Re: [Opengc-devel] NavTestGauge

[Damion S. <be...@cs...>]

> When using OpenGC with FlightGear, and displaying the
> NavTestGauge, I can't get the vor or adf needles to
> move.  Is that porting working with fgfs?

There are actually two issues here.

1) Back when the FlightGear data source was designed, FlightGear did 
not support sending nav deflections to external software. OpenGC did 
all of these computations internally, based on its own model of the 
world. For simplicity (and to enforce conformance to the rest of the 
data sources) OpenGC no longer allows the data source to do that. So, 
no, I don't believe that FlightGear is currently capable of sending 
that data to OpenGC. This may/should be a fairly simple matter of 
updating the data output format in FlightGear, but to be honest I 
haven't done much work in that regards. Your best bet may be to get 
someone in FlightGear to volunteer to maintain the data source. The 
rewrite that I did a while back changed the networking behavior but did 
not update the data format in any way.

2) I didn't write the needle code on the nav display, so I can't 
guarantee that it would work even if FlightGear supported the 
appropriate data output. This issue is one I can handle pretty easily, 
and is on my list of things to do already (since it affects all of the 
data sources).

> Is there a better way to turn off the navaids
> and smaller airports other than to edit apt.dat?

Not at this time, no. That's also on the short list of things to do. I 
added zoomin/zoomout buttons last night (which are in the CVS now) 
along with a ground track heading and speed indicator. Thresholding 
airports by runway length is one of the next things I'll be adding.

For the time being, the nav display is not meant to mimic any 
particular aircraft model, merely to provide a platform for developing 
the core functionality (hence "test"). Any suggestions for nice things 
to have would be appreciated. Things which are already on my list 
include:

1) Verify needle and CDI functionality.
2) Range scale (to indicate approximate distances).
3) Better rendering of airports and navaids.
4) More complete data on airports and navaids (particularly runways and 
extended runway centerlines for airports).
5) More control over nav rendering (turn airports/navaids/etc. on/off)
6) Thresholding airports by max runway length

Cheers,
-Damion-

---------
Damion Shelton
Carnegie Mellon University, Robotics Institute
A408-o Newell Simon Hall
412.268.3866 (office)
412.818.8829 (cell)
412.268.6436 (fax)
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~beowulf
---------
I remember how my great-uncle Jerry would sit on the porch and whittle 
all day long. Once he whittled me a toy boat out of a larger toy boat I 
had. It was almost as good as the first one, except now it had bumpy 
whittle marks all over it. And no paint, because he had whittled off 
the paint.