User talk:Bigstones
Welcome!
Welcome and thanks for Howto:Convert objects with ModelConverterX.
While it is something I will probably not use myself I appreciate your effort and the quality of your first wiki article here.
—Johan G (Talk | contribs) 20:32, 26 April 2014 (UTC)
apt.dat 810 vs. 850 vs. 1000 formats
I saw you recent edits related to the apt.dat formats, in particular this one. I do not know how many outside the developer and/or the scenery development/enhancement communities that are aware of the following, but it seems to go by word of mouth.
According to some forum posts ([1] 
, [2] ) it seems that genapts support both apt.dat formats 810, 850 and 1000, but unfortunately the terragear developers are not very clear on what formats terragear and/or genapts actually support, in fact can't find it in terragear's readme files.
In other words it seems for now that in FlightGear lingo 810 represents X-plane apt.dat 810 and older formats while 850 represents 850 and newer formats, if that is any help. I do not really like the inconsistency and ambiguity of that.
—Johan G (Talk | contribs) 10:24, 3 May 2014 (UTC)
- Feel free to fix my edits, I'm definitely not the expert one here! Rather, I think you're right keeping an eye on me. PS: documenting this project sure is a considerable endeavour.
- I guess I could have fixed this one. But I only now a little more than you on this subject. ;-) I also guess I was venting a bit of frustration about the lack of detail in some of the documentation.
- And yes I am sort of keeping an eye on you, though not on you specifically. This wiki is still not busy enough that one can, most of the days, see all that is going on looking at the Recent changes link in the menu to the left and the diff's.
- Also I moved your reply here and signed it. Wikis usually have replies on the same talk page as it kind of helps in following a conversation. Also, please sign you messages (easiest done using four tildes ~~~~ or the sign button
above the text box).
- Also I moved your reply here and signed it. Wikis usually have replies on the same talk page as it kind of helps in following a conversation. Also, please sign you messages (easiest done using four tildes ~~~~ or the sign button
A property rule to regulate lightmaps with the sun
First, I'm not sure if using a shader lightmap is the best way to lighten up scenery buildings. It only works with the right shader settings, and poeple with older computers can't/ won't use them. Then every buidling need a .xml file with the nasal-script --> perfomance issues raises up!
I still prefer the old way to lighten up buildings. (Described somewhere here in the wiki)
Nethertheless, I do understand your problem. I'm using lightmaps on the EC130 B4. (and Dornier 328 but not yet in my repo) Especially the EC130 B4 shows how to deal with it,
The magic property is sim/time/sun-angle-rad. You have to multiply the lightfactor with the sim/time/sun-angle-rad. How exactly you will find in the lightmap.nas of the current EC130 B4 in FGData.
Cheers --HHS (talk) 10:47, 4 May 2014 (UTC)
- Hi HHS, thank you for the interest. My computer is already getting old (6 y.o., graphics card 4 y.o.) and I have no problems with shaders, only Rembrandt shadows seem to be heavy. For when I'm done, my computer will be definitely old, so I hope using lightmaps is ok. Anyway, I don't know if you've read my forum post, but I'm already using sun-angle-rad directly and I am not satisfied (details in the post ). Also, there's no need for nasal to simply use that as a factor (see Howto:Lightmap, using Effect/model-combined-deferred is just more verbose - BTW, I'm not satisfied with this second effect and I'll post about that too).
- The idea is to use a single script in one of the models, which would add an adjusted 'sun-angle-rad' to the property tree, and use that as a factor for lightmaps. LOWI is already doing that, its version of your script is linked in my forum post.
- Cheers, --Bigstones (talk) 12:44, 4 May 2014 (UTC)
wiki restructuring
Went bold and moved the section to User talk:Bigstones/Essay:A plan for a reorganization of the wiki (permalink) in order to keep the comments with the contents.
—Johan G (Talk | contribs) 21:40, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
FG development process
thanks for those edits, really appreciated. In fact, I was just thinking that such "entry point" articles may be very worthwhile targets for someone looking to get involved in the wiki, we have only a handful of those articles, but they provide an excellent opportunity to become more familiar with the project, while also being fairly low-hanging fruits, but still pretty popular. Also, you'll probably not have as many questions once you have reviewed a few of those articles, specifically thinking in terms of entry points like:
- Volunteer
- How the FlightGear project works (this one is fairly popular but requires quite some cleanup)
- Forum communication
(The newsletter would be another obvious candidate)
Also, we have quite a few "troubleshooting" article that would greatly benefit from being cleaned up, or stuff like Hardware Recommendations.
Recently, some forum users also expressed some interest in possibly helping with this-for example, Jabberwocky made a number of suggestions [3] . So you may want to get in touch or directly team up?
