by Gavinmc42 » Wed Feb 20, 2019 2:20 am
Thanks, Phi has some SVGs to play with.
Need to figure out the look from the actions.
Some sort of Object based format?
Looks like Phi was intended as a Browser based system.
While Browsers do run on Pi's you really need a Pi3B+'s, 64bit OS and updated Mesa.
Gentoo64 is my current favourite 64bit OS on Pi3B+.
But these Chromium and Firefox browser don't run well on the single core Pi's.
SVG, HTML, CSS, JS all need to be parsed to make a baremetal browser.
They now need multicore 64bit CPU's as they tend to do software rendering as default.
A baremetal SVG to OpenVG parser would be a first step and probably about the 80% that would be needed to make simple instruments.
For 3D, OBJ/MTL to OpenGLES might be enough.
Lucky glass cockpits are mostly flat designs which can be mostly done with OpenVG.
The amount of updating data would be much less, some sort of protocol would be nice.
Does the industry have one already?
Pi's also have that GPIO port and so Touch/buttons can be connected to make real interactive instruments.
That's doable for the future.
Ultibo still does not have USB OTG serial working, so even though I can load the application via USB I cannot talk to it yet.
The serial uart works but that's extra wiring and even Can bus could be done using a SPI port and hat.
Too much like real instruments and my day job:)
My goal is to use Zero's without SD cards, so any home hobbyist (like me) could make a flight sim.
We do have Bluetooth LE talking, so using Zero W's is an option too.
I can understand the lack of formalised method, this is all new, even though I have been thinking about it for 5 years.
Knowing it could be done is not the same as knowing how to do it.
I did suspect the SVG to OpenVG might have been on the fly, I have done similar stuff for webpages on Pi data logger's.
That's a hard way to do it.
Virtual Instruments are about the look which is artists intepretation not a programmers interpretation.
Until I found out SVG was Inkscapes native format I did not know how to do instruments.
Doing a good looking display by code is very slow, which is why my PFD demo is so basic.
Seperating out the graphic design look from the code should allow for more flexibility.
Swap a svg file changes the look, but not the operating code.
I have done bitmaped instruments before, painful, vector graphics is the way to go.
However bitmapped background are useful, Povray does nice woodgrain.
Ultibo handles it bitmap images no problem, embedded or read from file.
Once ClearInk have a suitable display a paraglider nav system could be made for real.
Always wanted to make my own.