Re: [Flightgear-devel] FGFS Externals

[John W. <ca...@mm...>]

Curtis Olson writes:
> We are all in the process of learning ... I really hadn't done much
> C++ myself before we started the FlightGear project.
>
> > and some of it's finer points and nuances still elude me
>
> Unless your name is Bjarne Stroustrup, I'd be a little suspicious of
> anyone who said they completely understood *all* the nuances and finer
> points of the language. :-)
>
Thank you, thank you!  In the land of the blind the one-eyed is king and
right now I feel like a serf...

>> FDM battles....
> It boils down to this.  We have provided "capabilities" but not
> enforced "policies".  So, you could engineer an FDM battle if you
> wanted; in C/C++ there's nothing in the language that says you can't
> run way off the end of your arrays.  This means mistakes are possible,
> but hopefully people will be able to figure out how to effectively use
> the capabilities without stepping on too many land minds.  This whole
> section of code could be improved.  What you are seeing is a first cut
> at the problem.
>
> > > The --native option is used to emit the fdm data (as you observed) and
on
> > > receipt is supposed to smear it on top of the existing fdm data
structure,
> > > completely ignoring all the usual method calls.
> > >
> > In essence, you have a psuedo fdm running as a network module.
> > Now you have two places to interface to Simgear, change the Simgear..
> > Would using the FDM interface route obviate that need?
>
> I'm not sure I'm on the same page with you here.  SimGear provides the
> low level communication support code ... socket, serial, file, etc.
>
Actually, I don't think I was either. you have FDM times n interfaces (where
n =number of FDMs) no matter where you put the comm support... External
seemed like a nice
semantically correct place for "alien" non-FlightGear species

> I can give you my boss's cell phone number if you want to take it up
> with him. :-)
>
>
> > In the interim, will probably write some code this weekend just to
> > see what happens, get a little more practice, and gain further
> > understanding...
>
> I'm about 650 emails behind (after weeding out all the spam and
> unimportant stuff) so bear with me.  I'll do my best to answer
> questions and provide feedback.
>
I hear you. My feeling is whatever I write at this point is "throwaway". If
anything sticks then that is a plus (or plus plus).

Regards
Jack W.