#2 Comments on current CVS

[Hal Engel]

Let me start off by saying that it appears that there are a huge number of enhancements going on with current development. So you may already know much of what I am about to say. In addition, I hope that this is constructive and that you will find my feedback useful. Keep up the good work.

1. Render -> Display resolution only allows for very limited number of resolutions. I typically run FlightGear at 3200x1200 on my Xinerama system. This works very nicely. The highest resolution I could select with CVS KFreeFlight in the Render dialog was 1280x1024 which is not even high enough for one of my displays let alone both of them.

After exploring some more I found a place in the Preferences -> FlightGear Page 2 dialog to "Add a personal display resolution". This works but I think it is confusing to have two different locations for setting display resolution. Shouldn't both of these be on the same dialog?

2. When I try to launch FlightGear (I assume that is what the "Take off" button does) nothing happens. I am running FG 0.9.10.

3. The manual is for version 0.3.2 which is significantly different from CVS. So none of the new features are documented. This is understandable since it appears that KFreeFlight is undergoing some significant changes.

4. The CVS version actually runs on my 64 bit system more than just the first time. Version 0.3.2-r2 would only run the first time it was started as it would hang on every start after the first one. So this is an improvement. Now if it would actually start flightgear...

5. I like to start with my aircraft at some location other than the end of the runway. This makes for a more realistic sim since with real aircraft you are always starting at some location away from the runway. fgrun only allows you to set one "Initial position". This is much like the "Other" setting in the Position screen of KFreeFlight. I think this is a design flaw. This should allow users to set a custom "Start position" (actually I could see allowing users to set more than one per airport) for each airport (IE. the tie down location of my aircraft at that airport). In the KFreeFlight Airport dialog users can select an airport and then can select from a list of runways. Would it be possible to add a "custom position" option to the runway list so that users could specify a per airport start position? Much like the "Other" setting on the position screen but a position that the user sets as a starting point when that airport is selected that would be available as part of the list of runways for an airport.

6. On the Airports screen when a user selects "Get web info" shouldn't this take the user to the web page for the currently selected airport? At least for airports in the US a link to something like http://www.airnav.com/airport/xxxx, where xxxx = the airport ID, should work for the vast majority of airports. Of course, in other parts of the world things might be more difficult. This has the potential to be a nice feature.

7. Some FlightGear users are starting to use TeamSpeak to setup communications channels. Would it be possible to include an interface for this?

8. Network screen is a definite improvement over what is available on fgrun. But it would not allow me to select the US server (mpserver03.flightgear.org).

9. The NAV and COM screen has some formating problems on my workstation and I can not see some of the items in many of the tabs (IE. NAV 1 frequencies...).

10. It would be nice if users could adjust the width of the screen selection portion of the main dialog (not sure what to call it).

11. I am somewhat confused about what the "Favorite Manager" on the Airport screen does. It looks like this is to add and remove airports to the drop down list of airports. But I don't see an option to add anything and currently it only allows users to delete airports. I see that I can add airports by right clicking them in the airport list and selecting "add to favorite" (probably a typo shouldn't this be "add to favorites"). But the added airports do not show up in the Favorite Manager (again probably should be "Favorites Manager") dialog until KFreeFlight has been restarted. I guess this is a work in progress.

12. In the Weather screen selecting "Get real weather" does not work until the user has selected a non-default airport. Shouldn't this automatically get the weather from whatever airport the user has currently selected?

13. The "Where is it?" button on the Airport screen shows a screen that is mostly blank with a red dot. On the console I see the message:

QImamge::smoothScale: Image is a null image