Update ~ 2016-04-26 ~ FlightPath R9

[theo-armour]

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@fgx/owners

Chase cameras have more 'fun' aspects/angles than we want them to have. ;-)

But anyway, some questions:

• Is 'chase camera' a good term or does FlightGear call it something else
• The chase camera angle sliders are titled 'latitude' and 'longitude. Again, does FlightGear have a better/different way of titling these angles?

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FGx FlightPath R9

• 386 lines of code
• Rename camera follow to camera chase
• Add camera chase latitude and longitude sliders
• Add code to update camera position upon slider updates
• Code to update camera rotation has many issues ;-(
• Add Auto-rotate check box and code
• Add Flying check box and code

  Issues

• Flightmap scaling and positioning is still by eye
• Too long a wait before things start appearing on screen
• Chase camera rotation has many gimbal lock / where is up? issues
  • Try changing to cylindrical view?

[theo-armour]

@fgx/owners

Oops!

R9 did not seemed to get pushed properly to GitHub yesterday.

It's up now.

Can you answer the questions?

[geoffmcl]

@theo-armour hmmm, well to try to answer your questions... fgfs has quite a number of views...

The first is called Helicopter view... It defaults, to like your Chase Camera to behind, and level with the aircraft in front of you... but now in mouse changes view mode you can go up, down, or around the aircraft... even around to in front of the aircraft, always with the scenery rotating also... staying a fixed distance from the subject aircraft...

The next mode is Chase view... similar to the above, but the default is behind and above the aircraft in front of you... and again in mouse changes view mode, controlled by the tab key, you can move all around the aircraft... and in this view, when the aircraft turns the view yaws with it...

Then later there is a 'Fly-By view' where the camera is in front of the aircraft as is flies toward you, the over, under, past you, and it recedes... then switches back to in front, and you watch a fly-by of the aircraft... again in mouse changes view mode you can gimble all around...

And many more views... like a Chase view without yaw... all too hard to describe...

One day you need to install FG, and see for yourself...

But in all of the view, there is no lat, lon sliders... but I can see something like it when moving these sliders...

Like normally in your normal view the mouse only changes the camera of the scenery, while it seems in your "Camera Chase" the mouse does nothing... Why can it not rotate the view at that time?

As stated, this is very hard to describe... bring up FGFS and see for yourself...

PS: This was when running R10...

[theo-armour]

@geoffmcl

Views

I think I now appreciate many of the issues with views. Thank you.

The main thing to remember is that viewing things in 3D - especially when tracking moving things that are moving in relation to other things becomes very complicated very soon.

code exampleL

https://github.com/jaanga/cookbook/blob/gh-pages/cardboard/rollercoaster/js/third-party/threejs/DeviceOrientationControls.js

(How are you with quaternions? ;-)

What we should seeking - at the moment - is a basic example that works.

• The camera should track the aircraft position
• The camera can have six degrees of freedom in relation to the aircraft
  • XYX positions
  • XYZ rotations
• You can update the camera while the aircraft if in motion
• The user interface is readily understandable by a new user
  • UI uses familiar things such as sliders
• Real-time updates using a mouse and/or keyboard
• Settings can be updated via permalinks

I think Flightpath R11 begins to comply with much of this spec.

On the wish list is the real-time updates using a mouse and/or keyboard plus permalinks.

I think the priority should be to get the whole thing working well before going very far into a particular aspect.