Talk:FlightGear

Yay

Hooray, glad that this article has picked up momentum - the article a few months ago was no ware near adequete enough for such an important piece of software, but now it's really taking shape, great :) I'll try and contribute as much as i can to this article but most things i'm familiar with have already been written :P -Benbread 21:23, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Another reason to be happy. Flightgear 2.0 preview is here!!!!!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 32.60.65.89 (talk) 21:52, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

introductory editorial

A drawback of proprietary flight simulators is that it is not possible to add more features to the simulator or control the simulated environment oneself. Proponents of an open source flight simulator argue that such freedom is desirable for research projects and end users. For example, much of the aircraft and engine data is defined in XML files, allowing countless parameters be edited by users who want to explore the effects of various changes, without having to modify the source code or even re-compiling FlightGear.

I agree with this editorial, but it is just that-- a POV interpretation of selective facts to favorably present FlightGear. Its SOLE purpose is to explain why an open source simulator is better, nothing more. Because of its completely POV basis I have removed this section. Analyses and critiques like this DO NOT belong in an encyclopedia.

Comparisons belong in the reader's mind, not in an encyclopedia's words. A reader should NEVER be fed an opinion from a single article. Any evaluation should develop as the reader interprets ideas in is own mind. If open source simulators truely are better, then he should be able to gather that from NPOV articles on the appropriate subjects.

P.S. There are plenty of closed source simulators that allow the customizability (aircraft, engine performance etc.) described. X-Plane, Microsoft Flight Simulator even ATF Gold are a few.

External links

I'm thinking it would be good to remove all external links except the one to the official website. The reviews could be summaries in a little section I guess, and the rest is really only relevant for people who already have the game. Any other views on this? --Lijnema 23:28, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Good call. Serious policy violation and it sets a poor tone for future article work. I'll see if I can work on expanding this properly, trying to get into Flightgear right now. Chris Cunningham 16:14, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I think it would be a good idea to have

• {{dmoz|Games/Video_Games/Simulation/Flight/Independent_Developers/Flight_Gear/}}

as a sort of meta-link (link to links) for those wanting more links. // Liftarn

Yeah, perhaps I was a bit harsh. If you think it would be a good idea to have that link, I have no objections. --Lijnema 01:16, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I removed the link to http://www.flightgearplanes.com/ it seems to be an out-of-date front end to the official repository. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jentron2 (talk • contribs) 02:16, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Software

I can understand reluctance to include a list, but the importance and nature of the software to FlightGear is critical. For instance, the FDM are what simulate the aircraft inside FlightGear, and both the GUI and libraries are part of the binaries! I will agree it would be better if it were written into a paragraph, rather then a list. However, deleting outright it is like writing about an aircraft, but not mentioning its engines or construction materials. Fliega 15:29, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Very few software articles contain full lists of their dependencies and libraries. Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. This information is better located on external, dedicated sites. The same goes for the huge collection of aircraft, which i've left for now because it was de-listified. However, if this article is ever going to get a GA rating it must try to avoid sending readers to sleep with large lists of facts and statistics which hold little intrinsic value. Chris Cunningham 15:38, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree with the de-listing concept, but FlightGear is a special case when it comes to its content. Keep in mind FlightGear is not strictly software, it is a project, and its focus is on a release of code, not some sort of software title in the traditional sense. Fliega 15:52, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't see that this is a valuable distinction. MAME is a "project" in the sense of recreation / preservation too, but it doesn't contain an inline list of every one of the thousands of titles it supports. Chris Cunningham 15:55, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

The dependencies of the code are not analogous to a emulator supporting a title, but rather the reverse situation. Consider, articles list the OS a program needs to run on- its logical that an article about code list the software it needs. Fliega 16:15, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

And, once again, most software articles mention such dependencies only where particularly pertinent, and generally in passing. You seem to be arguing that FlightGear is more analogous to a distribution than an application. I really can't see how this is the case. Chris Cunningham 18:49, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Whatever the analogy, the dependent code is pertinent to the FlightGear project, code releases, and application. As you point out, there are cases where software articles mention dependencies- this article would be such a case. Fliega 19:23, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm. Anyway, at least it isn't just a huge list now. Thanks for your work in expanding this article. We'll see what review picks up in the future. Chris Cunningham 23:43, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Thank you... your candor and patience in the matter is duly appreciated. Fliega 01:32, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Add more screenshots

I think we need to add more screenshots from various versions of the program to show a better history of it. Eric Cartman's alter ego (talk) 15:04, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Force Feedback roadmap

I couldn´t find anything about Force Feedback. Is there any roadmap to implement this feature? 84.173.206.130 (talk) 22:03, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

I´m also intrested in a touring motorglider model. 84.173.221.106 (talk) 00:28, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

SDL

"Finally, Simple DirectMedia Layer is a software library which is used for compiling." SDL is not a build tool - presumably they use it to handle user-input...? -Wootery (talk) 10:50, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Moving the picture Gallery

Do you think it might be okay if we moved the picture gallery to another page? It seems to take up a lot of space.--Yoonsikp (talk) 19:02, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Yeah. I think it is overkill. Wikipedia:Image_use_policy#Image_galleries. The images should be on the Wikimedia Commons, anyway. We can just link to the category over there. We just have to choose which ones to keep in the article.--Brianann MacAmhlaidh (talk) 08:33, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

So how would we start? Not really good with wikipedia :P--Yoonsikp (talk) 19:09, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

I'll just remove it now. All the screenshots can be viewed when you follow the Commons template in the external links section. The other sims don't have many images on their articles: X-Plane (simulator), Microsoft Flight Simulator.--Brianann MacAmhlaidh (talk) 10:12, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

If you've downloaded the latest version, maybe you could get a screenshot for the article? Right now we've got a 'preview' version in the infobox.--Brianann MacAmhlaidh (talk) 12:06, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

But the GUI is identical!--Yoonsikp (talk) 00:42, 7 March 2010 (UTC)

media license = ?

