FGFS Status Reports
Current Development Summary
We are still early in the development of the Flight Gear Flight Simulator.
The following items are working or in various stages of completion:
- The LaRCsim flight model code has been incorporated. By
default this implements an accurate model of a Navion flying
@100kts. As you diverge from this speed the simulation becomes
less accurate. We now need to build a flexible structure
around the LaRCsim code so that we can simulate a wide variety
of aircraft.
- We have stars, planets, the Sun, and the Moon. All of these
are placed correctly in the sky for the current time and view
position. The moon has the correct phase. The sun smoothly
changes color and becomes much more orange/red as it aproaches
the horizon. The stars and the planets have the correct
magnitudes (brightness.) Find your favorite constellation in
the right spot in the sky. Also, stars are phased in and out
in stages so you don't have the light switch effect where
suddenly all the stars appear in the sky in their full glory.
- The sky smoothly blends into haze at the horizon. We have
implemented a smoothly blended redish/orange color When the sun
is low in the horizon (sunset/sunrise.) The sky color and
blending is tied to the sun position so the the transitions
between full daylight through sunset to night is incredibly
smooth and realistic.
- Work is progressing well on an advanced DEM based
terrain/scenery management system. Tiles are irregularly
meshed to significantly reduce polygon count, while maintaining
the same detail level, and eliminated artifacts of "regular"
meshes.
- Work is well along on a configurable HUD.
- Correct sun positioning. This is a big one because we can tie
lighting and shading effects to the current sun position. This
means the right side of the mountains and valleys will be lit.
As the day progresses from sunrise to sunset (if you are
patient) you can observe the shadows moving from one side to
the other.
Supported Platforms
One of the goals of FlightGear is to be portable and support as many
platforms as possible. To achieve this goal, Flight Gear is written in
ANSI C, on top of OpenGL and GLUT. This provides a pretty good amount
of portability. The following platforms are fulling supported:
- Win32 - Yeah, it sucks, but pretty much everyone
runs it. We have a working build based on the Cygnus Win32 gcc
compiler and linked to the old MS software-only-rendering
OpenGL libraries. This is fine for development, but eventually
we'll need to be able to build with other compilers and link to
optimized hardware accelerated OpenGL libraries.
- Linux -- Linux makes a great cheap development
platform. Besides, Linux needs a good general aviation simulator.
- SGI - Of course. Flight Gear and it's terrain
is pretty amazing on a high end workstation.
- Solaris - This is an example of how easy it is
to port Flight Gear to just about any Unix that has OpenGL and
GLUT support.
We also would like to support these platforms
- Macintosh - Ryan Connon
(techie@midcoast.com)
will be heading up the team to build in Mac support.
As long as you have a C compiler, OpenGL, and GLUT you have a pretty good
shot of porting Flight Gear to your platform. If you have a favorite
platform not listed here, feel free to contact us. We would be more than
happy to provide porting assistance and work in support for new platforms
into the core source code tree.
Everything from this point on is very outdated ...
Summary by Developer
- Gavin Bucknell (3/8/97) --
I've been working on instrument gauges as requested by Eric. I am
currently building a generic compass that, depending on parameters,
will display different styles.
I'm also working on the horizon instrument... early design. Will
try for glass cockpit and analogue control depending on parms.
- Curt Olson (7/4/97) -- Manage web page, and
mailing list.
USGS DEM data, VRML2.0 for the scenery description language.
I'd also like to be involved in weather modeling and incorporating
real weather sources. I have a lot of ideas for utilizing the
internet to make this sim a lot more realistic and fun.
- Dean Catalano (3/7/97) -- I've been working
still on the "design proposal" for aircraft for FG.
Brainstorming on aircraft systems and how they
should be modeled. I've been thinking of some ideas in terms
of modular design (i.e., "I think I'll put an engine here,
speedbrakes here, etc"). My initial idea is to create a Flight
Shop type of design but where individual components have
aerodynamic properties. Yes, I know I'm kinda thinking down the
road, but I'm trying to get ideas so I don't program my self
into a corner. I'm hoping to start some "idea" code to test out
some of my theories in the next few weeks. My main concern
will be to write a design that has "real world" response.
- Krisztian Kaldi (3/17/97) -- Working on an AI
engine to manage interactions between objects.
I have finally managed to get my language to a working
state. Right now 90% of the things are done (not counting the
ai thing...). I have a fully working compiler and an
interpreter. You can play with sim sources, compile then
interpret them. I'll attach a short description, mainly for
people who know something about languages and compilers. If you
have any questions, please throw them at me...
- Mike Vidal -- Documentation.
- Michael Basler -- Initial User Documentation.
- Ryan Connon -- Macintosh port and support.
Knowledge resource for aircraft stats and logos.
- Pepijn Schmitz (3/9/97) -- Networking and multiplayer
support.
I'm steadily progressing with some networking code for FG. I have a
rudimentary network & OS independent layer, and a working TCP/IP+OS/2
dependent layer. I haven't integrated it with Eric's code yet though.
I'll let you know when I have something working.
Summary by Project
Flight Gear Kernel
Status: We have a single threaded implementation.
- Do we want to try supporting "threads" or "real time" type
features?
Flight Gear Modules
Owner: Eric Korpela. Status: Coming along well.
Scenery Rendering
Instrument Panels
Weather Modelling
Sound Effects
Networking
- Client side (Platform independent layer/Platform dependent layer)
- Server side (Weather server, scenery server, aircraft/panel/sounds
server, multiplayer (area) server.
User Interface
- Developer (Internals) documentation.
- User documentation.
Last modified: 2/10/1998
Curtis L. Olson
(curt@flightgear.org)