FlightGear Newsletter February 2015

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February 2015

Development news FlightGear 3.4 Released ALS Volumetric Grass PagedLOD for AI models

In the hanger BAe Sea Harrier FA2 Citation II Space Shuttle Community News FlightGear on YouTube

Contributing Translators required FGBanners Screenshots Desktop backgrounds

Development news

FlightGear 3.4 Released

On February 17, the FlightGear development team published the v3.4 release of FlightGear, the free, open-source flight simulator. This new version contains many exciting new features, enhancements and bug fixes.

A list of major changes can be found at: Changelog 3.4. FlightGear 3.4 is available for a variety of operating systems from http://www.flightgear.org/download/

ALS Volumetric Grass

Thanks to changes in the way random vegetation is managed when not visible, FlightGear can now render volumetric grass on the terrain (for instance the airport keep) using the random vegetation system without blowing memory consumption. A grass texture matching color with the ALS airport keep effect is already available, but not activated by default since it doesn't look so good with other rendering frameworks.

To explore this yourself, add the following lines to the Grass/Airport/AirportKeep/Greenspace landclass in Materials/regions/global-summer.xml:

<wood-coverage>10.0</wood-coverage>
<tree-texture>Trees/grass_blades.png</tree-texture>
<tree-varieties>1</tree-varieties>
<tree-range-m>200.0</tree-range-m>
<tree-height-m>0.3</tree-height-m>
<tree-width-m>1.0</tree-width-m>

Just as trees do, grass changes with the season and gets little nests of frost when below the snowline.

PagedLOD for AI models

The rendering logic for AI aircraft has changed recently. Whether they are drawn or not now depends on their projected size on the screen and not on their distance. Please check these properties:

• /sim/rendering/static-lod/ai-range-model-pixel (should be true)
• /sim/rendering/static-lod/ai-detailed (should be 30)

With this configuration, AI aircraft bigger than 30 pixels on the screen should show up.

Note  There are other factors in OpenSceneGraph that decide if the Paged LOD nodes get rendered. It may sometimes take a couple of minutes or some view panning for the models to pop up.

Torsten Dreyer (2015-01-26). Re: [Flightgear-devel] Flightgear next (3.5.0) Does not render MP aircraft.

In the hangar

BAe Sea Harrier FA2

For a long time, the FlightGear (Sea) Harrier has been unmaintained. However, in early 2014, it's development restarted. Red Leader, it's new maintainer and developer, has added a host of new features to it, including guided missiles, new Nasal scripts, and a Canvas HDD.

The 2.4.0 version of the Sea Harrier has been released, with the following changes:

• Pushback truck is now fixed and works.
• Bbackwards-compatibility bugs fixed.
• A change to the sound system so that there is no sound when FlightGear loads.
• PDFs on the weapons system and HDD added

See also the forum announcement and the wiki page …

Citation II

Citation II with new Rembrandt lights

New instruments on Citation II's instrument panel

New objects on the flightdeck

Also the Citation II has received several upgrades - and still there's more to come! Ludovic Brenta and chris_blues put in a lot of time to polish her and bring her up to specs.

While overhauling the FDM, Ludovic also created a new aircraft for us: the Sierra Super II. This is essentially an aftermarket modifcation of the Citation II, with newer and more powerful engines. She's got an impressive rate of climb, and needs less fuel for an increased reach.

This nice aircraft is available via: --aircraft=Sierra-Super-II (Note: You need the Citation-II installed!)

The Citation II and Sierra Super II are available for download on SourceForge.net (note, that this option downloads the entire history of development - this translates to ~ 1GB zip file!) or via SVN with:

$ svn checkout http://svn.code.sf.net/p/flightgear/fgaddon/trunk/Aircraft/Citation Citation

The latter has the advantage,that you don't pull all of the history (~90 MB), and that for updates all you have to do, is navigate to the folder and type:

$ svn up

Now you've got all the latest updates.