The article and the home page clearly state that the source code is licensed under the GPL. Nobody says nothing about the media. Which license is it under? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.76.117.4 (talk) 11:47, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

New Article

I think we should another article called "History of FlightGear" Then we could use all the pictures we have.--Yoonsikp (talk) 17:49, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Article started we do have an article now called History of FlightGear made by me.--Yoonsikp (talk) --142.161.77.214 (talk) 01:54, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

Does anybody want to review my article?--142.161.77.214 (talk) 01:59, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

It's really just the same as this article though. If we removed the history from this one, all we'd be left with is a stub.--Brianann MacAmhlaidh (talk) 09:14, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

It's worth asking whether the history of this project is notable enough (validated by independent, reliable sources) to warrant its own article. Instead, take the history's most notable parts and make a very interesting, concise section on this article's page. czar · · 08:08, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Another commercial copy?

A product called "No. 1 Real Flight Sim Ever" at http no1realflightsimever.info is currently being touted on Facebook. It looks just like the other commercial copies of FG, and might be worth investigating. Rwxrwxrwx (talk) 14:08, 21 January 2012 (UTC)

And another? virtualpilot3d.com. Rwxrwxrwx (talk) 11:08, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Source material for the FlightGear article

Machine Design August 3, 2000, Linux gaming: publishers not playing with the penguin? Deutsche Presse-Agentur April 19, 2003, Aerospace America January 1, 2005, [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7]. -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 13:55, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

External links modified

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• Added archive https://web.archive.org/20100228145133/http://www.flightsim.com:80/main/review/fltgear.htm to http://www.flightsim.com/main/review/fltgear.htm
• Added archive https://web.archive.org/20070927201051/http://www.pcmag.co.uk/computeractive/downloads/2163376/flightgear to http://www.pcmag.co.uk/computeractive/downloads/2163376/flightgear
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My recent edit

In my recent edit, I removed a lot of the article. I did this because as a whole, the article is unencyclopedic. There were legitimate sources amongst the stuff I removed, but the entire article is in such a bad shape it would need to be rewritten, and only then would the sources come into play. As I said in the edit summary: Incomprehensible to the average reader, very few reliable sources. As the article stood or stands, it's little else than one big description of technology used in the game, with no indication of why this is notable, as in little to no reliable third party coverage. Eik Corell (talk) 19:15, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

The notability cannot seriously be under question, as anyone familiar with the subject will know that FlightGear is one of the leading flight simulators for personal computers, and the only open-source one of any real relevance. Your edit badly failed WP:PRESERVE and you actually just admitted that it removed some "legitimate sources", some of which may actually have helped assert the notability that you're not surreptitiously trying to put under question after removing the very third-party sources that could prove it. How does this make sense?

The article was technical, yes, as this is not even really a game, but a very complex piece of flight simulation software. If you can make it more understandable to the average reader, feel free to do so, but just removing content because it's technical is not justified. You can tag the article with Template:Technical if you want, and note that it states Please help improve this page to make it understandable to non-experts, without removing the technical details.

WP:GAMECRUFT isn't a license to serially wipe away the bulk of articles. This is not a "Non-notable articles and spinouts" (notability can be established easily), it is not "Numerous short articles" (you actually complained about the bulk of the single article), it is not "Detailed instructions" or even less "Strategy guides and walkthroughs" (it covers technical details but doesn't give instructions to do anything), it lists no "Excessive fictional details" or "Lists of characters lacking secondary sourcing" (as it's not even really a game with fictional elements), it doesn't substantially cover "Lists of gameplay items, weapons, or concepts" (even though that's a very wide one), it doesn't cover ephemeral items as "Cost" or "Rumors and speculation", it has a nice history in prose but not "Exhaustive version histories", it has no "Cast lists" that can apply to it, no "Unofficial translations", it doens't seem to state the "System requirements", nor any "Succession boxes" or or "Non-notable soundtracks".

Wow. That's all. WP:GAMECRUFT sure tries to be extensive, and yet, I don't see a single item that really applies here. Can you explain again why it justified all the non-consensual WP:REMOVAL even after your WP:BOLDness about it was shown to be objected to? LjL (talk) 19:22, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

Here is an example. Here is another. For the first one, this is meaningless for the average reader and it's not something that is covered in normal video game articles. This is the technical mumbojumbo that I was talking about. The second one: Pricing information, unsourced accusations of lying facebook pages and coverage of irrelevant community bickering. The "gallery" section goes without saying; No good video game articles have an entire section dedicated to screenshots. Now for the sources: The majority are either primary sources, i.e flightgear.org or its wiki. A lot of the ones that aren't are used to support new versions being released, which is where the version histories part of WP:GAMECRUFT comes in. With these sources already being of questionable notability: Techwoo doesn't exist anymore, and the archive link I could find that worked has the page listed as having only 172 views. So that one isn't a good one. But I kept the reception section because the PC magazine source is a good one, whereas the Softtonic one is at least acceptable. So is the torrentfreak one. The freesoftwaremagazine one is not notable, as compared to the traffic that the Softonic website gets in comparison. I can't find any mention of FlightGear on atcflightsim.com, either, despite the article sourcing the claim that they use it to their website. Eik Corell (talk) 21:52, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

