FlightGear Newsletter January 2013

This is a template for future newsletters, please feel free to edit/improve!

Welcome to the FlightGear Newsletter! Please help us write the next edition! Enjoy reading the latest edition!

We would like to emphasize that the monthly newsletter can not live without the contributions of FlightGear users and developers. Everyone with a wiki account (free to register) can edit the newsletter and every contribution is welcome. So if you know about any FlightGear related news or projects such as for example updated scenery or aircraft, please do feel invited to add such news to the newsletter. Core developers are encouraged to add news about their latest work to the newsletter's development section and the changelog of the upcoming release.

Development news

Note to all contributors: Please also copy your newsletter additions to the changelog of the upcoming release: Changelog_3.0.0.

Procedural Terrain Texturing

For users with powerful graphics cards, a much improved version of Procedural Texturing of the Flightgear terrain (which is as of now implemented under the Atmospheric light scattering framework) is currently being developed. This generates highly detailed visuals of the terrain seen from close-up (the smallest structures generated are of 1 cm scale), including a gentle bump-mapping, grain overlay and optional sparse-dot noise generated rocks or grass patches.

The texturing procedure is easily configurable via materials.xml and combined with regional texturing allows for a much improved experience for low-level flights or helicopter trips away from airfields.

Note that this feature will not be available for the 2.10 release, as it requires still some testing.

Terragear

The master branch of terragear has recently seen more enhancements and cleanup. Most of the functionality has been put into a single terragear library for reuse in all tools. Furthermore, all essential parts of the toolchain now support multithreading. The multiprocess support for genapts has been removed in favour of threading as well.

Work continues on the elevation tools. GDALchop has been re-activated and should become the prior tool to chop up elevation source files into buckets. As it relies on the well-established codebase of GDAL, it takes away the task of opening and reading the different kinds of elevation files from the terragear developers. Supported formats can be seen here: http://www.gdal.org/formats_list.html

Mailing list digest

(by far the easiest option to populate the newsletter with contents is copying/pasting stuff from the forum and the mailing list or the git logs)

Getting involved as a programmer

Please see Howto:Start core development

Release ChangeLog

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 (NAME)

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?
• What are your major interests in FlightGear?
• What project are you working on right now?
• What do you plan on doing in the future?
• Are you happy with the way the FlightGear project is going?
• What do you enjoy most about developing for FlightGear?
• Are there any "hidden features" you have worked on in FlightGear that new users may miss?
• What advice can you give to new developers who want to get started on their first aircraft/new feature/Nasal script?

More questions are being collected here: Interview questions.

Stay tuned for next month's interview, featuring FlightGear contributor XXXXXXXX

Snapshot releases

Every now and then, easy-to-install development snapshots are created (usually, twice montlhy). These snapshos depict a recent state of the development version of FlightGear. By using them users can test out features that will be included in the upcoming release. Testers are encouraged to file bugs at the issue tracker.

The snapshot can be download via the links at the bottom of this page: http://www.flightgear.org/download/. Updates and feedback can be found at the forum.

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.

In the hangar

All the way back in May 2011, we addopted a new status-rating system for aircraft. So far, only a few have actually been rated, as can be seen in the list 'hockenberry' set up at Google Docs. If you're an aircraft developer and your aircraft is/are not on the list, please consider rating their status. All you'll need to know/do is described at Formalizing Aircraft Status. If you'd just like to get started contributing to FlightGear, this would also seem like an excellent way to get started.

Wiki updates

New articles

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New aircraft articles

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Most popular newsletters

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And finally ...

Contributing

One of the regular thoughts expressed on the FlightGear forums is "I'd like to contribute but I don't know how to program, and I don't have the time". Unfortunately, there is a common mis-conception that contributing requires programming and lots of free time. In fact, there are a huge range of ways to contribute to the project without needing to write code or spending days working on something.

For ideas on starting to contribute to FlightGear, you may want to check out: Volunteer.

To learn more about how the project works, please see this short essay written by Thorsten, for a more detailed article see How the FlightGear project works.

Call for volunteers

• The Flightgear On Android team is looking for testers
• The Target4Today team is looking for volunteers to help improving FlightGear's combat support
• The FGFSPM (FlightGear Package Manager) is looking for a new maintainer.