Re: [Plib-devel] PLIB 'Neat stuff' library

[Steve B. <sjb...@ai...>]

Dave McClurg wrote:

> any idea when we might see the sky code in auxlibs?

Well, Curt's code is in his own SimGear package - and still
needs to have a little pruned out (or faked in) to make it
work with non-SimGear packages (We certainly don't want to
add a dependancy on SimGear withing PLIB).  On the other hand,
having removed that stuff, the new ssgSky would be no use to
programs needing the sophisticated ephemeris stuff - FlightGear
for example.

That implies putting a fork in Curt's sky code development...
which is a really nasty thing to do - two completely separate
copies of the code being maintained and developed - FlightGear
users having two copies of essentially the same code lying around...
YUK!  I can't help feeling that there must be a way to resolve that -
but until I've had a chance to rummage around in that stuff, I
can't say how hard that will prove to be.

I think that the major remaining issue is that the position
of sun, moon and stars comes from a sophisticated astronomical
model.  99% of applications won't need that - so something
*really* simple like azimuth/elevation for sun and moon and
random positioning for stars will be plenty.  I don't want
the astronomy code inside PLIB - it's wildly "off-topic"...
but SimGear NEEDS that sophisticated interface.

Ultimately, games will want to have sky models with green
clouds and a purple sky with a blue sun and orange stars...
there will need to be hooks to do crazy stuff like that too.

Meantime, if anyone needs Sky code - just grab a copy of SimGear.

Right now, I'm giving PPE my undivided attention - so looking
deeper into the sky stuff will just have to wait.  I have a little
hack to put into the SSG file format loader/saver so we can use it
for 'UNDO' in PPE - but that's all I plan to do to PLIB for a
few weeks.

-- 
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