On Tuesday, May 31, 2011 10:26:18 PM Robert wrote:
> I absolutely agree with Vivian. The users should know about planes that
> need much resources (CPU, RAM, VRAM).
> This value should not influence the total score.
I think how much compute power is needed and how difficult a model is to
use/fly
are seperate subjects from the status/maturatity of the model. In general
models that are more mature will tend to require more compute resources and
also will be more difficult to use/fly for aircraft of similar complexity IRL.
Ease of use of the models should reflect how difficult the aircraft is to fly
IRL
at least for mature models.
New users, particularly younger ones, sometimes think that FG is a game rather
than a simulation and assume that how it presents aircraft should be arcade
game like. I have seen a number of forum threads that started off with
something along the lines of "I just started using FG today and I tried to fly
<complex high performance aircraft> and I always crash during take off...".
Invariably the next post will point out that <complex high performance
aircraft> requires a lot of skill and experience to fly and will ask the user
if he has tried the C172P or some other basic aircraft. The OP will reply no
but I will. Then they report that they were succesful with the more basic
aircraft and are happy with FG.
IRL you don't climb into the pilots seat of a complex high performance
aircraft for your first flight ever and expect to walk away in one piece. Why
would this be different for FG and why would FG users expect it to be
different?
Having a difficulty rating someplace visible to users is a good idea since it
might clue in at least some new users that they probably need to start out
with something easy to fly usless they fly complex aircraft IRL.
So I agree ratings for difficulty of use and how much compute power is needed
should be seperate from the status since these have nothing to do with model
maturity.
> Maybe using the total score is not a good idea at all, because some users
> prefer the "eye candy" and don't worry about frame rate too much, others
> prefer an accurate FDM and a high framerate. So the total score doesn't
> tell the whole story!
The overall status is for backward compatibility. It is displayed in fgrun
and on the download page already.
Also the most mature models will have "eye candy", complex system modeling and
a high quality FDM. So I think it does tell most of the story and users can
infer how much compute power is needed for a given level of real life aricraft
complexity from the status rating. A very simple aircraft (IE. Piper Cub or
sail plane) of any status probably will run fine on a low to mid level system.
But a highly complex aircraft that has a mature model (production or above)
will probably require a high end machine to get good frame rates. It's not
really rocket science as it just requires some common sense to figure out. But
I don't see any reason not to also include information about required compute
power for each model.
> But the idea of showing the user individual scores (FDM, Systems, Cockpit,
> 3d model, + needed resources) is a good one!
> What do you think?
At this point users have to look in the XML files to see the FDM, Systems,
Cockpit and External model scores. These are not visible in any UI or on the
download page. So at this point only users who understand how things are
setup in FG will be able to find this information and more work will be needed
to make it available to nave users.
Another issue is for the needed resources and difficulty rating to make sense
there needs to be documentation on how to create the ratings and a description
some place for user so that they can understand what these mean.
Hal
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