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Implementing new features for FlightGear: Difference between revisions
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Implementing new features for FlightGear (view source)
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We've been seeing an increasing number of discussions on the forum started by people who are obviously eager to become potential contributors. Unfortunately, this has caused some friction over time, because people were expecting their involvement to work differently, especially those primarily making suggestions and providing feedback through discussions are obviously getting fed up with the community of contributors not responding directly to such feedback. | |||
Now, we do appreciate any community involvement obviously, but people who are serious about actually bringing certain changes to FlightGear will find that just making suggestions will typically not work too well, and that just participating in lengthy community discussions is usually fruitless. We've had some extremely heated discussions over the years, some debating interesting ideas - and many ending up being dozens of pages in size, containing hundreds of postings. Often, these contain lots of good ideas and suggestions, but sooner or later these suggestions become emotional and are no longer constructive - yet, we're dealing with them constantly, which is taking up resources, i.e. time and energy. | Now, we do appreciate any community involvement obviously, but people who are serious about actually bringing certain changes to FlightGear will find that just making suggestions will typically not work too well, and that just participating in lengthy community discussions is usually fruitless. We've had some extremely heated discussions over the years, some debating interesting ideas - and many ending up being dozens of pages in size, containing hundreds of postings. Often, these contain lots of good ideas and suggestions, but sooner or later these suggestions become emotional and are no longer constructive - yet, we're dealing with them constantly, which is taking up resources, i.e. time and energy. | ||
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Currently, this article is entirely based on a write-up that Thorsten contributed based on having worked on a variety of novel, and unprecedented, FlightGear features over the years which initially also didn't receive much support at all, and which also caused lengthy discussions (or even flame wars) on the forum and the devel list, including features like [[Advanced weather]], [[Atmospheric light scattering]], [[Procedural Texturing]] and most recently the [[FlightGear Newsletter April 2014|EarthView]] orbital rendering engine. | Currently, this article is entirely based on a write-up that Thorsten contributed based on having worked on a variety of novel, and unprecedented, FlightGear features over the years which initially also didn't receive much support at all, and which also caused lengthy discussions (or even flame wars) on the forum and the devel list, including features like [[Advanced weather]], [[Atmospheric light scattering]], [[Procedural Texturing]] and most recently the [[FlightGear Newsletter April 2014|EarthView]] orbital rendering engine. | ||
These are just a few examples to put some context around the advice given here. Also note that the people who contributed to this particular write-up are not core developers per se, we are also primarily middleware/base package contributors. And when we started out a few years ago (and several thousand postings back), we were also highly critical about [[How the FlightGear project works|the way the project works]], and all its shortcomings. And now, we're often the ones being "yelled" at on the forums when dealing with newcomers, even though that's exactly how we started out. | These are just a few examples to put some context around the advice given here. Also note that the people who contributed to this particular write-up are not core developers per se, we are also primarily middleware/base package contributors. And when we started out a few years ago (and several thousand postings back), we were also highly critical about [[How the FlightGear project works|the way the project works]], and all its shortcomings. And now, we're often the ones being "yelled" at on the forums when dealing with newcomers, even though that's exactly how we started out. | ||
Yet, fast forward 5+ years later, we are still trying to contribute in meaningful ways to the project, despite some (or even many) of these problems still persisting even today. So this is an attempt to provide a '''lessons learnt''' intro based on newcomers trying to become contributors, and trying to turn their ideas into features that actually end up in FlightGear, without having to be expert programmers necessarily, or even programmers at all. | Yet, fast forward 5+ years later, we are still trying to contribute in meaningful ways to the project, despite some (or even many) of these problems still persisting even today. So this is an attempt to provide a '''lessons learnt''' intro based on newcomers trying to become contributors, and trying to turn their ideas into features that actually end up in FlightGear, without having to be expert programmers necessarily, or even programmers at all. | ||
== What is this about? == | == What is this about? == | ||