Here's a more detailed list of what's been updated:

Systems

• several checklists have been added.
• A realistic startup procedure.
• A major overhaul of the Autopilot-systems.
• The FDM got upgraded and several bugs got fixed in the process.
• All knobs can now be turned with the mouse-wheel.

Instruments

• Added a new Lighting Panel to the pilots panel. All knobs and switches, which actually have a function are animated.
• Instrument Panel got new textures. Looks a bit more used now.
• RMI now is switchable on Nav1/ADF and Nav2/ADF.
• HSI can be switched between Nav1/Nav2/GPS with the AP control panel's NAV-button.
• a ZVK500 GPS instrument was added on the pilots instrument panel.
• a CDU was added on the center pedestal.

Model

• All exterior lights are now Rembrandt-capable.
• The missing door-ladder was added and animated.
• The speedbrakes got a major overhaul and are now much closer to the real thing, also the lower speedbrakes are added and animated.
• Several small additions to the cockpit and cabin, including an accurate circuit breaker panel, sadly without functionality for now.

Still-To-Do's

• Interior Rembrandt lighting
• Finetuning of speedbrake's animations and add LoD
• More interior model details (e.g. circuit breakers 3d-models, better textures, overhead lights, air conditioning outlets etc)
• Create different liveries for Citation II and Sierra Super II.
• CDU needs more functions and bugfixes

We hope you will enjoy flying this little aircraft and explore all the new possibilities she's got to offer. If you want to be on the very latest point of development, check out the new download site for aircraft regularly.

Atlantis SpaceShuttle. Astronaut Commander TICO

Space Shuttle

With great enthusiasm of a few cosmonauts we have now a totally working Space Shuttle in the line. Comprising 3 Main engines, 2 booster engines, 5 orbit control engines, 2 orbit manouver engines, smoke, sound, animations - all in MP-modus, and ready for you to start up in the orbit! A detailed help lets you go up and try to hold a stable orbit in 150000 to 350000 ft, up to mach 30 and soon on the way to the moon :)

Easy to download.zip file or clone at: www.github/herbyw/antonov-aircrafts

(As an add-on you will get the AN-12, AN-22 and AN-225 in also heavily updated versions) See you at KTTS, the center of development and a good starting point into the borders of FlightGear's gravitation model.

Community News

FlightGear on YouTube

Channel: Flightgear's Tutorial

Note  Spanish language only.

(es) Cómo leer los instrumentos — (en) How to read instruments

Contributing

Translators required

	The FlightGear Wiki still needs help for translating it into various languages. If you are interested in making the FlightGear Wiki multi-language then start at Help:Translate.
	Das FlightGear Wiki benötigt immer noch Hilfe bei der Übersetzung in verschiedene Sprachen. Wenn Du Interesse daran hast, das FlightGear Wiki Mehrsprachig zu machen, dann fang doch mit Help:Übersetzen an.
	De FlightGear Wiki kan nog steed hulp gebruiken bij het vertalen van artikelen. Als je interesse hebt om de wiki meertalig te maken, raden we je aan om een kijkje te nemen bij Help:Vertalen.
	La FlightGear wiki todavía necesita ayuda para traducirla a varios lenguajes. Si estás interesado en hacer la FlightGear wiki multilingüe, entonces comienza en Help:Traducir.

FGBanners

If you own a web page related to FlightGear or you want to create a new one, (such as a hangar, YouTube channel, etc.), you may required some graphics elements. Please visit our logos repository. If you have some art skills, please don't hesitate to contribute with your own design creations.

Screenshots

The FlightGear project always needs screenshots for the website, which show features that were added since the last release.These shots should be of good quality — regarding contents and technical image properties. It is therefore recommended to use the best viable filter settings (antialiasing, texture sharpening, etc.). More info at Howto:Make nice screenshots.

Desktop backgrounds (by Aepcam)