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Feature Requests / Proposals / Ideas: Difference between revisions
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Feature Requests / Proposals / Ideas (view source)
Revision as of 00:38, 19 August 2006
, 19 August 2006Restructured this page and placed the 'general ideas' at the front and wish-list at the end.
(Moved section "Standard Aircraft Folder Structure" from the wish-list to the Aircraft Development page.) |
(Restructured this page and placed the 'general ideas' at the front and wish-list at the end.) |
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Occassionally, people join the FlightGear mailing lists offering to contribute to FlightGear and asking where they might start contributing, apparently often hoping for some sort of official "TODO" list or at least some sort of semi-official roadmap. Unfortunately, nothing like this exists so far for FlightGear and the closest thing to a "TODO" page, the "Goals page", has apparently not really been updated for several years. | Occassionally, people join the FlightGear mailing lists offering to contribute to FlightGear and asking where they might start contributing, apparently often hoping for some sort of official "TODO" list or at least some sort of semi-official roadmap. Unfortunately, nothing like this exists so far for FlightGear and the closest thing to a "TODO" page, the "Goals page", has apparently not really been updated for several years. | ||
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'''IMPORTANT: before you actually start working on any of these efforts, it is important to subscribe to the FlightGear Developer's mailing list to discuss your plans, this is extremely important in order to avoid duplicate code/efforts and a lack of coordination with regard to relevant implementation details, so please make sure to talk about your plans with other contributors before starting your work!''' | '''IMPORTANT: before you actually start working on any of these efforts, it is important to subscribe to the FlightGear Developer's mailing list to discuss your plans, this is extremely important in order to avoid duplicate code/efforts and a lack of coordination with regard to relevant implementation details, so please make sure to talk about your plans with other contributors before starting your work!''' | ||
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== General Ideas == | |||
* Set up a wiki at FlightGear.org, so that regular backups can be easily done. Also, the wiki could possibly write/export its pages directly into the CVS directory of $FG_ROOT/Docs | |||
* set up a full set of automatically created DoxyGen documentation at FlightGear.org, possibly using a monthly/weekly update cycle for the CVS version, this would require approx. 500MB of webspace, could be done using a cron job | |||
* consider distributing the FlightGear CD/DVD as a linux boot cd/dvd (i.e. knoppix), so that users can optionally try to easily boot easily into linux in order to start FG | |||
* consider setting up a non-profit organization for FlightGear, so that donations may become tax-deductible | |||
* consider setting up a subversion server, so that we can stop using CVS-subversion can easily import an entire repository, preserving all revision history etc. | |||
* http://scan.coverity.com/ - offers free code checks to open source projects | |||
* At http://freshmeat.net/projects/installbase/ or more specifically at http://installbase.sourceforge.net/main.shtml there's an open source cross platform GUI installer available that may be an interesting option for creating binary FlightGear installers. The whole thing is based on TK and works with statically precompiled interpreters that serve as stub for an ASCII config file that contains all relevant information for cross platform setups,including a tarball of installation specific files for each platform. The installbase installer is very convenient and works entirely with a very powerful GUI frontend that allows you to set up, test and export installer packages. Given that the final config file is ASCII, it would probably be quite possible to simply put all this into some sort of Makefile, so that the whole package creation could be handled automatically, i.e. by doing something like "make win32-package" or "make macos-package". The [http://installbase.sourceforge.net/screenshots.shtml screenshots] look very convincing. That way, all FlightGear binaries could easily use an identical installer and configuration wizard. | |||
* Set up a cross compiler version of gcc at flightgear.org to automatically create binary packages (releases) of FlightGear for platforms such as Win32 or MacOS. FYI: all registered sourceforge developers can access the so-called "compile farm" which is comprised of a number of different hosts/platforms including various compilers, on the AMD64 Opteron machines there are also various Win32 cross-compilers installed under /var/scratch/tools/bin -if you are interested in using the sourceforge services to create FlightGear binaries, check out the [http://sourceforge.net/docman/display_doc.php?docid=762&group_id=1 sourceforge docs] --[[User:FlightZilla|FlightZilla]] 07:53, 18 June 2006 (EDT) | |||
* import the complete DAFIF data into an SQL database, including Robin Peel's database, this would offer the possibility to provide a web based interface to the corresponding data, i.e. in order to allow users to easily provide corrections or augmentations for existing data. Eventually, this could probably also be useful for the landcover DB anyway?--[[User:82.83.154.229|82.83.154.229]] 09:31, 18 June 2006 (EDT) | |||