I have dug up some possible sources, with particular attention to ones that seem to imply or acknowledge notability of FlightGear within the subject of flight simulators (although I think it's hard to deny its notability):

• "FlightGear 3.0 - Une étape majeur bientôt franchie". Micro Simulateur (241). Éditions Larivière. April 2014. ISSN 1163-4561. Archived from the original on February 2016. Retrieved February 2016. {{cite journal}}: Check date values in: |access-date= and |archive-date= (help)
• Gleason, Scott; Gebre-Egziabher, Demoz (2009-01-01). GNSS Applications and Methods. Artech House. ISBN 9781596933309. Furthermore, it provides an interface with other well-known tools such as Google Earth and FlightGear.
• Snásel, Václav; Platos, Jan; El-Qawasmeh, Eyas (2011-06-30). Digital Information Processing and Communications: International Conference, ICDIPC 2011, Ostrava, Czech Republic, July 7-9, 2011. Proceedings. Springer Science & Business Media. ISBN 9783642223884. Initial research narrowed the possible choices for a flight simulator down to FlightGear and Microsoft Flight Simulator 2002.
• Gagné, Marcel (2004-01-01). Moving to Linux: Kiss the Blue Screen of Death Goodbye!. Addison-Wesley Professional. ISBN 9780321159984. I have a warm spot in my heart for FlightGear, an extremely impressive open source flight simulator (Figure 18–16). The developers of this incredible package have produced a beautiful thing. The scenery itself is breathtaking [...]
• Wright, Richard; Lipchak, Benjamin; Haemel, Nicholas (2007-06-18). OpenGL SuperBible: Comprehensive Tutorial and Reference. Pearson Education. ISBN 9780321630155. Figure 1.14 shows a screenshot from a popular flight simulator that uses OpenGL for 3D rendering (www.flightgear.org).
• Miller, Robin Roblimo (2005-01-01). Point & Click Linux!: Your Guide to Trouble-free Computing. Addison-Wesley Professional. ISBN 9780131488724. Flightgear—Flight simulator program based on sophisticated technology originally developed for the U.S. military
• Thompson, Tyler. "FlightGear: Flight Simulator - PCMech". PCMech. Retrieved 2016-02-21. This week, I review FlightGear, an open source flight simulator that will match, if not beat Microsoft's $50 alternative.
• Anderson, Nels. "FlightSim.Com - Interview With Curtis Olson Of FlightGear". www.flightsim.com. Retrieved 2016-02-21.
• Perry, Alexander. "The FlightGear Flight Simulator". www.usenix.org. Retrieved 2016-02-21.
• "November 2015, "Community Choice" Project of the Month – FlightGear | SourceForge Community Blog". Sourceforge. Retrieved 2016-02-21.

I hope some of this can help the article and the citations can help clarify its subject's notability, also in light of the RfC below.

Reply with quick pov, from a new editor who created some recent text additions

Hey there:). I'm a new editor who was part way through bringing the article up-to date. The project is 20 years old, and most of the text looked 10+ years out of date. I added some text on the physics of flight, and visual cues & rendering a day ago. I'm not familiar with this talk page stuff or wiki markup (I used the visual editor) so I'll quote the above and reply if you don't mind.

> Eik Corell: "For the first one, this is meaningless for the average reader and it's not something that is covered in normal video game articles."

Thank you for your diligence and volunteering to maintain articles, but Flightgear is not a video game. I'm not sure what should be acceptable given what Flightgear is, but I'll leave what I know for the consideration of the good people here.

Flightgear about:

> "The goal of the FlightGear project is to create a sophisticated and open flight simulator framework for use in research or academic environments, pilot training, as an industry engineering tool, for DIY-ers to pursue their favorite interesting flight simulation idea, and last but certainly not least as a fun, realistic, and challenging desktop flight simulator. We are developing a sophisticated, open simulation framework that can be expanded and improved upon by anyone interested in contributing."

The general values of the forces behind development development appears to be this (in an opensource project it varies depending on individuals contributing).. Although there's notable use of FlightGear as a desktop simulator (note simulator for exploration of flight - not a game) a lot of the contributors and forces to date have been from technical communities & backgrounds as I understand it.

It just so happens that various commercial games have flying vehicles, and some commercial simulators selling to casual users have different parts of flight simulated - by means of varying approximation.

Having flying craft doesn't equate to software having the same goals or use. For instance the approach of YASim, based on blade elements and the artwork provided, is used in some commercial software. The YASim page describes the approach as a "crude approximation at best" aimed at subsonic simulation - it starts to fall apart at transonic and is bad at supersonic & hyper-sonic. For other methods like JSBSim "you will need more than a casual knowledge of aerodynamics", and the author stated he would have likely stayed with JSBSim had he had that knowledge initially. So YASim is intended towards people with less understanding of aerodyamics. That's just different approaches within FlightGear. Other commercial games (and casual simulators) have varying levels of things modeled - it depends on entertainment goals, common expertise of game developers in aerodynamics, and keeping development expenses down to meet profit targets.

