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FlightGear Status

topic posted Sun, January 16, 2005 - 10:37 AM by  Unsubscribed
The Virual Playa model files can be downloaded from www.virtualplaya.org.
Virtual Playa looks awesome in Microsoft Flight Simulator, but for those of use who can't or won't run it, FlightGear from www.flightgear.org is a possibility. FlightGear is freely available and runs on Windows, Linux and Mac.

I converted some of the Virtual Playa models that Andrew posted in January(?) of last year for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2002 to FlightGear. Those converted files can be found at ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cxh/...ar.htm
There are various problems with the converted files, which are documented on that page. In particular, the converted files _do not_ work on the Mac yet

Unfortunately, the recent files from the Virtual Playa January 2004 release do not all convert. I'll see what I can do, but I'm swamped with some other tasks. Any C programmers out there want to take a shot?
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  • Caro...
    Caroline
    offline 0

    Re: FlightGear Status

    Wed, August 10, 2005 - 3:26 PM
    Hi,
    I just joined this tribe and am interested in your FlightGear inquiry. It seems that if VP ever gets big, it's going to need to be open source, no? Or it's own "game". I can't picture it forever tethered to Micro$oft. Besides, I have a Mac, and can't interface with the M$ stuff. I'm not a programmer, but is there any help you need that I might be able to provide? Repetitive grunt work? Testing?

    Does someone need to research other cross platform open souce flight sims that might work better? GL-117 or something? Do we need to find out how other people do this? Like Quake or Second Life? What engine are they built on? Or do you already know all that? Can I ask any more questions? Let me know if I can help. My background is mostly art/design.
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    • Unsu...
       

      Re: FlightGear Status

      Thu, August 11, 2005 - 11:12 PM
      Basically, the problem is that the Microsoft Flight Simulator format evolves over time. I was able to convert the Virtual Playa models from Flight Simulator 2002 (or something) just fine, but the Flight Simulator 2004 format has a bunch of new stuff in it that does not convert with the old converter. The tricky part is that the file format is not documented. I'm working from pages on the web that predate FS 2004.

      I see two big issues:
      1) MS Flight Simulator looks better than Flight Gear. This is partly because MS FS has a bunch of dedicated (paid) engineers on it.


      2) MS Flight Simulator is dirt cheap. I swear I saw a copy at Costco for $25 or so.

      However MS FlightSim does not work under MacOS or Linux, so Flight Gear looks better there, and is cheaper.

      I've not had much time to do further work on the conversion. Basically the work requires C and maybe a little C++ and a loose understanding of how graphics work, especially applying textures. My notes are at ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cxh/...ar.htm

      I appreciate the offer of testing and stuff, but what it really needed is looking at the raw data files and trying to figure out what is going on.

      I agree that an open source component would be a big win, especially for the Mac. The problem I ran in to revolved around byte ordering on the Mac, so I was not able to get it to go.

      GL-117 looks interesting. There is this tension between using something like FlightSim/FlightGear, where one can fly a plane around vs. a more immersive 3d environment. Flying is totally cool, but there are limits in the amount of detail that can be displayed etc. Going to a different rendering engine might be interesting.

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    • andrew
      andrew
      online 46

      Re: FlightGear Status

      Thu, August 11, 2005 - 11:40 PM
      Cyber burners everywhere,
      The project is not umbilically connected to ANY platform. It is a fluid and evolving entity and if anyone has a better scaffold around which it can be built then ... wa-hoo! We will evolve.

      It does bother me that it PC only, and I wish MS flight sim were free. Chris is doing a wonderful job of adapting the package for flightgear, which IS open source and works also on Mac.
      However...
      Microsoft flight sim however works well right now, in that ...
      1. It is universally available as an engine from Alameda to Australia.
      2. By using it as an engine, it keeps our download down to a small packet.(the base download is only 18megs. If the engine were also to be downloaded it would be several hundred megs at least.)
      3. It is well supported and is tolerant of our mesh and textures.
      4. It supports multiplayer activity and voice over IP like "teamspeak"www.goteamspeak.com/news.php , thus allowing many people to be in the space at the same time and having conversations with each other. THIS IS THE BIG DEAL.
      5. There is no point 5.
      6. It is very lovely to look at.


