FlightGear Newsletter October 2013

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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. At the end of each month, it's generally a good idea to get in touch with other contributors to ask them to add news about their contributions to the newsletter.

Development news

Note to all contributors: Please also copy your newsletter additions to the changelog for the upcoming release: Next Changelog.

Atmospheric Light Scattering

The highest quality shader effect of the Atmospheric Light Scattering rendering framework has received an upgrade in the way the ground fog layer is rendered. Up to now ground haze has been rendered up to a fixed altitude. Close to the upper layer edge, this inevitably leads to an artificially-looking sharp intersection line of fog and terrain. The new effect adds a noise distribution to the line and blurs it selectively, thus leading to a more natural appearance of partially fogged terrain from all altitudes.

Original haze layer edge Fogline blur effect

FGCom

FlightGear has FGCom built-in since two months now and all reported bugs has been solved.

The new server is now providing a simple interface showing who is connected ( http://fgcom.flightgear.org ) You can also find FGCom-sa (standalone) in the download page ( http://fgcom.flightgear.org/download )

This server coming with following feature:

  • Backward compatibilities with old FGCom (wrong frequencies like 127.320MHz instead of the correct 127.325MHz)
  • Ready for 8.33KHz frequencies spacing (like channel 118.005)
  • ATIS message record
  • Web interface monitoring ( fgcom.flightgear.org )
  • Use an up-to-date dialplan generated with the last X-Plane data

People are encouraged to use this server. (FG 2.99+ and FGCom-sa 2.99+ has fgcom.flightgear.org as default server)

FGRun updates

FGRun has been cleaned up of expired options and new options have been added. Some of the more important changes include:

  • Checkbox to enable Rembrandt rendering.
  • Several rendering options that are no longer in use have been removed.
  • FlightGear's built-in anti-aliasing can now be set through Advanced > Rendering.

Random Buildings

Project Rembrandt

A number of Mac users have been reporting issues related to running Project Rembrandt (deferred rendering/shadows) on Mac OSX with ATI/AMD GPUS, we are now looking for Mac users to provide feedback on running Rembrandt on Mac OSX, required information includes errors and warnings shown during startup/runtime, but also screen shots showing any issues. Please see: Project Rembrandt#Mac Issues.

Canvas System

High Level Architecture

Usability Improvements

opentrack

The opentrack project has gained proper, official support for FlightGear!

Please see the readme for head tracking using multiple trackers: face, inertial Rift/Hydra, marker printed on flat paper, freetrack-like light points. You can use it without Nasal scripts, just with protocol definition.

If you have any issues regarding Linux support, compiling, feature requests and usage, please create an issue/feature/support request.

Unfortunately due to being understaffed we presently can't offer binary installers for Ubuntu, Debian and the like. Contributions are extremely welcome!

There's also the forum thread regarding the Linux/Windows software.

Soaring Instrumentation Toolkit

A new project has started for bringing improved support for soaring instrumentation to FlightGear. The soaring instrumentation toolkit is a small library written in Nasal code that allows the creation of glider specific gauges (variometers and glide computers) by connecting elementary blocks together (implemented in OOP). Although still in early stages of development, the library already supports TE (Total Energy) compensated, Netto, Relative (aka Super Netto) and Speed Command variometers. There are plans for supporting final glide computers as well. To learn more about the project, see the forum thread at [1] or directly follow the progress in galvedro's fgdata/soaring-sdk branch [2].

A fun Adventure for Halloween

this is an Experiment to explore FlightGears Capabilities beyond simulating Flight. You control a human "Walker" and explore a cursed Graveyard. Find hidden treasures and avoid being caught by evil Forces.

Download and Instructions here: http://cms.flightgear-de.net/index.php/scenery/91-hwspecialen

Halloween 2013-1 Halloween 2013-2 Halloween 2013-3

Getting involved as a programmer

Unfortunately, most of the active FG developers are currently very overstretched in terms of the areas that they have ownership of, which is affecting how much can actually be done. Fundamentally we need more core devs.

If you are interested in contributing as a core developer, 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

Nasal for newbies

New software tools and projects

FlightGear addons and mods

In the hangar

New aircraft

Piaggio Pegna Pc 7

Piaggio Pegna Pc 7

Helijah introduces a new old airplane, the Piaggio Pegan Pc 7.Designed to win the "Schneider Cup," the development of the aircraft was too complex and the time available is too short. He never flew :(

Available in this hangar and on Git. Obviously, improvements are welcome as always.

Detail of the cockpit Exterior details


Gotha G. V

Gotha G. V for FlightGear

Helijah introduces a new old airplane, the Gotha G. V. During the First World War, the Gotha G series devices were among the most effective long range airplanes. They carried the war to England from German airfields located in Belgium.

Available in this hangar and on Git. Obviously, improvements are welcome as always.

G.V : Detail of the cockpit G.V : exterior details


Robin DR400 Dauphin

Robin DR400 Dauphin

A new Robin DR400 Dauphin is now available. This aircraft is a common general aviation airplane used all over the world.

Features: developed for Rembrandt rendering, tutorials, checklists, tooltips, cockpit details... see the wiki page for more details.