JSBSim for instance was benchmark tested by NASA against other professional simulations in the Space industry for suitability for R&D (accuracy, numerical stability etc). All the simulators tested were deemed to be performing well: https://nescacademy.nasa.gov/flightsim/

From p.24 of the executive summary

> The eventual matches between simulation tools, achieved only after several iterations of comparing results and correcting mistaken assumptions and other errors, was good enough to indicate agreement between a majority of simulation tools for all cases published. Most of the remaining differences are explained and could be reduced with further effort

The assessment provided anonymity to results and they are listed on p12: "Participating in the assessment were participantsfrom NASA AmesResearch Center (ARC), ArmstrongFlight Research Center (AFRC), JohnsonSpace Center (JSC), LangleyResearch Center (LaRC),and Marshall Space FlightCenter (MSFC), and an open-source simulation tool development project (i.e., JSBSim)."

From the space shuttle article

> JSBSim, is quite capable of orbital dynamics, in fact it has been benchmarked against several test cases in a 6-DoF simulation code comparison by NASA.

> JSBSim is not a game engine, it is a professional simulation code that just happens to be OpenSource.

I was just starting some updates, didn't really even touch the flight dynamics engines part of physics. I did envisage there would be a lot of reorganisation, expanding to be easier to understand, and possibly culling. But I also expected there would be a lot of things to update after neglect for so many years. That includes a bunch of areas I was intending to leave to others.

I don't know what type of information would be suitable to Wikipedia's standards for a project with FlightGear's goals and progress - if I work on this more eventually I may create a copy in a sandbox first.

(Perhaps the visual editor could be used for talk pages too!)

Kind regards, and apologies for not knowing wiki markup or proper talk page formatting.

Ssvv7 (talk) 09:49, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

RfC: substantial article trimming

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Closing, per request at WP:ANRFC and WP:SNOW. Consensus to Restore, with [citation needed] tags whenever appropriate, and remove uncited questioned content if no sources are found in 60 days. --GRuban (talk) 16:24, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

---

Should the content that was removed from the article in this edit (and additional content subsequently in this) be restored per WP:PRESERVE/WP:REMOVAL, pending, if needed, much more granular discussion of individual aspects? LjL (talk) 22:05, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

• Restore (as initiator) per the reasons given here (in short: notability is easy to assert and anyway this is not AfD; none of the WP:GAMECRUFT points really apply; technical details should be made more understandable and not simply deleted). LjL (talk) 22:05, 21 February 2016 (UTC)
• Restore. While the article undoubtly has several issues, some content was removed where simple cleanup would be more useful than deleting it. Maths314 (talk) 15:38, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
• Comment I'm curious as to what specific sections should be restored. I mean as long we're not talking about [8]. Shouldn't need explain the problems with that one. Eik Corell (talk) 16:04, 22 February 2016 (UTC)
• Restore I don't really see any reason that such an extensive removal of material was required. Also it doesn't really seem like WP:GAMECRUFT applies to the material removed. The article, including the content removed, seemed focused on the game not on fictional elements within the game or non-encyclopedic content like how-to's or strategy guides. Frankly, such a wholesale removal of material kind of seems like vandalism. Klaun (talk) 21:18, 25 February 2016 (UTC)
• Restore - I don't see the reason why the content was deleted. It couldn't been easily fixed with a few simple clean-up edits. Comatmebro User talk:Comatmebro 18:50, 26 February 2016 (UTC)
• Comment At first glance, I agreed with the Restore comments, but I noticed that much of the deleted material seems completely unsourced. It reads very much like paraphrasing from an article (some reads a little like Original Research), so sourcing becomes really important. It is hard to say that any of this material should be kept without sourcing or references. Even if I voted to Restore, I would insist that the material find sources in 60 days or be removed. StarHOG (talk) 17:24, 1 March 2016 (UTC)
• Restore with tags whenever appropriate, and Remove if no sources are found in a reasonable time. “WarKosign” 11:22, 5 March 2016 (UTC)
• Restore with tags wherever appropriate and add sources wherever reasonably practicable. There is an unhealthy and unconstructive indoor sport of indulging a culture of veto, in which editors with nothing to contribute remove substantial material, sometimes large blocks of material, that instead they could have amended, or that did not require citations or repeated citations at all. That may be a tempting tactic for wikilawyers and warriors, but it is disruptive editing all the same. This is not to connive at sloppy authoring or editing, but there are worse things than missing a citation or a comma. JonRichfield (talk) 05:21, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

• Strong Restore, agree with JonRichfield: deleting this content is not improving the article. Adding citations or CN tags may have been an improvement. Really most of the sourcing this article needs can be handled by citing the source code right? That is not always the most helpful but it is a valid response to CN tags. Some of the individual removals may be justified but this large-scale reduction looks like slaughter to me. Bad info needs removal, good info that is unsourced needs tagged at most, not deleted. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:33, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

List of companies using the product

In relation to the above entry and my recent edits, I looked through the article again and I realized something: The majority of the universities listed are not official users or partners, but merely the place where students have made projects or submitted papers that somehow use FlightGear in their research. This is obviously not the same as universities using the software, as the list would imply in its current state. I propose keeping the companies in the way that I included them in the "commercial redistribution" to which I added the ones that seemed the most notable or official, mainly the company entries. I'm somewhat weary of the premise of listing them as well per #7 of WP:INDISCRIMINATE: "Simple listings without context information...", "listings of business alliances, clients,". There is very little in the way of third-party sources covering how or why the company use, university use and other entities using it is notable; so back to information for the sake of information. I've left the list for now. Eik Corell (talk) 18:03, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

Article content

@Ssvv7: Regarding the points raised here, I'll briefly go through the major things that jump out at me. The first is the section on binary and code. The problem with this is that to most readers, and I'd even argue even players/users/whatever of the product, this means nothing. If a reliable source had covered how or why it was important, e.g if being written mostly in C++ made it a technological outlier, or the quality of its code or whatever had received attention from said reliable sources, that's a different story. The same applies to talking about difficulties of compiling codebases, quality of distributions, etc.

