Re: [Flightgear-devel] Volcano - scenery model or AI scenario?

[Stuart B. <stu...@gm...>]

Hi All,

On Thu, Sep 14, 2017 at 12:46 PM, Thorsten Renk wrote:
>
> Quick question - I have a demo for Kilauea showing some activity in the
> crater (glowing lava, some smoke - more active states possible).
>
> Would we generally consider that rather a scenemodel and put it into the
> database (on the grounds that it's a natural phenomenon and contributes to
> scenery) or as AI scenario (on the grounds that it is a time-dependent
> phenomenon and might be chosen to be not active, or even have a GUI element
> to change activity state)?

I think it should be a scenery model, distributed in the normal
manner.  Volcanos
don't change their lat/lon, and we can add any Nasal/animations
required (I think).
Having them as an AI model as part of fgdata  when they are only relevant if
a user chooses to fly in a particular specific geographical region
just feels wrong to me.

I'm not aware of any technical limitations that mean having them as an
AI model is better/worse
than a scenery model.  The only thing I can think of is for changing
the local weather (I suspect
I can guess what Thorsten is thinking of next here...).

As an aside, one thought I've had in the back of my mind for a while
is having easily defined
calendar animations, or perhaps as one of the <condition> elements.

For example, there are some tall chimney towers near me that were a
key VFR landmark, but
which were taken down a couple of years ago.  I could write a fairly
complicated animation to
make them visible based on the correct date, but having a shortcut
would be handy.  I've never
got around to doing that though.

I could imagine similar things could be used for Red Bull Air-race
pylons and other temporary
structures, as well as allowing "historical" scenery so one could fly
a DC-3 without seeing any
wind-turbines.

Just a thought... :)

-Stuart