      In my dream time, I imagine sitting on the back porch of the Seattle mansion smoking a fatty with "Bill" and kicking him the idea of MS making a free version of flight sim but with only active scenery from say Reno to the Nevada border, which (no offense) is rather bland bit of geography anyway except for Black Rock Desert for which we have a special fondness.
      This would be a place we could call our own. The return for MS would be the added exposure and good snuggly PR, with of course the net gain of the "click here for the full upgrade" crowd (everyone eventually wants to fly over their own house or town). WIN/WIN!

      Does anyone have Bill Gates cell phone number?

      Until then, we continue to make our end of the deal a gift and hope people think of it as priceless rather than mearly free.

      Come see us in Centercamp after dark play with our screaming fast system and give me shit in person for exposing you the the dark side.

      Hugs and kisses,
      Andrew
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      • Unsu...
         

        Re: FlightGear Status

        Mon, September 12, 2005 - 11:41 PM
        Hi Andrew,
        Well, I made a last minute decision to go to this year's burning man but did not make it around to the Virtual Playa booth in Center Camp.

        I fixed a few minor bugs in the old models I've been working with:
        - Fixed a problem with upside down bitmaps. Turns out that plib has a bug here. I submitted a bug report, but it could be years before it gets fixed. My solution is to use ImageMagick to invert the bitmaps.
        - Fixed a problem with the texture maps flashing white.
        - Fixed problems that were preventing the models from displaying in FlightGear 0.9.8. Basically, I was not properly zeroing some fields, so the values were haywire.
        There were some other minor fixes as well.

        The revised files are at ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cxh/...ar.htm

        The current big problems:
        - The playa data is not flat, so some of brcplan.bgl is partially covered by the playa. In MSFS, we can use the flatten directive. I'm not sure how to do this in FlightGear. One solution would be to regenerate terrain with the playa being flat. The other would be to move the models to better match the terrain.
        - There is a limit to the number of vertices that the ssg files can handle. One hack would be to convert the large models to some other format and then save pieces of the large model into smaller pieces and convert those pieces to FlightGear compatible ssg files. Another idea would be start with the gmax source files and work from there. There might also be a FlightGear compatible file format that does not have this size limitation.
        - I'm missing some bitmaps
        bgl.out:WARNING: ssgLoadTexture: Failed to open '123B2SU1.BMP' for reading.
        bgl.out:WARNING: ssgLoadTexture: Failed to open '127B2SU1.BMP' for reading.
        bgl.out:WARNING: ssgLoadTexture: Failed to open '256B2SU1.BMP' for reading.
        bgl.out:WARNING: ssgLoadTexture: Failed to open '258B2SU1.BMP' for reading.
        bgl.out:WARNING: ssgLoadTexture: Failed to open 'BADDATA.BMP' for reading.
        bgl.out:WARNING: ssgLoadTexture: Failed to open 'TRUCKF.BMP' for reading.
        bgl.out:WARNING: ssgLoadTexture: Failed to open 'UNTITLED-1 COPY.BMP' for reading.
        bgl.out:WARNING: ssgLoadTexture: Failed to open './123B2SU1.BMP' for reading.
        bgl.out:WARNING: ssgLoadTexture: Failed to open './127B2SU1.BMP' for reading.
        bgl.out:WARNING: ssgLoadTexture: Failed to open './256B2SU1.BMP' for reading.
        bgl.out:WARNING: ssgLoadTexture: Failed to open './258B2SU1.BMP' for reading.
        bgl.out:WARNING: ssgLoadTexture: Failed to open './BADDATA.BMP' for reading.
        bgl.out:WARNING: ssgLoadTexture: Failed to open './TRUCKF.BMP' for reading.
        bgl.out:WARNING: ssgLoadTexture: Failed to open './UNTITLED-1 COPY.BMP' for reading.
        testwow.out:WARNING: ssgLoadTexture: Failed to open '123B2SU1.BMP' for reading.
        testwow.out:WARNING: ssgLoadTexture: Failed to open '127B2SU1.BMP' for reading.
        testwow.out:WARNING: ssgLoadTexture: Failed to open '256B2SU1.BMP' for reading.
        testwow.out:WARNING: ssgLoadTexture: Failed to open '258B2SU1.BMP' for reading.
        testwow.out:WARNING: ssgLoadTexture: Failed to open 'BADDATA.BMP' for reading.
        testwow.out:WARNING: ssgLoadTexture: Failed to open 'TRUCKF.BMP' for reading.
        testwow.out:WARNING: ssgLoadTexture: Failed to open 'UNTITLED-1 COPY.BMP' for reading.
        testwow.out:WARNING: ssgLoadTexture: Failed to open './123B2SU1.BMP' for reading.
        testwow.out:WARNING: ssgLoadTexture: Failed to open './127B2SU1.BMP' for reading.
        testwow.out:WARNING: ssgLoadTexture: Failed to open './256B2SU1.BMP' for reading.
        testwow.out:WARNING: ssgLoadTexture: Failed to open './258B2SU1.BMP' for reading.
        testwow.out:WARNING: ssgLoadTexture: Failed to open './BADDATA.BMP' for reading.
        testwow.out:WARNING: ssgLoadTexture: Failed to open './TRUCKF.BMP' for reading.
        testwow.out:WARNING: ssgLoadTexture: Failed to open './UNTITLED-1 COPY.BMP' for reading.
        Also, chrome_t is corrupt.
        Do you have copies of these bitmaps? I have not looked in the latest August release yet, so forgive me if they are there. I'm not sure if these bitmaps are very important, I should probably concentrate on other details.