Regarding the draft here, that's a different story since RockPaperShotgun is a respected and reliable source. Though there are issues of presentation, i.e changing "criticism from media" to "Controversy" and possibly cutting the section down to avoid quotes, and instead stick to summarising the overall message being presented in a concise way.

As far as the video game/simulator distinction goes, I've run into this before, and have seen it applied to much less sophisticated games than this. I'm unsure what to make of it, because on one hand there is obvious professional application of this software, but with a lot of software like this, the sophistication of the simulation can often be dialed down, or the game features some kind of arcade mode making it accessible to casual users in the same way a typical video game is. I lean toward it being both. Whichever is the case, the proper sourcing of information remains the primary problem: Community wikis, fan sites, etc being used as sources is inappropriate whichever side of the issue we land on.

Looking into other stuff that I removed, I can explain another problem with a lot of info added: From this revision, I removed the "additional software" section. The source problem is there; It uses a community wiki as a source, it goes on to mention off kinds of unofficial software, without sources to show how or why any of it is notable. With this extreme level of explaining unofficial plugins and software, we indirectly get into WP:NOTMANUAL -- The information is of such limited relevance to the average reader that I don't think it's unfair to claim that the section mainly serves as a gameguide or instruction set. The same goes for the "depencies" section; The information is so technical and limited in scope that in practice it's useful only to a select few. It ends up somewhere between being information for the sake of information and said manual-ish info purely by virtue of how technical it is. Eik Corell (talk) 05:54, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

@Erik Correl: I tried to add some sub sections and headings to address each topic. Hope you don't mind, feel free to rename headings / sign paragraphs for clarity - Ssvv7 (talk) 06:24, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

Once this part of the discussion is done, the rest of my PoV will fall into place, so I'll focus on this part first before commenting on other sections. After some quick googling for sources:

"but with a lot of software like this, the sophistication of the simulation can often be dialed down" In Flightgear's case there is no 'arcade' mode. It's a civilian sim, so unlike games there's no target to shoot/fire at least in distributions associated with the flightgear.org project. There was a discussion on the developer mailinglist on helping people getting into flightsim, and whether FG should be dumbed down (made unrealsitic) at least for introductory Cessna 172P. The outcome of the discussion was that the correct thing was for newcomers to use easier aircraft with tutorials rather than create fake or unphysical aircraft not present in reality - the easy to fly Ercoupe was revamped to help with that as a result. Gliders and such are another option. The use cases of FG are for aerospace research & development, pilot training, industry/DiY integration with external hardware/systems etc. and not just as a desktop simulation. Non PC platforms like Raspberry Pi are also supported these days.

A lot of the people developing FG historically, and hence the development pushes, seem to have been from Aerospace research or various technical backgrounds (see http://jsbsim.sourceforge.net/about.html if you need sources). I did a bit of googling and found this quote from a FG developer on the Orbiter forum that elaborates:

FG developer in 2017:"You're probably picturing an OpenSource variant of a desktop sim for entertainment, say, FSX. That's not what the project is."

"While the vast majority of FG users uses it as desktop simulator for entertainment, it's OpenSource, the developers who shape it (there's no market, the number of users doesn't generate any bonus for the sim). And lots of the developers are from aerospace research or (to a lesser degree) industry who need FG for some purpose."

"For example, you can, out of the box, render FG via three graphics cards and nine connected screens. No desktop user needs that, but the big 3-axis motion simulators running FG do. You can connect to a running instance with a tablet and set weather, or cause aircraft failures - again, the casual user doesn't need that, but flight instructors do. There's FAA certified simulation stations running with FG for instance - something e.g. X-plane can't claim so far."

"The trajectory computation code (JSBSim) we use for spaceflight has been developed with air and space in mind - it has passed NASA benchmark tests for numerical stability and is a tool used by aerospace departments in several universities around the world. Out of the box, there's for instance a flag to let it simulate the minute torque by gravity differentials on a spacecraft - because some past researcher happened to need that for his PhD (or so)."

"Of course Earth rotates, and it has a non-spherical gravity field, and there's Coriolis forces, and so on... it's on par with other professional 6 DoF simulation codes (I can probably dig up the link to the NASA numerical benchmark tests if you really care), it's not a quickly rigged game - if you insert the Shuttle aerodynamics tables, it will do what NASA's Shuttle sims do to the letter"

(actually, the developers typically cringe when someone calls it a game - that's not how we see what we're doing)." - FG developer in 2017

Following on from the developer's comments, searching publications from an Aerospace research institute like the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) for "JSBSim" [1] and "Flightgear" [2] gives plenty of publications. These are results that aren't just doing research where the focus is on human factors or training, while using the simulator just for visualisation/interface, which is what would be expected for a casual/arcade sim if it ends up in an Aerospace publication. In-fact JSBSim is the flight dynamics engine so none of those results are about human factor.

