Re: [Plib-devel] ssg sky

[Curtis L. O. <cu...@in...>]

Steve Baker writes:
> > Vehicle dynamics will be one big issue on my plate.  It would be great
> > to have something decent I could just use, but if not, I will make my
> > best effort to contribute whatever I have to write myself.
>
> I wasn't thinking of the full sophistication needed in a serious
> simulation - just something quick and dirty to let potential game
> developers get started quickly.
>
> Something like the code that the SGI Performer library provides for
> that kind of thing.

Sure ... we could save the sophisticated vehicle dynamics for another
library. :-)

> > For they sky, you need to feed in a top sky color and a horizon color.
>
> Is the horizon directional?  When the sun sets (for example), the sunset
> colour is most intense near to the point where the sun goes down.

Yes, you can specify an angle to rotate the sky so it can align with
the sun.  Again, the value of this rotation would be calculated
externally (and flight gear already contains the math to do this.)

> > This could be calculated by time, or sun angle with the horizon, or
> > you could just feed in random colors such as orange at the top and
> > purple at the horizon.
>
> MmmMmmmm - green and magenta skies.

I'd hate to not be able to accurately model your world Steve. :-)

> PLIB really needs a path generalization thingy - perhaps we should
> just suck that into the package too.
>
> However, for the textures you could just look in the ssg path or let
> the application tell you where they are.

Yup, that would work fine.  If you like, I'd be happy to move
FlightGear's path generalization code to plib ... or I could
contribute it as a starting point so you could "SteveBaker-ify" it.
As long as we could still accomplish the same basic things with it,
I'd be happy to use plib functionality for platform path independence.

I think this would definitely something that would fit well within the
scope of plib.

If you are interested I could send you some code.

Regards,

Curt.
--
Curtis Olson   University of MN, ME Dept.       Flight Gear Project
Twin Cities    cu...@me...                  cu...@fl...
Minnesota      http://www.menet.umn.edu/~curt   http://www.flightgear.org