Fast(er) Progress
In just a few weeks, there’s been amazing progress with FlightGear. I’m actually starting to have hope that this could work out.
Gerry Mos and Simon Morley are heads-down in getting to grips with basic import and animation (Mossie) bending the flight model into a greater level of detail (Bomber). They’ve learned a number of interesting lessons along the way. Like not installing FlightGear where its installer defaults to. Do it that way and somehow any modifications you make to aircraft get ignored. (don’t ask me; but that’s just how it is). I had tried a quick test to swap out an existing gauge in the A6M2 Zero cockpit with the same gauge, only with better-quality Targetware art. I was pretty sure I edited the right files to make it happen. But, launch the Zero and the same old gauge is staring back at me. Well, now I know what was going on, so I’ll reinstall FG outside of the Windows Program Files/ hierarchy and see if that doesn’t produce better results.
Provided that works… then I’ve got a boatload of Japanese, American and Aussie gauges to port over. Simon and Gerry are thinking about the idea of using texture atlases (whereby you combine shared artwork on larger texture files, presumably to limit draw calls as much as possible), so I may need to wait and lurk a little while longer before diving into THAT pool.
Today, though, Mossie got the trial Spitfire I on the tarmac in-game in Flight Gear (albeit with landing gear not displaying correctly, as it hasn’t been mated to a proper flight model). Still that’s immense progress. In the whole time we were associated with Simulab, nobody managed to get a model that wasn’t one of Paul’s original jets) to appear in-game.
With FlightGear, we can use the X-Plane plug-in to create and preview animations, and also, the animation protocol in this system requires only that, for a hinge or a travel path, you name the xyz coordinates of the two end points. That is such a wonderful, freeing revelation. No more of the old Targetware drudgery of needing to provide both a position and an angle accurate to 3 or four decimal points… on any axis that was not completely 90 degrees, or haggling with whether or not the part references the 0,0,0 point. Just that one fact alone will reduce a huge burden with regards to building and importing aircraft.
So, it’s actually looking like this is gonna happen… provided Paul can add the ballistics elements, Simon comes through with the flight model process, and we all can create the GUI and other gameplay elements we require to call this a decent combat sim.
I’m looking forward to jumping in with both feet. I’ve got 25+ aircraft and almost 10% of the earth’s surface to outfit. And I miss flying too!
