Decoupling the AI traffic system: Difference between revisions

= Goals =

Decouple the AI traffic system from FlightGear so that it may eventually become a standalone component, which would not only help improve runtime performance but also provide a possibility to handle AI state synchronization across multiple FlightGear multiplayer clients by feeding in all AI traffic via the FlightGear multiplayer server, so that all connected clients would get to see identical AI traffic, that is properly synchronized.

* "If one of the computers taking part in the multiplayer network has generated a bunch of AI aircraft, will they all be propagated to the rest of the multiplayer members ?  If so, you might be able to dodge the processor load of full aircraft simulations, by having two computers with one having the human and a graphics display and the other having all the AI and no graphics display. Just a thought. "[http://www.mail-archive.com/flightgear-devel@flightgear.org/msg08701.html]

* "Yes - you still need the "pilot" logic however it's done. It certainly won't be wasted."[http://www.mail-archive.com/flightgear-devel@flightgear.org/msg08744.html]

* "the protocol supports the idea of multiple aircraft sharing a single server connection for FG instances that are primarily handling a number of AI planes on behalf of a multiplayer scenario" [http://www.mail-archive.com/flightgear-devel@flightgear.org/msg18423.html]

* "Is there a way to create new instances of AIAircraft or another kind on the fly, just by adding some nodes in the property tree, or running a command from the telnet interface, that is, without modifying the source code ? Is there something planned in this direction ?"[http://www.mail-archive.com/flightgear-devel@flightgear.org/msg26021.html]

* "Curt and I have agreed that we need some sort of DCS (Distributed Content System) that synchronizes instances of dynamic models between multiple running versions of FlightGear. That way a multi display setup of FlightGear will work with ATC/AIModels/AI Traffic (and MultiPlayer) code enabled." [http://www.mail-archive.com/flightgear-devel@flightgear.org/msg26053.html]

* "Yeah! How about setting up an mp-server feeding in real traffic? Or even just AI? So that every client would see the same traffic."[http://www.mail-archive.com/flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net/msg13210.html]

* "Should not be necessary. All you do is to output the AI aircraft positions to all clients connected. The server itself fetches the data from the internet or whatever the source. No need to have a client for every AI plane."[http://www.mail-archive.com/flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net/msg13215.html]

* "This would also be a great way to help start factoring out the current AI Traffic code, so that it may run separately from flightgear, possibly even standalone directly on the machine hosting a server!" [http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1849308&group_id=161928&atid=821811]

* "What's even more important: having such a capability would mean that we automatically end up with a very convenient high level tool to EASILY stress-test multiplayer servers and the underlying multiplayer code!! Of course, this capability should be optional and configurable to ensure that not arbitrary "multi-aircraft clients" can connect to a server and bring it to a breakdown by inserting thousands of traffic nodes. But if there is a way for authenticated/trusted clients to employ such functionality, it would be really awesome."[http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1849308&group_id=161928&atid=821811]