Re: [Flightgear-devel] dc3 pannel lights
Curtis L. Olson wrote: [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Agreed. Instruments that test whether they are powered should default to powered if the aircraft does not provide a suitable electrical system. This could translate to if the required power bus property is not present. A simple default electrical system that provides just a main bus would only satisfy instruments that connect _directly_ to the main bus. I know that David disagrees with me on some of this, but my view is that the electrical system should provide common named outputs. Hang on ... I don't think these are mutually exclusive options. Woudn't you agree that, as well as standardising on bus names as much as possible, it would be good to smooth the transition from always-on to having a proper electrical system, by making all instruments default to on if they have been modified to check whether power is provided but have been plugged into an aircraft which does not yet specify any electrical system? For instance, panel lights would always check /systems/electrical/outputs/panel-light-power or something like that. And the green navigation light would check /systems/electrical/outputs/nav-lights-power and the turbofan engines' fuel flow monitors would check /systems/electrical/outputs/engines/engine[n]/monitoring-power and ... The only way I can see of making a generic simple electrical system serve this scheme is if we can somehow make /systems/electrical/*/*-power return true - i.e. any unknown property under a given branch returns a default value. I don't think the property mechanism has this feature at the moment, but it might be possible to add it. However, I completely agree that, to the extent possible, it makes sense to standardise the names. - Julian ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] dc3 pannel lights
John Check writes: Well, Ideally, no, but like anything else, unless we have some documentation to work from, getting it right isn't likely. I don't know what doco is available. My feeling is that that we should at least have the battery and/or alternator connected to a main buss, which is simpler than what the 172 has. All we need is for a generic_electrical.xml to be loaded when one isn't specified. I have no problems with making it a requirement to add one to the markup for a plane, but I'm sure others may feel differently. I have no idea how this was handled prior. John, That might be the best way to go, build a super simple electrical system that has battery, alternator feed into a single master bus, and have all the outputs feed off that. This would probably be better than putting in a C172 electrical system into an A4 or a 747. At some point if someone cares, they could research the electrical system of the specific aircraft and impliment it then. I don't know how much time I'll have today, but I can try to take a quick look at this at some point, unless you want to knock it out. Regards, Curt. -- Curtis Olson IVLab / HumanFIRST Program FlightGear Project Twin Cities[EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Minnesota http://www.menet.umn.edu/~curt http://www.flightgear.org ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] dc3 pannel lights
Andy Ross wrote: John Check wrote: What it is is that when electrical system modeling was added it affected planes for which no electrical system was added. Shouldn't the sane choice for the defaults be the opposite? The instruments work unless the electrical system tells them that they are disabled? Agreed. Instruments that test whether they are powered should default to powered if the aircraft does not provide a suitable electrical system. This could translate to if the required power bus property is not present. A simple default electrical system that provides just a main bus would only satisfy instruments that connect _directly_ to the main bus. - Julian ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] dc3 pannel lights
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Agreed. Instruments that test whether they are powered should default to powered if the aircraft does not provide a suitable electrical system. This could translate to if the required power bus property is not present. A simple default electrical system that provides just a main bus would only satisfy instruments that connect _directly_ to the main bus. I know that David disagrees with me on some of this, but my view is that the electrical system should provide common named outputs. For instance, panel lights would always check /systems/electrical/outputs/panel-light-power or something like that. That way the panel lights code doesn't need to know anything about how an electrical system is put together. None of the code or instruments would care if nav1 plugs into master bus 1 on one aircraft and critical systems bus on another aircraft and is directly wired to the battery on a 3rd aircraft, we can easily use the same instrument and code for all of them. It's possible to parameterize the navcom (and any other) instruments so the higher level instrument panel xml file can tell each instrument where to look for it's power. But, it's harder to parameterize internal code this way. Ultimately it's 6 of one, half dozen of the other though and amounts to where you draw the line between the electrical system and the instrument panel and the rest of the code. I.e. a lot of instruments have circuit breakers or fuses between them and their power feed. The electrical system could easily model these, the panel/instruments themselves could also model their own circuit breakers and fuses. Where do you