"but with a lot of software like this, the sophistication of the simulation can often be dialed down" - One experienced simmer on flightsim.com forums from commercial sims was having trouble with the full procedures of the C172P saying "the commercial sims at least make sure that you can get the aircraft to move on first running without making you sift through some rather complex configuration". In this instance the same dev, who was the shuttle maintainer wasn't familiar with the latest C172p config options - where the startup state depended on start position chosen in the qt launcher: from cold&dark, to ready for take off, to mid air start already flying. There were also autostart & state change options available from menue, as well as tutorials with skip buttons. The philosophy of opensource vs commercial is the important bit in this reply:

FG developer 2018:"I guess that's the thing in a nutshell. We're not doing a commercial sim. The C-172p developers aren't getting anything from attracting a new user, he'll never become a customer which brings money. Instead it's a matter of pride for the devel team of that particular aircraft to make things realistic in great detail - like the procedures to walk around the aircraft and remove wheel chocks etc. - and being able to do that is what motivates them. There's aircraft developers who worry over getting the inertia of a moving gauge needle right - not over how to market things."

"Wearing my own maintainer's head for the Space Shuttle, I am fully aware any user will be hopelessly lost sitting in the commander's seat for the first time, because - just like the real thing - you need a long training period to operate a Shuttle, it's not intuitive at all. So I'm guessing you need to do at least 100 pages of reading and a week of familiarization before you manage to do simple things. It's the OpenSource nature of FG, the lack of a need to sell this to anyone, which enables me to do it to that level of detail.'""

"So (like other things in FG), the C-172p is a labour of love where several talented people took a lot of time to create something that counts among the most detailed FG has to offer - it's meant to likewise take some time and effort to be enjoyed - if you're after getting into the air without much effort, perhaps another aircraft is better for you - there's also those which are initialized with engine running and ready to take off."

"Or, if you don't enjoy at all doing some tinkering of your own, then you're likely better off with a commercial sim. We're not actually trying to do a second X-plane, just for free - we're trying something different." - FG developer 2018

Since FG is an entirely volunteer based opensource project, there's no incentive to use lots of marketing speak, adjectives, etc. when the FG goals are stated. Rather the words are chosen precisely. Flightgear.org/about : "The goal of the FlightGear project is to create a sophisticated and open flight simulator framework for use in research or academic environments, pilot training, as an industry engineering tool, for DIY-ers to pursue their favorite interesting flight simulation idea, and last but certainly not least as a fun, realistic, and challenging desktop flight simulator.". This isn't like just a commercial sim using marketing speak and words like "incredible", or "ultimate", to make a relatively casual/arcade project seem realistic to unsuspecting readers.

It's in line with those goals, and FG not being a game, that I started adding info/updating a description of the project into a sandbox page with sources in September 2019 - it seems someone has reviewed it and recommended it for inclusion as is in February this year (I didn't notice it in Feb). I will see if I want to write more, and will be looking to add it at some point over the next few weeks.

"video game/simulator distinction" - Another point is that wiki guidelines about game articles assume content can be present in sections relevant to goals of games - entertainment. Looking at the Game style guide.. There's no corresponding sections in Flightsims for: story/plot/settings/gameplay design/gameplay loop/soundtrack accompaniment to story. There's also no winning or completing quests. Non-arcade simulations and their features are fundamentally about how close to reality the simulation gets - so, in general, articles should be a lot about that. For articles about desktop simulators simulating reality, equivalent things to game articles sections need to be found - otherwise what you end up with is an article that contains almost nothing. In addition to being a desktop sim, FG goals are in R&D, DiY projects, pilot instruction etc. For all these goals you need equivalent sections too.

I can expand on any of the points. - Ssvv7 (talk) 06:24, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

Going by WP:VG/GL, we may not have anything for a plot section, but a gameplay section is doable -- Describe that players control an aircraft, that players can customize and set up said aircraft in a number of ways and fly that aircraft from airport to airport and so on, same with a soundtrack section if the soundtrack was notable, and that leads back to the recurring problem: A lack of third-party sources. Sources like github, sourceforge, internal mailing lists, forums, fan sites etc are not appropriate for a variety of reasons, primarily that they're all user-generated content and none of them are established, acknowledged experts in the way that again that an established and known source like RockPaperShotgun is. Basically that's what the problem boils down to here; A severe lack of proper sourcing. Without this, expanding the article gets right back into adding information simply for the sake of information that I mentioned. Reliable third-party sources sort of act as arbitrators of what can be included since they usually explain and cover concisely the issues for a wider audience. Looking at your draft here, the problems I see is still this listing of way too detailed/technical stuff. What is needed is a concise description for example where you simply state that the game features complex atmospheric and physical simulations, etc, and then possibly mention an example where a source exists. Going off listing individual concepts and details like 3d density distribution of clouds and how water color changes based on atmospheric conditions is the antithesis to that conciseness, and that information makes it look like a kind of white-paper or brochure for people who are already familiar with aviation and related subjects. I'm gonna look for sources to see what I can find. Eik Corell (talk) 09:13, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

