nVidia Driver Tweaks for Fligthgear on *nix OS

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valery
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Re: nVidia Driver Tweaks for Fligthgear on *nix OS

Postby valery » Tue Jan 03, 2017 3:43 pm

I missed your wishlist

1. Multicore/multithread of FGFS core:
2. Python support as an alternative to Nasal for OOO procedural programming
3. Change of graphics rendering out of the ugly OpenSceneGraph (there are a couple of viable GPL alternatives once I had in mind. Need to re-research)
4. A reworked launcher in Java or GTK, able to better interact with FGMEMBERS and give better control of properties to the user. This being more FGRUN-like.
5. walk away of PLib dependencies (I believe the cores are already doing this as well)
6. Solve the rembrandt/ALS issue (I dont' think these are really that incompatible except by design -- intentionally made incompatible by Thorsten Renk)
Anyhow, ultimately the software would look so much better if both features could be simmultaneously on.
7. Catch and kill memory hogs
8. Improve multiplayer plattform (many goals needed here)


I completely agree with you and with the order of your choices perhaps switch 2<=>3.
And at 9nth position:
9. Air Combat capabilities !

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Re: nVidia Driver Tweaks for Fligthgear on *nix OS

Postby IAHM-COL » Tue Jan 03, 2017 3:44 pm

totally adding 9th! :D
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Re: nVidia Driver Tweaks for Fligthgear on *nix OS

Postby jwocky » Tue Jan 03, 2017 4:53 pm

Air combat only when switched on or we have some trolls all the time going for the bus drivers!
With combat ability we also have to think about a user-login because alas, the ability to shoot other people down will lure the trolls out of the underwood.

Why exactly do you want Python as scripting language? I am surely not a fan of Nasal, true, but why Python to replace it? We would need something fully object-oriented for many things.
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Re: nVidia Driver Tweaks for Fligthgear on *nix OS

Postby LesterBoffo » Wed Jan 04, 2017 12:08 am

This is my sort of 'Gee I wish' list

Before FlightGear I was developing for Fighter Squadron WWI, a mod of the old combat flight sim SDoE.

It would be interesting to see if parts of the old SDoE game code could be 'trained' to run inside of FG. It's all rather old 32 bit coding. I know a couple of the original Activision sim developers for SDoE. The original coding for SDoE was done on Linux machines, IIRC I think there's still a Linux version of the OpenPlaneStudio, FDM and Damage Model complier.

SDoE uses AC3D as part of it's suite of apps for developer's use, the 3d parts are exported from AC3D as either .lod's or .obj's and then joined together as an .sm file within OPS, which adds a lot of ASCII coding scripts and property files within the vertex and polygon points to establish masses, airfoils, elasticity, density, damage boxes and weapons effects. There's a lot of similarity between the way YAsim and OPenPlaneStudio design basic aerodynamic elements. SDoE also runs the visuals under a selective renderer for either OpenGL or DirectX, but it's a really deprecated, old OpenGL renderer.

Which is why I'd like to see if we could help port FS-WWI further into 21st century visuals.

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Re: nVidia Driver Tweaks for Fligthgear on *nix OS

Postby IAHM-COL » Wed Jan 04, 2017 12:33 am

jwocky wrote:Air combat only when switched on or we have some trolls all the time going for the bus drivers!
With combat ability we also have to think about a user-login because alas, the ability to shoot other people down will lure the trolls out of the underwood.


I am in the same board with this feeling.
I imagine that one could have a parameter that can only be set on launch time (not addreseable if you are already flying) like

Code: Select all

--enable-combat


Such parameter will system-wide enable combat mode. Regardless of what plane you fly you can be damaged and be brought down. Beside it can allow for maybe a generic or global way to implement weaponry, and planes with xml tags like lets say

Code: Select all

<weapon>
   <specifications/>
   <specifications/>
</weapon>


could be generated to code for weaponry in fighters.

This way, if you don't use the --enable-combat parameter, then you are both safe and harmless regardless of what aircraft you are flying (an A380 with passengers or an Eurofighter)


Why exactly do you want Python as scripting language? I am surely not a fan of Nasal, true, but why Python to replace it? We would need something fully object-oriented for many things.


Well...
for pure OO, when needed; once we fork we would have C-level control of the code.

but at the level of surface-coding (what we would try to do in Nasal, like aircraft specific management of the property tree) or for animations, etc, having the fork to be able to use python in full replacement of nasal would be great.

Let's face it. Nasal is really not-neat. Firstly, it reads like spaguetti-soup code. It lacks structure mostly, it lacks clarity, and it produces uninteligible errors. It's also badly documented. But most important, it is a "niche" language. This is to say, it is specific to flightgear. Learning to code in nasal has no further professional-development repecursion. It's like learning a dead language. But also, most importantly, having access to python give us immediate access to a wealth of expansion libraries and a wealth of a very lively development community where finding help online is prompt. (usually a google search away).
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Re: nVidia Driver Tweaks for Fligthgear on *nix OS

Postby IAHM-COL » Wed Jan 04, 2017 12:42 am

@Lesbof

That's certainly an interesting wish list.
I am working my way around to fully understand it, but I take is around the combat-support modes as well?

I knew FG had once some bombable which I never expanded cause I am too noob of a pilot to succesfully engage in combat.
(only one time I simulated something like this with Side, and it took me two flips before I was down just by myself, mere lack of aircraft control :blush: )

Also, I know some of the OpenRed Flag group had coded some Nasal hacks for damage subroutines, which allowed them to shoot themselves out of the skies.

