On Wednesday 09 April 2008, Stuart Buchanan wrote: > --- On Wed, 9/4/08, Melchior FRANZ wrote: > > Do we really want MP support for all aircraft in the base > > package, at a cost of an extra 200 MB of data? Wrappers are fine > > (like Vivian described), but do we want a complete concorde.ac with all > > textures *again* in the AI/ dir? If someone wants the Concorde > > displayed, then s/he can install it, no?
Currently Aircraft/ is ~1200 MB on cvs. So yes. I think we can easily afford 100 or 200 MB for "cheap" ai models. As you name the Concorde. The whole dir currently takes 19 MB. If someone adds a Concorde that takes up to 2 MB, that would be fine. > Yes, I strongly think that there would be a real benefit for everyone who > uses the base package to be able to see all MP aircraft. As well as making > the MP experience faster (which everyone would benefit from), I think it > would make it richer for new users. There is another problem that i see here. There will be a day, when we will need to decide, which aircraft will go into the base package. For someone who just wants to try FlightGear the base package shouldn't be too large. We might want to have about twenty well-designed and fully-functional aircraft in the base package at the end. I'd opt for inclusion of as many AI (lightweight) aircraft as possible. People who try FG, will see other models that they like, and will eventually download them. > Even though I have a fairly fast machine, MP flying around KSFO is still > marginal. It is likely to get worse as the number and complexity of > aircraft increase. Creating AI models (and also promoting a culture of > creating AI models for all new aircraft) would go a long to helping this. Yes. I'm all for promoting a culture of creating AI models for all aircraft. > In that context, another 50 - 100MB of data in the base package seems > reasonable. I agree. > I think it should be possible to create AI aircraft at less than, say, > 500KB per aircraft, which would grow the base package by less than 100MB. > For example, the Vulcan AI model is around 200KB. If they can be that cheap it is perfect. IMHO we can't be too restrictive here, though. Some aircraft will need a little more space. > > I'd prefer fgfs to show better information about which > > aircraft couldn't be shown because they aren't installed, > > and a better LOD concept (LOD in the aircraft dir, where it belongs). I very much like this idea, Melchior. We would need to come up with a solution that would allow us to easily deliver many low-LOD models (for multiplayer-support) with the base package. And then, there has to be an easy way to upgrade to the full aircraft. Could you propose a more detailed design that would allow all of that? I would volunteer to write the necessary code. > How about the following > > - Maximum size 250KB. > - All textures converted to PNG and scaled to 1/4 size in both dimensions. > > Does that seem reasonable? This seems like a hard limit. I really don't want to see plenty of aircraft with crappy textures. Lightweight aircraft should still look pretty from the outside -- even when standing right next to them. Reducing the texture size is fine, but please check that it will still look nice. cheers, - till ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by the 2008 JavaOne(SM) Conference Don't miss this year's exciting event. There's still time to save $100. Use priority code J8TL2D2. http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;198757673;13503038;p?http://java.sun.com/javaone _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list Flightgear-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/flightgear-devel