I've only answered one paragraph first. Can you split up your various different issues on article content (currently sorted into paragraphs) into different sections? Otherwise I'd need to quote the entire thing for clarity which amounts to the same thing. I'll also sign each paragraph/point I write from now on so others can respond to that chain specifically. - Ssvv7 (talk) 01:15, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

Eric Correll wrote: "As far as the video game/simulator distinction goes, I've run into this before, and have seen it applied to much less sophisticated games than this. I'm unsure what to make of it, because on one hand there is obvious professional application of this software, but with a lot of software like this, the sophistication of the simulation can often be dialed down, or the game features some kind of arcade mode making it accessible to casual users in the same way a typical video game is." Firstly - do you understand that Flightgear is not a game based on my response above? We should establish that first. - Ssvv7 (talk) 01:15, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

Eric Correll wrote: "Going by WP:VG/GL, we may not have anything for a plot section, but a gameplay section is doable". My point was for non-game articles, putting it in video game article terms, equivalent things need to be found first for all the missing stuff before content can be considered for removing. That's a thought experiment or exercise to make sure game article maintainers consider & understand what something is, before they remove/edit. In video game terms, what replacement sections are needed for each of Flightgear's goals? Of course, I'm not saying WP:VG/GL is appropriate because these are not games. Flight-gear is several things in it's goals - R&D, pilot instruction, DiY hardware/software projects, in addition to a desktop simulation. Flightgear also supports non-desktop platforms like Raspberry pi (useful for DiY) in a stripped down form these days. - Ssvv7 (talk) 01:15, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

The video-game/simulator distinction really doesn't mean in the end. The compromise would be to say that it's both; It's a video-game flight simulator. Whether we go the software route or the video game route as far as content rules goes, the same problems remain with lack of sourcing. Lots of technical papers on implementations of various things and concepts, but not much that summarizes these things and how they're important to the average reader. On that subject, I found this source, old as it may be, maybe the article could be expanded or existing info sourced to that, but sources seem very hard to come by. I have meanwhile implemented a shortened version of your draft piece on redistribution of the software as a "controversy" section. As for the many things that the game contains, as you mentioned -- Pilot instruction, research and development platform, I think mention of this could easily be added to the lede. I'll try to get around to that as well, but I still remain wary of adding information without sources. Eik Corell (talk) 18:41, 22 August 2020 (UTC)

"The compromise would be to say that it's both; It's a video-game flight simulator." - Having a 3d graphics and user interaction does not mean a particular piece of software is a game - scientific visualisations use 3d rendering and have user interaction. :::::Do you have any information that says FG is a game in what it does, or was ever even intended as a game by flightgear.org - I don't mean casual references on gaming or arcade sim websites that don't care about the terminology? - Ssvv7 (talk) 06:59, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

"Whether we go the software route or the video game route" - Content should cover all goals if software if it has more than one - the content for more technical goals shouldn't be removed if there's a less technical goal. If, purely hypothetically, someone created marginal uses for a software platform as a game, any article should contain the full information for the goals of the software product, plus any other entertainment uses. For example, imagine a scenario where someone created a game that runs on a opensource spreadsheet (Excel equivalent) software using whatever scripting was available. There are lots of games for Microsoft Excel. Imagine if it become extremely popular, like some games by small independent game studios. Is it then appropriate to remove information about the spreadsheet goals of the program, or is it appropriate to create a section and add any entertainment specific goals. FG isn't a game, there's no real game material part of the flightgear.org distribution, which doesn't even include military targets to shot at as it's a civilian sim. In fact FG has lots of goals other than being a desktop simulation (including running on non-desktop platforms). - Ssvv7 (talk) 06:59, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

"Lots of technical papers on implementations of various things and concepts, but not much that summarizes these things and how they're important to the average reader" - Articles should first contain information to the average user of each of the goals of a software project. It could then could be expanded to bring things down to the average reader who is looking for that information. For example, a fluid dynamics article like Eddies contains a lot of info that is understandable for the average reader of fluid dynamics topics, at a more technical level than my draft. These articles often only contain information aimed at the average reader of wikipeida in the introductory paragraph. Same for a lot of Computational Fluid Dynamics articles, and a lot of Physics articles. If the software product has multiple goals, and audiences then at a minimum the information should be there at a level suitable for the most technical goal. It can later, as a bonus, be expanded for readers from the least technical goal, and an extra bonus would be to include some information for the average reader of Wikipedia who might stumble across the article, probably towards the top. In the sandbox addition I did in September 2019, I included an extra intro section on physics that at least contained information describing the problem being solved by flight simulation to cater for those with less technical background who use FG as a desktop simulation (not a game). It at least contained information describing the problem, even if it brief and a bit technical - but it cross-linked to a lot of articles where people could learn more. I didn't need to have done that at a bare minimum. The level was more than low enough, for example, for readers using FG/JSBSim for research in the space industry. The information could be given a "too technical for users of FG for some of FG's goals" tag, but it's an improvement over the information not being present. - Ssvv7 (talk) 06:59, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

"problems remain with lack of sourcing. Lots of technical papers on implementations of various things and concepts, but not much that summarizes these things and how they're important to the average reader. On that subject, I found this source, old as it may be, maybe the article could be expanded or existing info sourced to that, but sources seem very hard to come by." - It's not the job of sources to translate what papers say into terms that an average flight sim reader, or average Wikipedia reader, understands. Wikipedia articles in Physics/Maths/CFD can cite journal papers directly, and don't need help to translate into terms to be understood by an average reader of the topic in question, or an average reader of Wikipedia that might stumble on the article. - Ssvv7 (talk) 06:59, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