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Re: nVidia Driver Tweaks for Fligthgear on *nix OS

Postby LesterBoffo » Wed Jan 04, 2017 1:15 am

I can contact both Scroft and Jason at OpenPlane who are the last of the old development crew for FS-WWI. I'm not sure if either have access to the base code, but it's worth a shot. I've been posting screenshots of my work and conversions of FS-WWI aircraft in FG to their forum, we even bounced the concept around of trying to import the converted .bzg terrain files to OpenPlane scenery. There is some enthusiasm for giving it a go, it's just that both are limited in their free time presently.

This is running a tangent off present topic and maybe I should start a new thread about it.

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Re: nVidia Driver Tweaks for Fligthgear on *nix OS

Postby valery » Wed Jan 04, 2017 11:19 am

jwocky wrote:Air combat only when switched on or we have some trolls all the time going for the bus drivers!
With combat ability we also have to think about a user-login because alas, the ability to shoot other people down will lure the trolls out of the underwood.
Why exactly do you want Python as scripting language? I am surely not a fan of Nasal, true, but why Python to replace it? We would need something fully object-oriented for many things.


This is generally done at server level. Currently, flightgear mpmap server are opened, ie anybody, including bot or crackers, could connect to the servers.
For Python, I agree with IHAM, but perhaps the choice of the language must comply with the following too:
- efficiency in a real-time environment
- easy to embed/use in C/C++
- can generate bytecode would be great

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Re: nVidia Driver Tweaks for Fligthgear on *nix OS

Postby jwocky » Wed Jan 04, 2017 7:38 pm

Val: Okay, as I said earlier, I like my Java better than C++. So I looked into the JMonkeyEngine earlier. But since everybody is so hellbound for C++, fine, yeah, why not? The argument for Java is only portability, that we can make use of more programming capacities since Java is easier to learn and handle and that we could actually abuse Java to program also Java in planes and compile it at loading time into bytecode and run it controlled on the same virtual engine. So, question: Do you speak JAVA? 8-)
By the way, we can always go for the machine-dependent parts C++ and the rest JAVA, they have an interface that works nicely.

Israel, I definitively will NOT defend Nasal. You know, I call it the "programming language for masochists" and my hang to masochism is not so developed. My thinking was, instead to implement just another limited script language, we could maybe implement a fully blown programming language. See, from where I stand, engines for example are classes. So, in a 747, I have for example 4 instances of the engine class. Nice and easily to handle because packed in objects. With another script language, we have again this chaos of here a piece of code for an object and there and then somewhere else.
However, if we would go again fully C++ for the core, we can't use native code (as in C++ in the planes) because C++ is not exactly human-friendly, it rises the risks to machine level. Imagine, someone programs a plane extension in C++ and messes up his pointers. With a Java-class this can't happen. All that would happen is, that the sim is continue running and your plane specific class says, it has an exception.

Also on the subject of programming language for planes:
    - we have to consider that the old planes should still run, so we can't cut off Nasal entirely
    - I wish a complete oo-language mainly because this speaks to my idea of a cleaner easier programming in planes
    - You wish for a real script language
What would be your take on a script language we actually translate in a kind of byte code at starting time? A "for-loop" for example would translate to the same bytecode construct whether it is a "for-loop" in Nasal, Python, Jave, Whatever, andanotherlanguafewedontevenknow yet ... Same with all basic programming structures. That would give us a lot of flexibility for the future.

@Lester: About the whole combat question and in part also historical aspects.
I once had this crazy idea to connect objects in the scenery with time-ranges. Buildings are build, they disappear over history, other buildings are built. The basic idea, and I haven't checked yet whether this is even possible, is, to run simulation at a certain "historic time". Means, for example if you fly WWII, this one server for the time, he is set to WWII, will not let you in with an F-14 and there will be no World Trade Center in 1941. Well, that is just one of my crazy dreams. Another one is, to have more stuff that doesn't fly. We have already player-carriers and motorcycles, is there a reason why we don't have working submarines and warships. Especially war ships with AA could add some new dimension to combat flight simming.

See, what we are talking here is not really an FG fork anymore. The question would be, is it easier to do such a thing from the scratch or fork and develop step by step to our vision. We talk not only the client for example. For a real good combat sim, we would also need to expand a lot on the server software and the protocol in between.
The problem, with both ways, is not only how to program it but also the what. See, I can probably bring up a lot of clouds in the sky ... if someone could tell me which kind of clouds, how do they look and what are the weather conditions for them ... I could probably even program a motorcycle if I had the faintest idea about morotcycles. So, aside of programmers, we would need a lot of specialists who can give us that kind of input.
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Re: nVidia Driver Tweaks for Fligthgear on *nix OS

Postby IAHM-COL » Wed Jan 04, 2017 7:48 pm

I think Java is a good approach and wraps nicely around existing C++ code we will reuse.
I wouldn't object grabbing Java for the fork

About scripting language vs non-scripting language. We so far agree Nasal is to be deprecated. We also agree not a 1 step move. Slow replacement and keeping it "functional" on the background is the way to go to avoid a massive rupture of stuff at the beginning. I think.

Python sounds to me as a good approach to this.

I just look at JMonkey. This looks a very promising replacement to the OpenSceneGraph thing.

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