Re: [Flightgear-devel] Rating System Redux

[Hal V. E. <hv...@gm...>]

On Friday, June 03, 2011 11:45:26 AM Stuart Buchanan wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 6:56 PM, ThorstenB wrote:
> > Hi Stuart and all,
> > 
> >  > http://wiki.flightgear.org/Formalizing_Aircraft_Status
> > 
> > We have some (too few!) aircraft providing documentation / tutorials,
> > i.e. how to start, how to use instruments... I like extremely
> > detailed/realistic aircraft, and I'm not asking everyone to provide
> > cheating autostart options. But realistic FDMs/cockpits/... are still of
> > little use when people don't know how to use them. So, wouldn't it be a
> > good idea to make the level of documentation/tutorials part of the new
> > rating system? Especially since that's certainly of interest to new
> > users (new to FG, or just new to the aircraft).
> 
> You may have seen that I've proposed putting it at least partly within the
>  "Systems"  rating, as really it is related to operating those systems.

There are some things that should be covered in the in-sim help or a pilots 
handbook that are related to the FDM such as Vne, stall speeds, service 
ceiling and the like.  So perhaps there is an FDM component to this as well 
but this is probably a nit and having it covered in the Systems catigory seems 
OK to me.

> 
> Thus far, my proposal is that for a Systems:3 rating, there must be
> either in-sim instructions or a tutorial for the correctly modelled engine
> startup.  I think that is reasonable, and will allow new users to at least
> start the engine, if not get into the air.
> 
> We could extend that such that for each of the modelled systems for a given
> rating there must be either
> - in-sim help/checklist
> - in-sim tutorial
> - referenced documentation elsewhere (Manual, wiki, freely available PoH)
> 
> Does that seem reasonable or too draconian?

This strikes me as an OK approach.  As the systems being modeled get more 
complex and/or numerous having everything covered by in-sim help/check lists 
is not feasible (IE. the help text becomes too big).   But there is also a 
need for more documentation as more systems are added to the model.  Having 
some basic aircraft help (perhaps startup, take off and landing check lists 
along with some other basic info) and referring users to a pilot's handbook 
that covers in detail how these systems work IRL should be enough to satisfy 
this requirement.  

For many aircraft getting the pilots handbook is not hard but it can take some 
research to find.  I had considered adding the pilots handbook to my aircraft 
directory in a Docs subdirectory since it has been put in the public domain by 
US.gov (IE. no IP issues - something that will not be the case for all 
aircraft).  But the best of the handbooks available is fairly large (around 54 
meg) and I am a little hesitant to add it since adding the handbook almost 
doubles the download size of the aircraft. 

I didn't even think about this when rating my aircraft since I had assumed 
that most if not all aircraft with with a shot at something beyond a beta 
rating would either have extensive in-sim documentation or a pilots handbooks 
would be available.  For me adding this requirement to the rating system would 
not affect how I scored my model but it may impact others.

> 
> The problem with having it as a completely separate rating is that when
> calculating an overall status for the aircraft  it "dilutes" the other
> ratings (in particular FDM) unless one starts weighting the different
> ratings.
> 
> -Stuart