+New in 0.6.0
+* Tons of improvements with scenery creation. Inter-tile gaps have been
+ fixed, distorted textures have been fixed, real coastlines have been added,
+ and many other subtle improvements.
+* Tools for parallelizing the scenery building tasks. For instance by using
+ 20 machines in parallel, scenery for the entire USA can be regenerated in
+ just over 4 hours vs. 70+ hours on a single machine.
+* Texture scale can be specified (and changed)( in the materials file. The
+ sim must be rerun for the change to take effect.
+* Windows now uses plib joystick code so rudder pedals should now work.
+* Now builds against Steve Baker's plib (portable game devel library)
+ distributed separately (www.woodsoup.org/~sbaker/plib/)
+* Many source code changes for the MacOS port contributed by Darrell
+ Walisser (the port isn't quite there yet ...)
+* Source code changes for better compiling with the Borland compiler.
+* Source code changes for better compiling with the native Irix compilers.
+* Fixed a bug so you can now fly across the international date line (or
+ more precisely the division between longitude = +/-180.
+* Tweaks to the Astro section contributed by Durk Talsma.
+* Autopilot improvements contributed by Norman Vine.
+* Fonts/characters now drawn with texture maps for increased speed.
+* Instrument panel can be toggled on and off with "P".
+* GUI interface for tweaking some autopilot parameters.
+* HUD appearance and layout changes contributed by Norman Vine, includes
+ faster font drawing for much better performance.
+* Reset function added to reset you to your starting conditions.
+* GUI function to enter a new airport id (and be transported there)
+* Added serial output support for an "in-development" full motion cockpit.
+* "Just in time" texture loading to reduce initial sim loading time.
+
+
+New in 0.59 (This is an intermediate/stepping stone release. Skip this
+ release if you are interested in stability.)
+* IRIX portability changes and support for native SGI compilers.
+* Solaris portability tweaks
+* Incorporated some MacOS portability changes (although the port is not
+ yet complete.)
+* Changes to allow adjustment of the autopilot settings while it is
+ activated.
+* Began complete overhaul of scenery generation tools.
+* Fixed a view frustum culling bug.
+* separated lib GPC (generic polygon clipper.) GPC is not "freeware" and
+ the author has explicitely refused our request to distribute source code
+ for this library with Flight Gear.
+* updated installation and getting started guide
+* switched to a simpler, lighter weight frame rate calculation method.
+* new tile division scheme.
+* GPS serial *output* fixes.
+* Added a nifty halo to both the sun and moon. Preparation for allowing
+ subtle moon lighting effects at night.
+* Incorporated Jon Berndt's new C++ flight model rewrite.
+* Autopilot settings can be adjusted while active.
+* Updates to the instrument panel.
+* Fixed AOA reading on the HUD.
+* Added random splash screens.
+* Modified scenery loader to accept tri-fans.
+* Other non-backwards compatible changes to scenery file format and tile
+ layout.
+
+
+New in 0.58
+* Added JSBsim alpha code ... this is Jon S. Berndts alpha FDM rewrite.
+ Still lots to do, but you can watch a balistic flight for a short time.
+* Renamed Simulator/Flight to Simulator/FDM
+* Tweaks to assist building FGFS on solaris platforms.
+* Moved Lib/DEM to Tools/DEM
+* Started preparations for scenery generation tools overhaul.
+* More MSVC++ support.
+* Removed code that made the sun bigger at the horizon since this is just
+ an optical illusion in real life.
+* Bug fixed so that the sim can start out at an airport below sea level.
+
+New in 0.57
+* Converted to a simpler frame rate counting method.
+* Fixed the AOA reading on the HUD.
+* Removed gpc from the Lib section of distribution by request of the
+ gpc Author. The gpc license is unfortunately not compatible with
+ the GPL. I may look for an alternative library, or just require
+ that developers download this library separately.
+* First slew of changes from the MacOS porting effort contributed by
+ "Robert Puyol" <puyol@abvent.fr>.
+* Support for an arbitrary number of serial ports + additional serial port
+ output tweaks.
