Re: [Flightgear-devel] Weather scenarios - add ICAO standard

[Edward d'A. <tru...@gm...>]

On 19 April 2018 at 11:27, Thorsten Renk
<tho...@sc...> wrote:
>> Not every person that develops/might develop/tests aircraft is friends
>> with
>> the command line, and having CLI skills and on top of that having
>> knowledge of
>> obscure Flightgear CLI flags to be able to work on/test aircraft seems an
>> unreasonable requirement to me.
>
>
> Not as such, but it has to be weighted against other issues.
>
> And frankly, learning how to add a commandline option in the launcher is a
> matter of 3 minutes - hardly something that'll be important compared to the
> time you need to develop even a simple aircraft.
>
> Well, and metar isn't really an 'obscure flag' either.
>
>> On the other hand, maybe some of the other weather scenarios could do with
>> some pruning, if the length of the scenario dropdown is an issue (or maybe
>> the
>> order might be revised)
>
>
> If we discuss the scenarios we present, I'd much  prefer the complete
> meteorology set (cold sector, tropical weather,...) and the glider scenarios
> (blue thermals,...) to be added before standard atmosphere is considered -
> these have a much wider user-base.
>
> For the record, I think adding standard atmosphere as a scenario is a bad
> idea because of the following reasons:
>
> a) it is not a term the standard user is familiar with and not a 'scenario'
> in the classic sense (in fact, it is a non-scenario)
> b) in the same vein, it won't do what it proposes to do if the user selects
> AW without an explanation given - potential issue reports on the horizon
> c) if we make too many weather scenarios 'accessible', none of them really
> is in the current dropdown menu
> d) standardized aircraft tests are a comparatively rare use case, if we
> decide to add more scenarios, I think others should be priorized
> e) the standard atmosphere can easily be added via commandline or a config
> file if so desired
>
> I'll be happy to re-investigate the question along with a general re-design
> of the weather UI - I'm not happy with the current non-presentation of
> glider stuff either - but without such a re-design, simply adding 'standard
> atmosphere' is going to make me even less happy for the reasons above.
>
> Which is why I object.

A redesign would be good, especially if it includes a grouping of
different types of "weather scenarios" (launcher) or "weather
conditions" (PUI GUI), and maybe some more specific details in the
description.  To me it sounds like "ICAO standard" could be a perfect
beginners weather setting.  I could imagine lots of new users' posts
on the forum could be responded to by saying - switch to the "ICAO
standard" weather scenario/condition and see if you still have
problems flying the aircraft.

Regards,

Edward