The aircraft is available in Git repository and at PAF team hangar

Cockpit of Robin DR400 Dauphin Rembrandt lights of Robin DR400 Dauphin

Updated aircraft

Boeing 747-400 instrument displays

The PFD while on ILS approach to Schiphol's runway 18R

Nearly all of the instrument displays in the Boeing 747-400's cockpit have been converted to the new Canvas system. Instead of complex animated 3D models (with the various layers very close to each other, to feign a 2D instrument), the displays are now relatively simple 2D SVG drawings. The code for the primary flight display (PFD) for example has been reduced by nearly 2000 lines.

Thanks to the flexible nature of a Canvas based instrument, a great deal of new features have been added. Some of these functions include:

  • The PFD now shows speed limits, reference speeds, ILS guidance and autopilot modes.
  • The primary EICAS has been extended with an expanded gear position indicator (non-normal display in case of gear failure) and pagination for the memo messages.
  • The secondary EICAS received two new pages: doors and status.

The plan is to make these displays available in dialogs, to work around the fact that simpilots cannot easily/quickly look around their cockpit.

The new displays are already available through Git and will be available for all with the next release.

Liveries

Scenery corner

Regional textures

Enjoy the Norwegian Fjords and the Finnish lakelands in style - regional texture definitions for Scandinavia have arrived on GIT, fully supporting high resolution procedural terrain texturing.

Scandinavia regional textures Scandinavia regional textures (detail)

Airports

Aircraft of the month

Airport of the month

Screenshot of the month

Suggested flights

Aircraft reviews

Wiki updates

Philosopher has brought native Nasal syntax highlighting support to the wiki by creating a GeSHi config file for Nasal. We can now use the <syntaxhighight> tag with a lang="nasal" attribute to highlight Nasal code properly. Simply insert code between tags this:

<syntaxhighlight lang="nasal">
# hello.nas
print('Hello World!');
</syntaxhighlight>

And it renders into this:

# hello.nas
print('Hello World!');

We will be running a scripted bot to update all our existing uses of "php" markup to use "nasal" instead. To learn more, see Howto:Syntax highlighting for Nasal. Here's a little example showing various highlighted items:

# this is a comment
# operators:
!a ? a+b - c/d*e : f~g;
# Builtin functions, strings
print('Hello World!');
die("We have an error, Houston!", arg[0]);
cmdarg().getNode("setting").getValue();
streq(typeof(id(keys(hash))),10);
# Loopoids
foreach (var a; ["haha", {command:"NASAL!"}, me]) {
    if(0) break;
    elsif(1) continue;
    else return;
    while(1) sprintf("%s%s\n%s=%f", "Spam", "spam", "spam", 0e-0);
    for (var i=0; i < 0.00; i += 0x0) printf("%d", int(i));
    forindex(var o; a) (func {
        var o = o;
        setlistener("/", func print(o), 1, 2);
    })();
}
# String escaping stress tests:
'\a\b\c\"\\\?' # none of these
"\e\?\'\f\a" # none of these
'\'' # this one
"\"\r\n\t\\\t" # and all of these
# And optionally string formatting:
"%s%%s%.0f%8d" # the second "s" shouldn't be highlighted, otherwise everything else
# Syntax error!:
%$@&^|\`


Translators required

En.gif 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.
De.gif 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.
Nl.gif 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.
Es.gif 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.

Community news

FlightGear on YouTube

New tutorials and screencasts

Buckaroo's YASim guide updated

Gary "Buckaroo" Neely have released a new version of his Guide To YASim. YASim is one of the two flight dynamic models (FDMs) that comes included with FlightGear, the other one being JSBSim. Depending on the available data either of the models can be used. In general it is said that if aerodynamic test or simulation data is available JSBSim is the better choice and if not YASim is a better choice.

YASim is often used instead of JSBSim as the latter has a steeper learning curve, mostly because of the level of aerodynamics and flight dynamics knowledge that is needed and because enough data rarely is available to make a better than decent FDM. However YASim is not all that well documented and can more often than sometimes be a bit puzzling. Over the years Gary has collected notes on what worked and what didn't as well as have had a look at the YASim code (or so it seems) and have from that made a guide that is available at his hangar (see link above).

If you are new making aircraft with an YASim FDM or want to tweak an existing YASim aircraft to have its performance to better match published data or a flight manual, reading or at least glancing through his guide is highly recommended.

Forum news

The new board index

On the 25th of October, the FlightGear forum was moved to a new server. At the same time the forum software was updated to the latest version and a new style was installed. The new style is responsive, which means that scales with your screen size. More and more people view the forum on tablets or smarthphones, which should be a little easier now. For desktop users, the restyling provides a cleaner, more modern look with more room for actual content. By removing lots of ballast, the forum has also gotten a significant speed up.

From now on, the FlightGear forum lives on http://forum.flightgear.org Please update your favourites to point to the new url. The old links will forward you to the new forum for the time being.

As with all software, some issues will only show up once end-users start using it. Please post to the special forum topic if you've found something that doesn't work, looks broken or is missing.

Multiplayer

Virtual airlines

FlightGear events

Useful links

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 Target4Today team is looking for volunteers to help improving FlightGear's combat support

Did you know