Re: [Plib-devel] SGSky class

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

Steve Baker writes:
> This looks *great*! 

Cool, I was fearing a violent reaction. :-) :-) :-)

> So do you want it to remain a part of SimGear - or should I slurp it
> up into an SSG-UT (utility toolkit) library?

For my purposes and goals right now it makes sense to keep this code
as a part of SimGear (www.simgear.org).  But, I have no problem with
keeping a parallel copy in ssg.  I think I've seen that performer has
some instant sky capabilities too, so putting this inside ssg is not
without precedent.

It may be that down the road if I'm pleased with how it all was merged
in with ssg I would just remove the sky code from SimGear and let the
official copy reside with ssg.

I imagine you would need to make some changes to integrate with ssg.
It might even make sense to change naming conventions and such.

> I can see how incorporating the things that FGFS needs (like
> SGEphemeris) would be hard if it were a part of SSG-UT - but if it
> would certainly be quite a bit more useful to non-simulation users
> if it were inside PLIB (one less dependancy!).

I tried to design the sky code in such a way that you can hardcode
your own object position values and not depend on real/current object
positions, etc.

However, it would be nice to keep things structure so you can continue
to easily plug in real world values so that the sky can always match
reality if that is what you want.

> (Of course, it doesn't have to be either/or - it could be in both -
> separately maintained).
> 
> Until I get time to play with it, it's hard to say.  The API looks
> pretty good though.

Ok, when you get a chance to play, let me know what you think.  I have
some additional things that might make sense to add to the api, and as
we look closer at things it might make sense to shuffle some of the
parameters around, but hopefully this is a good starting point.

Regards,

Curt.
-- 
Curtis Olson   Human Factors Research Lab       Flight Gear Project
Twin Cities    cu...@hf...                cu...@fl...
Minnesota      http://www.menet.umn.edu/~curt   http://www.flightgear.org