X-Git-Url: https://git.mxchange.org/?a=blobdiff_plain;f=NEWS;h=6fcc148021c26fc1cb9f60cea71a686002a49520;hb=439779ee3673bf0534b88ad7223fca66e96273ed;hp=3998207d93cd014582e8408cc8d66ab143dbca97;hpb=ba6f80b9fdcabf339299ccb601f639cebb18b7a2;p=flightgear.git diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS index 3998207d9..6fcc14802 100644 --- a/NEWS +++ b/NEWS @@ -1,7 +1,251 @@ +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" . +* 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 @@ -88,7 +332,7 @@ New in 0.44: * 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. + valid single pass initialization path. * use already calculated LaRCsim values to create the roll/pitch/yaw transformation matrix