
Scaling image 'D:\FlightGear\data\Aircraft\A380\Textures\Common\keyboards.png' from (300,200) to (256,256)
Scaling image 'D:\FlightGear\data\Aircraft\A380\Textures\Instruments\pedastal1.png' from (1152,1024) to (1024,1024)

Ambient coloring
The lighting settings changed in CVS (and thus next release), making this plane very dark when looked at from certain angles. This can be solved by copying the RGB value of each material to the AMB value. For example:

Code: Select all

MATERIAL "skin.001" rgb 1 1 1 amb 0.243379 0.243379 0.243379 ...

should be

Code: Select all

MATERIAL "skin.001" rgb 1 1 1 amb 1 1 1 ...

Liveries
The real problem is not the mapping, but the use of two different texture layouts. The Airbus livery In the Textures/Livery/House/ directory is quite different to the ones in Textures/Livery. That also explains why the house livery looks fine.

Framerate hit
The exterior view does not have much effect on my framerates. Looking around in the cockpit is a different story. The framerate hit is quite noticeable. You might want to take a look at the model/textures to see if anything can be improved.

Views
As said to Fahim, I (and probably most others) prefer the helicopter view to be behind the aircraft, instead of infront (looking backwards). This can be easily achieved by placing a - in front of the 75 meter offset of the views. With that offset, the plane does not fit into the screen anymore, so something like -110 would probably be better.

Also, the walk view seems to be broken.

File/directory structure
As said before, I do not like the directory-tree of this aircraft. I do not know if it is like this from the first drafts by Ampere?
Compared to other FG aircraft it is very chaotic, with .xmls, model and textures being spread all over the place. Using sort of the same structure as the majority will make it easier for developers to use things from this plane on other planes, as well it will be easier for new developers to understand (as all documentation is aimed on the general structure). Ofcourse you are free to use whatever structure you like, just my two cents.

Looking forward to further improvements. It looks very promising!

Cheers,
Gijs

[Liam]

Ambient coloring
The lighting settings changed in CVS (and thus next release), making this plane very dark when looked at from certain angles. This can be solved by copying the RGB value of each material to the AMB value. For example:

Code: Select all

MATERIAL "skin.001" rgb 1 1 1 amb 0.243379 0.243379 0.243379 ...

should be

Code: Select all

MATERIAL "skin.001" rgb 1 1 1 amb 1 1 1 ...

Hi Gijs, I want to do this to the A340 also, does this apply to every texture of the model? and of every model including interior/wings/nontextured (except lights/contrails I presume)? also, will there be a visual difference for 1.9.1 users?

[Gijs]

does this apply to every texture of the model? and of every model including interior/wings/nontextured (except lights/contrails I presume)?

Not the texture, the material should be changed. Texture is an image, material is just color. Each objects has a material, not every object has a texture.
This should indeed be done for every model, including instruments (and scenery objects).

also, will there be a visual difference for 1.9.1 users?

No. AFAIK ambient coloring has no effect in the stable version.

[Fahim Dalvi]

Hey,

Ok, first congrats on this awesome plane! Nice to see it in FlightGear. Fahim, thanks for the amazing work you did the past year(s), and see you soon

Thanks

I do not feel like I am the right person to check the flight behaviour, as I can in no way tell you if it is realistic. However, it does fly like one would suppose it to fly.
Therefor I only listed some technical-bugs/tips.

Go Ahead, thats a very good way to Improve aircrafts!

Texture resizing

Code: Select all

Scaling image 'D:\FlightGear\data\Aircraft\A380\Textures\Common\buttonlight.png' from (34,32) to (32,32)
Scaling image 'D:\FlightGear\data\Aircraft\A380\Textures\Panels\ecam\sd_doors_01.png' from (342,237) to (256,256)
Scaling image 'D:\FlightGear\data\Aircraft\A380\Textures\Common\keyboards.png' from (300,200) to (256,256)
Scaling image 'D:\FlightGear\data\Aircraft\A380\Textures\Instruments\pedastal1.png' from (1152,1024) to (1024,1024)

Well, Two of the Textures have been done by Me, two by Scott. Mine (the first and the last one) have a small deflection, which i think arose during some copy paste work in different editors. I am Not sure that Scott is aware of the fact that Textures should be of the power 2, Sorry If I haven't informed him before about it.

Ambient coloring
The lighting settings changed in CVS (and thus next release), making this plane very dark when looked at from certain angles. This can be solved by copying the RGB value of each material to the AMB value. For example:

Code: Select all

MATERIAL "skin.001" rgb 1 1 1 amb 0.243379 0.243379 0.243379 ...

should be

Code: Select all

MATERIAL "skin.001" rgb 1 1 1 amb 1 1 1 ...

I had really kept that for the Last. I didn't actually expect it to be released, but I got so busy that I wasn't able to complete many things.

Liveries
The real problem is not the mapping, but the use of two different texture layouts. The Airbus livery In the Textures/Livery/House/ directory is quite different to the ones in Textures/Livery. That also explains why the house livery looks fine.

Actually, the one in Textures/Livery/House/ is not used. That Folder was attached by Scott(?) If I am not wrong. The Livery Part can be done again, as Ampere had requested for the files to be separate. But During that time, there wasn't any information on use for multiple textures, So I combined them into one. I may Go ahead and seperate them again!

Framerate hit
The exterior view does not have much effect on my framerates. Looking around in the cockpit is a different story. The framerate hit is quite noticeable. You might want to take a look at the model/textures to see if anything can be improved.

I have tried to Keep the Models and textures as low size as possible. I do not mean to criticize Scott, but I think the SD Panel made by Him does have unnecessary Poly;s. Again, I will Look at this ASAP.

Views
As said to Fahim, I (and probably most others) prefer the helicopter view to be behind the aircraft, instead of infront (looking backwards). This can be easily achieved by placing a - in front of the 75 meter offset of the views. With that offset, the plane does not fit into the screen anymore, so something like -110 would probably be better.

Also, the walk view seems to be broken.

The Walk View isn't supposed to be there. It has to be removed. And Again, the Helicopter view was a thing to be done at last. Sorry for the Inconvenience again!

File/directory structure
As said before, I do not like the directory-tree of this aircraft. I do not know if it is like this from the first drafts by Ampere?
Compared to other FG aircraft it is very chaotic, with .xmls, model and textures being spread all over the place. Using sort of the same structure as the majority will make it easier for developers to use things from this plane on other planes, as well it will be easier for new developers to understand (as all documentation is aimed on the general structure). Ofcourse you are free to use whatever structure you like, just my two cents.

I Did talk to Ampere about that but He Isn't ready to combine them. Also Having the Models Seperated is another cause for Framerate Loss, But Ampere isn't ready for combining them(He has his own Advantages Tho, No Offense meant. )

Looking forward to further improvements. It looks very promising!

Cheers,
Gijs

Not So Soon I suppose, I may be cutoff from the FG community for the next 3 months

Lastly, I would Like to Thank Ampere, Scott, and Everybody who helped in this Project! Thanks a Lot!

Regards,
Fahim

[jiraya66]

doesn't work on 1,9,1 can't see the plane