That source is a more casual article written by an arcade/gaming sim website - Papers & PhD thesis can't even be compared to this. The journalist in question probably spends most of the time writing about flight action games and relatively arcade entertainment oriented products, which is the goal of the site. The journalist will have unfortunately done a reasonably limited research, given he has to cover a lot of other products. The article is oriented towards his gaming or arcade flight audience, he concludes with "As a flight simulation “game”.. ". The highest quality sources are peer reviewed journals and reviews of multiple papers - in all subjects, not just Aerospace. Journalists writing about flight arcade/entertainment, in all likelihood, will not have had the opportunity to get a mathematical background to learn and understand simulation problems at Aerospace PhD level - something that people reviewing articles in journals do, never mind the people writing the papers. Similarly for people's thesis projects in FG, which are supervised and then reviewed by people with PhD's in relevant areas. - Ssvv7 (talk) 06:59, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

Erik Correl wrote:"Regarding the draft here, that's a different story since RockPaperShotgun is a respected and reliable source. Though there are issues of presentation, i.e changing "criticism from media" to "Controversy" and possibly cutting the section down to avoid quotes, and instead stick to summarising the overall message being presented in a concise way.... "I have meanwhile implemented a shortened version of your draft piece on redistribution of the software as a "controversy" section."

"RockPaperShotgun is a respected and reliable source" Note that RPS is a respected and reliable source for gaming, and wargaming. Tim Stone is a Wargame specialist from the gaming side, not really a civilian flight arcade specialist, and not a reviewer of an Aerospace research journal as far as topics related to civilian sims. RPS is fine for things like ethics that apply both to games and sims, but not for other scientific things. - Ssvv7 (talk) 06:59, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

"acknowledged experts in the way that again that an established and known source like RockPaperShotgun is" - This is your game editing background again. RPS is lucky to have one wargame specialist, and can't be expected to cover non-arcade flight simulation in depth, let alone civilian flight simulation. You won't find links to papers, or referring to the standard NASA set for measuring simulations (ironically using, in part, Flightgear). Speaking from an opensource point of view, the way the game industry is set up doesn't create quality of reviews, review articles by multiple people like with peer reviewed journals, or time for depth of reviews - despite the gaming industry involving 10's of Billions of dollars if not 100s. Because of the amount of money involved, and the influx of shareholder investors, the system is currently broken. For example the 1st game on the list of most expensive games had $200 million dollar marketing budget and only $50 million dollars of development. Strictly speaking, the parameter being optimised by shareholder interest is the profit - and just being anti-competitive and drowning out other products with marketings works as well as creating good products. It works even better - since it's easier for managers to just pour dollars into marketing/advertisement, than nurture a complex knowledge industry business (in fact, as news coverage in recent years shows, it's apparently easier to abuse behavioral psychologists to retain and monetise through DLCs/gambling, than make better games). This impacts what gets covered, to what detail, and the qualifications of the Journalists. Game journalists are underpaid, and completely saturated for attention and with things to write about in the limited time available by the big PR dollars. There isn't enough money in journalism for news sites to sponsor degrees in game design - let alone engineering. A quick google shows articles like this. That article shows how the sheer amount of money thrown at marketing means game company PR's created Journalism awards in some countries with a vast conflict of interest, creating pressure to play along and tone down criticism - or get sidelined and/or cut off from exclusives. With youtube and social media, marketing has moved to abuse "influencers" to undermine what journalism there is - influencers who are less financially secure if doing it full-time, less experienced/qualified, and work alone without editors to review work. Game sites, even ones with RPS that at least have 1 wargame specialist, are limited. Papers, theses, and writings by people with degrees in subject matter supersede these. - Ssvv7 (talk) 06:59, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

Erik Correl wrote: "i.e changing "criticism from media" to "Controversy"" - Hm. Maybe just criticism is better. Controversy implies that there are other sources free of commercial conflict of interest that disagree with the core ethical criticism. - Ssvv7 (talk) 06:59, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

Eric Correl wrote: "and possibly cutting the section down to avoid quotes, and instead stick to summarising the overall message being presented in a concise way." a). Tim Stone threw every second of his personal and professional experience behind his criticism using the word "loathed". That's an extra-ordinary statement. Extremely uncommon. b). Given the strength of criticisms for both products (Virtual pilot and Pro flight), it doesn't sound very neutral to use words like 'scathing' to describe the strength of various criticisms for either product even though it's a fair comment. I felt it was better to do a direct quotes like "lying through their teeth" and describe some allegations neutrally using detached language were possible - than try to mix neutrally voiced allegations with strong descriptions of the severity of the criticism. c). The strength of the criticism are also worth quoting by itself, as it is notable - bordering on unprecedented - from a senior journalist at that, and consistently in articles 6 years apart for similar products showing it was not a momentary reaction as might happen on a small site with no editor unlike RPS. - Ssvv7 (talk) 06:59, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

Proposed merge of JSBSim into FlightGear

overlaps with [[FlightGear#JSBSim] fgnievinski (talk) 02:47, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Redirected rather than merging, given that there was no referenced content on the other page, a long-standing issue there. Klbrain (talk) 09:11, 2 October 2022 (UTC)