Re: [Flightgear-devel] Include local Aircraft/ folder in fgdata/AI and fgdata/FlightPlan scenario search

[James T. <jam...@kd...>]

> On 20 Oct 2017, at 11:39, Brendan Black <en...@gm...> wrote:
> 
> Admittedly i didn't think this through completely,  but wanted to throw this out there. Would it be practical and feasible for the scenario and flight plan search that is done in fgdata/AI to include the fgaddon or any other aircraft folder. Say if you include a sub-folder of Aircraft/AirCrane/AI and Aircraft/AirCrane/AI/FlightPlan that this location will automatically be searched and included in the scenarios list?
> 
> My purpose if for easier implementation of cargo hauling which relies on an AI Scenario to add cargo to the scene. But beyond that, many AI scenarios could be aircraft specific (think tow plane for a glider). It would be a simplified way for aircraft developers to include AI scenarios with their aircraft.
> 
> Wayne
>  
> I think something like this would be good - like you I tend to include AI Scenarios in an AI directory of the Aircrafts own folder, but having any AI directory automatically searched outside of FGDATA would be great - no more copying/linking AI files into FGDATA every time an upgrade is done
> 

My take would be, we need a way for these things to exist outside FG_DATA, but it probably shouldn’t be in the aircraft dirs, that’s a separate mechanism.

I’m open to suggestions what that mechanism might be (Torsten’s addon system is a reasonable solution maybe?)

Now, if the ‘AI’ stuff is really specific to a particular aircraft, we need to think about that mechanism, since obviously it’s always best if data is self-contained. We could permit $current-aircraft-dir/AI to be searched, but only for certain kinds of content; maybe one of you could give some typical use cases?

The reason I am being a big cagey here is, there are some subdirectories of FG_DATA/Ai, such as traffic, which we handle in special ways. Hence we can’t simply have more dirs exactly the FG_DATA/AI, but I suspect the use-cases people actually want, are more specific and hence easier to get working.

(BTW, the separate issue of AI models for aircraft should be skipped here, since that really does need a different management mechanism)

Kind regards,
James