        - The mac port continues to not work because of endian problems. Again, selecting a different file format could help here.

        Anyway all of these pale in comparison to the big problem that I can only convert MSFS 2002 files, not the newer MSFS2004 files. I see a couple of solutions:
        1) Hack up a converter to MSFS 2004 BGL files. This could be tricky
        2) Use either the gmax files or else the xml intermediate files.

        So, I'm going to focus on handling MSFS 2004 files. I'll poke around and see what I can do.

        Andrew, are you comfortable releasing your gmax files? It might be faster for me to work from those files.

        I see your point about the beauty of using MSFS. It sure looks much better than FlightGear, and the multiuser capability is a win.
        I'm interesting in the FlightGear port partly for my own edification, partly for political reasons. I certainly don't fault you for using MSFS, which really is the best looking tool for the task.

        Anyway, I'm sorry I did not connect with you at the event, there is just so much to do, and so little time to do it in.

        _Christopher
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        • Unsu...
           

          Re: FlightGear Status

          Sun, September 18, 2005 - 4:17 PM
          Ok, I was able to convert the August 2005 Virtual Playa download to FlightGear. See ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cxh/...ar.htm

          A few caveats:
          1) The man himself and other objects are incomplete. This is because of the vertex/face limitation in .ssg files. I can look in to other formats.
          2) These files will not work on a mac, there are endian issues.
          3) The playa is not flat, so the objects are either above the playa or stuck in it.
          4) The following bitmaps are missing:
          Tile not found (Ok if initializing)
          WARNING: Premature EOF in './CHROME_T.BMP'
          WARNING: Premature EOF in './CHROME_T.BMP'
          WARNING: Premature EOF in './CHROME_T.BMP'
          ssgLoadTexture: No such file or directory
          WARNING: ssgLoadTexture: Failed to open './BANNER4.BMP' for reading.
          WARNING: Premature EOF in './CHROME_T.BMP'
          ssgLoadTexture: No such file or directory
          WARNING: ssgLoadTexture: Failed to open './GREGORYH.BMP' for reading.
          ssgLoadTexture: No such file or directory
          WARNING: ssgLoadTexture: Failed to open './MAGNETIC.BMP' for reading.
          ssgLoadTexture: No such file or directory
          WARNING: ssgLoadTexture: Failed to open './258B2SU1.BMP' for reading.
          WARNING: Premature EOF in './CHROME_T.BMP'
          ssgLoadTexture: No such file or directory
          WARNING: ssgLoadTexture: Failed to open './PORTACABIN.BMP' for reading.
          WARNING: Premature EOF in './CHROME_T.BMP'
          ssgLoadTexture: No such file or directory
          WARNING: ssgLoadTexture: Failed to load './FURNITURE_WOOD' for reading.

          A few other points:
          1) Flightgear can't handle 16 bpp bmps. bpp is bitplanes * bitcount.
          I had to use Imagemagick mogrify to change the original bmps to
          8 bpp, flip them and mess with the alpha channel:
          /bin/mogrify -flip -transparent black -channel alpha -negate -compress none -depth 8 *.bmp

          2) It seems like a the January 2005 release had a bunch of models in it that are not present in the August 2005 release on www.virtualplaya.org.
          This is probably a good thing as FlightGear did not run very well on my laptop when I had lots of objects from the January 2005 release.

          _Christopher
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