+* Serial output tweaks to make things more robust and act more like a GPS.
+* Portability enhancements for Borland, Solaris, and SGI.
+* Some internal class renaming and reorganizations. fgFLIGHT becomes FGState.
+ fgCONTROLS becomes FGControls.
+* Started work on an "external" flight model so the sim can be driven from
+ external input (serial port, network, file, etc.)
+* Fixed a problem that creeped in with setting the initial startup altitude.
+ This could cause an unrecoverable bounce and you'd end up flipped on your
+ back. Should be fixed now.
+* Sun now appears to grow in size as it gets very low in the horizon.
+* Fixed a view frustum culling bug where the scene was not accurately culled
+ when your view was anything other than straight forward.
+
+New in 0.56
+* Changed default HUD units to the more standard feet units. You can still
+ use meters by specifying the command line option "--units-meters".
+* Added some initial joystick support using Steve's joystick interface class.
+ This works great under Linux, but Steve's class now needs to be ported to
+ Windoze and other platforms.
+* Also added a fall back to the GLUT joystick routines for windows (until
+ we can find better joystick support.)
+* Added some initial serial port support for acting like gps and outputing
+ nmea data such that could be fed into a flight map software package.
+* Miscellaneous code clean ups, portability improvements, and optimizations.
+* Switched to a streams based error/debug logging system that can be
+ completely stripped out for a release build (./configure --without-logging)
+* Support for cygwin32 b20 compiler (latest release)
+* Continued progress on instrument panel
+* Support for starting fgfs at higher resolutions.
+
+New in 0.55
+* New version of gpc (generic polygon clipping library) from
+ http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/aig/staff/alan/software/
+* Brakes (use "b" to toggle)
+* Added an altitude hold module to the autopilot. Lock your current altitude
+ with "ctrl-a", "cntr-a" again will deactivate. (Also lock your current
+ heading with "ctrl-h", and again to deactivate.)
+* Added a terrain following module ... "ctrl-t" to activate.
+* Added an autothrottle ... "ctrl-s" to activate.
+* Fixes so that terrain tools will work in windoze.
+* More STL & Compiler compatibility fixes.
+* Changes to use a Point3 class.
+* Fixed win95/98 time problem that limited fps to about 18.3
+
+New in 0.54
+* Implimented audio envelopes so that pitch of engine changes with throttle
+* Textured moon, and rewritten/restructured Astro code.
+* More optimizations and code cleanups. (Norman Vine, Bernie Bright, Charlie
+ Hotchkiss.)
+* Bug fixed that was causing odd display artifacts due to a degenerate
+ fragment being created for every tile.
+* Bug fixed that caused scenery generation to go bad (misplaced fclose on an
+ invalid file descriptor.)
+* Code changes to support g++ 2.7 STL (from Bernie Bright)
+
+New in 0.53
+* Some initial "GameGLUT" support contributed by Gary R. Van Sickle
+ (tiberius@braemarinc.com)
+* Tracked down and eliminated some memory access type bugs that were
+ causing segfaults on some platforms, with some compilers using various
+ optimization flags.
+* Assorted code optimizations submitted by Norman Vine.
+* Renamed fg -> fgfs
+* Shuffled files.
+ - Created a new directory Simulator/Airports/ to handle airport data
+ specific tasks
+ - Created Simulator/Object/ to handle basic rendering objects
+* Panel code update from Friedemann Reinhard (use --enable-panel to activate)
+* Contributions from Bernie Bright
+ - Created some new classes to enable pointers-to-functions and
+ pointers-to-class-methods to be treated like objects. These objects
+ can be registered with fgEVENT_MGR.
+ - File "Include/fg_callback.hxx" contains the callback class defns.
+ - Modified fgEVENT and fgEVENT_MGR to use the callback classes. Also
+ some minor tweaks to STL usage.
+ - Added file "Include/fg_stl_config.h" to deal with STL portability
+ issues. Added an initial config for egcs (and probably gcc-2.8.x).
+ Don't have access to Visual C++ so I've left that for someone else.
