FlightGear Newsletter November 2015: Difference between revisions

[[File:Reset-reinit-control-panel.png|thumb|reset/reinit control panel for regression testing purposes implemented using Nasal & Canvas]]

FlightGear does not currently support saving/loading flights or reliably switching between aircraft at run-time, this is extensively discussed at [[FlightGear Sessions]].  

[[Reset & re-init]] is the effort to refactor the FlightGear initialization process such that resetting/repositioning is supported, without having to exit/restart FlightGear. Currently, this is exposed via the [[Aircraft Center]] (Canvas based), but is considered broken by most core developers (fragile at best).

In addition, core developers are hoping to better establish data dependencies between different subsystems, so that more and more subsystems can be made optional (analogous to [[FlightGear Run Levels|run-levels]], to be dynamically removed and re-added at run-time.  This will be particularly important to untangle implicit/hard-coded dependencies among different subsystems, and will be one of the key-tasks to move certain subsystems into dedicated HLA federates.

One of the long-term goals here is to provide a so called [[FlightGear Headless|headless]] mode so that certain, non-graphics related, features (=subsystems) can be better tested in isolation, e.g. in an automated fashion on the [[FlightGear Build Server]], which could help increasingly automate the build/release process, but also related regression testing.

The other goal here being to increasingly modularize FlightGear by using [[HLA]] (high-level architecture), and splitting off the simulation/rendering loops (see [[FGViewer]]), as well as [Supporting multiple renderers]] (think Rembrandt/ALS), and scenery engines (standard and osgEarth), analogous to how FlightGear already supports different FDM engines (JSBSim and YASim), but also different weather engines and rendering engines (standard/Rembrandt, ALS). HLA will make it possible for certain subsystems to be moved to dedicated cores by using separate threads or even processes, which also means that certain subsystems may even be running on a different computer, in a distributed setup.

The underlying requirement that these efforts share is that there needs to be a much better re-/initialization process, so that there are no hard-coded assumptions about running subsystems or initialization order.

For the time being, many of these efforts are not yet completely functional, so more feedback and data are needed.

 

 

 

Learn more at [[Howto:Reset/re-init Troubleshooting]]