== User Perceived Improvements == | |||
This is meant to provide an overview of things that users perceive as insufficient or simply inconvenient in FG, so that the developers can get an impression of issues that users would like to see eventually addressed in FlightGear. Among others, inspired by- and based on references to discussions posted by Melchior Franz to the developer's mailing list, on 02-11-2006: | |||
* http://digg.com/software/Awesome_Free_Flight_Sim | |||
* http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/16997 | |||
* http://happypenguin.org/show?Flight%20Gear%20Flight%20Sim | |||
* http://www.winfuture.de/news,23149.html | |||
* http://nickles.softonic.de/ie/47000/Flightgear | |||
Evaluating the merits of such discussions should eventually enable us to determine which areas in FlightGear need to be specifically addressed in order to make FlightGear appeal to more users. Please feel free to add new entries. | |||
* non-intuitive scenery modification and installation | |||
* non-intuitve aircraft modification and installation | |||
* non-intuitive joystick configuration | |||
* non-intuitive aircraft panel creation (lack of GUI frontend) | |||
* non-integrated startup wizard (requires fgrun) | |||
* lacking performance | |||
* significant startup times | |||
* currently no glass cockpit support | |||
* lacking documentation | |||
* insufficient mac support | |||
* webpage appearance | |||
* FDMs partially not very convincing | |||
* not fully animated 3D models | |||
* insufficient weather modelling and -effects | |||
* multiplayer not yet too playable | |||
* non-standard GUI, not too appealing to many users | |||
* outdated FAQ | |||
* no integrated tutorial/ground school or learning mode | |||
* no realistic helicopter support | |||
* no multi screen support | |||
* airports/runways cannot easily be modified/re-created | |||
* non-configurable approach lighting for runways | |||
* no blade element FDM | |||
* GUI does not yet expose many of FlightGear's features that are available via command line | |||
* no real scenario/adventure support | |||
* no combat support | |||
* hardly realistic scenery-missing/inappropriate textures, objects, landmarks. | |||
* no realistic water modelling | |||
* no ground traffic modelling | |||
* hardly localized UI: GUI, command line, error messages | |||
* no localized help dialogs (basic commands, keys...) | |||
* no Voice ATC | |||
* not very advanced AI ATC | |||
* no moving map directly integrated in FlightGear | |||
* warnings and error messages are only rarely informative | |||
* no flight planning facility integrated/available | |||
* no support for sailgliders, hanggliders - unpowered flight | |||
* no scripted demo flights that users could "play" to see a simple flight (pattern) including landing | |||
* no ATC facilities for real life controllers (VATSIM like) | |||
* does not work well on lower end hardware | |||
* starting FG takes a while and FG seems to have crashed, the window (splash screen) is not redrawn-unresponsive until finally started up | |||
* no water effects for ocean and rivers (waves/streams) | |||
* no support for weight & balance (and fuel) for aircraft | |||
* currenlty not a suitable VFR simulator | |||
* few buildings have proper night textures | |||
* significant initial download (>100MB) - might be a good idea to try to reduce the base package size where possible | |||
== Feature Requests == | |||
=== Minor Requests === | === Minor Requests === | ||
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* Have FlightGear become its own IDE (integrated development environment) by allowing users to create and modify instruments directly within FlightGear, this would probably require a revamped (or more feature-rich) GUI toolkit than PLIB's PUI. Eventually, it would be desirable to allow users to pick instruments from the base package and place them at runtime on panels. For the majority of users this would be an essential steps towards improved usability. | * Have FlightGear become its own IDE (integrated development environment) by allowing users to create and modify instruments directly within FlightGear, this would probably require a revamped (or more feature-rich) GUI toolkit than PLIB's PUI. Eventually, it would be desirable to allow users to pick instruments from the base package and place them at runtime on panels. For the majority of users this would be an essential steps towards improved usability. | ||
* add support for automatically created scenery objects to populate the scenery dynamically at runtime (autogen-like), this could add quite a portion of realism to FlightGear without having to model scenery manually using fgsd, yet one could still use fgsd for areas where people are willing to contribute. All other scenery should by default be populated using autogen buildings and objects (references: http://www.infinitylab.com.au/research/prototypes.htm and http://vterrain.org/Culture/BldCity/procedural.html and http://pcity.sourceforge.net/ ) | * add support for automatically created scenery objects to populate the scenery dynamically at runtime (autogen-like), this could add quite a portion of realism to FlightGear without having to model scenery manually using fgsd, yet one could still use fgsd for areas where people are willing to contribute. All other scenery should by default be populated using autogen buildings and objects (references: http://www.infinitylab.com.au/research/prototypes.htm and http://vterrain.org/Culture/BldCity/procedural.html and http://pcity.sourceforge.net/ ) | ||