+ - This file is influenced by the stl_config.h file delivered with egcs.
+ - Added "Include/auto_ptr.hxx" which contains an implementation of the
+ STL auto_ptr class which is not provided in all STL implementations
+ and is needed to use the callback classes.
+ - Deleted fgLightUpdate() which was just a wrapper to call
+ fgLIGHT::Update().
+ - Modified fg_init.cxx to register two method callbacks in place of the
+ old wrapper functions.
+ - The new classes in libmisc.tgz define a stream interface into zlib.
+ I've put these in a new directory, Lib/Misc. Feel free to rename it
+ to something more appropriate. However you'll have to change the
+ include directives in all the other files. Additionally you'll have
+ add the library to Lib/Makefile.am and Simulator/Main/Makefile.am.
+
+ The StopWatch class in Lib/Misc requires a HAVE_GETRUSAGE autoconf
+ test so I've included the required changes in config.tgz.
+
+ There are a fair few changes to Simulator/Objects as I've moved
+ things around. Loading tiles is quicker but thats not where the delay
+ is. Tile loading takes a few tenths of a second per file on a P200
+ but it seems to be the post-processing that leads to a noticeable
+ blip in framerate. I suppose its time to start profiling to see where
+ the delays are.
+
+ I've included a brief description of each archives contents.
+
+ Lib/Misc/
+ zfstream.cxx
+ zfstream.hxx
+ C++ stream interface into zlib.
+ Taken from zlib-1.1.3/contrib/iostream/.
+ Minor mods for STL compatibility.
+ There's no copyright associated with these so I assume they're
+ covered by zlib's.
+
+ fgstream.cxx
+ fgstream.hxx
+ FlightGear input stream using gz_ifstream. Tries to open the
+ given filename. If that fails then filename is examined and a
+ ".gz" suffix is removed or appended and that file is opened.
+
+ stopwatch.hxx
+ A simple timer for benchmarking. Not used in production code.
+ Taken from the Blitz++ project. Covered by GPL.
+
+ strutils.cxx
+ strutils.hxx
+ Some simple string manipulation routines.
+
+ Simulator/Airports/
+ Load airports database using fgstream.
+ Changed fgAIRPORTS to use set<> instead of map<>.
+ Added bool fgAIRPORTS::search() as a neater way doing the lookup.
+ Returns true if found.
+
+ Simulator/Astro/
+ Modified fgStarsInit() to load stars database using fgstream.
+
+ Simulator/Objects/
+ Modified fgObjLoad() to use fgstream.
+ Modified fgMATERIAL_MGR::load_lib() to use fgstream.
+ Many changes to fgMATERIAL.
+ Some changes to fgFRAGMENT but I forget what!
+
+New in 0.52
+* Stars added in 8 stages as sky gets darker for a smoother more realistic
+ transition.
+* rewrote star loader to significantly improve load times.
+* Tweaked sky brightness and dawn/dusk colors.
+* Fixed a small problem with moon rendering.
+* Fog color tries to track the sky color at the center of view in sunrise
+ and sunset situations.
+* Optimizations from Norman Vine
+* Code fixes and tweaks from Charlie Hotchkiss.
+* Added an --enable/disable-sound option.
+* Added a pause key "p"
+* Added command line options to specify initial position and orientation.
+* Added command line option to start in paused or unpaused state.
+
+New in 0.51
+* Translucent menus
+* Various HUD intensities so you can find something that is readable for the
+ current conditions and lighting.
+* Tie visibility to far clip plane & view frustum culling so reducting
+ visibility can increase frame rates by increasing what is culled.
+* Fixed stupid bug with misplaced initial position.
+* Hopefully fixed a bug when parsing system.fgfsrc on windoze.
+
+New in 0.50
+* HUD updates from Charlie Hotchkiss (ladder number rotate w/ ladder, control
+ position indicators are back)
+* Only draw the PUI cursor if Mesa/Glide/Fullscreen.
+* Added mipmapping.
+* Calculate the model view transformation matrix once per tile per iteration.