You already looked at some others, but these are fairly involved if you don't know about programming already, e.g.:
--Hooray (talk) 13:25, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
- I've already done some work on Volunteer and Howto:Understand the FlightGear development process (I expected it to be more technical, so I had never read it! You could have pointed me there yesterday). I've read How the FlightGear project works and I'll try to do some cleanup, maybe pointing to Thorsten's shorter version. Howto:Start core development is core, I won't touch it :P (I'll see what I can do).
- The plan was indeed to work on entry points while finding (waiting) for tools for a category tree cleanup (I'll nudge you when I think I'm done of course).
- --Bigstones (talk) 13:46, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
- List of suggested articles to review:
- *
Volunteer - * How the FlightGear project works (argh... couldn't we just copy Thorsten's version?)
- please leave it alone then, Thorsten's version is much better - but we've seen forum feedback suggesting that people actually do read the whole thing (which cover quite a bit other stuff), and the view numbers seem to confirm this: 3600 vs. over 10k for the wiki article. It was never "written", it was just copied together from forum responses...i.e. flame wars that would have been pointless otherwise --Hooray (talk) 21:56, 13 May 2014 (UTC)
- *
Forum communication - *
Howto:Understand the FlightGear development process - * Howto:Start core development (it is long, but seems well organized and written. It seems fine to me)
- --Bigstones (talk) 21:49, 13 May 2014 (UTC)
- The new article at FlightGear and old Hardware could also use some peer review, it's currently based on a few forum/devel list discussions, but this has been coming up for a while now, and it's causing irritation obviously. So any help would be appreciated. Maybe cross-linking from Hardware Recommendations and a handful of troubleshooting articles would be a good idea, too ?--Hooray (talk) 15:56, 15 May 2014 (UTC)
- I can do that. I was actually thinking of reorganizing the newborn Category:Troubleshooting, as many FAQs on problems are everywhere (even on graphics support forum), optimization hints for developers and users are mixed... well there's a bit of work to do. (I'm working on paper right now - real paper I mean.)--Bigstones (talk) 19:46, 15 May 2014 (UTC)
- The new article at FlightGear and old Hardware could also use some peer review, it's currently based on a few forum/devel list discussions, but this has been coming up for a while now, and it's causing irritation obviously. So any help would be appreciated. Maybe cross-linking from Hardware Recommendations and a handful of troubleshooting articles would be a good idea, too ?--Hooray (talk) 15:56, 15 May 2014 (UTC)
Drafts and incomplete pages, a tip
Being a bit slow I usually start new pages as subpages to my user page. In that way I can work on them in a slower tempo and leave them unfinished for a month or two if I hit a snag or have less time available. As they are on a subpage they do not show up on regular searches (the advanced search have to be used to include user pages) and pages that I have not touched for a while are left alone by other editors.
My tip is to have a subpage to your user page whit links to articles you are working on, and perhaps have a few "sandboxes" there as well.
—Johan G (Talk | contribs) 22:10, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
- Thanks for the info, however I think I can finish it tomorrow. I'll keep that in mind for other times though, I tend to be rushy instead, but with highs and lows, especially in volunteering.
- --Bigstones (talk) 02:09, 10 May 2014 (UTC)
Category:Support
edit: moved to FlightGear wiki:Village pump#Category:Support
Wikipedia links
Hi,
it's a noble strive to fix red links. However, I don't think we should use (internal) wiki links to link to Wikipedia, like you did in Falconara Airport. Unlike Wikipedia/Wikimedia/Commons, Wikipedia is not part of our family and I would therefore prefer to use external links for that. In this specific case, I would opt for removing the links completely, as they add little to the article.
Our (unwritten) policy has always been that we try to minimise the amount of non FlightGear specific info. We simply cannot keep current with all of what's written on Wikipedia. Instead of listing all airlines operating from a certain field, we can simply link to the Wikipedia article. That way the list will stay current and those looking for FlightGear specific information won't have to dig through all the Wikipedia lookalikes ;-)
Please let me know if you have different thoughts; I'd happily discuss them.
Cheers, Gijs (talk) 16:31, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
- Hi Gijs, I definitely agree, I'll simply remove those links. Regarding "wikipedia:" links, I fear I've been using them a bit lately, instead of external links (well, won't be more than a handful.) I thought it was just cleaner, but I admit that I didn't like that you can't distinguish them. Thanks for the advice.
- --Bigstones (talk) 17:17, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
- As for the Wikipedia links, specifically using interwiki links (i.e. in the [[wikipedia:Wikipedia page]]), I have been thinking that maybe we should have a template for that so it is visible that we are linking to Wikipedia, or any of the other sites possible to link to using interwiki links.
- —Johan G (Talk | contribs) 00:14, 19 May 2014 (UTC)