draw the dividing line? Some of this is up to the person that defines the electrical system and the instruments/panel for a particalar aircraft, but for internal code which isn't as flexible, I think some conventions need to be agreed upon. For instance, there is code that generates morse code sounds for the radios when they are properly tuned in and the ident switch is on. This is separate code from the navcom instrument panel xml, but it also needs to know where the navcom power is comming from ... we don't want to be playing morse code when the the avionics master switch is off ... especially if the panel instrument is dark. Personally I prefer to define a bunch of common, agreed upon, standard named outputs, and have the electrical system (whatever structure it has) power them. This makes defining the electrical system a bit more complex, but makes it easier and more convenient to model inline switches, circuit breakers, and fuses, especially if we are connecting this to real cockpit hardware that has these sorts of things. My 2 cents ... Regards, Curt. -- Curtis Olson IVLab / HumanFIRST Program FlightGear Project Twin Cities[EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Minnesota http://www.menet.umn.edu/~curt http://www.flightgear.org ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] dc3 pannel lights
On Wednesday 23 October 2002 8:10 am, Curtis L. Olson wrote: John Check writes: Well, Ideally, no, but like anything else, unless we have some documentation to work from, getting it right isn't likely. I don't know what doco is available. My feeling is that that we should at least have the battery and/or alternator connected to a main buss, which is simpler than what the 172 has. All we need is for a generic_electrical.xml to be loaded when one isn't specified. I have no problems with making it a requirement to add one to the markup for a plane, but I'm sure others may feel differently. I have no idea how this was handled prior. John, That might be the best way to go, build a super simple electrical system that has battery, alternator feed into a single master bus, and have all the outputs feed off that. This would probably be better than putting in a C172 electrical system into an A4 or a 747. At some point if someone cares, they could research the electrical system of the specific aircraft and impliment it then. I don't know how much time I'll have today, but I can try to take a quick look at this at some point, unless you want to knock it out. Regards, Curt. I'll bang one out ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
[Flightgear-devel] dc3 pannel lights
The c172-yasim pannel is lit at night, so this seems to be a change to the dc3 only. - Dave ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] dc3 pannel lights
On Tuesday 22 October 2002 10:11 pm, Dave Perry wrote: The c172-yasim pannel is lit at night, so this seems to be a change to the dc3 only. - Dave What it is is that when electrical system modeling was added it affected planes for which no electrical system was added. I went through and added the markup to include the electrical.xml from the default 172 to all the variants, but never did the non Cessna planes. I don't recall any replies to my asking about using that as a default for the rest of the fleet. ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] dc3 pannel lights
John Check wrote: What it is is that when electrical system modeling was added it affected planes for which no electrical system was added. I went through and added the markup to include the electrical.xml from the default 172 to all the variants, but never did the non Cessna planes. Shouldn't the sane choice for the defaults be the opposite? The instruments work unless the electrical system tells them that they are disabled? Otherwise every all new panel work will either be useless at night or require hacking in a nonsensical simulation. The A-4 has the same symptom, for example. Certainly we don't want a Cessna electrical system, no? Andy -- Andrew J. RossNextBus Information Systems Senior Software Engineer Emeryville, CA [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.nextbus.com Men go crazy in conflagrations. They only get better one by one. - Sting (misquoted) ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
Re: [Flightgear-devel] dc3 pannel lights
On Wednesday 23 October 2002 12:44 am, Andy Ross wrote: John Check wrote: What it is is that when electrical system modeling was added it affected planes for which no electrical system was added. I went through and added the markup to include the electrical.xml from the default 172 to all the variants, but never did the non Cessna planes. Shouldn't the sane choice for the defaults be the opposite? The instruments work unless the electrical system tells them that they are disabled? Otherwise every all new panel work will either be useless at night or require hacking in a nonsensical simulation. The A-4 has the same symptom, for example. Certainly we don't want a Cessna electrical system, no? Andy Well, Ideally, no, but like anything else, unless we have some documentation to work from, getting it right isn't likely. I don't know what doco is available. My feeling is that that we should at least have the battery and/or alternator connected to a main buss, which is simpler than what the 172 has. All we need is for a generic_electrical.xml to be loaded when one isn't specified. I have no problems with making it a requirement to add one to the markup for a plane, but I'm sure others may feel differently. I have no idea how this was handled prior. ___ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
