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FlightGear Newsletter September 2012: Difference between revisions
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FlightGear Newsletter September 2012 (view source)
Revision as of 09:59, 3 September 2012
, 3 September 2012→Interview with a contributor (NAME)
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This section lists changes committed this month that will be available in the next release, these will be copied to the release changelog shortly before a release (for each month), so that we hopefully get a comprehensive list of new features. | This section lists changes committed this month that will be available in the next release, these will be copied to the release changelog shortly before a release (for each month), so that we hopefully get a comprehensive list of new features. | ||
== Interview with a contributor ( | == Interview with a contributor (Thorsten Renk) == | ||
''In each edition we have an interview with a contributor. Suggestions for possible questions are available on [[interview questions]], you are invited to come up with new questions and interview ideas obviously! Anyone is free to write an interview (with him-/herself or others) for next month's newsletter! If you'd like to help interview a contributor or get interviewed, please do consider adding yourself to the [[list of interview volunteers]]! To keep this going and less awkward, we are currently trying to come up with the convention that former interviewees become next month's interviewers.'' | ''In each edition we have an interview with a contributor. Suggestions for possible questions are available on [[interview questions]], you are invited to come up with new questions and interview ideas obviously! Anyone is free to write an interview (with him-/herself or others) for next month's newsletter! If you'd like to help interview a contributor or get interviewed, please do consider adding yourself to the [[list of interview volunteers]]! To keep this going and less awkward, we are currently trying to come up with the convention that former interviewees become next month's interviewers.'' | ||
* How long have you been involved in FlightGear? | * How long have you been involved in FlightGear? | ||
Since late 2009. | |||
* What are your major interests in FlightGear? | * What are your major interests in FlightGear? | ||
In the broadest sense, modelling of the environment. I've started out modelling clouds and weather, then as I discovered shaders I've also included dust, haze and light scattering effects, and of late I am into improved ways of texturing the terrain. | |||
All these areas are related, so it's actually pretty powerful if the same person knows how to affect all of them - for instance, on a rainy day, we not only see an overcast cloud layer, but also the light beneath the clouds is dimmed, the sunrise has a different color hue, the ground is wet and hence darker than usual and there may be water on the ground. Being able to do all these things with the same environment model is pretty cool. | |||
* What project are you working on right now? | * What project are you working on right now? | ||
Procedural texturing, i.e. computing the texture mix to be displayed on the terrain inside the shader code - this allows for effects which would be impossible to achieve with the standard way of assigning textures due to the huge memory footprint. | |||
* What do you plan on doing in the future? | * What do you plan on doing in the future? | ||
Who knows? I have plenty of things I would like to do and in principle know how to do - the problem is just making them run fast enough. It's pretty amazing how fast a graphics card can crunch numbers, but there are limits eventually. And basically every day, looking out of the window and observing the richness in detail on a real sky, I see how inadequate even our most advanced shading models really are. It's amazing how nature solves all the rendering equations in real time. | |||
* Are you happy with the way the FlightGear project is going? | * Are you happy with the way the FlightGear project is going? | ||
Mostly. I know many people think FlightGear should have a project structure which works more like a commercial project, i.e. with clearly defined project goals and well-defined tasks. Rather, it is a somewhat anarchic collection of different individual projects merged together, often with multiple ways to solve the same problem (we support as many as four different ways to generate clouds for instance) which makes it not always easy for new contributers in need of a feature. But, coming from a research environment, I actually feel quite at home with such a development model - science works the same way, and for instance, while having several independent ways of doing the same thing can be seen as a waste of resources, it can also be seen as a feature - we explore many different ways of doing things which helps us find the best solution. | |||
What I don't like is that there is often a lot of friction - for instance 3-D modellers feel underappreciated since most of the project decisions are made by the coders, there's an ongoing controversy between scripting space (Nasal) and C++ coding, and there are contributors of world scenery vs. custom scenery creators. While some level of discussion seems useful to me, related discussions often reach a point which I find no longer productive. | |||
* What do you enjoy most about developing for FlightGear? | * What do you enjoy most about developing for FlightGear? | ||
The same thing Tolkien enjoyed about writing 'The Lord of the Rings' - the possibility to do subcreation. The visible FlightGear scenery is a world to explore, and this world is directly and visibly influenced by code I write. I can place myself high up in the air, look down and wave my mouse - and a whole layer of clouds appears. I get to decide what color the sunrise has. That's pretty fascinating as far as that goes. | |||
And actually, I've always enjoyed flying through clouds in flight simulators - in the early ones, they were just so bad, but now I can make them just the way I've always wanted them to be. Flying between two scattered cloud layers is still one of my favourite activities. | |||
* Are there any "hidden features" you have worked on in FlightGear that new users may miss? | * Are there any "hidden features" you have worked on in FlightGear that new users may miss? | ||
Plenty. Several I decided not to release since they are too tricky to control, so flags switch them off. For instance, there's a working model for wave lift in the Advanced Weather code, but there is no code to automatically place it (that's much more tricky to develop), so the wave needs to be placed by hand with a suitable line of Nasal. There are experimental cloud layer definitions which are just too expensive to render on a normal system. Many things I just try, and when I find no good way of implementing them, they stay in the code in a de-activated mode. | |||
* What advice can you give to new developers who want to get started on their first aircraft/new feature/Nasal script? | * What advice can you give to new developers who want to get started on their first aircraft/new feature/Nasal script? | ||
Be patient. The world doesn't revolve around you, but good work is recognized eventually. | |||
Many people seem to expect that the FlightGear development community is just waiting for their contribution and jump to fill every requirement. But every developer has his own agenda, and the way things actually work is by convincing people that spending their time to support another project is a good idea. For instance, demonstrating that a project is feasible is a good idea before expecting help. | |||
I know it looks pretty unwelcoming if someone wants to contribute and needs to go a long way before getting help. On the other hand, I know the other perspective of investing a lot of work into someone's project, just to see the other person disappear and all that work being lost. So I understand much better that established developers want to see that someone is serious about what he proposes to do before they jump in. | |||
More questions are being collected here: [[Interview questions]]. | More questions are being collected here: [[Interview questions]]. | ||
Stay tuned for next month's interview, featuring FlightGear contributor XXXXXXXX | Stay tuned for next month's interview, featuring FlightGear contributor XXXXXXXX | ||
== Snapshot releases == | == Snapshot releases == | ||