FlightGear 3.0 backlog: Difference between revisions

From FlightGear wiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Line 25: Line 25:
download (well, terra-sync, really) the relevant files. If you don't use the  
download (well, terra-sync, really) the relevant files. If you don't use the  
feature, you don't download the files ever.</nowiki><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.mail-archive.com/flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net/msg40754.html|title=<nowiki>[Flightgear-devel] Textures separation, cleanup</nowiki>|author=<nowiki>James Turner</nowiki>|date=<nowiki>Tue, 17 Sep 2013 15:12:46 -0700</nowiki>}}</ref>|<nowiki>James Turner</nowiki>}}
feature, you don't download the files ever.</nowiki><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.mail-archive.com/flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net/msg40754.html|title=<nowiki>[Flightgear-devel] Textures separation, cleanup</nowiki>|author=<nowiki>James Turner</nowiki>|date=<nowiki>Tue, 17 Sep 2013 15:12:46 -0700</nowiki>}}</ref>|<nowiki>James Turner</nowiki>}}
<references/>


=== FGCom (F-JJTH) ===
=== FGCom (F-JJTH) ===

Revision as of 10:01, 18 September 2013

Current release: 2020.3.19 (18 Oct 2023)
Next release: 2020.3.20
See release plan for details.
Cquote1.png To get to the 3.0 goal sometime in the near future, it's probably a good idea to create a backlog of open items in the wiki and link the release plan document to that.

As usual, we don't have to be perfect for a new major release number. But the new features being the reason for the new major number should work reasonably correct. I can't tell if that's the case for Rembrandt as I didn't have the time for any tests over the last 12 month or so.

[1]
— Torsten Dreyer
Cquote2.png
Cquote1.png and "pre-announce" 3.0 as the Feb 2014 release to give us just a little more time to prepare and make the 3.0 as polished as possible. After all, it'll be the third major release in 15 years[2]
— Stuart Buchanan
Cquote2.png
Cquote1.png many aircraft developers in particular would want to perform some extra TLC before a major release. Externally, 3.0 is going to be considered a bigger deal than 2.12.0.[3]
— Stuart Buchanan
Cquote2.png
Cquote1.png Declaring that the Feb 2014 release will be 3.0 now will give everyone plenty of notice, and might encourage efforts to fix bugs in the next 6 months. I'm aware that my FG development time is more limited these days, and given activity on this list I suspect I'm not alone, so this time might be quite useful.[4]
— Stuart Buchanan
Cquote2.png
  1. Torsten Dreyer (Sun, 02 Dec 2012 12:18:19 -0800). Next FlightGear release (Feb. 17 2013).
  2. Stuart Buchanan (Tue, 25 Jun 2013 14:48:56 -0700). Re: [Flightgear-devel] reminder: entering feature freeze now.
  3. Stuart Buchanan (Tue, 25 Jun 2013 14:48:56 -0700). Re: [Flightgear-devel] reminder: entering feature freeze now.
  4. Stuart Buchanan (Tue, 25 Jun 2013 14:48:56 -0700). Re: [Flightgear-devel] reminder: entering feature freeze now.

Items

Please only add items that have a corresponding mentoring core developer (=someone willing and able to work on it), or items that have been marked as accepted in the issue tracker: https://code.google.com/p/flightgear-bugs/issues/list?can=2&q=FeatureRequest%20status%3Aaccepted

A more lightweight base package

Cquote1.png For the next release (3.0, I think), I want to reduce the size of the installers by making parts of the base package optional. Some are easy, like AI Traffic and ATC chatter - the first time you enable that feature, we'll download (well, terra-sync, really) the relevant files. If you don't use the feature, you don't download the files ever.[1]
— James Turner
Cquote2.png
  1. James Turner (Tue, 17 Sep 2013 15:12:46 -0700). [Flightgear-devel] Textures separation, cleanup.

FGCom (F-JJTH)

Nasal (Philosopher & Hooray)

  • expose hooks to access more internals, i.e. for better diagnostics (parser,codegen,VM)
  • better debugging, profiling and introspection support
  • provide some form of dialog to show running callbacks (timers/listeners) and their impact on performance (fps, latency)
  • look at making the existing GC generational

Weather (Thorsten)

  • lightfields and Rembrandt working together
  • lightfields properly supported by Basic Weather Done Done (by Stuart for 2.12)
  • lightfields integrating well with other shaders (For example, I know that the random vegetation doesn't work with lightfield shaders, and the fix that Emilian put together to allow the random buildings to work was a workaround rather than a full fix. I think this is probably something you and I will need to work on together to fix.) [1] Done Done (by Stuart and Thorsten for 2.12)
  • a redesign of the weather interfaces, basically going to the unified weather system people have been talking about - some ideas and brainstorming urgently needed! (backed by Thorsten and Stuart) Done Done (by Stuart and Vivian for 2.12)

Long-standing bugs

Then some fixes for long-standing, not really critical but annoying bugs

Eye Candy

Then maybe some cool, but not so important features to make things complete:

  • lightning (and thunder?) for thunderstorms
  • windsocks moving with ground wind rather than wind at aircraft position

Ideally, making full use of things we already have to present the best possible scenery

  • regionalized random building types
  • dedicated texture packs for the main vegetation zones
  • exploit the placement mask possibilities fully

And then, ship 3.0 with (finally) the next edition of a world scenery release, so we can really present much better visuals! So, personally I'd like 3.0 to be a release that doesn't only have cool features, but also cool features which work basically everywhere and a release that doesn't have the current snags like 'this doesn't work with that, and the GUI is counter-intuitive and so on.

Let me be the first to admit that it's much more fun doing my own stuff the way I like and then just merge it in. But if we can find consensus about any plan having to do with integration of new features and making it all work together, then I'm willing to reserve the majority of my coding time for working towards that goal. Would this be something to aim for in a 3.0 release?

CMake Build System Issue

FlightGear versions <= 3.0 are known to have a cmake build system issue related to NOT automatically reconfiguring the SG/FG sources after updating the version files in in $SG_SRC and $FG_SRC, which basically means that using "git pull" to update your source trees (via the d&c script) will create the latest binaries, but they may not be looking for the right base package data, because the source trees are still using the old version files. This has been encountered by various contributors, including at least one core developer.

To work around this issue, simply switch into your SG/FG build directories and reconfigure each tree by running "cmake ." - for further info, see [2][3].

Misc

  • add a standalone Nasal interpreter for people to play with Nasal without requiring a full FG sessions (Philosopher & Hooray)
  • add the "Nasal Internals" docs (Philosopher & Hooray)

Related Pages

Related Discussions