+ Then glLoadMatrixd() it for each fragment rather than calling push(),
+ translate(), pop().
+* Added a basic splash screen.
+* Added support for switching between fullscreen and window mode for
+ Mesa/3dfx/glide.
+* added an enable/disable splash screen option
+* added an enable/disable intro music option
+* added an enable/disable instrument panel option
+* added an enable/disable mouse pointer option
+* Ground collision detection. You can now land or test for collision with
+ any scenery surface.
+* Converted angle of attack scale into a radio altimeter.
+
+New in 0.49
+* Managment of multiple textures
+* Incorporated Friedemann Reinhard's initial panel code.
+* Fog mode is now GL_FOG_EXP2 instead of GL_FOG_LINEAR
+* Build the non-shared pieces of the FG sim as static libs.
+
+New in 0.48
+* Incorporated Steve Baker's PUI user interface library written
+ entirely on top of OpenGL
+* Incorporated Steve Baker's Audio library which currently only
+ supports Linux, but a win32 port is very close to being done.
+* Sort object fragments by material property before rendering. This
+ will be a big help to performance when we start including objects
+ with a wide variety of material properties and textures.
+* Overlapped scenery tiles to reduce the chance of an occasional
+ floating point precission induced gaps.
+* Fixed a bug in zlib exposed by Borland Win32 compiler.
+* Impose a maximum triangle area during scenery generation so even
+ very flat areas will get split into a few smaller sub triangles.
+* Fine grained (fragment level) view frustum culling.
+* view transformation optimizations -- Norman Vine.
+* Fixed polygon winding problem in scenery generation, so all
+ tri-strips are wound counter clockwise (opengl default).
+
+New in 0.47
+* Course (per tile) view frustum culling.
+* Added a command line option to specify --fg-root which will override
+ $FG_ROOT
+* Hard coded default locations for FG_ROOT for situations when nothing
+ is specified. Unix = /usr/local/lib/FlightGear Win32 = \FlightGear
+* Restructured the command line processing code so that it can process
+ these sames comands (one per line) out of a config file.
+* Added a command line option to specify field of view. This is
+ adjustable at run time using "X / x". Supporting code contributed
+ by Norman Vine.
+
+New in 0.46:
+* Complete C++ re-write of the HUD section.
+* Miscellaneous bug fixes and tweaks.
+
+New in 0.45:
+* Added an option to enable/disable wireframe rendering.
+* Added an option to enable/disable fog/haze.
+* Added an option to enable/disable sky blending.
+* Added an option to select smooth/flat polygon shading.
+* Added an option to enable full-screen mode.
+* Added a visual frame rate counter on the HUD. (Contributed by Durk Talsma)
+* Autopilot updates (Jeff Goeke-Smith)
+* Added an option to control the number of neighboring tiles that are drawn
+
+New in 0.44:
+* Fixed a horible bug that cause the time to be *WAY* off when
+ compiling with the CygWin32 compiler.
+* Wrap up zlib so we can conditionally compile back in normal behavior
+ on systems that have trouble building zlib.
+* Minor adjustment to texture coordinate generation to reduce texture
+ swimming.
+* Added a command line option to enable/disable texture maps
+* Minor transformation adjustments to try to keep scenery tiles closer
+ to (0, 0, 0) GLfloats run out of precision at the distances we need
+ to model the earth, but we can do a bunch of pre-transformations
+ using double floats and then cast to GLfloat once everything is
+ close in where we have less precision problems.
+* command line option to set starting position by airport ID
+* Cleaned up initialization sequence to eliminate interdependencies
+ between sun position, lighting, and view position. This creates a
+ valid single pass initialization path.
+* use already calculated LaRCsim values to create the roll/pitch/yaw
+ transformation matrix
+
New in 0.43:
+* material properties bug fixed when rendering terrain.
+* bug in sky color generation fixed.
+* bug in fog color generation fixed.
* zlib on the fly decompression/compression support.
* more code reorganization and clean ups.
* a fixed up 30 arcsec DEM file preprocessor. World wide DEM's are